There are things that matter in a marriage that never really come to the fore until after you have taken that plunge. One of them is the influence close family, like a controlling mother or a hateful sister, can have.
My marriage went from the best thing that ever happened to me to my worst nightmare because of this. And now that I have met three other women who have suffered the same fate, as well as heard about countless others, I feel that something needs to be said publicly about it.
It is disrespectful and totally wrong when mothers and family members think that they have a right to call on your husband to help them for everything; literally call him on the telephone any day or night and think he should be available for them; drop in at the house whenever they feel like, and go to the fridge and take out things; begin cooking like if they live there; just come in and open the pot to see what you are cooking as if it has anything to do with them; and worse, come over unannounced and then decide, without asking permission, that they will spend the night.
I went through that nonsense for nearly three years, and my husband could never see with me how wrong this behaviour was. He said that was how they came up, living together between three houses in his district, and he was comfortable with it.
My husband never once raised a word of protest even though he knew how I detested these practices as I saw them as a violation of our privacy. Instead, he would look at it as if I did not like this or that person, which was not my point at all.
As if his insensitivity was not enough, I had to deal with his mother and youngest sister, both of whom saw me as the person who stole their bank.
From day one his mother had nothing good to say about me. I am dark and he is brown-skinned, so she told me she always wanted to have “pretty children, not darkies”.
She also had a problem with my body. I am well rounded while my husband and most of them are pretty slim, so she would say things like, “when you get pregnant the bed is going to scream out”. She insulted me once about my size when she put one plastic chair into the next so I could sit down and this caused everyone around to laugh, including my husband.
Then the fact that I am not Barbadian was another sore point. She would sometimes drop remarks about non-nationals, especially those from Guyana and Jamaica, coming here to steal Bajan men.
Even though I am not from one of those countries, and I was born overseas to Bajan parents, she still regarded me as a foreigner. Talk about ignorant!
Though his mother was overbearing, it was the sister that was really a pain. That girl has no sort of respect for anyone except my husband and her mother, and even with them she sometimes behaves disrespectfully.
This girl would walk into a room with my husband and I were sitting down talking and would just ask him something as if I was not in the room. When I complained about that, he first used to say that that was her way and she meant nothing by it. But as time wore on and she and I clashed over it, he would then tell me not to pick on her.
Imagine that, I get the blame for something though she was the one who was rude and unmannerly.
But worse than that was her insistence about asking him for money, and when he did not have it, encouraging him to get it from me. I told him I had nothing to give her as she was rude and indifferent to me, but all that did was cause another sore point between us.
The bottom line was that I could not win no matter what I said or did because his family just did not appreciate me. They saw me as an outsider.
I was his second wife, and they really liked the first one, who died in an accident overseas. So they had no uses for me.
What hurt me deeply though is that I never saw this coming at all when we were courting. They were pleasant to me, though not overly friendly in any way. I didn’t have a problem with that as I am not very much into this family thing.
At that time, too, we spent the vast majority of time at my rented house.
It was only after we married and decided to build a house together, then moved into a small unoccupied house that had belonged to his aunt and is next to his mother’s place, that the reality of what his family were really like hit me.
What I find really painful is how he never once stood up for me on anything. All he used to do is tell me that I was overreacting, or I was too thin-skinned and should let the comments slide. It seems they could never do wrong at all.
That turned me off of him, and all the love I felt for him just disappeared. That was what caused the break-up of my marriage. Why can’t men see that their loyalty is first and foremost to their wives, to whom they should cling and forsake all others? Doesn’t even the Bible say so?
It hurts me that what I thought I had is no more, but the lesson I learnt and want to pass on to others is that in-laws can be the greatest enemy to a married couple.