Dear Editors,
I read your magazine very carefully, and I truly enjoy the topics you choose
to write about. But in your last issue, you touched on a subject called “It’s
Supposed to End With Us.” My question is: what exactly is supposed to end, if
in many cases it never even had a chance to begin?
I am talking about the fact that today, from the very first day of marriage,
young couples live separately and build their own household. And the ones who
often end up hurt are the parents on both sides. As the saying goes, “The
wedding is over, the candles are out – and all that’s left are the debts.”
Many new daughters-in-law try to keep their distance from their husband’s
parents. I once even heard one friend advise a bride, right before the chuppah:
“Don’t let them get too close, or they’ll get used to it and start coming over
without being invited.”
Tell me, how is a mother-in-law supposed to feel warmth or respect toward
someone who acts distant from the very beginning and seems determined to keep
everyone at arm’s length?
And what about the son, who hoped that after getting married there would be
a beautiful relationship between his wife and his parents? Of course, living
separately, he will still want to visit his parents for holidays and Shabbat.
But that is often where the arguments begin – she wants to stay home, or go to
her own parents instead.
I believe that after a wedding, we should not lose the love and respect that
already existed before it.
You write about education and changing times, but our generation was
educated too. And many of us lived together with our husband’s parents. We
worked, raised children, and still managed everything with our own hands. We
did not hire cleaning ladies or order meals from restaurants all the time.
What great hardships are people talking about today? Very often, it is the
mother-in-law herself who sends someone to help her daughter-in-law clean the
house. And if the young couple comes for Shabbat, she sends them home with food
as well.
On one point, however, I completely agree: relationships must be built on
trust and mutual respect from both sides.
And finally, I would like to ask you to write more about how parents should
prepare their daughters for family life – especially how to build a marriage,
how to treat a husband with respect, and how to respect the family she is
becoming part of.
R. Aminova
