did your son in law ask your permission to marry your daughter? and how?

[bellarella]

I did not see it as offensive, but I'm sure that if I knew someone well enough to marry them then the two of us would pretty much know how we felt about this tradition already.

This is the reason why I would not want my daughter marrying a man who asked for permission/blessing before proposing. If he knew my daughter/me well enough to be ready to want to be engaged, he should already know that we do not find this tradition benign.

I don't know why it is fine for someone to say that they would have an issue if the FSIL didn't ask, but that it's closed minded to have an issue if they do ask.

At the root of all of this is are one of two ideas. 1. That it is "courtesy." But courtesy is contextual. If you know (and I believe you should by the point you are thinking about marriage) that your FILs don't expect/want to be asked, then it is not courteous to do so. 2. You believe that you really should have the parent's blessing/permission before asking. That is just a fundamentally different view of marriage than what I have. I do not see anything wrong with wanting my children to marry people who have the same view of marriage and how it interacts with other family dynamics. Similarly, I would hope that my children do not marry people who have different views on whether/how many children to have, financial goals, etc. There are a few issues that I think are core to a successful marriage. And yes, I do hope that my children find partners who share all of the same core values. I don't see that as being "closed minded."

 

[bumbershoot]

This is the reason why I would not want my daughter marrying a man who asked for permission/blessing before proposing. If he knew my daughter/me well enough to be ready to want to be engaged, he should already know that we do not find this tradition benign.

That's the important thing, isn't it? That a person know, at the very least, their intended that well. I'm not sure that knowing the *family* is THAT important, so in your shoes I'd pull back from that, because by the time it's a question, maybe your daughter would actually be OK with it, and maybe *you* are the one who doesn't know something about your daughter....

Who knows?



Disrespectful way of doing it:

My mother's father and my father had a closed door discussion during which my dad told my grandfather that they would be leaving and moving to California. Grandfather said absolutely not (my mom was 17 at the time), but if he married her then it would be OK. So...the men decided that she would be married. This isn't what she *wanted*, she just wanted to get the heck out of her house, but it's the only way her dad allowed it (not sure what the consequences would have been if she'd just left).

Not so disrespectful way:

DH and I got engaged all on our own. The engagement went to pieces. We barely knew each other, we didn't know each other's family (well, I knew his and still don't like them much, though they like me more now than they used to). After the implosion of our engagement, there was some counseling, some time...and then we decided that we would, after a time, get re-engaged. My father's family had a reunion on my uncle's Montana property, DH went with me, and he pulled my dad aside to talk to him about another engagement, to explain what had happened before, and make sure my dad knew that the same thing wasn't going to happen again (things weren't necessarily all DH's fault, but he was the one that left while I was still trying to make things work better, and I was the very very heartbroken one).

If my mom were alive, he would have gone to HER. My dad was simply the living remainder of my parents, so he got this courtesy extended by Robert...it wasn't a property thing, but a "I'm going to make your daughter happy, please support us, this is what I, and we, have changed this time" thing.

After my dad picked himself up off the floor (he's rather a hippie and really didn't need to give permission or blessings or anything, and was really surprised at this, because he's clueless about who I am and still thinks I'm a 4 year old he can rev up and make insane) he gave his blessing, and later that night around the campfire, DH didn't so much propose, as announce our re-engagement. Which was basically fine for me, as I don't really like public proposals.

 

[disykat]

This is the reason why I would not want my daughter marrying a man who asked for permission/blessing before proposing. If he knew my daughter/me well enough to be ready to want to be engaged, he should already know that we do not find this tradition benign.

I don't know why it is fine for someone to say that they would have an issue if the FSIL didn't ask, but that it's closed minded to have an issue if they do ask.

At the root of all of this is are one of two ideas. 1. That it is "courtesy." But courtesy is contextual. If you know (and I believe you should by the point you are thinking about marriage) that your FILs don't expect/want to be asked, then it is not courteous to do so. 2. You believe that you really should have the parent's blessing/permission before asking. That is just a fundamentally different view of marriage than what I have. I do not see anything wrong with wanting my children to marry people who have the same view of marriage and how it interacts with other family dynamics. Similarly, I would hope that my children do not marry people who have different views on whether/how many children to have, financial goals, etc. There are a few issues that I think are core to a successful marriage. And yes, I do hope that my children find partners who share all of the same core values. I don't see that as being "closed minded."

Great post!