What To Do When Your Folks Do Not Like Your Spouse

What do you do when your family and/or friends do not approve of your spouse? As it turns out, there are a number of strategies to help with this, but the most important is just doing a good job of taking care of your marriage, regardless of what others think. It’s a tough situation to be in: you’re fully committed to your marriage and love your wife to bits, but her parent don’t think you’re good enough for her. Or your husband’s friends make it quite clear that they don’t like that you spend so much time together. Marriages don’t exist in a social vacuum: this kind of social disapproval is bound to have some kind of effect. Social Disapproval and Marriage When you’re faced with disapproving friends and family, does it draw you closer together as a couple or pull you apart? Popular culture often talks about a "Romeo and Juliet Effect" where family disapproval intensifies love. This is based on a famous study by Driscoll et al[i] in 1972, who found that feelings of love increase as levels of perceived interference from parents increase. However, almost every subsequent study into this has found the opposite effect: interference or disapproval from family and friends has negative effects on relationships including lowering relationship satisfaction, reduced relationship stability, reduced commitment, lower feelings of love, higher levels of criticism and less positive appraisals of your spouse[ii][iii]. I was a little surprised by this research, to be honest. It has been my anecdotal observation—this is more watching dating relationships—that when parents disapprove it tends to bind the couple together more strongly. They not only have their newfound love but they also have a common enemy. Then again, these studies are looking at long term relationships and when I think about that context, I lean more towards the reality that if you have a lot of negative info about your spouse coming from friends and family, that can easily shape your perception of your marriage. If there’s an upside to this, it is that approval from your social network has positive effects such as improved perceptions of your spouse, greater feelings of love, and greater stability for the relationship. Overall, the positive effects of approval from the social circle are stronger and more consistently found than negative effects of disapproval[iv]. I do think there is a warning here for all of us: just to be careful about how we approach other struggling marriages. I think this research shows that when couples are struggling they really need our support, not our criticism. It is easy to stand outside the marriage and point out all the problems to the person you’re close to, but are you really helping the couple? You could do a lot more for their marriage by being there for them and showing that you believe in and support their marriage, rather than helping them pick it apart. Why Does Approval Matter? You might be wondering why these effects appear. Why should other people’s opinions matter? Well, every opinion you hear from your friends and family has the potential to, in some way, influence your own thinking. Approval from your social circle helps create a stronger identity for you as a couple: when other people see you as a well-suited couple and approve of this role, this helps you form a joint sense of self and identity. Approval from others also reduces uncertainty about the relationship, while disapproval increases uncertainty. This uncertainty about whether you should really be together alters your perceptions of the relationship and your behavior changes accordingly[v]. Imagine this: you have a disagreement with your spouse about something minor. It would be fairly natural to want to discuss this with a close friend, or a family member. If that person already has a negative opinion of your spouse then that’s going to affect how they respond to your concerns, and the advice they give to you about it. Whether or not you choose to heed their advice, their opinion is now in your head. The more often you hear such opinions the harder it will be to ignore them. Which Is More Influential: Parents or Social Circle? A study from 2012[vi] found that for most couples disapproval from the social circle was more detrimental to the relationship than parental disapproval, in that it significantly influenced how much participants reported liking their partners. However, parental disapproval was a strong predictor of relationship quality when the study participants were more reliant on their parent's resources, such as their financial provision or their opinions. So for younger couples who are still in some ways reliant on their parents, or couples who have very close relationships with their parents, the approval or disapproval from parents is more influential. It’s All About Perception Once again we come back to perception. The research shows that the perception of approval is more important than actual levels of approval in determining relationship wellbeing and stability[vii]. This suggests that disapproving friends/family aren't directly responsible for impacting your marriage- it's the doubts and negative opinions they create in your own mind that do the damage. That reinforces my earlier warning: be supportive if your sibling or child is struggling in their marriage. I know you might want to get your mama bear on if you see something you don’t like in the marriage, but try to be a voice of support and care rather than criticism. What To Do When Family/Friends Disapprove So we’ve seen how the opinions of those around you can impact your marriage. Now let’s look at what you can do in this situation. Reduce the Impact Through Commitment Commitment is very important in any marriage but becomes even more so in this situation. A study in 2008[viii] found that commitment to your spouse mediates the link between social disapproval and reduced relationship stability. So remaining very committed to your spouse and building on your intimacy and bond can reduce the impact of disapproving friends/family. This isn’t quite the same as the Romeo and Juliet effect where disapproval improves your relationship, but a strong bond and enduring love for each other can survive regardless of this social disapproval. Watch What You Say Disclosure influences others’ opinions. Obviously, disclosures about your spouse to your parents or social circle can affect their opinions of the spouse (and your perceptions of their opinion). A study in 2014[ix] found that increased overall level of disclosure and increased positive disclosure (revealing good things about your spouse) have a positive impact on parent's perceptions of your relationship (perceived and actual opinions), while increases in both positive and negative disclosures has a positive impact for friends. Overall, then, telling your friends and family more about your spouse is a good thing: hopefully, they will start to get a better picture of him/her and come to see them the way you do. Sharing both the good and bad aspects of your relationship with your friends is good, but with parents, you might need to be a bit more selective. Parents are perhaps a so much more invested in wanting to look after you that any mention of your spouse’s negative traits will set them off. Be Aware of How You Are Seen Be aware of how you come across as a couple. A couple's social circle will pick up on cues between the couple that give an indication as to how they are functioning as a couple, for example spotting "red flags" that indicate conflict or picking up on nonverbal cues that indicate tension. These then affect the observer's opinion of the relationship[x]. I am a little torn on this suggestion, to be honest. I see where the researcher is going and we want to help couples reduce disapproval. At the same time, I am always asking folks to be authentic and show up in whatever situation and be real. At the same time, I think that when your marriage needs work and you know it, then that is a situation where you guys as a couple also need all the support from your family and social network you can get. So do not give them a reason to become negative voices unnecessarily. Just be aware of how you come across and perhaps even promote disapproval in others at a time when approval would be more beneficial. Remember too that if negative opinions are already in place, they are going to color how actions are seen. If people already disapprove of your spouse then they may be more likely to interpret things more negatively. Something that seems harmless to you may be interpreted very differently by an observer if they are already questioning the suitability of your spouse. So just be aware of how you might be seen by others who hold different views about your spouse then you do. Side With Each Other Here’s something you can do in the moment when there’s conflict arising between your spouse and your family. We touched on this sort of thing in our episodes about successful in-law relationships. A study from 2010[xi] found that conflict between wives and mothers in law was a leading course of decreased marital satisfaction. But for the husband, taking the wife's side in the conflict and using problem-solving strategies to reduce conflict mediated this link and buffered against problems caused by conflict. In the face of conflict, it’s really important to stay united. Develop Autonomy Being dependent on your parents or social circle for resources (and by resources I mean anything from financial and practical support to emotional guidance) exacerbates the effect of relationship disapproval. If you’re reliant on your parents for money or on your friends for approval then their opinions are going to have a much bigger impact on your marriage. Working on becoming more independent and less reliant on your parents/friends will make their opinions less of a determinin