When will there be no longer tearful battles between mothers-in-law and brides?

On the limousine bus from Nha Trang to Dalat, there were only 5 people: the driver, my husband and I, and a young couple. The pass made the bus sway like a hammock even though the driver who was about my husband’s age was quite good at driving. After the bus stopped for everyone to have lunch, we moved from the middle seats of the bus to sit next to the driver to reduce the swinging motion we had the past hour.

When I was about 66km to Da Lat, there was a phone call. The driver picked up the phone and talked through the phone while driving. I thought to myself, “Oh dear, please end the call quickly, focus on driving, the road is so dangerous!”. Then suddenly, I was engrossed in his story without realizing it. I overheard, “Poor her! You see, she is so sick!”, “if you don’t call me, I will not know that”, “so, it’s not that I want to take anything from anyone, I just want her to stay still in a place, if she lives in one place for a while, then move to another place, she will be like a homeless child”, “yes, please take care of her for me, I’ll visit you tomorrow when I’ve done my work”.

Hanging the phone, he sighed, telling us, “I wonder when the two of you got married. I have been married for two or three years but I am fed up with that, now only seeing women makes me scared!”. Earlier, during the lunch, he asked if we were married, then was surprised when he heard the answer: “What? After 5 years of marriage, you can be so sweet?!”. We looked at each other and laughed: “Sweet or not, it is not a trouble of time.” Then he said nothing.

My husband asked, “Why fed up?”. He said, “Haiz… Our daughter, only 6 months old, hadn’t been bottle-fed before, but my wife left her at home for 3-day-business-trip in Saigon. Because of mother and daughter-in-law conflict, my wife insisted on going despite my mother’s prevention. Are you two living independently or with your family?” “We, each one, have been living independently, not living with our families before getting married!” – my husband answered.

He continued with a long line, “That time, we had loved each other for 7 years. I had told her before that we would live together with my family when we got married! There was only my mother now, if we lived separately, she would live all alone. When we were in love, there were so many promises and romances. Now we departed, she insisted on taking the child custody right, but she failed to take care of the child. She is busy at work, she sends our daughter to a place for some days and sends her to another place for some days. She lives in Nha Trang, her mother is in Bao Loc. Every time our daughter was sick, she didn’t tell me. My mother lives right there, it’s better if she took care of the granddaughter?! When our daughter was sick, she called her mother to come from Bao Loc to pick her up to Bao Loc. She was so poor to have to travel that far for so many times! Now the court has given my ex-wife the custody right, I don’t know what to do! Oh, she also said this: Between me and your mother, who do you choose? You stay with your wife for your whole life or stay with your mother for your whole life? Can you stand it?! I told her right away: Sorry, I only have one mother, but can have so many wives. Do you think it is right?”.

Hearing the story, I felt pity for him, his wife, and especially the baby. I am not sure about the driver’s answer. Because it’s not sure that he can find a better wife than this woman even though there are many women in the world. But deep down in his story, the fact that a woman is so confident in her love that she forces her husband to choose between herself and his mother, then, if I were him, I would think that the decision to break up with her was right. As a woman, I cannot accept loving an ungrateful man who is willing to give up his family for love. As a man (hypothetically), it is harder for me to accept myself as a bad child.

…

A few months ago, I visited a small restaurant owned by a Vietnamese woman who married a Japanese man. She happily sat down at the table with me, saying “Dear, you wrote so well!”. I was a bit surprised because I didn’t find myself writing well, I was simply someone who liked to write and persisted in writing what I thought. “Really?” – I laughed.

She said, “You know, I’ve been married for several years. We live in Vietnam and only return to Japan occasionally to visit his home, but my mother-in-law and I are very distant. Every year, I sent letters several times to my mother-in-law, but she did not respond. The other day, I read the chapter you wrote about mother and daughter-in-law, I just thought why that girl was so young and had such deep thoughts. I couldn’t think like you. I knew she was my mother-in-law and I always tried to build a good relationship. But maybe I did it the wrong way. When I finished reading, I wrote to her, very briefly: Mom, let’s go for a vacation this summer! Yet she answered my letter very happily. So, instead of writing so many beautiful words, I just wrote a simple sentence like that! Thank you!”.

I have heard and witnessed the dissonance between mother-in-law and daughter-in-law directly affecting the happiness of my family. As written in the book “The house with two lives”, I think, every relationship is two-way. The relationship between mother-in-law and the bride is no exception. Here, I want to say more broadly, that when the conflict occurs, in my opinion, it is difficult to tell which side is faulty, it could only be because both sides did not understand and harmonize with each other or the mother-in-law, the daughter-in-law and the husband are not good enough in how to treat each other, causing conflicts over conflicts.

We do not have enough time to analyze each situation. But I realized that there is a mistake many people make, that is they set the boundary in the relationship: the mother-in-law always thinks that the new girl who comes to her house is “daughter-in-law”, and the bride thinks that her husband’s mother was “mother-in-law”.

I was fortunate to be considered a daughter by my parents-in-law, and I always consider my parents-in-law my parents, with deep gratitude, for being the one who gave birth to and raised the man who spent the rest of his life to protect me. Although we do not have many memories, there will be. We don’t really understand each other but will understand. We need to be open, sincere, and truly love each other to remove the usual definitions of a relationship.

My biological mother – the gentlest female in the Solar system – has been living with my paternal grandmother for nearly 30 years. Mother never whispered or confided to my paternal grandmother, and did not know how to say to make Grandma happy. She also knew that her shortcoming was untalkative, so she tried to make up for it with her actions.

In the water season, when buying food, Mother will choose to buy my paternal grandmother’s favorite type of fish dishes. When traveling, Mother always thought of buying something as a gift for Grandma because she liked it very much. In the house, there are always full of fruits and cakes around Grandma’s bed. When meeting anyone, Mother always told them “this bracelet was the gift of Ngoc’s Grandma,” even though Grandma didn’t often give Mother gifts.

My paternal grandmother loves her children and grandchildren very much. With her daughter-in-law, Grandma is not too difficult, but according to the lifestyle of the ancients, she must always keep a distance, so she has never shown affection to Mother or other daughters-in-law. But there has never been a day that my Mother didn’t consider Grandma as her Mother, or was disrespectful. My Mother even took better care of my paternal grandma than maternal grandma. Therefore, my father and I love my mother very much.

By the time I got married, every time I mention my mother-in-law, Mother will say “I just talked on the phone with your mother”, instead of “I just talked on the phone with your mother-in-law”. My mother did not teach me that I must sacrifice my happiness. My mother taught me to live the way my heart felt most peaceful, the happiest, not having to feel anxious or regretful.

Perhaps I was raised by Mother’s love, so my point is: in all relationships, specifically in this article, the relationship between mother-in-law and daughter-in-law, we have to be honest first. And whether we have a worthy response or not, it’s a matter of …later concern.

If your husband is spiteful to you because of his mother, you either have to think whether you acted the wrong way, or you’ve chosen the wrong one to rely on. “Cast not the first stone” – Blame yourself, not blame your mother-in-law. After all, it’s your husband’s mother, and we all know “Everyone has only one mother in the world”. Your husband will probably appreciate a well-behaved wife than someone who always complains and tries to separate him and his family.

My girls, who have – are – and will enter a (promising) happy marriage. How will you behave and teach your daughter and son to behave so that our generation, and the next generations, there will be no more tearful battles between mother and daughter-in-law?