I Vent to Heal

So... I know that I blog to get stuff out of my system and I find it awesome almost, that I almost never blog about work. In retrospect, it's because I was a small fish in a large pond. I did what I was supposed to, I chugged along, but now things have changed.

Why now? In 2009 we did a lay-off, people in my department who had been with the organization 14-15 years were offered a retrenchment package. Several of them weren't really given a choice, and most of them were horrified. They weren't sure what they were going to do, the company had become their world, almost home if you will. Familiar faces, places, structures... gone. Some time later, we did a restructuring. Moved people around, created positions, put people in them, etc. Again, I was a minnow, quite unaffected by the restructuring, not seeing what it meant.

Now, I'm a slightly bigger fish, with thoughts about my future in this organization, and we've just done another round of lay-offs and a restructure. People who came to see the organization as their home, gone. People I met and enjoyed meeting, gone. And the moves that have been made, were made without interviews or even announcements. They were hand-picked for their positions.

I'm horrified, and not sure what this means for me. Do they expect that I will wait to be hand-picked? Do I call them out and ask for an explanation? Do I stay quiet and start looking at my options? Is this what they intended? To make people nervous, unsure?

Marriage

It's now been about a month since my in-laws visited and I had several 'discussions' with the SO about stuff. To his credit, he has been quite understanding and maybe next time things will be different. I also have been speaking to a friend who lives with her in-laws, and while I felt for her, true empathy came that week that my in-laws visited.

I read a lot of posts on IndianHomeMaker about women who live with their in-laws and stuff and found a few with 'advice' for in-laws like http://phoenixritu.wordpress.com/2008/07/07/the-tyranny-of-being-a-mother-in-law/ in this time and I'm incredibly ambivalent. Many years ago, I was sure I had the answer, that it was mutual respect. What I did not understand then though, is that not everybody is trying to be a better person. I'd like to believe that I am, and maybe I'm deluding myself, but now I've had to admit that most other people are quite happy with who and how they are. So they don't see why they should change or be different in any different situation.

In one of my discussions with the SO he asked why his mother should do something different here than in her own house, the only answer I had was that it's my house. His counter, and a reasonably valid one, is isn't it also their house? Yes, I would like them to feel comfortable, and I think I was reasonably good about it, but I probably wasn't. I'm willing to bet that my MIL felt more comfortable the last time they visited, when I was not here. I understand that, I even appreciate it, but I felt like I did not matter at all. Like my views and opinions on what to eat or buy or cook did not exist or matter. Maybe I was being hypersensitive, and I let it all go, because she was planning and cooking for her son, but the thing is, longer term, this will not be acceptable to me.

And it's always the little thing, like that she calls the place 'SO's house'. She means nothing at all by it, I know that, but it's not just SO's house, it's my house too. I said nothing about this to her or SO because I understand that she means nothing by it at all, but isn't that what sensitivity is? To think about what you are saying and realise that it might hurt somebody? At least that's what I learnt, not to say 'he' all the time in a general story, not to call certain jobs 'bad' or 'dirty' because that's associating a value with a task, which is inappropriate and unfair to the people that do that task. I also understand that not everybody thinks this way or feels this way, and I'm learning though, that I cannot tell other people that they need to behave a certain way.

So, the pathetic point I am trying to make is that a marriage is not just about two people. It is about two families, and the two families are not the same, just like the two people are not the same. The two people though, need to have excellent communication, a lot of trust, and a lot of love for each other, for the marriage to work, because the two families have to be managed. And managed by the person that was born to them. That is the way of the world, that is the only thing that family will accept.

What does that mean? Maybe now I can say treat your in-laws the way you'd like your SO to treat your parents. And maybe treat your DIL/Son-IL the way you'd like her/his in-laws to treat him? Practically, it would mean weighing things you say, to see how they would feel if said to your child by someone else. If you wouldn't like your child spoken to that way, don't say it. Similarly, if you wouldn't like your parents spoken to that way, don't say it. I think somehow SO and I have evolved ourselves to this level, because we can see how it feels. But we don't live with in-laws, neither him nor me.

SO has a cousin, she's lived with her in-laws through her 3 year wedding, and now she's leaving her marriage. Like all marriages, there have been ups and downs, but there have also been occasions of physical fighting. One, she admits, was quite mutual, with both fighting physically. Another incident was him hitting her. She's had enough, she wants out, and nobody is asking what he wants. His parents are speaking for him, insisting that divorce is the right option, so I guess nobody will be asking him anything any more. Her mother wanted our support in helping patch things up, but recent occurrences have suggested to her that it's best to end it.

From experience, I can say that marriages are fluid. I can say I have hated SO, I have loved him, I have been happy to be away from him and been miserable to be away from him, what has kept us together is that we both want to be together. And maybe that's what is important, love, trust, respect, and wanting to be with someone so much that you're willing to work on everything else.