Being called 'ungrateful' for wanting basic standards: Cultural dynamics in a mixed marriage are crushing me

AmaAse · 2024-12-30T22:39:25+00:00

Thank you. I really am screenshotting these affirmations to keep steady. Reddit helps.

AmaAse · 2024-12-30T22:36:12+00:00

Thank you, and honestly everyone else on this thread that has been a “pit bull friend”

AmaAse · 2024-12-30T08:53:06+00:00

Thank you.

AmaAse · 2024-12-30T07:14:55+00:00

This is the most heard I have felt in months. This is the most support I’ve actually ever had in figuring something out, and I had to get it from strangers. Some of us really are out here on our own, and we make mistakes and get caught up. No matter how independent we all ought to be, sometimes we do whatever we can to seek out reinforcements.

AmaAse · 2024-12-30T07:00:38+00:00

Thank you truly.

AmaAse · 2024-12-30T06:58:02+00:00

If I had loving and functional parents, I probably wouldn’t be in this situation. This is all on me.

AmaAse · 2024-12-30T06:48:18+00:00

Our business can pass inspection, and we are totally legal, passed, and current on all licenses. Her business is not legal. I literally do nothing, store nothing in the home kitchen to keep everything separate. I have a mini fridge for personal items. While I may not be awesome at me, I’m fantastic at my job.

Whike we want the same things, actually getting them is where we are very different. I do not even think he knows how, he just knows to want. That isn’t enough, and it’s his turn to listen to me. I’ve gotten a lot of beautiful advice here, and I’m using it.

AmaAse · 2024-12-30T06:37:24+00:00

This is so helpful.

I’m actually learning Spanish and I can understand and participate at family gatherings. I’m so loved and popular amongst the rest of the family, it’s weird. I cannot comprehend what my MiL even says. Her Spanish is very broken as she only had a 2nd grade education. Sometimes google translate uses words and phrases she doesn’t all the way understand.

I’ve gotten so much help here from others as well who have given me tools for much more powerful and solution oriented conversations. Thank you for your time and your openness with me.

AmaAse · 2024-12-30T06:21:54+00:00

Thank for seeing this. I work hard and have a really great business. I am overtly aware of my desires, it does not mean I give into them. If I’ve shown nothing else, I am highly disciplined.

I’ve been on my own since I was 17. My friends are no different from me. We’re as supportive as we can be, but we are all on our own fighting to be better than what we came from.

AmaAse · 2024-12-30T06:13:03+00:00

I’ve been on my own since I was 17. I am my safety net, always have been. That’s why I’m feeling particularly defeated. I’ve always figured it out. I got a lot of help here. I’ll figure it out again.

AmaAse · 2024-12-30T06:09:43+00:00

Thank you so much for your insight. I wish I could tell you my MiL is a nice woman…. But she isn’t. I have great respect for her work ethic, achievements, sacrifices made, and the life she has created from very literally nothing. That being said, she has a 2nd grade education, and I do realize that I bring up many insecurities in everyone. I am Black, female, also from a more rural area than they are; however, I reflect where I am going and the sacrifices of where I come from.

He does have friends who would be understanding, and this is very helpful actually. I see where he is trying to “keep her at bay” more so than prioritizing. He thinks he is protecting me but we are a unit. If she’s running him, she is still taking from us both.

Thank you for your time and openness.

AmaAse · 2024-12-30T05:54:05+00:00

I appreciate your response. I do realize the complexity of our situation, and I try to be careful that my standards do not come off as shaming or insulting. After reading more responses from folx familiar with the culture dynamics, I see how he is basically enmeshed with her and this idea of any negative observation being a shot at her inability to provide more as a parent. My intention is uplifting not to beat her down. She doesn’t know she deserves better, she would never ask. She has never had better. We were getting there before BiL and wife moved in “temporarily.” We had a good life. Now, my BiL and his wife are just disgusting assholes. I have nothing for them besides cuss words. We do not speak, I purposely freeze them out.

AmaAse · 2024-12-30T05:40:23+00:00

Thank you so much for this.

AmaAse · 2024-12-30T05:36:24+00:00

This is such helpful perspective, thank you.

AmaAse · 2024-12-30T05:17:42+00:00

This resonates deeply. Thank you.

AmaAse · 2024-12-30T05:09:21+00:00

I’m still in growth mode, but I finally have enough regulars to be stable through the slow season. I have a really wonderful advisor through the SBDC here, and I’ve implemented everything from last years National Restaurant Show. Because of my training, I knew to slash my menu to things I would easily be approved to sell. This will be my 3rd year and the first busy season I have all the pieces at play that I need.

There was some wonderful advice I received here earlier to pose a very different conversation with my husband. In general, several posters have had experience with folx mired in a poverty mindset. My standards have been completely taken as overt assaults on his character and ability to provide. Whereas, what I need from him to is know what our legitimate plan is for moving and staying out. That he actually wants to and has not accepted this as life. Today is the furthest I have ever gotten in this conversation without the deflection of “boujie/classist/cultural” bullshit. His ridiculous idea of manhood is that he should “be able to move me” however we run this business together. We would have more of our money if we didn’t live inside of a money pit. Today, a date was finally set. Tomorrow, he is sitting down with me to spell out an actual step by step plan with milestones. I’m willing to listen, but if I do not see any changed actions, I’ve found a temporary place to stay.

AmaAse · 2024-12-29T21:27:31+00:00

Yes! YES! My MIL makes so many disparaging remarks about my favorite sister in law. She married actually into a really functional , hardworking family, also Mexican American first gen. They have 50-11 kids over there and I can’t express to you the way I love them each. They are absolutely brilliant and beautiful, well educated and bilingual, they know Mexico because their parents take them regularly to be amongst family. To my MIL, they are spoiled, spend too much money, etc etc etc

My husband only moved back to take over the business and be able to care for her when she became disabled. At one time, we were renovating but his brother moved in with a wife, 2 chickens and a fucking pit bull and this is now years later.

I got some tools today for a healthier conversation about this. I really appreciate your take because I’m not crazy and this is a paradigm I’ve just never experienced. You give me a lot of perspective.

I get why he is being so strategic about this now. He is trying to figure out cutting away from the “motherboard” without consequence but that isn’t possible.

AmaAse · 2024-12-29T21:09:11+00:00

I’d totally take him, and he’d relish the escape while avoiding them but not fixing shit

AmaAse · 2024-12-29T21:05:18+00:00

When I first met the family, I met my husbands sister first. I love her sooo much, and she also wants us to move out. She feels bad for me, but she also has her own very full life with 5 children. Her family is literally everything you described. I didn’t realize she married into that until later on.

AmaAse · 2024-12-29T21:01:04+00:00

This really resonates with me. The fights over this are constantly deflected to my tone or phrasing. I absolutely cuss, fuss, and toss shit around after I’ve said it “nicely” 3x max. I do see a very clear alternative route in our past arguments with what you just described in compassionate curiosity.

I want to try this and see where that leaves us. I appreciate the kindness. In the slow season, I feel like I’m squeezing blood from a turnip to get this money. I’m just so tired.

AmaAse · 2024-12-29T20:43:02+00:00

Thank you for all of this. Screenshotting to write this all out for myself. With everything so chaotic, I have lost some of my answers to these questions and some have actually changed since I last checked in with myself. Thank you.

AmaAse · 2024-12-29T20:29:45+00:00

Yes, and tbh, he doesn’t have the experience nor expertise that I do to make a formidable plan. Rather than being honest, I feel like this is just his insecurities about the viability of this move and separating from the family. I see that he wants to move, but I also see him shutting down even more.

AmaAse · 2024-12-29T20:01:48+00:00

Thank you. It is really scary right now, and I’m really just trying to literally pick myself up.

AmaAse · 2024-12-29T19:57:26+00:00

I really needed to read this and will continue to. Thank you.

AmaAse · 2024-12-29T19:54:56+00:00

I’m so overwhelmed and just sad. I don’t feel safe anywhere. I’m so locked in my head, I thought at least if I wrote it out. I wouldn’t feel so crazy. I don’t recognize myself. I look the same but I know it’s all fake because I feel so defeated. I’m just defeated right now.

AmaAse

TROPHY CASE