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The voice of experience emanates from Cher in Kentucky in response to Andrew in Australia’s question featured in Episode 140:
A fellow listener asked about ways to suck up to the parents of one’s significant other. Having been married three times, engaged seven times before that, I have significant experience in that department.
Rule No. 1: Choose your battles. When the parent presents as an intractable bitch, leave it and go for the other parent. At first sight of my, my first husband’s mother’s first words to me were, “Jesus, you’re not a Catholic, are you?” She said it more to the crucifix at my throat (at which she bared her fangs) than to me.
I promptly ignored her and asked his father to tell me about the Battle of the Bulge. He pulled out maps, memorabilia, and held my ear for hours. When the bitch’s boy turned out to be gay and a tree-worshiping Pagan (bit of your own back, Ma!), I missed his dad more than I missed him.
Rule No. 2: To thine own self be true; they’ll figure you out eventually. Prior to the Bitch, for several fiances I converted to their religion (to impress the parents), one Protestant faith being the same as any other. Eventually I would get found out, though. What was I thinking, you ask? I was quite young, and it was Mississippi.
Rule No. 3: Find the deal-breaker, and don’t break it. With my mother-in-law, “living in sin” and pre-marital sex were a huge deal breaker. Let me add that she’s 90. She nagged my husband and his brother into their prior marriages so that they would discontinue living in sin. Forearmed with that knowledge, when I visited before our marriage, I was prepared when she asked me whether I would sleep in the guest room with my then fiance or on the couch. “I can’t sleep with him, ma’am. We aren’t married yet.” BINGO, we have a winner!
Rule No. 4: Take care of them. His people are my people. If you want them to like you and care about you, like them and care about them. It might not work, but it’s a good place to start. When you marry a person, you marry into a family, like it or not.
In that case, Cher has a MASSIVE extended family. I’m trying to picture how one can find oneself engaged as many as seven times, not even counting the ones that culminated in marriage, but it turns out I simply do not have sufficient imagination. She offers very sensible advice though, so we can all benefit without enduring the hassle of ten engagements.
Incidentally if any of you readers have managed to be betrothed more times than that, let us know in the comments! The first one to notch up twenty fiance(e)s wins a prize.
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