Set your priorities straight......Just don't blame someone.

I am new to posting though I was a regular reader here. I live in one of the metros with my husband and 1 child.
My inlaws live 10 minutes distance from us and my parents live about 40 minutes away. I have a bunch of relatives around and 1 of my siblings lives in the same city too. One of them is in US while the other in UK.
What I have observed is though I live amidst all the disturbing elements (according to some posters and my 2 siblings living abroad) I live much much peacefully than most of them.
My in-laws are more money-minded and calculative than some of your descriptions here. My parents are orthodox and hence find my ideas weird and see a rebel in me.

Ours was a love marriage, not love at first sight! But, we met through an online matrimonial site and it took us 8 months to decide if we could settle down as partners. All through my parents were against this 'dating' concept which is totally absurd to them since they hated the very word. My husband is not the first one I met online. I dated 3 more guys and finally he was the 4th one. All this took me close to 2 1/2 yrs to decide on my marriage.
Before marriage, we talked over our priorities. With the other dates I found it hard to match. But with dh many matches were there though I will not say all of them matched. Finally, we decided we could go ahead and settle down. Now, I leave it your imagination how I steered through all this with my orthodox parents. Just refused to marry without proper interaction with the guy.
My inlaws always had to say something in any matter. This did not result in nagging because I knew I had to set boundaries for which I had to set my priorities first. So, I would openly tell them what my thought is on their advise. Believe me, I was brutally frank sometimes. That made it crystal clear about their limits automatically.

I am so surprised that my siblings who live thousands of miles away in different continents get disturbed by inlaws. Their constant complaint is how inlaws treat them when they come here, how husband is a mama's boy, how in-laws demand things from them etc etc.
I have asked them several times to have clear cut goals and priorities for themselves first. Readers please do not assume my husband is a very matured, understanding guy in the whole wide world. No! He was not like this. In the first year of marriage I was surprised as to how he can be so immatured to run to his mom/dad for any little problem which he could deal with easily. What better person to start with than my own mama's boy hubby. So, I started telling him that one cannot be more foolish than this. It took me close to a year to wean him off this foolish habit of looking for help in parents. It worked in a year because I refused to take any advise if it came from his parents, my parents, any relative. Simply ignored. That will help in using your own brain cells to deal with your problems. We failed miserably sometimes but we stuck to it. My dh started giving up telling we needed some elders to advise us. I said I will call this relationship quits if he did so. Some of my relatives think I am over-confident. My inlaws take me to be stubborn DIL when I chose not to take their words. My parents as usual see me as a rebellous child. But at the end of the day, we know that if we failed we were the ones who is to be blamed and if we succeed all the credit goes to us and not parents or inlaws or relatives thereby enabling them to take advantage lowering your self-confidence. Dh is coming around slowly with this totally NEW concept.

It looks like in spite of education and being independent woman especially we Indian women have not learned the art of living our own life. There are no classes or tutorials for this. We need to make priorities in life and live by that.
What I have seen reading through so many is so many women clearly do not have any set goals/priorities in life as a result of which we tend to blame it on 2 elements as........ interfereing in-laws or un-co-operative husbands. What I ask you is "Did you ever speak up and if you did and you think you were ignored then did you take any effort to set boundaries, be it husband or in-laws?"
If you haven't then there is no use posting thread after thread on your issues because at the end of the day, to change your life was in your hands and you did not take that initiative so why blame on parents, husband, MIL,FIL,BIL,SIL etc, etc......

I believe more in straight forwardness and frankness than diplomacy in relationships. Diplomacy does not help much. It adds unnecessary pressure on your mind and gets you migraine by the time you reach middle-age....

Your thoughts are most welcome....:coffee


Keertana

 

Sita, What I have seen so many times is women come up with things as simple as husband talking to his mom for more than an hour on phone. All these women, my sister included, are all thousands of miles away.
I think it is their own feeling of insecurity or I call it also jealousy and over possessiveness because what harm can someone do sitting that far when I see that my inlaws living 10mins distance from me can be kept off. Not that they are angels but at least I did my part to see they don't bully me.
And, that is enough...do your part......speak up frankly!

I am surprised that some women in these forums prefer living in another city not for better job, better pay but just to get away from inlaws. Some prefer to settle abroad even though they long and very badly long to live in India, and reason being the same....inlaws!
I have read some even want their inlaws to die so they can live in peace.

Are these inlaws barbaric than Hitler?? Or are you incompetent and meek individual with absolutely zero self-esteem and devoid of even minimum self-confidence.

I would like to hear more.

 

spiderman, What I see is most woman and I will not excuse myself also in some situations, do not know what exactly they want.
I understand that in-laws can be cruel and husband a worthless fellow tied to mom's apron strings. In majority of the cases things could have been resolved if the woman atleast speaks up, expresses her dissatisfaction upfront and shows some real action than just sugar- coating words to please those very disturbing elements, no matter how bad/bitter this woman feels inside.
They resort to half baked diplomacy which usually fails because these elders (inlaws,parents) are more seasoned politicians than you and me...JMO!

 

Yes Priya, I agree 100% with you. The word 'COURAGE' is not found in so many woman.
For a while, let us keep aside the woman who are financially dependent.

Take the independent Indian woman of today.
They fear consequences, society, parents, relatives etc etc and give into abuse so much even after having ample scope and opportunity to get out and make life better.

What kind of role models are these women for their children? They cannot stand up for themselves even when needed to.