Dear Carolyn: My boyfriend and I come from fairly different backgrounds. His family is well-off and very liberal (they’ve even joined some of the recent protests) and all have advanced degrees. My family is poorer and more conservative, and my bachelor’s degree is the most advanced degree anyone in my family has ever attained. My family isn’t racist or prejudiced at heart, but they can be low-information on news topics, and a lot of the information they do have comes from dubious sources like Facebook, so sometimes they aren’t well-informed — and their opinions reflect that.
When I go to visit my family, my boyfriend often finds excuses not to come along, but I always go with him to visit his. I’m planning a visit next month, and he is once again “too busy” to go, though I’ll be going to spend four days with his parents for Thanksgiving. When I told my mom he wasn’t coming, she asked me if he doesn’t like them. They always roll out the red carpet for him when he visits, cooking special food, etc. They definitely try, whereas he doesn’t.
I asked him if there’s a problem with my family, and he said he’s not as comfortable with my family as I am with his, and he doesn’t feel like that’s ever going to change. He does avoid contradicting or arguing with them when they say stuff that bothers him, but I think it would help him see the other side of them if he’d get to know them better.
Can we go the distance with him feeling this way?
— Two Families
Two Families: Always, sure. But it will cost you your family, if you both keep running scared from (sorry) the elephant in the room.
And if you keep treating it as a matter of politics, education and class instead of a flat-out, comprehensive need to suck it up. Including, mainly:
· Suck it up and say what he means, instead of “find[ing] excuses.” Or accepting them; more on that in a moment. Dude’s old enough for an advanced degree? Can’t use his words?
· Suck it up and be uncomfortable for a few days because it’s your family and they’re important to you and you’re important to him. “Wah wah wah, I like my family betterrr.” Seriously? Like, 90 percent of us would rather be with our own families. Duh, Dr. Kollege.
But we show up for our partners’ loved ones, too, when we’re not entitled and self-absorbed to the trembling brink of implosion. Psst, cool secret: Many who do show up get comfortable over time and even grow to love these once-grudgingly-visited other families. Or not, but it isn’t for lack of trying. Are you more comfortable with his family naturally, or because you worked at it?
· Suck it up and call out self-absorption. This one’s all yours. “They’re my family. I would like you to know them better because they matter to me.” And you would like to know if he’s softer than his mother’s guest room sheets.
About Carolyn Hax
If he breaks up with you for doing this, good! That’s the best possible application of principles in dating: to scare off people who don’t have them.
As for his excuses — if you think he’s making up reasons to avoid your family (or anything), then say so on the spot. Whether it’s dutiful travel or a market run for eggs: If you can’t count on someone to bother or to admit why, then those are big flashy red warning signs. Non-weasels either show up or own why they won’t.
· Suck it up and have the conversation about your families, or a series of them. And politics and education and class. And the nuanced view of your family, your complicated family, which I think you think he sees in 2-D. Which you believe (or hope) he will warm to if he opens his mind, makes the effort and even has the courage to engage with them on the prickly stuff. How he does that, by the way, might tell you everything you need to know.
I could be off by hilarious margins on this point, but: Even though you and your boyfriend are major-holidays-together together, I somehow sense you got more into the shadings of your family’s beliefs and values with us (me, readers) than you ever really have with your boyfriend.
If that hunch is even close to true, then that’s your real obstacle to “the distance,” happily at least, with anyone.
If something matters to you, then make sure the ability to talk about it, all the way into the painful crevices, is the standard you set for a partner. Do that for yourself.
The post Carolyn Hax: Liberal boyfriend keeps dodging partner’s conservative family
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