The definition of mixed feelings: Watching your mother-in-law drive off a cliff in your brand new car.

Ha ha ha. We all joke about the infamous mother-in-law, but life with her doesn’t actually have to be so terrible.

Here are three ideas for how to structure your relationship, as a couple, with your parents and in-laws for the greatest benefit to your marriage.

Before we begin, we have a few caveats: if you or your spouse has a parent with a personality disorder, or with substance abuse issues, or even with a non-diagnosable challenge (such as really poor boundaries), you are going to have to take what we say and really scrutinize it carefully to see what will work for you and what won’t.

Another reality is that some of you are taking care of aging parents in your home. Again, you’re going to have to nuance what we say here to your situation because there are stresses related to caregiving that would be in effect if that was anybody in your home, never mind a parent or in-law.

None of us have perfect in-laws nor are we going to be perfect in-laws ourselves; but today we speak to the broader context of having reasonably healthy, imperfect parents and in-laws.

How In-laws Influence a Marriage

You may be asking the question, “So, I have a few issues with my in-laws – does that actually impact my marriage?”

The research says, “Yes! It does.” A study from 2001 looked at the marital success compared to discord with in-laws in nearly 300 wives and 300 husbands. They found that:

“The quality of the in-law relationship did predict the stability, satisfaction, and commitment expressed by the spouses in the study.” It is hard to predict causation, but in plain English they are saying that your in-laws can make your marriage painful.

For wives specifically, your perception of marital success is predicted by discord with mother-in-laws (MIL) and father-in-laws (FIL).

For husbands specifically, this was only noted with the relationship towards the FIL.[i]

We’re not sure why there is a difference there, but the point is that it is helpful to your marriage to have good relationships with your in-laws! It doesn’t mean that if you don’t, your marriage is going to fail, but there is an impact there and it is measurable. So, if your spouse is complaining about your parents and the relationship, you need to take that seriously.

We’ve now seen that in-laws definitely influence marriage satisfaction, so let’s look at three principles that should guide our in-law relationships.

Principle 1: The Autonomy of Family Units

When marriage was established at the beginning of creation, God’s instructions were that a man should leave his father and mother and cleave unto his wife.

Now, exactly what that looks like is going to be largely informed by your culture. We’re speaking out a white, north American background here, so if you’re from another culture the same principle is true, but how you might apply it will look a little different – keep that in mind!

The research comes to a very similar conclusion: “The new family has the task of forming a stronger, autonomous bond than the two from which the partners originated. If partners are unable to accomplish this task, their union may be threatened.”[ii]

It was even studied way back in 1954 and found that marriages were more likely to be cohesive if the couple was autonomous and had little conflict with their parents.[iii]

So the research and the biblical principle are aligned, and that is where I am pointing out that we need to observe this principle of autonomy.

The predominant responsibility is on the man to leave and cleave. This is leadership, but he is especially responsible to make his bond to his wife a higher priority than the bond to his parents. Not instead-of, but greater-than. This is about priorities. Where in-law relationships get very messy is when the wife feels that she has to compete with her husband for his loyalty, attention,