Thanks so much for reading, Casey. I've been on the hunt for more of these often invisible, unnamed things people carry in marriage/partnership. This is certainly one of them.
It absolutely is. I love reading your writing. I'm currently not in a relationship but this is preparing me to be better off if a next relationship happens! 😉
Spot on! This has been a challenge for me recently… sharing things about myself that make me vulnerable , and when I do, it beings minimized and dismissed. It doesn’t feel safe or good to share. Thank you for mentioning half listening. It’s very hurtful.
The background on a lot of this is silenced overfunctioning of the generation of women who are now grandmothers, and THEIR mothers and grandmothers. They endured the inability to ask for help and quietly accommodated instead of calling it quits, or when they DID call it quits they often let the same patterns replicate in their sons and grandsons by indulging when they needed to be guiding. I watch this with my inlaws. My MIL asks for nothing. She expects nothing of her husband, waiting on him hand and foot, and often does as much of that for others as she can so long as she doesn't slack on her spouse. She tries to be the perfect Chinese wife stereotype, then she eventually gets exhausted and lashes out at the younger generations, trying to guilt them over their failures to notice that she needed help after training them to be oblivious. I am the only female in the family younger than her since my BIL's very shortlived marriage and I only gave her grandsons, so she tried that on me but it rolled off my back. My sons have internalized a very warped idea of how adulthood works from this, and from talking to other men I think this is a very common problem even in non-Chinese households, where mothers have internalized the sitcom ideal of what a good mother looks like and suppress their frustrations with the men in their life for the sake of coming across as their idealized self.
That is the socialization process dynamic I pick up as a common thread woven into these relationships struggles.
More 🔥🔥🔥!
Thank you, Matthew.
Thanks so much for reading, Casey. I've been on the hunt for more of these often invisible, unnamed things people carry in marriage/partnership. This is certainly one of them.
It absolutely is. I love reading your writing. I'm currently not in a relationship but this is preparing me to be better off if a next relationship happens! 😉
Spot on! This has been a challenge for me recently… sharing things about myself that make me vulnerable , and when I do, it beings minimized and dismissed. It doesn’t feel safe or good to share. Thank you for mentioning half listening. It’s very hurtful.
The background on a lot of this is silenced overfunctioning of the generation of women who are now grandmothers, and THEIR mothers and grandmothers. They endured the inability to ask for help and quietly accommodated instead of calling it quits, or when they DID call it quits they often let the same patterns replicate in their sons and grandsons by indulging when they needed to be guiding. I watch this with my inlaws. My MIL asks for nothing. She expects nothing of her husband, waiting on him hand and foot, and often does as much of that for others as she can so long as she doesn't slack on her spouse. She tries to be the perfect Chinese wife stereotype, then she eventually gets exhausted and lashes out at the younger generations, trying to guilt them over their failures to notice that she needed help after training them to be oblivious. I am the only female in the family younger than her since my BIL's very shortlived marriage and I only gave her grandsons, so she tried that on me but it rolled off my back. My sons have internalized a very warped idea of how adulthood works from this, and from talking to other men I think this is a very common problem even in non-Chinese households, where mothers have internalized the sitcom ideal of what a good mother looks like and suppress their frustrations with the men in their life for the sake of coming across as their idealized self.
That is the socialization process dynamic I pick up as a common thread woven into these relationships struggles.