5 Secrets of Bonding With Your Father-in-Law

February 19, 2011, By Kurt Simonsen 0 comments

I'm smiling at the raw irony of me writing this piece. You see, I'm divorced, and here I sit crafting an article on how to best get along with your father-in-law, a man with whom I don't even have a relationship with anymore.

Odd you might say, but I thought a lot about it, and it actually makes sense. Though my marriage may have fizzled, the bond I had with my now ex-wife's father grew into something over time, dare I say, I actually miss. He was a good guy, and I think he felt the same about me.

The relationship came a long way from our first meeting when I was a 20 year-old college junior who had been chasing his 18 year-old daughter all over campus for the last two months. Sitting across from him at a nondescript Italian restaurant only 15 minutes after meeting him in my girlfriend's dorm room, I silently shook from nervousness. I liked her, so I didn't want to screw up.

Knowing that I was not the most talkative person around new folks, I tried to look the part of a legitimately trustworthy boyfriend. I wore a crisp white shirt, ironed jeans, a simple belt, and brown shoes. Nothing risky or offensive. Basically plain, ordinary and safe. Nothing that would set off an alarm and tell him to grab his daughter and run out of fear that I'd have her on the back of my Harley and covered in tattoos by semester's end.

Thankfully we had good conversation, and the evening went as well as a first time could...awkward but successful. My girlfriend later told me he was impressed, which made me feel good, so I smiled. Then she said, "It had nothing to do with what you said, idiot. He couldn't believe you didn't get any sauce on that bright white shirt."

After that day, many more came, each time the two of us doing the strange dance of suitor to father, with me eventually asking, some five years later, for his permission to marry his daughter. And it was on that day, following that conversation, that I realized something about marriage that I hadn't anticipated: you were committing to become a part of another family, not just dedicating yourself to one other person.

Looking back on that epiphany now, I see how my relationship with my former father-in-law evolved from an understandably awkward one into one of mutual respect. I can see the give and take that took place, and I know now, especially being a father to two daughters who will eventually place me in the identical situation, what he was thinking and wanted.

Here's what I learned.