How do you welcome a new in-law when her wedding speech has left you stewing? Read the advice of our resident sage Maddy Phillipps. And see the foot of the story for where to email your own problems for Maddy's advice.
DEAR MADDY: Earlier this year my sister married her girlfriend. At their wedding (held over a long weekend in Queenstown, bankrupting half the guests) my sister’s new wife made an obnoxious speech that has made me loathe her for life. She said that she loved my sister who was an incredible woman DESPITE the dysfunctional family she was raised in. It was clear she wasn’t joking and it was hurtful to our mum (who raised us on her own and did her best) and to me (her only sibling). I mean, our family has had its share of dramas but whose hasn’t? Since the wedding I’ve made it clear I want an apology – at least from my sister if not from her wife. But typically, my sister is acting like the wounded party – implying I’m purposely tainting her memories of her special day, because I’m jealous or something. How do I calm my rage before I have to face both of them at our grandmother’s 80th birthday party?
MADDY WRITES: You have a point. I, too, would be more than a little salty had I recently dropped serious money to watch a sibling wed atop a barren tussock-covered hill, overlooking acres of intensive subdivisions featuring endless schist-clad holiday homes for golfers, and migrant workers sleeping in their cars because said golfers have taken all the housing. And I, too, would not be overly thrilled with a wedding speech apparently portraying my sibling as a flower that grew out of a pot of dirt. So, rest assured, your rage is understandable. But if you want to calm it before facing the happy couple at the 80th, demanding an apology is not the way to go.
Apologies are seductive. We crave them because we think they’ll make us feel a certain way – that if the other person assumes responsibility for our hurt feelings, our pain will be validated and alleviated. But this outcome depends on sincerity. Insincere apologies (“I’m sorry you felt that way!”) don’t accept responsibility for anything, leaving the apology-seeker to grapple with a new insult on top of the original injury.
Unfortunately, your chances of getting a sincere apology aren’t looking good. If your sister or her wife wanted to spontaneously apologise, they would have done so by now, and receiving a genuine apology in response to a belated, angry demand for same is about as likely as the Epsom electorate flipping for Te Pāti Māori in 2026.
Making your emotional state dependent on a hoped-for apology is, then, worse than pointless, as it abdicates control of your feelings to the person who hurt you in the first place (and/or their chronically annoying spouse, who also happens to be your sister). Believe it or not, this is good news, because it means that you, and only you, have the power to shift your feelings about the situation.
Start by validating your own emotions. Your sister-in-law said something. You felt like she was criticising your family. You felt protective. You felt hurt. Those feelings are 100 percent valid. But! That doesn’t mean your interpretation of your sister-in-law’s comment was accurate. At the moment, your rage is fuelled by your assumption that the comment was motivated by pure malice. If you can adopt a more sympathetic, nuanced, and humanising interpretation, your anger will be impossible to sustain.
So, let me offer a different explanation. As you say, no family is without its problems. I’d go so far as to say that all families are dysfunctional – at least, if there’s a fully functional one out there, I’ve yet to meet it. When you grow up with your family’s specific brand of dysfunction (mine’s Emotionally Repressed and Enmeshed™, what’s yours?!), it’s so familiar that it feels like function, without the “dys". However, to an incoming spouse, their unfamiliarity with these very same behavioural patterns makes the dysfunction easy to see, a bit like when you go on holiday with a friend’s family as a kid and marvel at the weirdness of their habits. Combine that spouse’s macro-level hyper-awareness of their in-laws’ dysfunction with oxytocin-addled adoration of their chosen person, and it’s easy for them to end up kinda shocked at how well their partner turned out, no matter how much they love their in-laws.
So, what if the comment wasn’t really a criticism of your family, but actually a clumsily articulated, wine-addled expression of love for your sister? And even if you’re not entirely convinced, where’s the harm in adopting the most generous possible interpretation? I know it may feel like you’re letting your sister-in-law off the hook, but really, the only person you’re setting free by releasing your anger is you. If you can pull off the epic trick of validating your own feelings, and staying curious and sympathetic about your sister-in-law’s actions, I guarantee you’ll rock up to the 80th with all the equanimity of a bathing capybara.
And ironically, there’s a very good chance that over time, your new presentation as an empathic aquatic rodent will repair the relationship to the point that you can directly ask your sister-in-law about the wedding without risking anger or defensiveness, and she spontaneously delivers the sincere apology you wanted in the first place.
Maddy Phillipps is a barrister, freelance writer and clinical psychology student.
EMAIL your life problems to dearmaddy@tvnz.co.nz.
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