“For god sake, you need to shut up. I don’t care what my parents said to you. I already have so much stress in the office and I can’t come back home to hear your tantrums. If you can’t cope up with my parents, you have two choices – adjust or leave! Because, I can’t leave my parents. And next time, please handle such stuff on your own. Don’t get me in middle of this family drama. I have more important things to do.”
My friends’ husband told her as she just wanted him to talk to his parents about not being rude when she gets late in cooking dinner. My friend and her husband work at the same position in two different companies. They work for an equal number of hours at the office, they bear equal stress at work; they earn almost the same amount of salary. Still, my friend is expected to hear taunts from her in-laws for being not-so-good daughter-in-law and wife.
Rather than supporting my friend, how her husband rudely told her to either adjust to her parents’ taunts or leave the house shows the ugly reality of how many women are treated in their marriages!
Indian Marriages No Less Than Battlefield For Women
Many of us may tend to believe that Indian marriage is a battlefield for only housewives. But, rather the truth is the life is equally challenging for financially independent women as well. They are expected to do a double shift at home and at work and still made to feel they are not good enough wife or good enough mother or good enough daughter-in-law!
And, when these women are tired of suffering in silence and raise a voice against the abuse, they are either told to adjust or quit the marriage. Very few women are blessed to be with a man, who understands their struggle and tend to stand with them in the battle of her dignity!
We Raise Strong Women But Forget To Teach Families How To Live With Them
It is heart-breaking how while we are busy raising strong and independent women, we hardly spend time raising families who know how to live with these empowered women. And, that’s the reason why so many of us tend to find ourselves struggling in the house, who want strong and independent women but want to treat them as educated maids.
Women Marry For Love, Not To Be Treated As Maid Or Punching Bag
While many women marry for love and companionship, it is disheartening how a quite large number of them are either treated as maids or as a punching bag – someone, who is expected to absorb partner’s anger and frustration without raising any complaint. They are expected to sacrifice to make others happy; They are just twisted for other’s pleasure and egos. They are denied of their emotional needs and made to make peace with name-calling, sharp taunts, bitter words, and insults.
They keep making adjustments, compromises, sacrifices, in the hope that one fine day their husband and his family will give her respect for what all she did!
But the reality is that the abuse won’t stop till every woman stands for herself. I wish every struggling woman, tells this clearly to her husband:
Dear Husband, Marriage doesn’t give you & your family a license to hurt my self-respect and pride. I refuse to suffer the abuse in the name of marriage. I want to be a wife and a daughter, but I don’t want to be a punching bag or a maid!
