Marriage and expectations

The mother of all grievances is expectations.

When you're mature enough to understand this, you try to keep your expectations low. You try to avoid keeping expectations from strangers. But, you cannot help expecting certain help, certain warmth from your family members.

So, when you are old enough and still grieving, it's mostly because your family didn't match up to your expectations. Is it wrong to have expectations from your family? I think, no.

What do you do when they fail to do what you expected?

If you're a man, or an unmarried lady, you would say, shout at them, howl at  them, or maybe cry it out, and get over it. 

But, if you're a married woman, what do you do? If the family in question is your in-laws, of course, you don't shout or howl. You don't think you matter enough to them as much as their son or daughters. You don't think they understand you. You know for a fact that anything you say to them will go down as ego-hurt. So, you take the best and the only route available. You just sit in a corner and let the moment/feeling pass away.

If the family is your own parents, you don't say anything because you feel distanced. You feel disappointed. If they don't understand you then who would? If they don't know you and your expectations after being your blood-parents, how can you expect anyone else to understand you. You feel like they no more care for you and all that is left of the relation is the formalities. They don't tell you if they don't like anything of you, and you don't tell them if something they said or did, pinched you. You don't want to hurt them, especially from that distance. You just grieve in solace. 

(PS: If it's your spouse, then I think each one choses her own way of sorting the matter :P)

You would think you can share your problems with your husband. You can at least go to him and grieve your heart out. But, you know what, the irony is that even telling him is no more an option. You cannot go to him and tell him that you have problems with his mother, or his sisters! He may listen to you but would he understand? For how long can he continue to listen wrong things about his own siblings? 

Is it fair on him to force him to this torture? 

Is it fair on the world to put the woman to this torture?

When you're young, unmarried, you just want companionship. Someone with whom you can share your dreams, your future, your life. You know there will be problems but you never knew the problems are not going to be external, they are going to be internal. 

The woman is removed from her family, put in another family, expected to accept it, expected to change for it, expected to forget everything she learned to believe in, or live for. She's left lonely. Instead of giving her the support she thought she would get, you deprive her of all the support she ever knew, for her. 

It is so lonely.

I've been married for 2 years and I've still not been able to appreciate the concept society penned. I don't understand why it is the way it is. I don't know why the society makes it so unbearable to live happily with a person you actually want to live with. If it was not for the society, the world would be a much better place to live in.