Post Date December, 02 2023
I have been married to my husband for almost 10 years. In the past, during holidays and festivals, he bought various gifts and packaged them into several pieces to give to his elders. The main recipients of the gift are his parents' elders and my parents' elders. But he is very biased and buys valuable things for his own parents, while buying things for my parents feels heartbreaking when he spends some money.
He is also particularly enthusiastic and generous towards his family and friends. Once someone comes to his door, he always treats me well with good wine and food, making me busy both inside and outside; And when I come from my mother's family, he always excuses himself for going out to work or working overtime, ignoring me, which makes me very embarrassed. I have had multiple arguments with him about this, but he still goes his own way and doesn't want to change, and he has never apologized to me.
As the Chinese New Year approached, his younger brother was preparing to get married, and his mother-in-law came to ask us for 50000 yuan in support. At this point, there was only 30000 yuan at home, and my husband had all "contributed" to it. I was very angry and had an argument with him. It's not that I intentionally didn't help his family, but that he went too far. The year before last, her sister went abroad and borrowed more than 20000 yuan from us, but has not mentioned the word 'return' yet.
I usually save a little money by living frugally, first for the sake of my child's future plans, and second for the sake of our husband and wife's later life. And he always focuses on taking care of his parents and family, asking for money and things. He became the "filial son" of his parents, while I became the "disobedient daughter-in-law" in the eyes of my mother-in-law, which made me feel very uncomfortable. Excuse me, how should I handle this situation?
Ms. Yao:
I often hear that some marital conflicts are caused by unequal relationships in marriage. I didn't expect your husband's "favoritism" to be so severe, no wonder you had a dispute with him.
In traditional Chinese social psychology, "blood identity" is a natural and logical concept. Therefore, most people tend to subconsciously lean towards "blood relatives" rather than "marriage relatives". Nowadays, people's attitudes have greatly improved, especially in urban couples who often treat their parents and relatives equally.
So, you need to observe and reflect, what is the reason why your husband is so "biased" towards the elderly relatives of the two families? Is it because his family is relatively poor and the need for help from relatives makes him unable to refuse, or is it because your mother's family has a relatively comfortable life and does not require much support from you? Or is there some issue with Su Ri's mother-in-law daughter-in-law or son-in-law relationship?
If it's economic reasons, you should understand and tolerate more. If there are potential conflicts in the marriage relationship, both you and your husband should work together to solve them, rather than favoring each other in financial support or "reciprocity". If your husband still has a "traditional" mentality causing trouble, you also need to be patient and persuade.
I think your previous approach to dealing with favoritism was inappropriate, and it was useless during arguments, which may have further increased the husband's misunderstanding that you did not have good intentions towards his family and had to be compensated for by his "favoritism". Only by appealing to reason and emotions can your husband gradually change his inappropriate attitude and approach, and strive to level a bowl of water.
Here, it may also be necessary for you to communicate with his siblings (not his parents) to let them know the actual financial situation and difficulties of your family. Your husband's actions may make them mistakenly believe that your life is very prosperous, so they are not aware of any harm in reaching out to you for money.
