The unknown unknowns of the MacRae family.....

If you've ever ready the alternate history novels Harry Turtledove writes, you'll know that he uses the phrase "it never occurred to X to think something he or she would jolly well not want to occur to him/her" a whole lot. It's one of the man's favourite ways of pointing out that a character either doesn't want to face something that would lead to the realization tht his or her whole life had been a lie or said character can't conceive of something amazingly obvious because he or she is a product of an environment that would foreclose on that being a possibility.

The reason that I mention that is that while we know that Mike eventually judges Martha's extended family as being horrible people he's too good for (and also passes on the stupid advice about how meeting the other person's relatives is a humiliation waiting to happen to poor, dim Lizardbreath), it would never occur to Michael to ask himself what they think of him. This is probably because it never really occurs to him to ask himself what anyone he knows thinks of him and the way he acts. Because there's enough of Elly in him to confuse how he feels with what people intend, he just assumes that for some reason that's probably unfair, people take violent exception to his just trying to get through the day because he's also not aware of who he himself is.