Improving Your Relationship with Your Daughter-in-law

Improving your relationship with your daughter-in-law would seem to be a reasonable goal for every mother -in-law or father-in-law. After all when your son marries a woman she becomes part your family, hopefully for life. She will likely be at every major family event - birthday parties, weddings, showers, graduations, funerals the lot. How you get along with her can impact everyone else in the family for a lifetime. While everyone hopes, and some even pray, that their relationship with their daughter-in-law will prove amicable, not everyone recognizes that not just hope, but lots of serious thought and effort are required in order to keep improving your relationship with your daughter-in-law.

One of the most helpful things you can do to keep improving your relationship with your daughter-in-law is to recognize that she is not just an appendage of your son. While they often seem joined at the hip and may share many common interests and values, your son and your daughter-in-law are two unique individuals each worth knowing for who they are, not just for their connection to their spouse. When your daughter-in-law feels that you are interested in knowing and valuing her for herself you may find that she begins to be more inclined to open up and share the work needed to develop a healthy and long lasting relationship.

If you really value her as an individual then you can improve your relationship with your daughter-in-law by discussing and sharing common talents and tastes. Make connections with her over mutual interests in things like hobbies, reading, music, theater, television or travel. But don't limit your conversations just to what you have in common. Open the door to improving your relationship with your daughter-in-law by giving her a platform for talking about things that uniquely interest her - her job, her own family, her friends, her special interests. There is nothing more valuable than a father-in-law or mother-in -law who always has a moment to hear their daughter-in-law's thoughts, news, even difficulties with a patient and sympathetic ear.

As much as you think you know your son, the truth is that after he marries, there is someone who knows him more and is some ways better than you ever can. You can still have the same close and loving bond with your son but for his marriage to work, you have to be willing to recognize the central place that his wife now occupies And you need to recognize it without feeling hurt, jealous, slighted or annoyed. While accepting this rather large change in your life is not always easy, those who move on gracefully are rewarded with peace and the opportunity for a continually improving relationship with their daughter-in-law.

Some people move out of town to get it, some move across the country, but most young couples take some steps to get the space and privacy they need from their parents and in-laws. You can keep improving your relationship with your daughter-in-law if you applaud the way she and your son have developed their independence. Score points with both your son and your daughter-in-law by honoring the distance they have put between you and them. Visit happily when you are invited to their home or apartment but don't make a habit of constantly inviting yourself. As an uninvited guest you put your daughter-in-law in the unenviable position of having to either constantly play hostess even when she is tired or just not in the mood or having to ask your son to somehow limit your visits. Either way you have made yourself an unnecessary stumbling block in their relationship, not something you probably want to do.

Improving any relationship, especially a close one like that with a daughter-in-law doesn't happen overnight. So if you are really set on improving your relationship with your daughter-in-law make it a long term commitment. Don't expect that you will be immediately comfortable with one another. Just know that things can continually improve and your relationship can flower if you give it time. Forcing the issue by arranging lots of time together can often backfire and may make you appear to be overbearing or intrusive. Rule of thumb you can develop a bad relationship that will be hard to fix in short order. To develop a solid relationship that will bear up over a lifetime of family ups and downs takes time and patience, so build slowly and well.