Episode 49: Meeting the In-Laws?: Navigating a Functional Family when You Come From Dysfunction

It’s here guys. We’re in the thick of it, and we don’t mean mashed potatoes and gravy. We mean the holiday season. Dun, Dun, Dun! If you grew up with a dysfunctional family, you probably had at least a few traumatic holidays with them and that can make you a little skittish when the turkey and jingle bells start coming out. Family is hard. Holidays are stressful. But if you’re dealing with your own family at least you know what to expect. However, what if you’re not dealing with them? What if you’re meeting your partner’s family for the first time instead? And what if they’re…. “normal”? That sounds like it would be a relief, but it can be equally if not even more intimidating. When you’re only used to dysfunction, trauma, and abuse it can be difficult to know how you should interact with a family that is close-knit and loving, where no one screams or throws chairs or burns the food just to be spiteful. We get it, we’ve been there ourselves. So if you’re stressed and struggling to figure out how to navigate this holiday season with the future in-laws we’ve put together a list of questions for you to consider and talk over with your partner so you can feel a little more prepared for whatever uncertainty comes your way.

AUTUMN 

 0:37 

 Welcome to the Different Functional Podcast, where we explore the triumphs and challenges of trauma, recovery and being neurodivergent in a neurotypical world. In today's episode, we're going to be talking all about the challenges of meeting your partner's functional family when you come from a dysfunctional or traumatic family. 

I am Autumn, the older sister, and if you've listened to the podcast at all, you know that I do come from a rather dysfunctional and traumatic family. My current boyfriend, however, comes from what I would say is a very normal, supportive, healthy family, overall. For my fact of the day, I will share with you the most memorable faux pas I have made with my partner's family, and it's actually going to be the most recent faux pas, which is why it's the most memorable because it happened most recently. 

We actually went out to see his family a month or two ago. I got stuck alone with his mom. Like the whole week we were staying with his family, I managed to avoid this. I got stuck alone with his mom. It was a three-minute interaction and somehow in that three-minutes, I managed to bring up that my family was so crazy that one of my cousins had held his wife and child at gunpoint, and there was a hostage standoff on the news. 

But I don't even know why this came out. I don't even think we were talking about family. And I'm just like, hey, by the way, my people are crazy. Like, thank you, brain. That's what this poor, normal lady needed. And she had no idea what to do with it. Like, she was really nice and tried, but it was so foreign to her. She just - She didn't know what to do with that.

IVY 

 2:14 

You know, on that note,  I would love it if any of you listening out there come from a dysfunctional family have any tips or tricks for how to not overshare that kind of information with in-laws? I would certainly love to hear about it, because I also make those kinds of mistakes.

And I think I can actually one up Autumn on this one, potentially. I am Ivy the younger sister by the way, and my most memorable faux pas: One of the people that I was dating the first time that I met his mom and hung out with her one on one I spilled my guts to her about the abuse that I had gone through as a child. And to her credit, she was amazing and wonderful and sweet and very compassionate and handled it extremely well. 

But of course, I was a little stunned by the time we got back to the house about what I had just let slip out of my mouth in this first, really one on one interaction I'd ever had with my potential future mother in law. And the guy that I was dating at the time shamed me and was mad at me for telling his mom that information, and she scolded him. She was like, hey, that kind of abuse is hard enough to talk about and hard enough to live with, so don't be an asshole. 

So that is the most memorable one to me. One, because I am still haunted by the fact that I overshared that with somebody that I barely knew, but also because she defended me to the guy that I was dating at the time, which told me a lot about her and also a lot about him. 

If you have gone through abuse and you do share your story, it is not embarrassing. There's no shame in it. It was just a very awkward situation for me in my early 20s that I really did not know how to navigate once I had gotten in over my head. 

AUTUMN

 4:05 

Well,  I think that's the thing, though, about meeting your potential in-laws or whatever your equivalent of in-laws is if you aren't married, you know your partner's family. It's an awkward situation. It doesn't matter if you're from a functional or dysfunctional family. Meeting somebody’s family is just awkward. And then for those of us that do come from trauma, that do have abuse, that are just used to dysfunction, it's like, what are you talking about? 

You're like, you're already triggered because, well, it's family and you are triggered just by the existence of family because of where you came from. And then you've got like, nothing in common. You know, they're talking about their 401 portfolios or the landscaping they did. And you've got like, oh, you know, I buried 100 puppies because my mom kept adopting them and didn't take care of them. Like, what are you supposed to chime in with? There's nothing there. It's so awkward anyways. But you have almost - I would call this a cultural difference. When you come from a normative, healthy family and you come from a traumatic, dysfunctional family and you come to meet together, that is that I think it's a significant cultural difference. 

IVY

 5:15 

 Yeah, it's definitely a different culture. I can attest to that. Having dated lots of people in my time and having met lots of potential future in-laws, it never stops being awkward. I always feel like an alien in all those interactions, and that also extends into the rest of my life. 

Even in my profession, especially now that I'm self-employed and I have a lot more flexibility and freedom to be just completely, authentically myself, I have to be very, very cognizant of my propensity to overshare. Some people just fall asleep on the table and that's great. But then like, you start talking to your clients and you start being on friendly terms with your clients after all of the years that you work on them. And before you know it, you're sharing information you did not intend to share. And now it's too late. Cat's out of the bag and you have to keep seeing that person.

It's so yeah, it feels like a different culture because you're talking about what feels normal to you. And that's the thing. Like, even if you understand it by the rest of the world standards or by normative standards anyway, it's not actually normal. It's all you have because people talk about what they know generally. And if all you know is dysfunction, if all you know about family, which is a common conversation topic for a lot of people, if all you know is family is shit and chaos and trauma like you will end up talking about shit and chaos and trauma because that is the whole of your experience. 

And for a lot of us that grew up in that kind of environment and have spent years and years working on ourselves to get healthier, you don't necessarily have a whole lot else to talk about when it comes to just conversations with random people. My repertoire of small talk, of conversation starters is very, very small because I've spent so many years trying to scratch and claw my way out of the hell that I grew up in, and it continued to haunt me into my adulthood. So yes, I would say it's very much like a different culture. 

 AUTUMN 

 7:20 

And you do feel alien trying to talk to just quote unquote normal people. It's very difficult to not overshare. And sometimes it's not even necessarily oversharing. It's just like I've said, you're just like they told a story about their brother. I'll tell one about mine. But depending upon your family, those can be very, very different stories that come across. 

Now, if you're super, super lucky, maybe you can go most of the year and you don't have to worry about this. You just don't see your partner's family that often. You're so busy you just can't find time to get together. But guess what? The holidays are coming. And if you are with a partner that has a normative, healthy, supportive family, there's a good chance that you are going to be drug into the wonderful family holiday traditions that are coming up. 

And that's why we're doing this episode today, is to maybe give you a few pointers, possibly, on what not to do and what to do. Because especially, especially if you're just coming out of trauma, it can be so hard in those early 20s and those early 30s. It's really hard meeting that healthy family, knowing what to do, even figuring out how to have this conversation with your spouse. And so today, Ivy and I, we're just going to be talking about some of the questions we've come up with over the years to have a conversation with our partner to make the meeting the family experience, just a little easier. 

Now, do not get confused and think that Ivy and I are wonderful experts and have great masking ability with functional families, because that's not true at all. But there has been slow, gradual improvement. And so we're hoping that maybe a few of these questions will possibly help you if you came from dysfunction and this holiday season, you're going to have to learn how to blend in with functional families 

IVY

 9:08 

And just to tack on to that. We are, like I said, we're not experts. We are not doing this on a guide for how to navigate the answers to these questions. These are just some questions to start considering, questions you can ask yourself, and then conversations to have with your partner before meeting the in-laws. We're not experts and we don't know your situation. These are just questions to ask yourself and talk to your partner about. 

AUTUMN

 9:33 

 They're more like conversation starters, I would say more than anything. Because having a conversation, in any relationship, that communication is absolutely vital. But when you do have these, what we have termed cultural differences, it's especially important so that you can avoid awkwardness and faux pas and misunderstandings that could be potentially hurtful to many people in these situations. 

All right. So let's go ahead and jump in with the very first question. And this is the very first question on the list because out of all of them, I think this is one of the most important questions you can ask your partner. If you have someone and you plan on being with them long term, I think it's really important to know what does family mean to you and what does family mean to me, and how does that differ? 

Because the way I perceive family is very much skewed by the trauma I experience, by the dysfunction. The very mention of the word family makes me cringe. I do not like it. It makes me very uncomfortable. But if you come from a healthy, functional family that is supportive and loving, family means something different. It means home. It means love. It means a safety net. It means acceptance. It means knowing that somebody in the world will always have your back no matter what. And that is not my experience at all. 

And so if you are with a partner long term, I think this question is vital, regardless of whether you're planning on meeting their family over Thanksgiving or not, just to get an understanding of how that differs. Because if you guys plan on having a family together and eventually potentially integrating each of your families, that is a very good starting point. 

IVY

 11:17 

 You really need to know this, because this is something that could - not necessarily but could - become a deal breaker. Because if family is extremely important to one person, but extremely traumatic to the other person, even if that doesn't seem like a deal breaker right at the surface, it could become one over time. So that definitely is one that you absolutely want to start exploring with your partner, both for the short term of meeting their family, but also for the long term of navigating what that realistically looks like for the future if you stay together, become serious. 

Does that mean going to family gatherings? Does that mean their parents being very much involved in the lives of your children if you have children? Like, there are so many things that come from this question, and you really want to know relatively early on in the relationship what family means to and what it means to you. 

 AUTUMN

 12:16 

 And that first question, I think any ways will lead right into that second question, which then is how important is it that I meet your family? And also part of that, I think, can be for some people, how important is it that I like your family, that I get along with your family, that I appreciate your family? 

I was really lucky with my very first relationship because my first husband, he did have his mother, who was still alive, and I think he had a cousin, maybe a sister. I can't remember for sure, but he was really distant with them, so he didn't want me to meet any of his family. So that was a relief for me. So at least in my early 20s, I didn't have to worry about meeting the in-laws. 

But then when I got to my second relationship. For her family was important. And she did have good, strong connections with her family because they had been very supportive of her. And so family was really, really important to her. And so I had to make a lot of compromises to go to events with family members and to meet them and talk with them. 

And then in my most recent relationship - while my boyfriend does come from that normative, supportive, healthy family, like I said, he's also neurodivergent himself, and he's very much a loner. And so he understands that I'm not necessarily going to connect with his family like he does, and he's okay with it. And I've been very lucky with that. 

But if people come from very normative, supportive, healthy families, they may not initially be able to understand why you wouldn't want to meet them. Or even if you do meet them, why you would never connect with them. They don't understand that even though that person is family and meaningful and wonderful and loving to them, they're just another stranger to you. And that can be a very, very big hurdle to overcome. 

So I think that first question, depending on those answers, may lead directly into that second question of, well, how important is it that I meet your family? And if they like their family, how important is it that I like them to? 

IVY

 14:19 

Yeah, this question right here is the main reason why I said that first question was really important. I'm speaking purely based on my own experience. So take it with a grain of salt if you want. But one of the things that I have come to terms with about myself is that the concept of family is so foreign to me, and I have such negative associations with that word. The idea of me ever being part of a family, it's like something I can't even comprehend. It's like trying to comprehend what extraterrestrial life actually looks like. We have no way of knowing. We can guess. Is it similar to what we're familiar with? I don't know, nobody really knows because we haven't encountered extraterrestrials yet in any sort of way that would give us context for how different or similar they are to us. And that's what family is like to me. I can't wrap my head around it. 

And I used to think it was that I hated the idea of family. I don't. I can appreciate the idea of family from a distance, with an objective curiosity that comes from not knowing what the fuck that actually means. And so when I have dated people that are very close to their families, that have a very solid sense of family, and that's very important to them, it's like a fundamental, foundational part of who they are as a person is their dedication to not only their family of origin, but to their future family that they would build with a partner and children, and even to the concept of family in and of itself. As much as I used to think that that was not a deal breaker to me, now, it kind of is. 

And it's not, again, it's not because I hate family. It is because they value something. And this is something that's so important to them. That is a huge part of their identity that I cannot even grasp. I cannot wrap my head around.

And I don't connect very much to people in general. So the idea of being able to ever get to a point where I see these people as they are like my family. I don't even know what that means. And I don't connect and attach to people like that. They will always just be these people that are on the periphery of my social circle, even if I like them. And I may like individual members of that person's family, and they build the dynamic with that person, but I don't see them as family. And if I were to move away or that relationship ends, I won't long for that person that was part of their family because I don't connect in that way. 

So this is why I said that that first question is really important. Because that follow up of how important is it that I meet and like your family, if you are somebody like me, or if you're somebody that is just heavily traumatized by the idea of family and being around families is triggering for you, and that's painful for you. If that's the case, this may end up being a deal breaker in a relationship in the long run. And so it is important to find out from your partner how close to your family do you expect me to be, and can I live to that standard of expectation or not? Can I form those connections? Can I be that close? Can I get to a point where I'm even just comfortable being around your family and feeling like I'm one of the gang? 

AUTUMN

 17:38 

 In this particular question can be made even more complicated if you are neurodivergent, because I'm the same way as Ivy in that you're just on the periphery. You're not really relevant or important to me. And I know that sounds somewhat sociopathic, but that's kind of how I view most of humanity. Either I find you interesting and appealing and I want to interact with you, which is like four people in the world or I don't. And so I don't want to interact with you. Because I am autistic and so if I can't relate to you, I don't think you're interesting, I don't get why would I talk to you. Because talking to you costs me a lot of resources. Because I have to mask and I have to come up with things to say. And I could be using those resources to, I don't know, make dinner or do housework. And here I am, wasting it on something that's giving me no reward. And a lot of people don't necessarily understand that concept. 

And so if you are neurodivergent, that whole concept of do I need to like your family can get very complicated because like I said, with my second spouse, she was really into her family, but it wasn't that big of a deal because who she was closest to was her mom. And I loved her mom. I still love her mom. She was amazing. She was quirky and open minded and enjoyed life. And I love talking to her because it was always so interesting and I learned so much. But a lot of other people that I've met, I'm just like, I have nothing in common with you. You do nothing that interests me. I don't mean that offensively, it's just what do I talk with you about? Which then leads to the issues I have of talking about whatever comes into my mind, which is apparently hostage situations. 

IVY

 19:18 

 I'm going to add one more note to that on the topic of like, neurodivergent. One of the other things that becomes a hiccup for me with people who are really close to their families, and I don't know how applicable this is going to be to our listeners out there, but I imagine this will be true for some people. My home is like my sanctuary. It is my safe space. It is organized the way that I need it to, to keep me functional for life. As much as I like to be a spontaneous person, I do need something that is consistent and solid and safe and tucked away from the rest of the world. I need structure at home, and I need that to remain a safe space. 

And I have been in relationships with other people where part of being with them is having an open door policy for their family to come and go as they please. That is part, another part of why it has ended up being a deal breaker for me in past relationships. Because that does not work for me. That causes intense anxiety to me and I have come to the conclusion over time. That is not something that I am willing to compromise on. My home is my sanctuary. It is a space for me to have peace and quiet and very few external demands. And so being in a relationship with somebody that has family that just dropped by or whenever they please, is not something that would work for me. 

And that's part of why I say this can become a deal breaker over time, because it's not just a matter of whether or not I like their family or love their family or are comfortable with going to family gatherings, which those things in themselves can drive a wedge over time. But it also comes down to the little daily things, like having them stop by unannounced or needing to babysit their kids without any warning. It's little things like that that come into it too. 

These are all things that factor into that as well. Because if you come from a family of dysfunction where you are used to being completely independent and you're not really accustomed to helping out family members whenever something comes up for them, if you've been relatively isolated from that and relatively self-sufficient, self-sustained, it can be a huge adjustment to all of a sudden be part of essentially a community or a village. So that's one of the reasons why this is a really important question to ask. 

AUTUMN

 21:35 

 And that's a big reason why we suggested just starting out with those simple questions about the idea of family and the importance of family. So you even have a starting place to work to work from.

Now, assuming that you guys are okay with meeting each other's family, or at least attempting to meet each other's family, hen another great question, at least from my perspective, has always been what's your family like? 

Now I am autistic, so I'm always wondering like, what are the rules and what are the scripts and what can I expect? And I also have a lot of social anxiety, probably partially because I am autistic. And so I also want to know all those questions so that I can be more comfortable in that situation, and I can feel more prepared. 

Now, I also found, though, that with a lot of people that come from healthy, functional families, getting them to really tell you about their family in a meaningful way that can help you know what to expect can be difficult because a lot of people that come from functional families are just like, oh, they're like any other family, or you know how it is. But the reality is we don't know. We don't know what functional it looks like. We don't know what supportive looks like. And so this is a question I was asking like, well, what's your family like. And then if this person does come from a healthy, supportive family, I often have to coach them further with more specific questions. You know, do your brothers or sisters get along? Are you guys very touchy feely? Is there a lot of screaming or yelling, all of these kinds of questions? 

Because for them it's just normal and because it's normal for them and their family was functional. It's also normal for society. And so there's just this expectation that you know what family is and what their family is like because their family is just normal. But if you don't come from normal, then you don't know. And so I always like to say, you know, well, what's your family like? Tell me about them. And then I get in there with some pretty interrogative questions, getting very specific. Okay, so you told me that aunt Sally likes to drink. What does that mean? How many drinks does she have? What kind of drinking are we talking about? I get specific with it. Probably a little too specific, but I feel it's good to warn my partner ahead of time that I am going to be obsessed with these details. 

IVY

 23:58 

Yeah, that has always been one of the things that has irritated me so much. When you ask somebody what their family is like and they just give you that generic, well, we're like any other family. I don't know what that means. Because I know I can't base that on my family because I know my family is an outlier, atypical, or at least I certainly hope they are an outlier in atypical. And most other families are not as messed up. 

But every family does operate a little bit differently. It is not just a one size fits all. And so that's always been one of those things that really frustrated me too, because like I, I need more details. I want to know when your dynamics were like with each member of your family. What interpersonal dynamics were going on between other people? Who gets along really well? Who doesn't get along? Are there any favorites in the family? Are there any black sheep in the family? I want to know.

And yeah, like honestly, you may also have to coach them some because they may not even be aware. It's been fascinating to me how many relationships I've gotten into with people, and they just kind of give that generalized “it's just family”. Just family, and we're totally normal line. There's nothing out of the ordinary, you know, we're just like any other family. And then I meet them and I'm like. There is actually, maybe I'm just reading into things, but there are actually seems like there are some real issues here that nobody is addressing, and we're just all pretending like they don't exist. Okay, which is fine, but that's the stuff I want to know.

Because I don't want to ask the wrong question to the wrong person and cause a huge awkward moment in the family, or potentially start a fight over something. These are important things to know. I want to know your family dynamics. Spill the tea. I want to know the drama in the family. Don't tell me your family has no drama. Because I don't buy that. Because even the most loving, close-knit families that I have known most definitely have some drama. And if I'm going to integrate into that family, I kind of need a heads up about what to do and what not to do. And I kind of want to know details about each person to know, like how chill they are, how high strung they are. There are so many things that I want to know. 

And it does kind of boggle my mind that people from normative families, they don’t seem to ask those. I guess maybe because they've never felt like their survival was dependent on asking those important questions.

AUTUMN

 26:19 

I feel like that's a really good point, as their survival was never based on finding out the answers to those questions. And there are ways you can have that conversation without being so interrogative. And if your partner does feel like, why are you asking so many questions? Why are you so concerned? Sometimes it can help sharing what your average family looks like from your perspective. So you said your mom likes to have a drink or two, so did mine. And she went to bed for a couple of years and just drank alcohol and didn't eat. You know? And when you give them those ideas, it can really start to help them understand that, oh, you did come from a completely different experience than I had. And so then they can start trying to actually look at what's going on in their lives so that they can educate you. 

You can come from a space of curiosity and just let them know that you are interested, not just because you're anxious, but if you actually do care about them and want to care about their family, it's gentle, polite inquiry, I guess you could say.

Now this next question is one that's actually tripped me up in in the past, because I got the whole idea of, oh, we're just a normal family, so it's all good, whatever. But I did not realize that apparently even healthy functional families, they all have different sets of boundaries about what it's okay to share and what it's not okay to share. And so one of the questions I learned to ask over time was how open are you with your family? How much do you actually reveal about your daily life, or your finances or your sex life? 

Because they may think their families just average. And so you go in with expectations because maybe you've been in 4 or 5 different relationships, you've met 4 or 5 different functional, healthy families. And so you think you have an idea and you go in and you expect that they know all about their son's finances or their daughter's current college grades. But it turns out that your partner actually doesn't share that information openly with the family for whatever reason. 

And so that's one of the big questions I always ask. Is there anything you don't tell your family? Is there anything you're not comfortable discussing? And again, if you're talking about somebody from a healthy normative environment with this question and the previous questions and so many of the questions we're going to be talking about today, you may have to coach them further because they're like, oh no, I don't keep secrets from my family. Okay. Well, do you talk to your family about your sex life? A lot of people are like, no, why would I why would I tell them about my sex life? Some people do. So it's good to know that we don't talk about our sex life with your family. 

I have found it has saved me a lot of awkward moments just asking how open with your family are you and what exactly do we not tell them about?

IVY

 28:46 

I have found that to be especially true when dating people who are military or former military or law enforcement. Obviously, I can't speak for all of people who have been in relationships with those folks, but most of the people I have been involved with, for whatever reason, are people who are in uniform or were once in uniform, whether that's law enforcement or military. And often, as I have gotten closer to these people prior to meeting their families, because usually I don't meet families right away. Like it's something that happens after I've been dating somebody for a year or something along those lines. So often, by the time that I meet their family, I've been with this person for a while. We've shared a lot of vulnerable, intimate moments, as you do when you're developing a close relationship with an intimate partner. And during those conversations, I have often been told about very traumatic, painful or difficult experiences they have, and those are stories that they haven't always told their families. And it's not necessarily that they're hiding anything. It's that these things are very difficult to even talk about, or they don't want their families to worry about them if they're still in the service. 

And so those are the sorts of things, too, that I always now keep in mind that, okay, they're telling me these things that they experienced on the job, but I should probably figure out with them if anybody else who's been told those things, If this is something that they talk about openly or not to other people, because it's not always completely clear. 

Some things, if you are close enough to this person and they're sharing these things with you, you may not even realize that this is something they've held very close to the chest and they haven't told anybody else. So that is one thing that I just wanted to tack on to what Autumn stated, because I do feel like that has applied so often in relationships that I have been in, that I think it's an important one to be cognizant of. If you're dating anybody in uniform or who's had a job like that, where you do experience really traumatic things. 

There's a secondary part to this question. It's not just what sorts of things maybe you do not talk to your family about, but it's also how open are you with your family in terms of where we're at in our relationship? Because some people tell their families pretty much right away. You know, you hear those stories about some people, they go on a first date, they know this is the one I'm going to marry. They go home and they tell their sister, it's like, oh, this is the one. This is the one. I just know this is the one. I'm gonna marry this one. But then you have other people. They may be in a relationship with somebody for 2 or 3 years before they even mention that person to their family. 

And so it's important to ask the question. It's like, what does your family know about our relationship? And this is a good opportunity for you to kind of check into and see, okay, are we on the same page about where we're at in our relationship, how serious this is between us? 

And I would also say here to again, based on my own experiences, not to take some of those answers to personally. Some of the people that I've been with, they have wanted to introduce me to their families right away, but I've also been in relationships with people who were slow to open up to their families about their romantic relationships, didn't really want their families to know about those relationships until they reached a certain point of seriousness. 

And as somebody who grew up in a dysfunctional family, we often - or I, I'll say it that way, I have often felt like damaged goods. And so sometimes when I've been in relationships with people who I know are close to their families or have somewhat normative families, there's that little part of my brain that has said, Oh, they don't want their family to know about me because they're ashamed of being with me. And that may not necessarily be the case. If that is the case, that's a huge red flag in a relationship. But I say I bring this up just because for my own personal experience, it has been something that's it's kind of gotten stuck in my craw and made me feel shitty about myself unnecessarily. 

That actually is one of the things that happened in my current relationship. We first started dating. It was a very long time before my boyfriend introduced me to his family. And for a while I was thinking, is he embarrassed of being with me because his family is relatively normative, and it took me a long time to realize that, like, no, that's just kind of how his family operates. Like they wait until they're until they've reached a certain point of seriousness in a relationship before they tell the whole family about it. Because if it ends up just being in a relationship that lasts for couple of months, what's the point of introducing them to the family? But I didn't understand that initially. And so at first I took it really personally. 

So. Maybe you don't have that issue. Maybe you understand that that's not what's going on. But if there's that part of me that thinks, oh, they're taking so much time to introduce me to their family because they're embarrassed of being with me, because of the environment that I came from, that may not be the case. So don't let your brain automatically go to that. 

AUTUMN

 33:57 

 That's a really good point. And I know there's also been times where even if the family is really healthy and loving and supportive, the partner, the boyfriend, girlfriend, whatever may be reluctant to introduce you to the family because maybe they have been personally burned before. They were engaged or thought something was serious, and then they had somebody step out on them and they feel embarrassed and they're still trying to overcome something themselves. And again, this is why it's important to talk to your partner. So you're not just left guessing and assuming about things. 

Now, when it comes to that idea of being open, though, that's not just a one-way street. And so something I've also asked myself is how open am I willing to be with my partner's family? And then along with that, because this is that discussion you're having with your partner. How open is your partner expecting you to be with their family? 

So Ivy and I are not really great examples on this one because unfortunately we are accidental over sharers. We get stuck in a moment we don't know what to say, and it's like, hey, here's sexual abuse, here's some trauma. I didn't know what to say. So I gave you what was normal to me and now I've ruined the mood. But some people, however, like to play their stuff really close in the chest. They don't want people to know that they're in therapy. They don't want people to know that their father is in prison or that they experienced abuse. And so that's something to consider as well.

Because if you talk openly with your partner about these things, because you feel safe with them, they may not understand that that safety does not extend to their family, because, again, if they find their family supporting and loving, they're going to assume a lot of times that you do too, that that family will support and love you as well. And even if that family is supporting and loving, as in the case of Ivy's fact of the day where the mom stepped in and basically called their son an asshole for shaming Ivy and was super supportive and loving and accepting of that, it doesn't mean that you're ready to open up to that level. 

And so I think it's also a good idea to be like, okay, how open am I willing to be? What issues am I willing to tell you about? Or even, like Ivy was saying, that whole idea of how serious is this relationship? How much of that are you okay with your partner's family knowing? 

 IVY

 36:10 

 I think it also can come down to relevancy as well. I don't speak to our father. I've mentioned that in several episodes of the podcast before, and it used to be even oversharer that I am, it used to be in a lot of my relationships that I pretended that my father just did not exist. I didn't talk about him to my potential in-laws because I was ashamed of having him for a father, and I was so fearful that I would become him in some ways. So while I was processing a lot of that trauma, a lot of times I pretended like he didn't exist. And then later on in other relationships, once I started processing some of that and it wasn't so much of like me being afraid of becoming my father, and it wasn't as much about me being shamed of him as a person. I still tended not to really talk about him to the families of the people that I was dating, because he is not a part of my life. 

He is so separate from me at this stage in my life. I don't know what's going on with him. I don't even know where he lives. He knows nothing about me. I don't think he's knowing anything about me for years and years and years now. And so there didn't seem a whole lot of point in talking about him, because he's not relevant to my life. 

And I do have somebody that I consider to be like an adoptive father. And so I talk about him as though he is my biological father. When I have conversations, like with my boyfriend's parents now, I talk about him as being my dad. I had mentioned to them at this point, now that he is my more adoptive dad, and that I'm not on speaking terms with my biological father, but I also have not gone into a whole lot of details about my biological father. Because it's really not relevant at this stage. He is not a part of my life. They are never going to meet him. More than likely, even Kelvin is more than likely never going to meet him. And so it doesn't really make sense to me to talk about him as though he is part of my family when he's barely even a person to me anymore. He's mostly a stranger to me at this point.

So sometimes it may be just a matter of irrelevancy why you don't talk about certain aspects of your background with your partner's family. You may not even be trying to hide something. You may not have trauma that you're not ready to share openly with these people that you don't really know. Sometimes you just don't share this information because it doesn't really matter. 

AUTUMN

 38:33 

 But again, whatever the reason is, you're not sharing that information. It's good to check in with your partner if you guys are going to be meeting their family together so that they know what not to share as well. Because this is one of those situations where you could feel hurt or it could feel like the relationship is unsafe now because your partner said something you didn't want them to. But how was your partner supposed to know that they shouldn't say that if their family's always been loving and accepting and supportive? It would have never occurred to them to keep that information back. Again, those cultural differences. This is why you want to have those conversations. 

It's also a good idea to keep in mind the openness sometimes isn't our choice, because there's some times when whatever the shit we went through is just out in the world, and they may already know about it. Your partner's family may already be aware of it. If there was a huge public arrest, or maybe you went off the rails at one point with your mental health and ended up in the newspaper. Or maybe you just live in a tiny, tight knit community where everybody knows everybody, and so the whole town knows your story. It may be you don't want your partner's family to know all about the physical or sexual abuse you experienced, but everybody in town knows about it, so they know about it. 

And so it's a good idea to consider, you know, what does your partner's family possibly already know about you or your family? And on this then it's a couple of things is one, how do you feel about that and how do you handle that? Because if you didn't want them to know and they do, well, that sucks. But it still may need to be addressed because they may bring it up. And then the other part of that too is, well, how is the family going to react? Because if they are very supportive and they are very healthy and they want the best for their kid, because supportive, healthy families do want the best for their kid, and they see their child dating somebody that they've seen in the newspapers that got into a DUI, they may have some negative impressions. And that may be something you need to address with the family up front. So it's not this just big elephant in the room that nobody talks about. 

IVY

 40:37 

I also would say that it's important too that if it's information that they may find out later. Because maybe they don't know right now. There's a decent amount of criminal activity in my family, especially on my father's side, and none of my partners families have known about that. Most of my partners don't really know about it. I don't talk about it because those people aren't really part of my life. But there are certain things that would be very easy for them to find out. All it would take maybe is a Google search, and they would see some of this criminal activity that's in my family and think that I'm hiding something from when I'm not. 

So I think it's also important to consider that as well. Like they maybe it's not a big elephant in the room right now. Because they don't know about it, because it wasn't highly publicized or whatever. But it's something that could come back to haunt you later if you don't address it now. And so it's a really good idea to have kind of a come to Jesus moment with yourself where you figure out how you want to handle that situation. If you do want to be upfront about it from the get go, even before they find out about it through other means. If you just want to cross that bridge when you get to it. You need to kind of ask yourself those questions. 

And you probably do want to let your partner know about it, if nothing else, so that if their family does find out about these things later on, it doesn't blindside your partner. Because chances are, if they find something that they think is deeply concerning and think your partner doesn't know about it, they're probably going to tell them. Maybe they'll give you the courtesy of approaching you about it first, but maybe they won't. Maybe they'll just go straight to your partner and tell them about it. And if they didn't find out about it from you, it could cause issues in the relationship. So even if it's something that you're just not sharing because you don't think it's really all that relevant, or at least not relevant anymore, you do want to be mindful of things that could come back to haunt you later. 

AUTUMN

 42:40 

 I would also say that this is a good lesson to keep in mind as well, because for people like me and Ivy, that idea of image in our family was never big. And so we've dissociated from the idea of family and our family unit so much that, in all honesty, what our family has done doesn't really feel relevant to us. If our father had gone to prison, which he did not really relevant to me. How is that anything about me? But go back to that cultural difference. For some families, image is important. 

And that's not just a superficial thing. If the family happens to be in politics, if one of the members of the family is an important member of the community, what your family has done is part of your story, unfortunately, with the way society views it. And because your story is now attached to their story, this may be something that they will have to address at some point. Even if you've dissociated with your family and image as important, that doesn't mean image isn't a necessary part of life for your partner or your partner's family. 

IVY

43:47

Yes. And this part that I'm about to add, as much as I hate that, I feel the need to add - I do think it's an important thing to reference as well. Many of us who come from dysfunctional families come from families where there is a lot of abuse, and often that does include sexual abuse, and often that sexual abuse can come from family members themselves. If that is the case, especially if that person has ever been arrested for sexual crimes against children or sexual crimes in general, even if you don't associate with that person any more at all, if your partner's family finds out about that person, they're probably at least going to want to know if you're still connected to that person. 

And this is especially true if there are young children within the family, or if you are planning on having children with your partner. The in-laws are probably going to be really concerned about the possibility that there is a sexual predator lurking in your family that could cause damage to children within their family. 

And I hate that I have to even bring that up. But I do think it is an important one to talk about. Because unfortunately, so many of us have experienced sexual abuse from family members when we have grown up in dysfunctional families. Hopefully that is not the case for you. Hopefully this is something you never even have to think about. But if that has been the case for you and there have been any arrests or publicity around your family members for those types of crimes, you probably do want to let your partner and your partner's family know about that, so that they don't find that out later and have that come back to haunt you. Because that is one that's not just about you. It's also about them feeling the need to protect their family. And if you're planning on having children with your partner, they will probably feel strongly protective over those future children as well and want to make sure that they will be safe. 

AUTUMN

 45:50 

 Now, of course, these kinds of topics are obviously very big topics, and they may not be something you actually want to have over Thanksgiving dinner, especially if maybe the relationship isn't that serious yet. So when you're considering these questions like, what do I tell my partner? What do I tell my partner's family? What do I withhold? What's not relevant? You've also got to consider the strength of the relationship, the future of the relationship. 

And part of it also with all that is what level of openness is your partner's family willing to accept? Because with Ivy, for example, their families expectation that is, unless this relationship is really serious, we don't even need to know about it. So if they'd only been dating casually for 3 or 4 months, even if Ivy had met them, it wouldn't have been relevant to bring up any of this, because that family would not have been open to accepting this information, because Ivy wasn't really relevant to the family even at yet, which is totally fine. But every family is a little different. Every timeline is a little different. But I do think it's a good idea to say, okay, what level of openness is the family willing to accept at this point? 

And I think that also goes into just things that I consider normal. So for the longest time with me, I didn't realize that discussing my childhood was abnormal or could be mind blowing or shocking because yeah, I got that, I had come from a traumatic family, but I really didn't get that until my mid to late 20s. And so there was a long time where I just went around trying to relate to people. They would tell me a story about their childhood and I would relate, and it would kill the conversation because even though I thought it was relevant, my tale was sad and filled with trauma like my child is. And it shut everything down because they didn't know what to do with that. They weren't ready for that information. And some of the people I talked to honestly didn't want that information. It wasn't appropriate to share with them. 

And so I think it's a good idea to look at what level of openness is the family willing to accept, even if you're willing to be totally open about everything, is it appropriate in the situation? Is it right for whatever meeting that you're going to have? Is it right for that specific family, and is it right for the timeline of the relationship? 

IVY

 48:13 

You know this this doesn't only apply to the details of the dysfunction that you grew up in. Sometimes it can apply to relatively benign things as well, or things that you consider to be benign. So for instance, most of my life before I moved out here, I spent in the Bible Belt. Our family was Mormon. I thought nothing of that because it was normal to me, and I still have a fondness for the Mormon church. I know some people have had horrible experiences with the church. I did not. It was one of the few stable, safe, loving in environments that I had access to as a child. So I have no beef with the Mormon church. But growing up in the Bible Belt, I kind of figured out at a relatively young age not to talk that much about being Mormon, because most of the people that I knew thought Mormons were a cult. And their evangelical churches had painted Mormons out to be as bad as Satanists. 

So some of the things that could make your partner's family uncomfortable may not even be things that are associated with your dysfunction, but you still end up feeling weird about it. So keep in mind, too, that when you are being open with your partner's family, even if you're not oversharing, even if you are not going into a whole lot of details about your family's dysfunction, you may still run into things like this where it's like, oops, I made an awkward moment and I didn't need to. 

AUTUMN

49:37

I would say to that also that that's okay. When you have an awkward moment when you're meeting your partner's family, that doesn't necessarily mean it's because you're from trauma, because you came from a dysfunctional family, or even necessarily because you're neurodivergent. It's just the nature of the situation that a lot of times it's going to be awkward. But for some of us, it can definitely be more awkward because some of the things we do share or overshare are some taboo subjects that aren't typically talked about in quote unquote, polite society. 

And so if you are like Ivy or I and you are an overshare, maybe kind of consider what if you overstep the boundaries? What if you understand what you should talk about and what the family's willing to accept, but you get stuck with the mom in the kitchen for three minutes, and all of a sudden she knows all the gritty details of what happened to you between ages three and 14, because it happens to me a lot. So I always go into that situation, okay, what happens if I overshare? What's going to happen in this situation? 

And I've learned to include my partner in that so I can have an expectation about how the family might react. Are they going to be accepting like Ivy's boyfriend's mom was and protective of me? Are they going to shame me? Are they going to just get quiet and change the subject? Or should I try to change the subject because they don't want to be rude? Again, probably because I do have so much social anxiety and I am autistic, I just like to know what to expect. And because I know I'm going to be an oversharer, I like to develop a plan for that if I do overshare. What then? How do I come back from it? 

How do I well, not come back from it? But how do I keep moving forward with that? Because if this family is healthy and supportive and loving, and they are potentially going to be a part of your life, that awkward moment is just that. It's an awkward moment. It's just part of the story. But that story's continuing to grow and unfold. So how do we continue writing this story in a way that is positive and healthy and loving and supportive for everybody involved? 

I want to make a couple notes on that idea is one, it's okay. So what if you overshare and you include some of this trauma and you shake their world and they don't know what to do with that, maybe that can help them be a more open person. So when they encounter somebody in the future that does share trauma, that's maybe not as far along as the healing path as you are, or is still maybe a child in need of help, they won't be so shocked. Then they'll be like, oh, oh, I know somebody that's been through this. I've had this conversation before, and that initial awkwardness for them is gone. So if you do share, just consider that maybe it's actually beneficial for them so that if ever they encounter this in the future, and that person that they do encounter in the future from is in need from them to have actual help, maybe it's going to be easier for them to help. 

And then the second thing I also want to note on this too, and Ivy can chime in because maybe it has for her, but I will say this in my 30 odd years of oversharing, I don't think ever once I have ever actually ruined a relationship with it. I have made a lot of awkward moments. I have felt embarrassed. I still wake up at 2 a.m. remembering that one time I said that thing to that person and why, oh why did I say that? But it didn't ruin the relationship. Nobody's ever stood up and knocked their chair over and we're like, oh my God, I can't believe you even said that at the dinner table. You're banished from this house and never see my son again. That's never happened to me. 

So, Ivy, I mean, has that ever happened to you? Have you completely ruined something by oversharing? 

 IVY 

 53:15 

No. It might almost be worth it to ruin a relationship just to have somebody respond to that dramatically. I really liked that. That's kind of funny. No, I have not ever had it ruin a relationship. It has created a lot of awkward moments. 

But here's the thing too. Another reason why it is okay to have those moments is because chances are, whether you want to or not, you're going to have some of those moments. If you are somebody who is prone to oversharing for the life of me, no matter how much I have tried to fight that over the years, it still happens no matter how many of these interactions I have, it still occasionally happens. I do have that tendency towards oversharing, and I do have a lot of trauma to share about when I have those moments.  And if it does ruin a relationship, that relationship probably wasn't very strong to begin with. And maybe that's me being a dick. 

But here's the thing if that ever were to happen to you, if you're oversharing did lead to something like that, I mean, that's even if it doesn't cause your partner to break up with you if you having these things in your background, if your trauma and the things that you went through make them think badly of you, that should probably tell you something. That's probably a red flag that you want to consider, especially if your partner also has the attitude that these things in your past, or something that reflects poorly on you, that you should be ashamed of, or that they are ashamed of when it comes to you. 

And I had dated people before, but it did end up being a deal breaker for me, and even though they didn't break up with me, there were a lot of things about being with me that they were ashamed of.  A lot of things that they did not want other people to know or to talk about. And that did ultimately ruin the relationship that I had. Because they could not see the person I had become. They could not see my strength and my determination. They couldn't see the ways in which I had grown, the ways in which I had taken a shit situation and built something decent of myself. They could not see that. 

What they could see were the traumatic things that happened to me, the abuse it was inflicted upon me. And instead of blaming the abuser for those things, they looked at it as me being damaged goods. And that is a huge fucking red flag in a relationship. I'm just going to say that right now. The person you are with either loves you as you are with your background, and if they can't get over that, then they don't really love you. And maybe that's a controversial thing to say, but as far as I'm concerned, with the experiences that I've had, that has proven to be true.

If they cannot see me as the person that I am now, and they are ashamed of aspects of my past that I had no control over, or that were byproducts of the trauma and abuse that I went through, they didn't actually love me. They loved what they wanted to see in me. They loved the image that they created of me. They did not actually love me. 

AUTUMN

 56:29 

 Oh, I'm totally with Ivy on that one. If all your partner can focus on is the horror you've been through, and they cannot see the beautiful phoenix that you are that is rising from the ashes of that bullshit, fuck them. 

And by the way, if that mother does step back aghast,  knocks her chair out, and demands you leave the house, that kind of drama then opens the door for your own drama. Which means you could potentially throw a drink in her face. Because I feel like drama for drama. That's totally acceptable at that point. And it is a lifelong dream of mine to throw a drink in someone's face. I'm just saying. So that's something to consider.

Now when it comes to that idea of oversharing. A lot of us that come from trauma backgrounds or if we are neurodivergent, we're really aware that we're oversharing. Right? But here's the thing about people that come from supportive, healthy families, they often don't have a lot of self awareness. And so they may be oversharing and never realize it. So that whole family that you're about to slip into this, “oh, they're just like a normal family” Family. they might be consummate oversharers. 

You might come in and the dad slaps the mom on the ass and over dinner talks about what a tiger she was in bed last night, and the whole family is perfectly okay with that. And so that's one of the things I also ask too, does what is your family share? Like what are the boundaries in this family? Not just so that I don't overstep them. So that I'm aware.

Because if I sit down and the mom is like, so how is my son doing sexually? Is everything okay? I don't want to be just flabbergasted by that. I want to be prepared about whether or not this is an acceptable topic, or to at least know, oh no, that's grandma, she has dementia. Please do not answer those questions. That's not actually appropriate table conversation. 

Because again, we because we are different. We have had to develop a lot of self awareness. But a lot of these supportive healthy families haven't. So they might be oversharing and overstepping boundaries and seem crazy as fuck to us because we've built enough self awareness to actually understand what is considered appropriate or not appropriate in society. 

IVY

 58:40 

 Along with that, what's been interesting to me from my own personal experiences, are the people that I have dated who think that they come from just normal, healthy families. No trauma here, no abuse here, nothing like that. We’re a great family. We're super close. And then I meet their family and I'm like, ooh, okay, then these people don't realize they're dysfunctional. 

That can also be part of the lack of self-awareness, like some people truly are supportive, loving, relatively normative families. But then there's plenty of other people who think they're part of the supportive, loving, normative family and in fact are rife with dysfunction that they do not recognize. So be mindful of that as well. You may go into this interaction thinking, shit, I am going to stick out like a sore thumb because these people are normal. And then you get there and like, wait, these people are not quote unquote normal.

Which, I don't know, for me, on some level, has always made me feel a little bit of relief every time I've dated somebody and thought that their family was going totally normal. And then I meet them and, oh, no, I recognize this. This is a dysfunction. I am comfortable in here. I know what I'm doing now. It may look a little different than the dysfunction I grew up with, but I recognize dysfunction when I see it. I recognize abuse when I see it. I recognize the signs of trauma. Yes, you're all laughing about how your dad beat the shit out of you and threw you through a TV when you were eight. Really funny guys. Totally normal. 

That has literally happened to me before. I dated somebody who thought they came from just a totally normal, healthy, loving, supportive family. And then the whole family had a big joke about that time that he got beat to shit as a child for a relatively minor thing. So yeah, keep that in mind too. The family of your partner may or may not actually be normal and healthy and amazing. Even if your partner paints it that way. You may go in and get a, I don't know, pleasant or unpleasant surprise, depending on how you choose to approach it. I choose to approach it as half glass full. I think it is a pleasant surprise because at least I know it's like familiar territory now. 

AUTUMN

 60:57 

 I feel that also leads into another question that is really, really helpful is what if their family isn't as normal as they think they are? Because a lot of times people do think they come from these normative, healthy, supportive, loving families. And then you do get in there. And because you've done so much work and you've done so much research, you're very much aware that, no, that's actually a lot of dysfunction. And that is a very dangerous, harmful dynamic. And that was straight up trauma. Which would explain probably why we're in a relationship. Because you do also have the PTSD. You just don't know it. 

But what I found though is not everybody's really open to you just letting them know that. And so that may be a conversation you need to have is like, okay, what if we go into this and I see some things that are concerning. Are you open to hearing about this? Not necessarily the family, but even just your partner because your partner may not initially be okay with hearing that. They may write it off, they may think you're pathologizing things. And so I've always found it kind of helpful to ask that.

Because a lot of times there is some sort of dysfunction, there is some sort of trauma, there is some sort of invalidation, there is some sort of something in every single family. And yes, it may not be to the point that the entire family is dysfunctional or traumatic. But even my boyfriend's family, who is so loving and so supportive, there are definite things in his past that I can point to and be like, that was very invalidating. I can see how this led to your current behavioral pattern, which is potentially harming your life and your growth at this point. Let's talk about this. 

Luckily, this current partner has been very, very open to that. But not every partner is. Some partners are extremely defensive. They need to believe that their family is supportive and loving. They need to believe that they came from this normal background. 

And so maybe even discuss that idea. Because those of us that know we came from trauma and know we came from dysfunction, we know the signs to look for. And it's very possible that when you go and have dinner with this very healthy, loving, functional family, you'll find out it's not. And so the question then, is your partner open to hearing about those observations or not? 

IVY

 63:12 

 Yeah. And you may also find yourself in a situation at some point where you have to grapple with your concept to what a normal, healthy, supportive, loving family looks like. Because I know what dysfunction looks like. I have a vague concept of how Hollywood paints a good, loving family. But most people's families fall somewhere in between. Like Autumn said, pretty much every family has some level of dysfunction in it. And sometimes you find yourself in a situation where you have to completely shift the way you're seeing things in general. 

As a personal example of that, my current partner is the only person that I have ever dated whose family are immigrants. I had always dated, you know, basically what you find in the Bible Belt, white dudes, just basic white dudes. So my relationship with Kelvin has been different. And in some ways that I was not anticipating. Because I'm just like, well, people are people. No, not necessarily.

Like, yes, to a certain degree, yes, people are people. But, being in a relationship with Kelvin there's all of these cultural differences that I had never considered before. Because even though he was raised very westernized, there are still some of the cultural values and beliefs and things along those lines that come from his Chinese culture. Because his family did recently immigrate to the US within the last couple of generations. 

And so one of the things that I intentionally sought out when I was looking for a therapist for myself, was to find somebody who had an Asian background so that I could talk to her about things that I was confused about. Because sometimes I see things in Kelvin's family that I'm like, I don't know, that doesn't seem quite normal to me. But normal to me is either my family dysfunction or normal is this very American dream sort of concept of family, and that does not apply. Neither of those things apply to Kelvin's family.

And so it has been very interesting for me to have to really question my concept of what a healthy, loving, supportive family looks like. Like what do those words actually mean in context of his family? Because there are these huge cultural differences between Chinese culture and the American dream type of culture. And so speaking to my therapist, when I'm talking to her about issues that come up in our relationship or things that I notice in Kelvin's family, and trying to see what is normal by his family standards, it's been really helpful for me to have a therapist who does have an Asian background, whose family also recently immigrated to the United States, because it gives me so much more cultural context for what is normal and healthy by those cultural standards, so that I can understand Kelvin better and I can understand his family dynamics better. Without judging those family dynamics based on my very narrow idea of what family is. 

AUTUMN

 66:15 

 That's a really good point. And I think that applies not even when you have literally different cultures. But even just that idea of a healthy, supportive family, like I said, for a lot of us that came from dysfunction, all we have are these media painted ideals. And so it's like a stereotype. You have the stereotype of what a normal family looks like, but stereotypes aren't real. And so really getting into the idea of what is healthy, what is supportive, what does a real family look like. Not just what is this media ideal and what is dysfunction, but actually finding that real in the middle. 

Now again, probably my autism and my social anxiety, but another one of the questions I ask is what can we talk about? And this goes two ways for me.  One, what should I not talk about? Are there any major ideological differences, prejudice, biases that I should probably avoid bringing up at Thanksgiving dinner? Because I don't want to be the reason the entire family gets triggered because I mentioned something about, I don't know, Donald Trump at Thanksgiving dinner, and we don't talk about politics at the table, and I didn't know that. 

But the other piece, too, is a lot of times, especially for me, if I am talking to somebody that came from a healthy, supportive, loving environment, I don't really have a lot in common with you. And I have no idea what to talk about because my experience in life has been trauma, it has been mental health issues. And unfortunately, because I'm autistic, I have very niche interests, one of which is trauma. And so I don't have a whole wide range of subjects and am not a great conversationalist. I can commandeer conversation, but I will be leading the conversation, and not a lot of people will be talking, and probably everybody will feel awkward by the end because the pressure of speech will come on and I will overshare. 

So one of the things that I do then ask is, well, what can we talk about? What does your family like talking about? What subjects can I bring up that will take the pressure off of me? That they're interested in so I can perpetuate a conversation that the family enjoys? 

IVY 

 67:58 

That right there has been a saving grace for me, figuring out what everybody in the family is interested in so I can ask them questions specific to their interests to get them talking so that I don't have to. That has been awesome, because that takes so much pressure off of me. And I am way less prone to oversharing if I can just get them talking about something that they're really interested in. Especially if it's something I know nothing about, because then I can be interested in learning about this thing that I don't know anything about. Or at the very least, I can feign interest, which sometimes is just as valuable. 

The other thing, too, that I want to bring up here, and I think Autumn mentioned just briefly, like there can be certain trigger topics that you definitely want to avoid. And the note that I would add here is that sometimes certain members of the family have been through a trauma or have been in an abusive situation that did not stem from the family. It stemmed from something else. Maybe they got married to somebody who ended up being very abusive. And so they do have a lot of trauma associated with that. And one of the things I have to be mindful of, if I am aware of scenarios like that, is to not start oversharing, trying to relate to this one person that also has trauma. 

They may not want to talk about their trauma, and they especially may not want to talk about it in front of their family who loves and cares about them and worries about them. They may not want their family to know all of those details. They may not feel like sharing that sort of thing. But me talking about my trauma, trying to relate to them may be very triggering for them and cause not only an awkward situation, but also a very painful situation for them. 

And I think sometimes it's not just people from dysfunctional families that do shit like this, because one of the things that I have noticed without fail is that when I've gone out to the bar or something with Kelvin and he meets somebody new and they find out that he'd been in the military and that he went to a war zone, first fucking question out of their mouths: Did you ever kill anybody? Why would you ask somebody that? But people do that all the time. 

Why the fuck do we do that? It's not just people from dysfunctional families that ask stupid questions like that. Sometimes it can be triggering. So I always try to be very, very mindful of things that I might do or say, either trying to relate or out of my own curiosity that may actually be intensely triggering or difficult for another person. And that is especially true if it is me meeting potential future in-laws of the person that I am dating. 

AUTUMN

 71:01 

 We as humans do have a tendency to ask stupid questions, and I feel like that becomes even more so when we are in awkward situations. I feel a lot of us do get that pressure of speech, and then we end up saying things we regret later. No matter where you are on the functional or dysfunctional spectrum. 

Now, we kind of talked about this idea a little bit earlier, was the idea of, you know, how far along in the relationship are we and how much of that do we actually share with your family? But that idea was very verbal. And so something I like to check in on when I'm going to be meeting somebody is how much of our relationship are we able to share or demonstrate non-verbally? Like, how should I act with my partner couple? 

Because some people are really uncomfortable of having physical displays of affection when they're around their parents or their siblings. They may not want you to sit on their lap if their mom is right there looking at them. Other people don't care. And so that's one of the things I always check in on is, well, what level of connection are you and your family okay with? What level of communication? And I feel like for a lot of us, we also develop communication patterns with our partner that may not be appropriate for those family members. So maybe we joke around with one another. We use funny nicknames, but the family's more serious and your partner doesn't necessarily want to use those. 

But again, if they've not really examined their family and thought about it, for them, it's just natural to start acting more reserved or to not use those nicknames. But it's not going to be for you because you don't know. And trust me on this, it's important to figure that out before you go into this situation. Because my first husband, for example, luckily it wasn't with his family because I didn’t have to meet them. But we were at church and he was converting to the religion I was in, probably just to impress me and marry me. But that's beside the point. And one of the things a lot of people did with their partners in church was they rubbed their back. It was a sign of affection. And so since he seemed uncomfortable, I was rubbing his back and he seemed to seem more and more uncomfortable. 

After the service was over, I was like, well, what's going on? And he's like, you were basically making out with me in there. You were all over me. I had never considered that level of touching to be that expressive, but he did. And so that's really something to kind of consider, especially when you go into the family. A lot of families have very specific ideas about what level of physical contact is actually acceptable in public or in the family arena, and it's a good idea to find out what those are, just so you can not feel as embarrassed. 

IVY

 73:42 

 And you definitely don't want to create uncomfortable situations for your partner unnecessarily either. I would also add here to the to have this conversation directly with your partner, and don't just make presumptions about things based on stuff that you know about them or from external sources. 

Part of the reason why I bring this up is that when Kelvin and I dated for about a year before he finally decided it was time for me of him to meet his parents. And I was super nervous because I had so much investment in this man. I still have so much investment in this man. And so even though I'm always nervous to meet the families of my partners, I was way more nervous. And the fact that there was cultural differences made me even more nervous. Like, I don't want to do anything that's going to be unintentionally offensive. 

And so I would talk to some of my clients who had Asian backgrounds. I would go on online, and I would look for articles about integrating into a family when you are from a different culture and things along those lines. And one of the things that I consistently got was don't do any sort of PDAs. No public displays of affection that does not go over well in Chinese households. Like I got told that so much, and I saw that so much online. And so I went into the interaction, prepared not to do any public displays of affection, not hold his hand, not really even touch him at all, not be touchy feely, not use any terms of endearment. Nothing along those lines. 

I went in to the interaction with some assumptions that proved to be totally false, because I got there and Kelvin was actually very affectionate towards me. And his parents did not care. So don't make presumptions just based on what other people think in similar situations or things that you may see on the internet. Don't fall into that trap. If you can have that conversation directly with your partner, and if your partner isn't capable or willing to have that kind of conversation, just kind of go in and see how they act and then play off of them. 

Try to get in in a feedback loop with them, and just interact with them in the same way that they interact with you in front of their family. But don't make a ton of assumptions and make yourself super nervous for no reason like I did. Because that was very silly of me and very generalizing from me too. In retrospect, I actually kind of embarrassed about how much I was really stressed out about that, and it turned out to not be a big deal at all. 

AUTUMN

 76:12 

 Now, when it comes to assumptions like I was talking about, don't also assume that your partner knows what your comfort level is with touch and terms of endearment and physical contact when you're in front of their family. Because maybe the family is totally okay with you sitting in their lap and calling them Snookie and even maybe making out in front of them. But that doesn't mean you are. Don't assume that your partner knows that. Have that discussion. 

Because, for example, when I was visiting with my current partner's family, his siblings were over and each of the siblings had partners as well. And when we all went to sit in the living room after the meal, they all piled on top of each other's lap. So the brother had the girlfriend sitting on their lap, and then the sister had the boyfriend sitting on her lap, and they were all cute and cozy and couply. At home. I would definitely sit in Jake's lap. I love doing that. I love cuddling him. I love being all over him. In front of his family that was extremely awkward for me. I wasn't going to do that. 

So remember a lot of these questions are a two way street. Don't just ask, is the family comfortable with it or is your partner. Ask, are you comfortable with it too. And make sure you and your partner are both on the same page. 

IVY

 77:36 

One more little caveat I'd like to add here is not just about the level of PDAs that you're going to have with your partner in front of their family. I also now like to be prepared for what level of affection is appropriate within the family unit. Because our family was not very touchy feely. I have a fairly low tolerance. Not tolerance in terms of I hate it, but tolerance in terms of comfort level when I see people within a family being super affectionate with each other. 

And I have dated a couple of people who with their family, it's totally normal and nothing weird about it for the adult children to still be kissing their parents right on the mouth. And to me, no matter how often I saw that, I could never get comfortable with it. I never said anything. I'm not going to be a dick about it because it's not a weird thing for them. There's not any sexual abuse going on there as far as I know. It's just they are very affectionate with each other as a family, and it's not a weird, creepy, sexualized thing. 

But because for me and my background, that would be a really creepy, sexualized thing. I was always intensely uncomfortable around it, and the first time that that ever happened to me, it really shook me because that it was triggering to me. And I wouldn't have expected it to be triggering to me because it had never happened to me before. I never considered the possibility that adult children would still kiss their parents on the mouth. And it's not like a French kiss. It's like a peck, you know? It's not that big a deal, but to me, it was so triggering. 

Like I almost had a panic attack because in my mind, that is so unhealthy and so disgusting and so just sexualized and terrible. And you don't have those kinds of interactions with your family members. But that's coming from a space of my own trauma. And that trauma does not apply to every family. And for some families, that level of affection is totally fine. And there is nothing creepy about it. Nothing untoward, nothing abusive, nothing traumatic. It is just a normal display of affection. 

So when I am meeting my partner's family, I always like to know not only what level of affection is acceptable for my partner and I to be displayed with each other, but what I should expect from the family in terms of how they express their affection for each other. Because for me, even hugging my family is fucking weird. 

AUTUMN

 79:46 

 So Ivy actually makes a really good point there because a lot of families are actually huggers. And if you have any touch aversion, that may be an issue you want to sort out before you meet the family. Because you go to meet, they hug you, you go to leave, they hug you, you get up from the table, they hug you. And if you are touch aversive, that can make you extremely uncomfortable. So that's also a good idea to be like, are your family huggers? Are they touchers? Do I need to have a conversation before we meet them? Am I going to just tolerate that? Just something to consider. 

And then another question I asked myself a lot is how should I act? It doesn't necessarily mean I am going to act that way, but I like to know what the expectations are. And I get really specific with this because almost all the time, especially if your partner is super loving, they're going to be like, oh, act however you want. It's totally fine. You're wonderful, I love you, my family will love you. And I get that, but I also do want to be polite around them, and I want to make sure that I'm doing what I can to make the situation as pleasant for everybody as possible. 

It's just things that I feel better knowing going in is, you know, how much of me can I be? How much of me is going to be accepted in this situation? Because I do act very differently than other people. And as I've been learning to unmask as well, I do stim more openly and publicly. But if the family is going to be really freaked out by me rocking back and forth because obviously I'm freaking stressed out because I'm meeting the family for the first time and in my rocking is going to get worse and worse because my stress is getting worse and worse, and then it's freaking them out more, which makes me rock more. Is this a cycle we can end to begin with? And I can know, okay, maybe at this very first meeting, maybe I can put my mask on and not stim as much initially until I get to know this family a little bit better. 

I just I like having some ideas of what behavior is going to be okay and what behavior is not going to be okay, or at least what behavior is going to end in awkwardness. So I can make more of a choice about whether or not I'm going to pay the consequence of awkwardness for my behavior. 

IVY

 82:10 

And this is not us saying cover up your entire personality. Don’t be your authentic self at all. It's not about that. I feel like this is one of those things where it's like there's a time and a place for everything, and there are certain adjustments that you can make that aren't compromising your sense of identity. Like when I am around my partners - and this is not just true of Kelvin's parents, but in all of the relationships that I have been in - I have tried very hard to not cuss in front of their family unless I see everybody else in the family cussing. Because I curse like a sailor most of the time. Which, you know, if you've been listening to the podcast or anything like the amount of time. But that's not always like a cool thing to do in front of other people. And so I generally try to be much more cognizant of the words that I use and how I talk, because I can I can be a little bit crude sometimes in a way that I talk. I can be a little bit blunt sometimes in the way that I talk. 

And so I try to you know, I try to apply the same sorts of rules to being around my partner's family and that I would be going into a corporate work environment. You know, I'm probably going to try to dress a little nicer and probably going to be more mindful of the clothes that I wear. And these are things for me that are not huge parts of my identity that I feel like I am compromised as a person to shift for the environment that I am at. And maybe those sorts of things are different for you. Maybe certain things that I'm willing to mask or compromise on are things that you're not willing to. 

For me, it's something that I don't mind masking more if I feel like it's going to grease the social gears of the situation that I'm in with my partner's family, if it means that I can make subtle shifts in how I act or how I dress, that will come across as more respectful and polite to my partner's family. Those are things I personally like to do. 

There are some things that I'm not willing to do because they do feel like a huge compromise of me as a person. Like I would not blatantly lie about my background if I was asked point blank about certain things in my background that I'm uncomfortable sharing. I would not blatantly lie about that to try to cover up and pretend that I come from a family that's better than it is. Like, I wouldn't do that because that would feel compromising to me, but not wearing as low cut of a blouse and not saying fuck every sentence. I can manage that. 

But this is not us saying cover up your entire personality. Don't be authentic at all. Completely mold yourself to what you think your partner's family would expect from you. That is not what we're saying at all. It is important to have some level of authenticity there because if your partner loves you, they got a really love you, and that includes your background. That includes a lot of different parts that maybe would make the average person a little uncomfortable. And if you're going to be in your partner's life for a long time, chances are you're going to have future interactions with their family. And you can't, nor should you feel like you have to, hide yourself entirely. 

But maybe there are some things, like you can pull back and be like, okay, this is something that I wouldn't do in a corporate environment. Maybe I'm not going to do that in front of my partner's family when I don't know them well. 

AUTUMN

 84:58 

I feel like that idea of masking just goes hand in hand with the nest question as well. You know, the how should I act? Okay, there's parameters, but what if you're not okay with that level of masking? Or what if you can't not mask around people and you become somebody that your partner doesn't even know? So these are also things I talk about beforehand. 

Because if I do ask, okay, how should I act? What is acceptable, what's not acceptable? And they come at me with a lot of these restrictions and I have to be completely somebody else. I'm working on not masking. I'm working on being more authentically myself. So I say, what if I don't do that? What's going to happen? 

And again, that may go back to a red flag for that relationship. It's like, well, I need you to do that. I have to have you cover this up. And that may be something you need to talk with your partner about. If they're not really able to accept you as you are, like Ivy said. 

But on the other end of that, too, I am working on unmasking more and being more authentically myself. But I have masked for so long, it is just something I do. And in most situations it's something I can't not do, especially if it is a high stress social situation like meeting somebody family. And so that's also something I let them know is I may be unmasked around you a lot of the time, or less masked, but when we go to meet your family, you may not recognize me anymore. I may become somebody completely different, because I may be triggered in this situation, because I have a lot of trauma with families and I am around families. I'm also going to be highly anxious because I have a lot of social anxiety. I am also going to be very autistic because I am autistic. And you're asking me to be in a normative social situation. And so what's going to happen here is I'm going to mask and I may be very somebody that you don't even know, I may become the most normal, benign person in the world. 

And if your partner loves you for your differences, that may be very disconcerting, and especially if your partner is neurotypical and they don't understand masking. This may be a time you have to have this discussion with them so that they can understand what's happening. That it's not necessarily a lie, or that you're trying to lie about who you are or pretend to be somebody different, but this is just something that's so ingrained with you from decades of living in a society that hasn't accepted you. And it's something you maybe can't not do until you feel some sense of safety with these new people that you've never met before. 

IVY

87:30

Autumn brought this up a little bit earlier in the episode, and we were talking about issues that you may have that are already known to your partner's family. And she mentioned that for some people, it becomes a really big deal because they come from very prominent families. The dad's a pastor or there's a political figure in the family. And so there's peripheral things that seem relevant to you do impact the dynamics and can impact your partner and their families standing. This is another area where some of that can come into play. And why I mentioned earlier in the episode as well that these sorts of things can become a deal breaker over time. 

I have gotten to a point in my life, after all the relationships that I've been in. I dated a fairly wide range of people. I now recognize that in order for me to feel loved in a relationship, and to love myself in the relationship, and to be as authentic as I am comfortable being there are certain types of people that I likely will never have a successful relationship with, because their status in the world require something from me as their partner that I am not able to give. 

So, for instance, even aside from a family situation, there are certain people that I generally won't even try dating because the position that they hold professionally would require certain things from me, would require me to go out and do a lot of social networking, would require me to act very prim and proper, to be the corporate wife, to hang out with the wives of my partners, coworkers, things along those lines. Those are things I'm not going to be good at, and I don't have any interest in becoming good of those things. I would feel very much compromised in terms of my sense of self. I would have to completely pretty much cover up who I am as a person in order to be that.

And sometimes that can apply to family situations as well. Sometimes, if your partner's family is prominent and your partner has to be part of that image, then that requires certain behaviors from you. That requires you to dress in certain ways, go to certain events, do all of those things, and you have to really ask yourself whether or not you're on board for doing that. Maybe you are. Maybe it's totally worth it for you, and you are a master of masking. And it's not a big deal for you, but that is something I really think we all should ask ourselves. 

If we do have a trauma background that significantly impacts our mental health. If we're neurodivergent, we have things that make us drastically different. There are some relationships where that in and of itself can drive a huge wedge.

AUTUMN 

 91:04 

And that is one of the many reasons why it can be very important to have these kinds of conversations about your partner's family, and about the concept of family and the expectations around family before you get into the thick of meeting the family. Because if your partner loves their family and they want to be involved with their family, and they do see their family as an extension of them, then that relationship with the family is going to affect your relationship with your partner. And if you're going to have relationship foundation shaking conversations with your partner, you don't want that to have to happen over Thanksgiving dinner in front of your partner's family. It's better to have these kinds of discussions beforehand or after the fact, not during. 

Now, there's one last question I do think is a really good one to ask before going into the whole meaning of family thing, and that is what kind of support am I going to need from this. And that's going to require some self-awareness from you in knowing what support you will need from your partner, or what support you will need from yourself or your therapist, because you're going to be going into this situation and because your partner is part of this. 

Also, what support are they willing to offer you if you get too overwhelmed by everything? Are they going to be okay if you guys just leave the dinner? Or if you have to walk outside for a few minutes? Are they going to be okay going with you? And how do you communicate those support needs? If this is one of the families that doesn't say things openly and they talk around things, how do you communicate to them that you do need a little bit of space or you do need a little bit more support? 

And so I've always found this one really helpful to me, so that when I do get into the thick of it, I know that I'm not alone. Because for me, I do often feel like it's me against the whole world. And when I have a really good relationship, I finally feel like I have somebody that has my back. It's not just me against the world, it's me and my partner against the world. But if you get in this situation with their family, you may go back to feeling like it is you against the family or you against the world, and you feel isolated and that can really affect your mental health. 

So when I know going in the kind of support that I can expect and how to communicate that support, it makes the whole situation easier for me because I know that even though my partner's family is really important to them and they're going to do everything they can to be there for the family, that I am also still really important to my partner, and they're also going to do what they can to be there for me, and that helps me a lot in these situations, to feel less stressed and less anxious and less overwhelmed.

 IVY 

 92:36 

I would urge you again to just consider these questions and really give them some weight. Especially if you're still in that honeymoon phase with the person that you're dating and you're super excited to move forward with him and all of that. And maybe you're even excited to meet their family right now. And I'm not saying just catastrophize everything and assumed the worst possible scenario is going to happen, but starting to consider some of these questions and what that really means. Not just tomorrow when you meet them for the first time, but what these things mean, maybe years down the road. 

And how much of yourself you're willing to give, how much of yourself you are capable of giving in the ways that are needed in order to be part of this family, or to be separated from this family to the degree that you need without being a pariah, I guess, without being the bad guy. I'm not saying it's impossible to find compromises that work. I'm not saying it's impossible for you to meet their family and just absolutely fall in love with the whole family and finally find a place that is a safe space and feel like you're part of something bigger that does happen for people. And if that happens for you, that is amazing. But definitely consider all of the possibilities here, because this is more than just meeting them tomorrow. 

If I'm meeting the family, chances are that means we're leveling up in our relationship. What does that mean? If we continue to level up, what level of involvement will I have, not only with my partner, but with their family? And potentially, what involvement will their family have to have with my family, and what would that look like, and how am I going to navigate those waters? You don't have to answer all of these questions today. These are just questions to consider as you're going into this scenario where you're meeting for the first time in questions to consider as you move forward into your relationship. 

AUTUMN

 93:45 

And remember, with all this though, these are not just questions for you to consider. They're questions for you and your partner to discuss and talk about. And I do really encourage you not to catastrophize, because a lot of us have come from dysfunctional families or from trauma, we do tend to be more negative, and we can find it difficult to think that things are going to be successful or happy, or that will have a happy ending, but it is possible for us. And maybe your partner is really loving and connected with their family, and you are not able to be a part of it, but you can find a compromise for that. 

And like Ivy pointed out, maybe you are the pariah in the family. That's not always the worst thing, I'm pretty sure - because I've been with my boyfriend for about a decade now, and it's only within the last, maybe year that I've actually talked with and had some interaction with this family members. And I'm pretty sure for the first almost nine years of this relationship, or eight however long it's been, I was the pariah in that family. They're pretty sure I was not good enough for their son. They're pretty sure I'm the reason that I led him astray into this off grid lifestyle. 

And in all honesty. That was really great for his relationship with his family because they had a scapegoat for that blame, which then allowed them to see their son as he was and the success he was making. And it really, I think, in some ways strengthened that relationship. Maybe I'm wrong, but I think it did. And so now they're more accepting of him because they had a pariah. And now I am starting to open up a little bit and they are starting to accept me. But it's still not a super close knit thing. 

These things can change and flex and fluctuate over time. And just like every relationship is going to be different, so will every relationship with the in-laws be different. And it's going to change over time. And that's okay. There is no right or wrong, black or white. I have to accept and be accepted or I just won't accept or be accepted. There's always a million different compromises we can make. And so like I said, I really do think that if you are going to be asking these questions, don't just ask them of yourself. 

Have this conversation with your partner, include them. And possibly even if you're open to it enough, include the family as well, because you'd be surprised how many normative, healthy, happy people out there are really a lot more accepting and supportive than you'd think they are. Just saying. I mean, that's kind of what makes them happy and healthy and functional and supportive. 

All right, so with that, we will go ahead and wrap up the episode for today. And I am kind of curious out there, are any of you going to be meeting your partner's family for the first time or maybe just again this Thanksgiving? And if so, what are your feelings going into that? What are your thoughts? Ivy, could you give them our connect bits so they could reach out to us? 

IVY

 97:29 

 Yes, I certainly can. You can find us at our website: www.differentfunctional.com. We are on Facebook as Different Functional. We are on Instagram and TikTok as Different_Functional. We are on Patreon as Different Functional. 

We have merch on TeePublic.com. We are also on there as Different Functional. But good luck finding us through the search engine because they are stingy bitches about letting you show up in their search results. So if you do want to check out our merch, check it out through our website. On our homepage, there is a link where you can be taken directly to our TeePublic storefront, and you can see all of our fun merch there. 

I probably would not suggest wearing any of our merch as t shirts when you see your partner's family for the first time. Because while a lot of them are hilarious, we make it very obvious that you are either neurodivergent or you've got an interesting backstory. So yeah.

And if you want to support the podcast but you don't have the means or desire to join our Patreon or to buy our merch, you could still help us out by leaving us a rating or review, or going on to social media, following us on social media, liking, hearts, and doing whatever it is that you do on social media to let the algorithms know that you'd like to see more of us. That would also be very helpful to the podcast and spreading the word. 

 IVY 

 98:49 

 And we do notice that some of our listeners out there do interact with our social media posts, and that you guys are helping us get our name out there, and we thank you guys very much for doing that. We really appreciate all of you. And we hope that if you do have to meet the family this Thanksgiving, it will be as minimally awkward as possible for today. We will go ahead and wrap up though. We thank you for listening. And as always, remember, different does not mean defective.