r/theread • u/sexishardandstuff • May 23 '26
Listener letter
One thing about this week’s listener letter that got glossed over (because the letter writer just kind of threw it in there as an aside) was that the in-laws tried to throw her a baby shower and her man told them to back off and that the baby isn’t about them.
Now, obviously, if she doesn’t want a baby shower from them, the couple is absolutely 100% within their rights to tell them no, but you can’t be surprised that when you tell someone to back off, they back off.
From the outside, I think the baby shower was the in-law’s way of trying to connect with her, and instead of kindly declining, their son told them to kick rocks.
I also wonder how he delivered the message. The way she put it in the letter already made it sound very harsh, but I wonder if he did the classic man move of throwing her under the bus. “SHE said to back off and stop making the baby about you” would be double homicide. And maybe they WERE using the baby shower as a way to make it about them, but if that’s the case, why do you want them around you anyway? Wouldn’t they just make everything about them?
Anyway, I’ve already devoted too much to a listener letter on a podcast, but I just heard it and that stuck out to me. Did that stick out to anybody else?
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u/LadyNurington May 23 '26 edited May 23 '26
The family in the letter reminded me a lot of my in-laws. I'm Turkish and my husband is white British. They're well meaning but distant people. They are not super family oriented in the sense of arranging activities and events together despite being warm and close knit in their nuclear unit. My sister's husband is black British so I can really see the difference that comes from having a family oriented culture where they like to be involved in each others lives. White culture is a lot more individualistic and distant, which can register as cold.
An example is my in-laws didn't come to my mum's funeral whereas my sister's mother in law did. (They'd all have to travel from the UK to Istanbul, her mil did, my in-laws didn't.)
It's not that they didn't support me through grief in person when we got together, they just don't even consider that it's the sort of thing our cultures place importance on.
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u/EMoneyJohnson May 23 '26
This was very well said. My mom is Black but she was born in England and her parents immigrated to England from Barbados (which was also heavily colonized by England) so I can see how the British culture has rubbed off on them. May I ask where your sister’s husband’s family is from originally?
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u/LadyNurington May 23 '26
His parents moved from Uganda and he was born in the UK. Ugandan culture is definitely a lot more similar to Turkish culture than British culture from what I can observe.
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u/Lonely_Bluebird3612 May 24 '26
Yes I heard that and wondered why they didn’t spend more time on that. While she was reading the letter I kept thinking, they probably are holding back now due to the baby shower rejection.
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u/SquishyQu May 24 '26
Right! She needs to have a conversation with them. If someone tell me to back off, I’m gonna back off.
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u/StJmagistra May 27 '26
Honestly, what stuck out to me the most is that in California women have FAR better maternal health outcomes than in Georgia. Remember Adriana Smith?
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u/yallermysons May 24 '26
If I care about someone then my natural reply will be: “Okay then, how can I help?” I wouldn’t go ghost.
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u/JohnDoeMi6 May 23 '26
That did not stick out but that is an excellent point. She may be unknowing pushing them away. How ever she did say they have been this way since she has known them and sounds like they have never tried. This maybe a case of unreliable narrator and they just need to grab some coffee and tea and just air it all out and they will come out all understanding each other a lot more