The women burdened by the societal expectations of what it means to be a daughter-in-law, and this is still nowhere NEAR changing, anytime soon! Translated…
Been married nine years to date, because my husband works out of country, every holidays, every New Year’s, I’m the only one in Taiwan, and I’d gone to my in-laws alone by myself often.
My in-laws told, that they wanted to see me more often, I’d known, that it’s my responsibilities to show more care and concerns for them, but, my husband not being in the country, it’d made me feel, a bit, pressured. For about four years on New Year’s, I’d gone to my in-laws on my own. No need to help with the meal preps, no need to even lift a single finger, I was fed well, and lived comfortable in their home, but I’d still wanted to run from this, “seemingly mine, but doesn’t quite feel like mine”, space. I’d started asking why I’d felt like so.
Thinking on it more closely, maybe, it’s my loneliness working, the double dose of it—on the one hand, it’s the loneliness of separating from my husband, another, the loneliness of facing this expectation, this responsibility I suppose.
My in-laws, who are related to my husband, but, the link between me and my in-laws wasn’t, present at all, and I can’t feel comfortable enough, getting along with my in-laws the way I would with my friends either, even if my in-laws are very kind and gentle toward me, they’re very open too, but, I’m sure, both they, and I still expect me, to act more according to what a daughter-in-law should behave as.
My friend once told me, the long-distance/the dual-life couples are becoming the norm of society now, and there are the doing away with the traditions. I can understand what her words, meant, and knew, that there may be a lot of others like me, who other than needing to cope with the long-term physical separation from their spouses, and also have to face with being companions with one’s own spouse’s families, and all of these feelings, all of these things aren’t, easily, managed at all.
So, this is how you feel, caught, because you are married into your husband’s family, and around the holidays, he works away, and can’t make it home, and you feel that obligation to stay with your in-laws, and this is still from the expectations of us women, in our roles as daughters-in-law, that’s from tradition, and although the in-laws may be more opened these days, you still can’t help but feel the pressures, because it’s the cultural expectations, of how women should put their own husbands’ families, first, before their own.
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