Life is what you make of it and always will be. You will have to bend if you want him to bend. You will have to learn to be patient because he will be patient with you. You will have to learn to make that lemonade if life decides to throw you some lemons.
What you read in books is not what happens in real life…you want your relationship to work? You will ALSO have to work for it.
And no…that does not mean spending 30 minutes in the kitchen throwing together Shan masala and some meat.
PCG u r worried about them making u work and u r worried about them NOT letting u work. Is there anything ur not worried about. I think what ur asking for is a well to do professional and caring “un-attached” guy. And I have heard this quite a few times from aunties about bahus who were actually trying to pry the guy away from his family " to Phir yateem say karwa daitay shadi"(whether he was overly attached to family or not, some didn’t like hubby spending any time or even brain time on his family, we have a live example nadz). They r probably willing to move anywhere and live separately since they don’t have anyone else theyd be living with, But ofcourse all orphans don’t have the same opportunities that other ppl have, so they might not be money makers. I’m not saying look for an orphan, but trying to show u a perspective and also what I’ve heard over the years from aunties. And u will have to compromise somewhere, u won’t have everything that he wants and he wont have everything that u want, it hardly ever works that way.
Your question is definitely valid. Let me explain why it is this way.
We have seen enough of society enforcing their expectations on men and women to be a certain way. (For the purposes of this post, I am excluding the expectations on men - which by the way doesn’t work as a counter argument to my point below, if anyone is so inclined.)
It happens in situations as simple as “you’re a girl, go serve dinner and make chai” while the perfectly capable brother sits there. That of course doesn’t happen in every family, but it is very common. Whereas the girls are also taking on traditional “male” responsibilities.
The expectation, even if latent, that a girl would value the kitchen and her husband + kids/serving people above all else is what feels like an imposition because of the history of women not being allowed to have an identity outside of the home.
If you look at the middle class Pakistani society, women who ARE working outside of the home, are still expected to take care of majority of the home stuffs - at best a latent expectation. It isn’t all that better in North America either. It is not about being able to “work outside”. It is about being able to choose what they want from their lives.
This is why any of it to be the woman’s decision is important. You want to believe that you have control over your decisions. When someone/society expects you to value for yourself what it thinks women (and men) should value, it keeps you from being your own person. In the case of a woman not liking her husband telling her to quit her job (especially without a good reason) is the imposition of those same expectations/values that the person may or may not have chosen for herself. Even if she has chosen them (which many women do regardless of if they work outside of the home or not), the decision has to be hers to make up for all those ridiculously potential-limiting expectations.
Now, if one is to choose it for herself, there is absolutely nothing wrong with it. It stops being potential-limiting at that point.
Is it clearer why some of us are sensitive to that? I will be more than happy to explain further if need be.
I would hope for the parts of the society that don’t recognize this sensitivity yet to become part of the solution, not the problem.
No woman wants to marry a lazy/laalchi man or expects her partner to be that way.
Secondly, I am trying really hard to not let the bolded part get to me. But meh. You can believe whatever you want, but just remember that the entire world does NOT think like that. NOT all pakistani men think like that either.
Working is not a woman’s choice? Wake up and smell the coffee. World wide women are working, picking plants and manufacturing and serving that coffee you’re smelling.
Women are very much part of the workforce. If you choose not to accept it diwana that’s your problem. You can not impose roles on genders. It just doesn’t work.
So as long as the woman is there to make your coffee she is an essential part of the work force. When she takes on a leadership position as your boss, and hires a nanny to help, then she is jeapardizing her family?
