DEAR MISS MANNERS: My partner and I lived abroad for 12 years and have recently moved to his hometown.
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He has a job, I am working as a temp, and we are struggling to find housing, so we have been staying with his parents.
I am incredibly grateful to them; we have been living with them for two months now, and may stay another two months (the housing crisis is that bad). But I am also finding it difficult to live with them.
I knew it would be challenging not to have my own space and to live by someone else’s rules, but I also feel judged, and I hate their jokes.
They have feedback and comments about absolutely everything.
I prefer to shower in the evening, after work; they tell me it is “bizarre,” that showering wakes you up and is a terrible thing to do just before bed.
I have very long hair, and my mother-in-law has asked me several times if I would “consider” cutting it. When I said no, she pointedly said, “It is very long, you know.”
I am a vegetarian, and I never bring it up. Still, they will often ask if I am “tempted” by whatever meat dish they are having.
And then there are the constant jokes about my nationality. They will bring that up several times a day, asking me “what people do in my country of origin” (I left 16 years ago). Or they will just drop random words in the language of my birth into the conversation and laugh.
It makes it hard to fit in and feel accepted. My partner says to just ignore it, and he never intervenes — it is not something he would do.
My friends agree it’s difficult, but to “think of the free rent.”
What do you think?
GENTLE READER: Although Miss Manners does not want you to end up on the street — and she does understand that your partner’s parents are doing you an enormous favor — asking what she thinks, rather than how to fix your problem, strikes her as far too passive.
Etiquette is not a barter system. Just as one rudeness does not justify another, your hosts’ good deed of letting you live with them does not justify the ongoing rudeness you describe.
The unpleasant duty of asking them to please stop commenting on your country of origin, your hair and your choice of food should fall on your partner, whose duty it is not only to do so tactfully, but to insist the discomfort with their behavior is his own, not yours.
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Motivating him to do this convincingly is your task.
DEAR MISS MANNERS: Which is ruder: being ignored by someone who is constantly on their cellular telephone, or interrupting that person with a conversation without saying “excuse me”?
GENTLE READER: Justifying one rudeness by citing another is ruder.
Please send your questions to Miss Manners at her website, www.missmanners.com; to her email, [email protected]; or through postal mail to Miss Manners, Andrews McMeel Syndication, 1130 Walnut St., Kansas City, MO 64106.
