The in-laws

My brief here is to help create a system for collecting oral histories and adding them to the library collection. An interview I did this week was the saddest by far. We had agreed to talk about extended families and how Melanesian society is founded on family and clan responsibilities and obligations. We got onto one's interactions with in-laws, which are strictly controlled by a complex set of unwritten but widely accepted rules. One's in-laws of the opposite sex are off limits: one cannot talk to them, look at them, share food with them, be alone with them. If you spot them in the street, you turn away. Any contact, even inadvertent, is disrespectful and deeply shaming; it will require a public apology and compensation with food or money. Mere words of apology are inadequate.
How sad that happy and fulfilling relationships with one's partner's parents and siblings, and with one's children's partners, are not allowed.