Fiancee Not Hip to Direct Communication with Future Inlaws

Advice Columnist Zuri Gives Her $0.03 On Supporting a Fiancees Feelings and Allowing Her to Assimilate into a Family at Her Own Pace

Dear Zuri,

My fiancee and I have been dating for a while and keep running into the same problem over and over again. My parents are phone people who expect regular phone contact with their children, which I am happy to give them and do give them. But they have been disappointed and hurt by what they see as my fiancee's unwillingness to maintain a direct relationship with them through regular phone calls, particularly my mother. In the past, at my request, my fiance has made an effort to call my mother directly but the direct relationship becomes too much for my fiance to handle and she cuts it off again. Right now my parents are going through a tough time and are upset she hasn't called them directly to see how they are doing.

My fiancee, on the other hand, feels that she already has a nuclear family of her own to call all the time, and would prefer if I would be the buffer between her and my family for this regular contact. I only call her family directly rarely, and they are fine with that, so she feels it is unfair to expect her to do otherwise regardless of my family's expectations and interpretations.

Is it wrong of my parents to impose their expectations of their children onto my fiancee? Is it reasonable for my parents to expect to have a regular and direct relationship with my future wife? Or is it wrong of my fiancee to refuse to call them directly?

Thanks!
-AL

Dear AL,