The General Chat Thread (2016-2022)

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My wife's parents are visiting for the weekend arriving at 05:00 tomorrow morning with her niece. I hope that she's less trouble than she was the last time they visited four years ago. I hope her niece has matured a little also.

:D :D:D:D

I love them really.

How could you not love in-laws who only visit every four years?
 
Yorky said:
My wife's parents are visiting for the weekend arriving at 05:00 tomorrow morning with her niece. I hope that she's less trouble than she was the last time they visited four years ago. I hope her niece has matured a little also.

:D :D:D:D

I love them really.

How could you not love in-laws who only visit every four years?
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I loved my in-laws dearly (both now passed on), but they’d come visit us once a year and stay for two weeks, and by about the fourth day, I’d really be itching for them to leave, just because they upset my routine so much.
 
TastyReuben said:
I loved my in-laws dearly (both now passed on), but they’d come visit us once a year and stay for two weeks, and by about the fourth day, I’d really be itching for them to leave, just because they upset my routine so much.
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Up until the onset of the Covid problems mine would visit every two years. MiL would not stay longer than 3/4 days as she needed to return home (1000 km) to look after the farm. Neither of them had time to get used to the new gismos that we had purchased between the visits and to this day, I don't think the FiL has figured out (remembered) how to lock/unlock the front doors.

The new fridge/freezer and washing machine will have them flummoxed.
 
TastyReuben said:
I loved my in-laws dearly (both now passed on), but they’d come visit us once a year and stay for two weeks, and by about the fourth day, I’d really be itching for them to leave, just because they upset my routine so much.
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Luckily I never had any in-laws who stayed in the house (not ever!). If they visited (rarely) they would stay in a hotel. And 14 days is 13 days too long! I'm similar to you in that sense. I hate my routine being interrupted. To me that equates to stress. Its become more and more so since I've become a 'carer' for my partner as I rely on a routine to get me through the day.

Just thought - technically I had no in-laws as I wasn't/am not married. Is there a phrase for 'parents of partner'. I wonder?
 
Morning Glory said:
And 14 days is 13 days too long!
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They’d visit their other two kids for a solid month. They’d say it was because they had grandkids there and we didn’t, but I knew that it was also in part because they knew how uncomfortable it made me.

A lot of parents would try and force their will that way, but that was one of the good things about them.

When we visit family, I always insist on staying in a hotel, with the exception of my in-laws, because I knew it would have hurt their feelings. The rest of the family…so sad, too bad, get over it, AFAIC, and it does still upset her sisters when we do that, but I feel much better staying in a hotel, so I have a place to escape to when I get overloaded with the whole thing.

Her family are…boisterous, to say the least, and everyone is encouraged from birth to be as loud and vocal as possible. You ever see those movie depictions of a loud Italian-American family eating a meal and everyone is talking and shouting all at once? Yeah…that’s a quiet day with my wife’s family.
 
TastyReuben said:
I loved my in-laws dearly (both now passed on), but they’d come visit us once a year and stay for two weeks, and by about the fourth day, I’d really be itching for them to leave, just because they upset my routine so much.
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I got along with my in-laws just fine, in small doses. But, the same is true with my own family.

CD
 
Morning Glory said:
Luckily I never had any in-laws who stayed in the house (not ever!). If they visited (rarely) they would stay in a hotel. And 14 days is 13 days too long! I'm similar to you in that sense. I hate my routine being interrupted. To me that equates to stress. Its become more and more so since I've become a 'carer' for my partner as I rely on a routine to get me through the day.

Just thought - technically I had no in-laws as I wasn't/am not married. Is there a phrase for 'parents of partner'. I wonder?
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Married or not, they are still "family" IMO. I think it is okay to call them in-laws, even if you aren't technically married.

My parents always stayed at a hotel, by their choice. They also only came to our house for a couple of days at a time. My in-laws couldn't afford that, and would come for a few weeks at a time. My ex and I had a big, four bedroom house, so it was not crowded, at all.

My MIL was a great cook, but she did not mind a cluttered kitchen. That caused me some stress, because every horizontal surface in the rather large kitchen would be covered with "stuff." My ex-wife and my MIL kept things clean, as in sanitary, but cluttered.

CD
 
TastyReuben said:
Her family are…boisterous, to say the least, and everyone is encouraged from birth to be as loud and vocal as possible.
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I really find that so difficult (impossible in fact). My son when he was living here once had a girlfriend who, although she was French, had spent several formative years growing up in the USA. She just shouted everything in an excited voice. She was the one I found perching on my kitchen counter (!) once when I came back from shopping.

Another time I was in a favourite hotel in Canterbury. An historic quiet boutique hotel where we had stayed many times. On this occasion a family from the USA were having breakfast in the quaint and rather small breakfast room at the same time as us. The younger two, who seemed to be in their late teens/early twenties talked so loudly that I was nearly in tears.

I'm beginning to sound racist against the USA but the 'shouting' presentation is a reason I don't like watching American food shows.
 
Morning Glory said:
I really find that so difficult (impossible in fact). My son when he was living here once had a girlfriend who, although she was French, had spent several formative years growing up in the USA. She just shouted everything in an excited voice. She was the one I found perching on my kitchen counter (!) once when I came back from shopping.

Another time I was in a favourite hotel in Canterbury. An historic quiet boutique hotel where we had stayed many times. On this occasion a family from the USA were having breakfast in the quaint and rather small breakfast room at the same time as us. The younger two, who seemed to be in their late teens/early twenties talked so loudly that I was nearly in tears.

I'm beginning to sound racist against the USA but the 'shouting' presentation is a reason I don't like watching American food shows.
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I tend to agree with you re: Americans being loud and sounding excited. Still, I think latin and mediterranean people are usually regarded as the loudest. I personally think my Spanish neighbours are the loudest of them all. We the Portuguese are a bit of an exception, I think we seem quite gloomy and a bit sad (there's a reason why Fado is our national music...)
 
Well, it may make a difference if you’re encountering folks who are on vacation/holiday - they may be a little more excited just because they’re letting loose and relaxing a little.

I’ve been around a good bit of the US, Ireland, the UK, and Europe, and I’d have to say, I’ve found plenty of national variety in the “noisy, boorish” category. :wink:
 
Having lived in America for 61 years, there is some truth, and a lot of myth in the statement that Americans are loud. The problem we have is the most common of problems -- the loudest people get all the attention. You don't notice the quite ones, because they are quiet.

Now, there are a lot of restaurants/bars in the US that have music playing all the time, and often too loud, so we have to talk loud to be heard. From my travels in Europe, that's not as common there. It is especially true in Sports Bars, which we have a lot of here. I would imagine that a bar/pub full of soccer/football fans in London watching a match are not particularly quiet and reserved. In fact, I'd wager that a fight is more likely to break out in that situation than in a Sports Bar here. But, I wouldn't categorize all British football fans as violent. But, since they get all the attention, I could jump to that conclusion.

Also, Tasty was talking about Italian Americans, and as a group, they talk louder, and can't talk without using their (well, I should say our) hands. This is especially true in the Northeast, specifically New York, where his in-laws lived. My Italian American family is a lot quieter. That's just our nature.

If my family were in your local restaurant/pub in Europe, you probably would not even notice were were there. But, you do notice the loud ones, and assume we are all like that.

CD
 
This is a fascinating subject. There are indeed cultural differences between people of different countries and ethnicities and these have been well studied - the most popular reference is the The Culture Map which is the one we use at work. Speaking of Portugal, this was well studied by sociologists that we had a long dictatorship and the Catholic church was a strong influence in the country for many years, so the Portuguese are very focused on shame and blame and very restrained - and also very non violent and non confrontational.

I've seen a lot of these differences at play in my work where I get to interact with people from many different countries, like the US, Singapore, India, Japan, the Netherlands anf others. It's fun to have a day where I jump from a call with a colleague in Singapore, where we always have to spend the first 10 minutes talking about our personal lives and what we did over the weekend, to a call with someone from the Netherlands who immediately gets down to business 😀

Of course in the end, people are people and we're all different and unique, but these cultural differences are undeniable.
 
We have those differences internally here as well, as quiet, polite Midwesterners will be quite shocked at gregarious, loud NY/NJ folks. I’m sure most countries are the same.

My in-laws…my MIL was an Iowa farm girl when she married a brash, outspoken soon-to-turn-pro athlete from south-central NY state. They couldn’t have had personalities that were further apart. She could disappear into the background of any room, and he was always the center of attention, and you’d hear him coming before you saw him. They settled back in NY state, and since they were a couple of thousand miles closer to his family than hers, that’s how they were raised: “YA GOTTA PUT YAHSELF OU’DARE!” - that was my FIL’s advice for everything.

My mom, in that respect, was exactly like my MIL - under no circumstances whatsoever should you ever, ever call attention to yourself, boast about yourself, or in any way ever try and be noticed, and since my dad left 100% of the child-rearing to her, that’s how we were raised. Never raise your voice. If something is wrong, just let it go, swallow your feelings, always yield to the other person, that sort of thing.

Believe me, it took a lot for me to feel comfortable around my wife’s family, and that’s all on me, because to a person, they welcomed me like a family member right from the start, much more open than my family have ever been to MrsT, I must say.
 
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