I can't live with my mother-in-law
Hello, Ekaterina! I am 24, my husband is 25. We are both economists, currently working with role models. They have their own children's store; we are not allowed into the economic and accounting side of the business under the pretext that we cannot cope. For the most part, we clean the store after closing, sometimes we purchase goods and add them to the store database (exclusively with our parents). We very often hear that we are not doing anything, we are wasting time, we are not working enough, but when we try to understand the documents ourselves and help, we also receive a reprimand: “why are you bothering, this is all wrong, this has already been done.” I wrote in the second message, but for some reason it was not sent, that I was very afraid of my mother-in-law and could not object to her, just like my husband. We feel completely dependent on her, but for him this is the norm, he considers such family relationships to be normal. I have wanted children for a very long time, we started planning a year ago, but after a year of unsuccessful attempts it turned out that I have a cyst, and for six months now I have been undergoing treatment, in 3 months there will be an operation and, as the doctors say, I will be able to get pregnant right away. During this time, I realized that I really want children from my husband, but I absolutely do not want to raise them with my mother-in-law. She is already planning how and what will happen, for example, we can’t use diapers, we will wash diapers, she has already set aside a lot of children’s clothes and toys, she has equipped the nursery without our knowledge (without furniture, just renovations), it turns out that all I can do is just give birth and leave from business, because everything has already been decided. For the first six months we lived together in a 2-room apartment. Then we had a fight and rented an apartment with my husband. Since last spring, my parents moved to a private house within the city. This house was built a long time ago and was supposed to be, roughly speaking, a “family residence”; it is very large, and naturally it is not discussed whether we want to live there. Even before I met them, it was planned out where the nursery was and where our bedroom was. After they moved, we moved into their old apartment, but not for long. Now this is the situation: all our things are in the house, but there are no doors in the rooms yet, so we often spend the night in the apartment. And every time we need to come up with reasons why we decided to stay there. Responsibilities have always been distributed like this: the mother-in-law cooks and decides everything, we only help. I don’t go into the kitchen because we don’t have the same ideas about normal food (I don’t really like meat, I prefer vegetables and light food).
We have free time in the evenings, after 20.00. If we are in an apartment, then we watch movies, have dinner together, and have sex. We often spend our evenings separately; I love baking, so I’m most often in the kitchen, and my husband likes to play computer games. I don’t care about this, I think that everyone should have an activity that relaxes them and brings them pleasure. If we stay in the house, we are alone when everyone goes to bed. Because the concept of “personal space” does not seem to exist. Mutual friends live in other cities and we communicate very rarely; we have separate friends, but they also do not live in our city. In our free time, we don’t go out anywhere, because there is nowhere and no one with us.
Relationships in families are very different, despite the obvious matriarchy in both families. My family has very warm relationships, I always know that my parents will support me, that I can turn to them at any time and tell them about any problems. Since childhood, I was given complete freedom, no one limited me in anything, I always feel that my parents are proud of me, that they believe that I can achieve a lot, and this faith is also in me, I never had any doubts about own abilities. With my husband, on the contrary, the children hardly communicate with their parents, he is still afraid to ask questions and ask for advice, because at any moment he could get a beating. And I understand him perfectly, I need a lot of time to tune in and talk about some problem with his mother. She is not a bad person or a monster, as she may seem. She is a very caring mother, will always come to the aid of a friend, and is very sociable. But she really likes to control everything, everything should be as she decided, she does not know how to delegate responsibilities, she likes to take out a bad mood on her loved ones, she is very calculating.
My father-in-law is a very calm person, he never interferes in our affairs, he is always busy with something. My husband is very similar to him, he also does not show initiative, but if you come up with something to do, he will do it with joy and conscientiously. I’m more like my mother, I’m independent, I don’t need anyone’s help in everyday affairs, I’m very anxious and suspicious, I get lost in new companies, I’m withdrawn. But there are also traits from my dad: I’m not a homebody at all, I love company (friends, it’s hard to get along with strangers), I really like change, it’s hard for me to stay in one place, I really like to radically change my life (probably because of this I agreed to move in with my husband, and therefore I can’t stay there any longer). I very often recognize myself in my mother-in-law, I also like to control everything, it’s easier for me to do it myself than to ask someone, I often take it out on my husband. My husband is the opposite, he is indecisive, likes to stay at home, he likes to be alone, he doesn’t like change at all, he’s always the life of the party, but at the same time he’s very reserved, he’ll never tell anything unnecessary, it’s hard even for me to get anything out of him, serious We don’t carry on conversations, he withdraws into himself and is silent.
