AboutVani Expertise Can tackle queries pertaining to relationship with in-laws especially in cases of love marriages, where both partners belong to different cultures or backgrounds or castes or countries.
Experience 12 years of married life, cross cultural experience, in India.
Education/Credentials Masters in Business Administration
Question Hi Vani, I have sent you a question earlier and received an answer regarding my relationship with my in-laws.
I am an indian girl married to an indian guy whom I know for the past 7 years. We are married for 10 months now. I was in and out of talking to his parents b'coz we never had an amiable relation from the beginning. And my husband hardly helped in any way to get our relationship better. Infact he worsened it by always supporting them and backing out on me whatever they tell. Anyway we are living miles apart and I decided I could just talk to them once in a week just to make my husband happy and ignore everything else. Usually its formal how r u types conversations. Even when I try to ask some extra questions, they would non-chalantly reply and ask to hand over the phone to their son. Moreover they talk to their son in their native language which I don't know. They know that I might be hearing it and they would still purposefully ignore me by talking in their language.
I don't really mind if they don't want to get close to me or don't want me to get close to them. But I feel if there is anything important news, they could share with me just that piece of info, rather than I hearing it everytime from my husband or some other relatives. B'coz I do tell them everything happening here, as my husband expects me to. His brother got a job, they didn't share with me, my husband told me. Now his father is getting retired and I have been expecting them to tell me atleast as an info. But they never told me. I asked my husband to atleast let them know that I am expecting them to tell me. He just told me that its not an important thing to share with me. When I changed my job, that too from one contract to another contract which is so common in IT, my husband expected me to tell their parents. I did told them as I thought I should share things with them. I just feel its so unfair that I have to share everything, but then they just ignore me.
Also my FIL sometimes sounds sarcastic and I used to just ignore. Recently he commented something bad about my job change which made me really angry and I asked my husband to defend me and stop his father passing such insane comments. But he is always supporting his parents and asking me to forget it.
Is it so much to expect my husband to defend me when his parents hurts my feelings?
Or is it so much to expect his parents to share info with me?
I have been thinking of planning for a baby soon. But I keep going back and forth on that thought as I feel so insecure with my husband always supporting his parents whatever they say. I keep fearing what if one day they want their son to leave me and what if my husband being a very obedient son, leaves me.
As they always wanted their son to get married to a dumb girl who would bring lot of dowry and jewels, and they can use her in whatever way they want. I didn't give them anything as ours was a love marriage and moreover I won't just take everything without proper reasoning.
Answer Hi Priya,
You would need to continue with your phone calls to them just to keep your husband at peace. But ignore them completely - have a relationship like that with a neighbour - you say Hi and Hello and then never take things to heart. They exist but in a way they do not exist for you. Its best that you wait for a while before you plan for a baby as you need to be cheerful and happy before that happens. Try your best that visits to your inlaws place are minimized since now your FIL is retiring.
