“I’m a Conservative Who Got in a Blowout Fight With My Liberal Future Father-in-Law. Now I’m Wondering if the Marriage Will Work”

We're all neighbors(opens in new tab). But the steep political divides(opens in new tab) running through the country can make that awfully hard to see.

Every week, readers write in asking how to navigate relationships(opens in new tab) strained by today's political climate. Our "Dear Builders" series offers a little guidance for holding onto the people who matter, even when you don't see eye to eye.

This week’s email comes from a conservative reader whose weekend with his liberal future father-in-law ended in a shouting match, and who's now wondering whether the marriage itself is in trouble.

Got a conflict you'd like our take on? Email abuscemi@buildersmovement.org(opens in new tab)

Dear Builders,

I got in a really bad fight with my future father-in-law last weekend and honestly I'm still kind of messed up about it.

We always got along fine before. But this time when they came to visit it was different. He knows I'm more on the conservative side and the whole weekend he kept saying stuff like how Republicans are all racist and all homophobic and how we want to take the country back 100 years. And he'd kind of look right at me when he said it. Like he wanted me to say something. And that's not even me, I love the women in my life and respect them, my roommate from college is gay and he's still one of my best friends to this day. So I just kept quiet and let it go, and let it go, but then he said that people like me are the reason his nephew who's gay grew up scared to be himself. And that was it, I couldn't take it anymore. We got into it pretty bad, we were both yelling, and my fiancée was standing there almost crying. Then he just went to bed.

I honestly thought we'd get up the next day and have some coffee and kind of laugh it off, like ok that got out of hand. But he was already gone when I woke up. He left super early and didn't even say bye to my fiancée or me.

My family is way more conservative than I am, and when I called my mom about it she just goes "remember you're not just marrying her, you're marrying the whole family too." So now I can't sleep, I keep thinking about how every Thanksgiving and Christmas is gonna be a disaster with all of us in one room, and honestly part of me is even wondering if I should be marrying into this family at all.

What should I do?

Sincerely,
Rattled Fiancée

Dear Rattled Fiancée,

First, breathe. You had one bad night, not a verdict on the rest of your life, and the fact that you're this shaken tells me something good about you: you actually care about this man's opinion of you, which means the relationship is worth something to both of you, or it wouldn't hurt this much.

Let's start with what happened, because I think you already know it wasn't really about you leaning conservative. A man does not corner his daughter's fiancé and needle him all weekend because he's worked up about your politics. He does it because he's scared. Somewhere in him is a father watching his daughter hitch her life to a near-stranger, and he's trying, clumsily, through insult and provocation, to find out who you are and whether you'll be good to her. He picked the crudest possible way to ask the question. But underneath "all Republicans are X" was probably something closer to "are you safe for my kid?" That doesn't excuse the nephew comment. It was a low blow and it landed exactly where he aimed it. It might, though, help you see him as a frightened dad instead of a villain.

The harder truth (and I say it with love): You lost a chance in that argument, and so did he. The two of you had a real opening to talk about the gay roommate you love, the nephew he's clearly terrified for, maybe even the fact that you might have more common ground on that nephew than either of you realized in the heat of it. And instead you both reached for the loudest, worst version of each other and swung. It happens. It's human. But the repair is now yours to start, not because you were more wrong, but because you're the one lying awake at 3 a.m. wanting it fixed, and the person who wants it fixed is the person who moves first.

So move first. Not with a text, not with your fiancée as the go-between, but directly, and soon, before this hardens into the story he tells himself about you forever. Call him. Say something like: "That got away from both of us, and I don't want it to define how we know each other. I said things I regret. I'd like to take you to lunch, just us, and start over." Then, at that lunch, resist every urge to relitigate who said what. You will want to win. Winning is the trap. Your only job is to let him see the actual you, the guy with the gay best friend, the guy who loves his daughter, the guy decent enough to reach out after getting hurt. He built a cardboard cutout of "a conservative" in his head and lit it on fire. You can't argue the cutout away. You can only keep showing up as a real person until the cutout stops matching what's in front of him. 

Now, the marriage question. One awful weekend with your future father-in-law is not a reason to leave someone you love. But pay attention to how your fiancée handles what comes next. She doesn't have to pick a side between the two of you, and it's unfair to ask her to. What you can hope to see is that she's willing to stand beside you as you repair this, that she'll tell her dad she loves you and needs him to try, that she treats your bond with her family as a shared project and not your problem to solve alone. Talk to her. Not about whether her father was right, but about whether the two of you are a team when the families collide. Her answer to that is a thousand times more predictive of your marriage than anything her dad shouted.

Your mom, by the way, is right that you marry the family too. But she gave you only half the wisdom. You marry the family, and the family marries you, and every wedding in history has been two clans of oddballs and hotheads and people who vote differently learning, slowly and imperfectly, to sit at one table. The holidays you're dreading are not doomed. They're just going to take work, and a few more awkward lunches, and a willingness on your part to keep being gracious even when someone's being unfair, which, I'd gently point out, is the exact muscle a good marriage runs on anyway.

You're not questioning the wrong relationship. You just got a very loud, very early preview of the real work. Go do it.

Warmly,
Alex

Got a conflict you'd like our take on? Email abuscemi@buildersmovement.org(opens in new tab)

Art by Matthew Lewis(opens in new tab)