After a few days of getting
married, my wife and I travelled to Bangalore where I was working. She had
decided to join me in the Garden City and we started setting up our house. After
the initial days of settling down, she started experimenting with her culinary
skills. As ‘customary’, my mom had told her about all my interests and being a
loving wife she tried to cook some of those dishes which I like. Many of them
were quite tasty but living the life of a proverbial husband, I immediately
applied a benchmark of my mom’s cooking.
Words of expectation floated
around. She tried to change some of the cooking styles to meet the expectation,
but soon enough I realized a major fact. My mom cooked in ‘her own’ style which
she developed that our family loved. The same logic should really apply in my
wife’s case as well. She has a style of cooking which should be supported by
giving her a freehand. This alone will help us as a family than having to
perform under pressure of expectations. As soon as she was made comfortable
with this acceptance, our kitchen exploded with never-before experienced
flavours! I now have a new benchmark for taste.
I mentioned the above
instance just to highlight the importance of acceptance than having
expectations which many a times become unjustified. This is not just true in
case of a couple, but equally important for the extended family members as
well. I’m not quite sure how much have the male of our species experienced this
pressure tactics in our society which still heavily leans towards its patriarchal
nature. At the risk of being biased, let me highlight the case of girls this
time.
From the day a proposal comes
to a family, followed by seeing the picture of the girl, this expectation game
starts. The family starts discussions about how the girl is, how she should be
etc. Once the wedding gets fixed, these discussions become even more intense.
More such conversations take place among the relatives as the wedding date approaches.
Expectations hit the roof as soon as the bride sets her foot in the house.
Everyone has something or other to say, irrespective of any trace of logic present
in their statements. Most often the groom is oblivious to these conversations
and the bride is left at the mercy of a bunch of strangers who will be
showering her with an avalanche of these expectations. The ordeal has just
begun!
Life goes on and just like
how performance reviews happen in the corporate world, the new bride gets
reviewed time to time based on the expectations that were set up for her. The
relatives seem to have quite an uncanny ability to judge the new bride on every
possible occasion. The discussions go from her choice of dress to the style of
ornaments and many more such topics which suddenly seem to take an elevated
level of importance. What could be surprising in some families is the fact that
this performance review does not stop even after many other ‘new brides’ join the
family. The show goes on.
One of the possible
psychology behind this behaviour is that historically the family would’ve built
an expectation about how the girl for a guy should be. By virtue of seeing the
boy grow up from childhood they want their would-be daughter-in-law of the
family to have certain traits to match the guy. What they do not realise is the
fact that the girl who is coming into the family comes with a definite
personality which she developed in most cases over a period of three decades or
less.
While some families realise
the importance, what many still don’t practice is the art of ‘accepting’
instead of ‘expecting’. You should be able to accept the new member of the
family with all her positives and negatives. The more you try to mould, at
times even break, her personality to induct her into your boundary of
expectation, you’re potentially pushing her to a point of no return where she
either snaps or develops an attitude of indifference!
May the good God bless you
with the providence of acceptance than setting expectations! Let the family be
blessed with the young new mind who comes in with hopes and prayers. May you
all experience the bliss of a soul that can rejoice in your acceptance than
having to constantly live under your X-ray eyes of expectation! God bless!
