Irreconcilable meddling... and white boys on family

Dear Victoria Blunt,

I'm writing about my wife and her relationship with her parents.
We've been married for about a year but she still hasn't told them about me. This is fairly easy to do since they live on another continent and she has no relatives living here, only a local community of "countrymen/women" with whom she has little contact. (My wife moved to this country with her family as a young teenager, and decided to stay and finish High school/University here after they left.)

Her parents found out that I exist at all in a sort of roundabout way. She had been out of touch with them for about a year and had left her old apartment without giving any kind of new number or contact info. I guess they were trying to track her down, because her brother who is a few years younger than us and also lives "back home" found me on facebook. It wouldn't have been hard to find me, since her name and photo was all over my profile at the time; a search of her relatively rare name and our city brought me up as one of the only results. (I "cleaned up" and made private my facebook at her request after more relatives started contacting me looking for her.)

She urged me to not reply. I didn't add him as a friend (it wasn't his real account anyways--for whatever reason it was a second account with far fewer friends). I felt bad, so I did tell him my work email address and that I knew her, and that she was doing OK. From there her parents got my work email address and we have periodically exchanged brief emails where I told them in vague terms what she is doing with herself. At one point I also gave them her main email address since they asked repeatedly for her phone number and I felt really conflicted about always writing back negative or creepily vague responses to them. They have always responded to me in a friendly way and have even said that I should come and visit them with her one day.

My wife finally worked up the nerve to contact them on one of her parents' birthday a few months ago. Since then they have sent a few emails back and forth, and they urge her to settle down with someone since she is getting older, etc. At this point it's become pretty clear in their emails that they know we are in some kind of relationship and they have spoken highly of me a number of times.

So, I haven't been pressuring my wife too hard to admit that we are married, but every once in a while I bring it up. I feel like the time is right, if not necessarily this week, at least some time in the next little while! But she has remained noncommittal.

But here's the other side of it. We have both been in relationships in the past with people of the same sex. She was working for years to get the nerve to come out to her parents as a lesbian. This makes her feel weird about telling them she is married to a man (nevermind a white one). On some level, she has told me, she still wants to tell them she is a lesbian and have them understand that. It doesn't bother me, of course, but you can see how it makes it a bit harder to explain.

Should I push the issue of her telling them we are married? Every time I have to avoid it in writing emails, I just feel like I am making myself look worse at some future date when they do find out-- I feel like they might feel hurt, as if I didn't think enough of them to tell them.

Sincerely,

Tattletale Tom

Dear Tattletale,

I suppose there is a lot I could say on this issue. We could discuss sexual identity and how difficult it is for sexually fluid women to exist in a binary society. (Poor Anne Heche.) We could talk about the difficulties inherent in social networking sites such as Facebook. (Several ex-friends have found me - always a jarring experience. At least most of them got less attractive over the years.) Or we could talk about how to convince your wife to bite the bullet and tell her family about you. And you know, that seems to be what yr rooting for. But I don’t think I’m going to talk about that.

The thing is my overly friendly friend, your wife asked you not to engage with her family – and you did. She stopped speaking to them – and you started. What is it about her requests that left you confused? Or do you feel that you just know better?

As cute and cuddly as couples can be, it is almost always a mistake to assume that you know better than your significant other….ESPECIALLY when it comes to their family. I sense a severe lack of communication on the part of your and your wife. I’m not saying you did something awful; in fact it sounds like yr a pretty sweet guy and you wanted to make things right. But we can’t fix the mistakes of the people we love, and we can’t deny them the right to live out their lives as they so choose. When you got married you did not merge your identities and your rights as human beings. Do you know exactly why she stopped speaking to her parents? Maybe they really suck. Maybe they beat her or hurt her or deserted her - or maybe they’re pretty wonderful after all. I have no idea, but you should, especially if you’re meddling in her relationship with her family. It is essential that you and your wife talk about her feelings concerning the choice she made to cut off contact with them until you understand her position backwards and forwards. And then sweetheart, you’ve got to go along with whatever she wants. We go into relationships with baggage, and while you should be consulted with about said baggage, you should never be the one to decide when and where and how your wife unpacks it.

It is commendable that you care so much and it is cute that you seem to want her to reconnect with her family. But if you don’t trust her to decide for herself when she tells her family (if ever), then I’m going to go ahead and recommend couples counseling. I’ve never tried it (so I can't front and tell you it's totally awesome), but this is the sort of issue that might require a third party. Maybe she’s not communicating her position well enough or maybe this is just an all-around sore subject. Either way, don’t make a move until you really understand what’s going on, and you’re sure that what you do won’t leave you with a wife who cutts off communication with you too.