When you marry a better half who comes from a huge extended family, you better be ready to deal with the stable of relatives who seem to always be around. The things you need to deal with can range from the mundane to the extreme; from aunts who like to spam group chats with meaningless “feel good” memes to uncles that seem to have taken it upon themselves to constantly advise on how to raise your children. Unfortunately, you don’t really have a choice but to be patient – yes or not? Of course, you could go all wolverine rampage on them all but that would not bode well for your relationship with your loved one, would it? Probably not.
So how do you deal with these annoying aunts and uncles you suddenly feel like you adopted?
- Respect and patience. This means putting up with all the jam with a smile. Wear it out. Family functions don’t last for that long do they? Of course, if you choose to go on holiday with the group then you can only blame yourself for digging your own damn grave.
- Decline invitations to limit your exposure to the most annoying individuals in the group. Familiarity breeds contempt. So don’t get too familiar. Try to get an overseas job posting if possible. That would solve a whole lot of problems. If you don’t bring your husband of your wife, you won’t have to deal with your spouse either.
- Get wasted. All the time. Throw up in their homes. Throw up at the entrance to their homes. Pass out in their cars. Soon enough, they will stop inviting you anywhere. But if they do. Then they are aunts and uncles worth putting up with. Keep them close and take care of them. For they probably love you more than your parents do.
- Always wear a serious and worried look on your face so that people leave you alone. But beware, there are some fo*ls out there that will still feel like taking liberties with you – teasing you like a child or making jokes at your expense – trying to get you involved in all the lovey-dovey family activities. Here you don’t have a choice – refer to point 3.
- Be nice for as long as you can. Then have a friend call you with an “emergency” that you urgently need to help out with. This may only work so many times (likely just once) so I would keep this little jewel for some major event if I were you.
- Borrow some cash from one of those annoying relatives, then never return it. When in the presence of that relative, talk about how you never borrow any money from anyone. Keep doing it. Eventually, that relative will start to tell the others. Eventually one of them will tell you. Then deny everything and insist that the annoying relative is trying to frame you. This will split the family – if you are lucky maybe even in half – significantly reducing the number of annoyances you have to deal with. Unless of course, all the annoying relatives end up on your side. In this case, you probably should try your best to get along with them anyway.
- At the end of the day – you may want to reconsider point 1. If these people genuinely love you – then putting up with their annoyances might just be worth it – yes or no? I mean as long as they do nothing destructive or life threatening to you – sometimes it actually is nice to be surrounded by people who care for you – even if they annoy the life out of you while doing it.
