The Big 5 Every Happy Marriage Keeps From the In-Laws

Strong couples are selective (not secretive). They know exactly which doors stay open and which ones stay locked, because once you have too many people getting involved in your marriage, somebody eventually starts acting like it is theirs.

This does not, in any way, mean cutting off your family or refusing advice, because healthy marriages need community too. They need wise friends, and sometimes even counseling, but there is a difference between seeking wisdom and handing over the reins to your relationship.

I have seen that the really happy couples I know all seem to understand one thing instinctively, and that is that not everything belongs outside the marriage.

In that vein, here are five things that, if you talk to them, they will tell you:

1. Keep your money between the two of you:

If you are building wealth (or barely scraping by, for that matter), the details belong to the two people signing the checks. You see, the minute other people come to know your financial situation, they tend to start writing your life plan for you.

So, the smart couples don’t hide their finances out of shame; they protect them for their own peace of mind.

When a man identified only as “John” won a $22 million lottery jackpot in the United States, he told financial expert Dave Ramsey that he had deliberately kept the news from his parents and children while he figured out his next steps. His concern wasn’t greed. He was trying to keep his relationships free of the pressure that sudden wealth can create.
— lotteryusa.com

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2. Last night’s fight should stay in the house:

This one has ended more marriages than people realize.

What happens is, you have an argument, you are angry, you call your mother, or sister, or your best friend, or that co-worker you feel you can tell anything, and you unload everything. Then your spouse apologizes, and you forgive them, and life goes back to normal.

Now, everyone moves on… except your audience!

You forgave because you love your spouse. Only your mother isn’t married to your spouse, and neither is your best friend. They are loyal to you.

So, while you are laughing together again, they are still remembering what happened last week. And that is not all, because every new disagreement gets added to an invisible file they have been keeping. Perhaps for years.

Eventually, someone says:

“I never really liked him anyway.”

Actually, they didn’t know. It is just that they never got the opportunity to forgive and move forward the way you did. So, the moral of the story here is: Never invite an audience to a private argument.

A woman tells how she and her spouse had one explosive argument while her parents were visiting. Then the next day, the couple reconciled and were set to begin couples counseling. The marriage had a chance to recover, but her parents couldn’t move on. After witnessing such a fight, it seems they permanently lost trust in their child’s spouse, leaving her wondering if the relationship with her parents could ever be repaired.
— “My parents no longer like my spouse, and I don’t blame them”

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3. Your partner’s “weaknesses” aren’t topics of discussion

You know, every marriage has conversations that happen after the lights go out, whether it be career fears, our body insecurities, old family wounds, the business idea we are afraid will fail, or the mistake we are still ashamed of.

Unfortunately, some partners use these, trying to entertain friends. So, they will casually mention their spouse’s biggest insecurity, because everyone else is sharing relationship stories, and everybody laughs… except, of course, the one whose confidence was just traded for cheap laughs.

Know this: things shared in confidence are in reality tests of loyalty. Therefore, never trade your partner’s trust for a moment of social banter. Your home should be the safest place your spouse knows.

“To be clear: I don’t care if she vents now and then, or leans on her sister during tough times. I just feel like there’s a difference between support and giving someone a front-row seat to every flaw I have.”
(Source)

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4. Your marriage doesn’t need to follow someone else’s timeline

People can get surprisingly invested in milestones that aren’t theirs. So they go on about your buying a house or having kids, but it is mostly just projection and, thankfully, not necessarily malicious.

They naturally assume that the life that worked for them should work for everybody else. Only marriages aren’t all the same. Some couples have children immediately, some wait a while, some never do. Again, some rent happily for years and even change careers at forty.

Your happy marriage doesn’t require you to keep explaining it. Know that matrimony isn’t a race against others. Run your own race at your own pace.

Marriage researcher Dr. John Gottman has spent decades studying successful couples, and one consistent finding is that healthy marriages build a strong internal partnership. They turn toward each other to solve problems instead of letting outsiders steer their relationship.

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5. There are only two veto votes that count in a marriage.

This may be the hardest lesson of all.

A lot of the time, when couples hit a deadlock, it becomes extremely tempting to recruit support. So, you call your brother, she calls her mother, and now, the disagreement has turned into teams. Nobody loses but the relationship.

The fastest way to make your spouse feel alone is to make them feel outnumbered.

Healthy marriages don’t solve disagreements by collecting outside votes until somebody has the majority; they resolve them by staying at the table long enough to understand each other. Sometimes the answer is “yes”. Sometimes it is “no” (or “not yet”). As there are only two votes that should really count, if it isn’t unanimous, then it just means the conversation isn’t over; it just needs more patience.

According to experts, there are four primary areas in which in-laws may create strife: holidays, kids, enmeshment, and genuine discord. The problem is rarely that family members care too much, it is when their care starts competing with the marriage itself.
— Psychologytoday.com

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One last thought

You must have noticed by now the partners who love to provide live commentary on their marriage so much that every little annoyance becomes today’s group chat topic. Naturally, after a while, everyone knows the marriage almost as well as the couple does.

This is a dangerous place to be, because the more people “watching” their marriage, the more such partners turn into performers instead of partners to their spouses.

The people who love your marriage don’t have to manage it, no matter how well-intended they think they are. Not every door needs to be locked against them, but every healthy marriage knows exactly which ones never get left open.

To be clear, privacy and secrecy are two different things: the former is a boundary, while it is the latter is a cover-up. Privacy protects a marriage. Secrecy, on the other hand, covers up wrongdoing. The two are, therefore, not the same.