Dear Mother-In-Law,

You taught me that not everyone deserves my time and efforts and how not everyone deserves to know the ‘real me’. What I have strangely noticed about you, is that you aren’t all that uncaring, as you’d like to show us.

Days when I’m up early and relentlessly racing to cook and pack everyone’s tiffins (which is most days), your mornings are peaceful. Days when I’m tirelessly entertaining your guests, despite a hard week at work, you are satisfied, despite you ever giving me any credit for what I had done.

But then, there are also those days, when I want to stay in my blanket for a while longer, days when I just want to laze around in my PJs, days when I want alone time with my husband, days when my sister comes home to see me, days when I visit my home to meet my parents, those are the days you begin to hate me so much. You fight with me, through tantrums and even taunt me.

You don’t keep food for me when I come home from a tiring 14 hours day, only because it’s your way of punishing me for choosing to take a break.

After almost four years of knowing you, what I have now learned is that you aren’t uncaring at all; your love is conditional.

Well, my dear mother-in-law, while I don’t expect you to give me the same treatment as you would a daughter, (because I have my parents for that), I do rightfully expect a few basic courtesies and understanding from your end.

You are my husband’s mom and I have no intention of taking away your importance from his life. I do understand this, you should know that I have. I own a separate place in his life and you should respect my space in his life as much as I respect yours in his. Please stop viewing me as a threat to this “mother and son” bond.

Secondly, I’m qualified and earn as much as your son does. Yet you don’t shy away from bashing my culinary skills, or according to you, lack off, especially in public. Please understand that if a person’s true judgment of character came from their cooking skills, then how would you rate your son?

There’s truly a lot to me, which doesn’t involve my cooking or laundry skills.

I know you have a ‘stay-at-home-daughter’ who cooks amazingly well; but have you thought of the one small difference between us? I wake up at 6 AM to cook, prepare my husband’s tiffin as well as mine, get ready to work, go to work and handle a 14-hour-day, to only then come home and finish up the housework. While, your daughter, well, she cooks at her own will and wakes up at her own will too.

Notice the minor difference? Why can’t your darling daughter wake up early on the weekends to cook for the family?

After a six-day work week, it’s definitely physically straining to play the role of a maid on a Sunday. Because according to you, your maid needs a holiday on Sunday, but your daughter-in-law doesn’t. Despite doing nothing, your daughter needs to rest on Sunday, but I don’t. Your maid needs rest on a Sunday, but I don’t.

Do you forget that I’m human?

You don’t know the real me and you don’t deserve the real me either.

I pity you. For expecting so little out of a woman. For being unable to respect and care for someone else’s daughter. Despite you and your ways, I’m proud of the way your son treats me, the way he loves me and still sweeps me off his feet.

He doesn’t care about how I do the laundry, cook, entertain your guests or so on. He cares about who I am and my passion for work. He fell in love with me, and loves me, as much as before, even today. You could never look beyond how I dressed up, cooked or spoke to your guests. And trust me, at first, I cared about your opinion and desperately tried to shine in your life.

I’m sorry to say this, but unfortunately, you’ve lost my respect.

My boss once told me, “When you can’t treat her as your mother, don’t expect her to treat you as her daughter.” Amongst those wise words, I realized that I was never going to be your daughter, I’m always going to be your husband’s wife.

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