I always told my now-husband that we should get married during the “seven-year itch.” That way, I’d be too busy planning a wedding to go and scratch it. Well, Nostradamus couldn’t have planned it better – we got engaged right during that seven-year itch. And as soon as we did, I felt trapped. It was no fault of my husband, but I felt like a rabid dog in a hamster cage. Not exactly the look of love you’d expect from a newly engaged Indian girl. Does/did anyone else feel like this?
The old saying “Why buy the cow when you get the milk for free?” didn’t resonate with me at all. If you buy the cow , you own the cow. i don’t want to be an owned cow, i would rather continue giving my milk for free. As soon as I got engaged, people started commenting on my behavior. “You’re engaged now; don’t you think it’s time to learn to cook?” or “You’re engaged now; you shouldn’t wear clothes like that.” Or even, “You’re engaged now; at the very least, you should wear something in your ears” (jewellery).There was this whole list of life changes I was now supposed to commit to, while my husband was out there living his best life – no ring, no expectations. If anything, he’d been given instructions that he could now do less.
I never ever wanted to live with my in-laws, we had saved for a house deposit. I knew that living in someone else’s house was no easy feat. I’d watched my sister go through it. She moved in with her in-laws right after her wedding and had been living there for nearly three years. In that time, she became a shadow of herself. I watched her spirit fade in front of my eyes. She had married an only son, and his mother didn’t want her; she wanted someone else for her son. Not that she had a specific candidate in mind – just someone else. My sister was too….well, too modern and uncouth. She wanted someone straight from India, someone taller, richer, fairer.
Now, a little story about my sister: for all her modernity, she’s a people-pleaser. More like the joker in the deck, really – you could play her anytime because she’s so adaptable. It’s hard to explain, so maybe an example would help. Before she went to university, she made herself get used to drinking coffee because she’d heard that’s what uni students drank. In her desperation to fit in, she had started weaning herself ON coffee. Gradually increasing the number of granules each day, in the summer holidays before uni.
She did everything to try and fit in; she even tried her hand at making Indian desserts. I watched on taking note of the effort to outcome ratio.
In those three years, she lost a lot of her herself and her hair. She cried allot and to my utter dismay – her husband just watched on. I love my brother-in-law; he’s the closest thing I have to a real brother, but during that time, I found it very hard to like him.
I told my husband-to-be that I didn’t want to move in with his parents. He said it was a non-negotiable. It was expected and we’d have to do it, but only for a limited time. Then, as we were preparing for the wedding, the lady next door to my husband’s parents decided to sell her house. And that’s when the bars on my cage thickened. My husband told me it had always been his parents’ dream for him to buy the house next door. I said an irrevocable no – I didn’t want to live with his parents, let alone right next door to them. The noose around my neck felt tightened. He told me he’d be buying the house, either with me or with his sister.
There was no further discussion, only that ultimatum.
When my parents heard about the house sale, they told me to stop being difficult and buy the house; it was a sound financial decision. So, all my savings went into this house – half the deposit from my husband’s family, half from me. The house’s equity-to-debt ratio was terrible, the price of the house was widly inflted. However as this nextdoor neightbour had looked aftre my husband as a child, i was opaying backdated babysitting fees. No one would negotiate with this women – the price was the price. As someone financially minded, this hurt every part of me.
So the house was bought. It was a fucking shithole, with polystyrene ceiling tiles and terrible plumbing and electrics. We had to replace the kitchen and bathroom too. My dad, mum, and I did most of the work. Suddenly, once the house was bought, no one else seemed to care about it. My parents worked tirelessly on it, and I’d go over every evening to help clean up. My husband mostly played the role of coffee/tea provider, his dad was too ill to help, his mum, a housewife, couldn’t be bothered, and his sister claimed standing on a ladder would give her vertigo. Another red flag. This is how much they would work for for somehting they really wanted?
My family are grafters – simple farming people – they’ll never get rich because they’re too honest.
Once the house was fixed up, we put it up for rent. A month before the wedding, I was at my husband’s house for dinner, chatting with my sister-in-law in the hallway. She asked directly, “So, where are you living after you get married?” I was puzzled. I thought, surely she knew I’d be moving into the same house as her. So I said, “Umm, I plan to live here.” She looked at me, slightly aghast, and said, “Are you? I’d never live with my future in-laws. Welcome to the family!”
The thing is, she knew. She knew her mum had set these expectations on us. She also knew I had very little choice. That set the tone for moving into their house. I asked my fiancé if this was something the family had discussed because, to him, it was always “the plan.” He just looked at me and said, “Yeah duh! that’s why we got the room decorated with built-in wardrobes (and a desk!).” So my SIL was just being a bit of a cunt.
After we got married, and moved into the house my race to buy a house began. I didn’t feel welcome and it was nothing like home. The main conversations revolved around which housework tasks I’d be responsible for. My husband and his sister squabbled over which chores they could hand over to me. For the first two months of marriage, I never came home sober. My friends were close to staging an intervention. I don’t recommend in-law living. When they had really goaded me, i would wait until the evening I knew his parents were still downstairs. Then I would started jumping on the bed to make everyone in the house feel as uncomfortable as I did. Sometimes i used to do add panting noises. Our bedroom was right below the living room, i used to imagine the chandelier swinging side to side. I didn’t want to be there, and it felt like they didn’t want me there either. Yet all of us maintained the farce for 7 months.
Now, when ever i suggest that my husbands spends a night as his parents house out of convenience. He looks at me as if I have asked him to sleep in the car. Then he asks, why would I want to do that? Exact a fucking right!
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