I only married your son, I wasn't sold into your family, so why can't I buy clothes to wear?

(From a reader submission, images in this article are from the internet)

I only married your son, I wasn't sold into your family, so why can't I buy clothes to wear?

Isn't getting married about finding someone you love and living life together? So how is it that in my mother-in-law's eyes, I've become just another maid in the house who can be scolded and ordered around at will? Seeing the way my mother-in-law treats me after marriage makes me wonder - is this really the married family life I've been longing for? Why don't I feel even a bit of happiness?

Back then, despite my parents' objections, I married far from home and came to the city where my husband's family lives. At that time, my mother's eyes were red from crying. In her view, I was so far from home, unfamiliar with the local area, with not a single relative or friend, having to start everything from scratch, with no foundation and no one to help me. Even when I felt wronged, it would be hard to find someone to talk to. She thought I might suffer because of this. But I didn't have so many thoughts about it. In the eyes of our generation of young people, love knows no boundaries, and you can work and live anywhere. The world has become a global village, so what does it matter if you don't marry in the city where your own family lives?

But when I actually arrived there, I discovered that the place was still quite conservative, and even though the economy was developing rapidly, it wasn't as fast as my hometown. People's ideas also lagged somewhat behind those of big cities. On top of that, since my husband is from a single-parent family - his father passed away early, and afterward it was my mother-in-law who raised him single-handedly - the two of them are quite close. He has respected his mother since childhood and is very filial. But in my eyes, his mother is a domineering and unreasonable person who looks at everything only from her own perspective and never considers my feelings. During the first month or two after I married into the family, I hadn't found a job yet and stayed at home. As a result, she targeted and mocked me all day for having no income, left all the housework for me to do, and I lived in misery every day.

To reduce friction, and also to prove that I had value and the ability to survive independently, I later started actively looking for work outside. Every day I would research information, send out job applications, and then constantly check online for results or wait for calls from employers notifying me of interviews. I did all this without letting my mother-in-law know. For one thing, I didn't know what the outcome would be at the time and didn't want to make a big fuss before anything was settled. For another, my mother-in-law complained that I had no job, yet she wanted me to stay home and do chores, so that she could have one more person to share the housework and could also vent her temper at me anytime. In her view, it was perfectly normal for a daughter-in-law to stay at home following her mother-in-law's instructions, being filial to her elders, and helping her husband manage the household.

Not long ago, I finally received an interview invitation from a fairly large local company, and I was very happy. To make a good impression on the interviewer, I had my husband take me out to buy clothes a couple of days earlier. But unexpectedly, when I came home happily and tried them on, my mother-in-law got very angry and started yelling at me directly. First she accused me of going out before finishing the housework, making her work hard for quite a while. Then she scolded me for wasting money, saying I stayed home all day without the ability to earn a single cent, and had no occasion to wear new clothes anyway, so why buy them?

I didn't want to explain so much to her - her prejudice was deeply ingrained. But the grievances I had bottled up for days finally burst out at that moment, and I said to her directly: "I only married your son, I wasn't sold into your family, so why can't I buy clothes to wear?" She cursed me, saying that was just my fate and that I only deserved to be a servant doing chores in her house. Seeing her harsh and mean expression, I couldn't help but have a big fight with her. After returning to my room, I cried my heart out. I felt that back then, before I had arranged anything properly, I had ignored my parents' advice and married far away alone, and that was why my mother-in-law looked down on me. I felt very regretful.

My husband is quite reasonable. After he came in, he kept comforting me and working on me, saying that his mother is just that kind of person and that whoever is around her gets a bit tormented by her. As long as my work situation was resolved, I wouldn't spend much time at home in the future, and with less contact with my mother-in-law, the friction would naturally decrease. After hearing that, I felt somewhat comforted. If I had to stay with my mother-in-law every minute of every day, I really felt I would break down. I think one view of my own mother is correct: if you marry far away, you can't possibly know everything about your husband's family in advance, such as the personalities of your parents-in-law and their family members. Just this alone has troubled me for quite a while. What do you all think?