They said, when you marry your hubby: you marry his family.

Well…. not quite true, if you get married and then live in a different city, island or country, Ha!

But yea, pretty much true when you live near or around ’em.

You see, when you are (by choice or not) living near your spouses’ family, then you should be ready for the intervention, the judgement, the gossip, the preach, the critique and other annoying bad-talk stuffs, no matter how kind-in-general his / her family appear to be. What make a marriage works? Compromise. So, when you were in a relationship, when he or she was still just a boy / girlfriend of yours, you just need to compromise with one person. Easy, right? Now, imagine the effort of compromising being multiplied as much as the number of his family member, for each member is a unique individual.. Still easy? Hell no! Well, at least not for me.

Don’t get me wrong, it’s not that I hate my husband’s family. No, not at all.. I love ’em, there are funny cousins, nice cousins, lovable mother-in-law, and generous brother-in-law. But I won’t lie, you can’t always be on the same page with someone, even with the nicest person. Disagreements will always be there, you can’t avoid ’em. They are inevitable. When disagreement comes, a potential to a fight will follow, then you gotta know, like really know, when to shut up.

For instance, when your baby is not 6-months old yet, but her pediatrician said she needs to start eating porridge and fruit juice (other than breastmilk) considering her weight-gain is lower than the normal rate, then you gave her some rice porridge with overflowing chicken-stock (so the texture became watery to ease your baby to swallow it), aaaaannnd there she was, this judgmental-in-law telling me that I shouldn’t do that. I should just improve the quality of MY breastmilk, I shouldn’t sacrifice my child gastrointestinal system to digest that HARD CHICKEN STOCK because she was too young. And she told me that with that look in her face as if I just fed my child with arsenic acid. I mean, really? Are you kidding me?

Well, lucky for her, my mother always taught me to be polite to older person, so I just smiled and said: “It’s OK, she (my baby) defecate just alright after the porridge” *end the conversation with a polite fake smile*

If I chose not to be polite, I would go snap and argue:

1. she is 5-months and 3 weeks, like just a week-to-go to 6-months
2. chicken-stock is not hard, what hard is your head, duh.. would you rather let my baby to not gain weight because I’m too stubborn to follow the pediatrician advice?

Other instance, when I wear something that is not fashionable enough. Then this other judgmental-in-law gave a spontaneous comment: “you look hideous”. Bahahaha! Well, look who’s talking. The woman who said she doesn’t care about wealth and fancy stuff, the one that claim herself to be a religious person, yet she gave rude comment over someone else’s appearance. Oh well, should I be offended? Should I argue, defend myself? Well, I don’t mind looking hideous, I know since a very long time that I don’t have a good sense of fashion and I am OK with it, even my hubby is OK with it. So, there I went again, just gave her a wordless softest polite fake smile.

My mother always said, if you got nothing nice to say don’t say nothing at all. Well, it helps me so far. I don’t get into a fight, I don’t waste time on needless argumentation, I don’t get hurt. Everytime I decide to just shut up, I save my energy, save my mind, save my soul from hatred. So, if you read this and have the same problem, I hope this tips help. When it comes to deal with your in-laws, feel free to express yourself, just know when to shut up 😉