When a girl gets married she has thousands of dreams of a married life and many fears. She has heard and seen countless incidents of in laws bad behavior towards the DIL, with husbands doing nothing to protect wife. But when you r getting married everyone shows u a rosy picture and u too tend to suppress negative thoughts try to keep a neutral if not a positive mindset. You decide to try your level best to keep everyone specially husband happy try to win hearts. That’s what every girl decides.She is told you are going to “your own home”. The girl too comes with the mindset this is my home now. The in laws too are excited they had thousands of dreams of son’s marriage. They, in the back of mind have the fear that the dil will snatch their son from them. But they too suppress this thought and take a wait & watch approach. Now when the son gets married for some days or months he is smitten by is newly married wife trying to know her tell her about himself and his family. This is the toughest time for the family, if the family is patient and quietly lets this phase pass everything is ok but if the negative thought comes like she is snatching my son, he doesn’t care about us anymore, what will happen to us if he will be like this always going around her, this fear leads them to start trying to’ get back’ their son. They try to keep them apart not allowing them to spend time together if they try to go out in the evening the in laws make one excuse or other to stop them or send someone with them. They employ several strategies to tell son what an incompetent girl he has married (even though they have chosen her) like:
1 Criticising the DIL in front of son, making false complaints, crying.
2 If the DIL makes some mistake telling everyone, repeating it endlessly.
3 Making big issues of trivial matters.
4 Constantly making fun of her looks, way of dressing, way of talking, walking finding out imaginary faults in her looks, dress.
5Criticising her parents and always try to prove that the DIL and her family has lower status than theirs. Making fun of her parents, family traditions.
If this does not work they try to keep them apart by:1 Never giving them privacy specially in the daytime.Not allowing son to remain in the room when the DIL is there. If son & DIL r in the room they will continuosly move in & out of room,will go & sit with them, will send someone in the room or will simply call one of them out of the room on one or the other pretext (cooking food,watch your favourite programme on t.v and many many more)
2 Don’t allow both of them to go out together either they try to accompany them or they try to send someone else with them or one of the parent falls ill or they call some guest at that time.
3 If son lives somewhere else they try to keep someone with them or continuously send people to their place or one of them lives with them.
4 Emotionally blackmailing the son repeating before son how they have raised him ,fulfilled all his desires etc(which is true) .They again &again tell son that they r bonded by blood ties and the d-i-l is an outsider. If the son cares for his wife or gets emotionally close with wife they say you have changed a lot now all you care about is your wife.
Here we are talking about people who have no pathology, are what we call normal people. They do all this merely out of insecurity. They believe that if son & DIL love each other too much then the son will forget his parents then what will happen of them, who will take their care. They don’t even realize that they are spoiling son’s life and they are actually pushing the son away. This also leads to increased insecurity in d-i-l , she feels that in laws are trying to create a rift between them and r trying to snatch away her husband. First she tries to win their heart this makes a husband feel happy that his wife is taking care of his parents and he gets closer to wife, which in turn increases the insecurity of parents and they increase their efforts to get back their son. Now the d-i-l gets worried she keeps on thinking why they are doing this to me now she tries to keep her husband close to her starts complaining about her In laws tries to get husband’s support. Here 3 things can happen
1 the son stand in support of his parents, blames his wife for everything and accuses her of trying to divide his family. In this process he gets the support of his parents, parents now feel secure but the son ends up losing his wife’s trust, love and in some cases wife.
2 The son supports his wife tries to explain things to parents. Parents either stop here only and everything is alright or parents become more insecure now their efforts, blackmailing increases and they start hating their d-i-l. In this case son looses the parents.
3 The son decides to stay mum. He doesn’t support anyone. The tension increases the son ends up loosing his mental peace.
So in the end it is the son who has to loose either his parents or wife. The solution to this problem lies in the hands of son only. He has to explain to his parents that they will always be an important part of his life. He has to tell them that since wife is new to the family and to him so he needs to spend a little more time with her to understand her and to help her adjust with the family. This doesn’t mean that he is ignoring the parents. He can also say that since they know him since forever he expects them to be more understanding of his feelings .He can also explain that now that he has married he will have to take care of his wife also and just like them she is an integral and important part of his life. Similarly he can explain to his wife that his parents r very important to him and it is his duty to take care of them and as a life partner he expects his wife to understand this and support him.He has to make sure that wife feels secure that though her husband top priority are his parents she too is important for him.
