My brother-in-law is getting married, and my mother-in-law wants me, the daughter-in-law, to lend him money to buy a house or give up our new home.

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

My brother-in-law is getting married, and my mother-in-law says: either you lend my son money to buy a house, or give him your new home.

I married into my husband's family and became their daughter-in-law, but that doesn't mean I replaced my mother-in-law and became my brother-in-law's mother. When I heard my mother-in-law so self-righteously make this unreasonable demand of me, I got angry right then and there. What gave her the right to have such a view and understanding? Did she think we were easy to bully, or did she really believe we had the responsibility to raise her favorite youngest son?

Back then, my parents didn't agree to me marrying my husband. It wasn't that they disliked this man. In their view, although his family circumstances were a bit poor and the family burden was heavy, he was still relatively honest and reliable, down-to-earth, and a person worth entrusting their daughter's life to. It was only after meeting my mother-in-law once that they felt this woman, who had lived in the countryside all her life, had quite a big misunderstanding in her ideas. She seemed like someone who had time-traveled here from the early last century, with outdated and rigid thinking. Even people of my parents' generation found it hard to communicate with her, and they thought I might suffer after marrying into the family.

At that time I didn't understand these things. I thought we wouldn't be living with my mother-in-law anyway, and even if there were differences in ideas, I could just yield to the elderly a bit more in daily life, and it wouldn't cause any big conflicts. But only after entering the family did I discover that I had really been too naive. She believed that once I married in, I was part of her family and should naturally take on everything. All the big and small matters at home were pushed onto me. Whenever any relative in the countryside had something going on, she would come looking for me, and they would all stay at my home when they came to the city, causing me countless troubles. Yet she still thought this was what I, as the eldest daughter-in-law of her family, should do. She also doted on my brother-in-law especially, to the point of spoiling him. He was already grown up but still didn't do any proper work, fooling around outside every day. When he had no money, he asked my mother-in-law for it, and when she didn't have any, he asked us. My husband and I were both very helpless, and we couldn't even say anything, because as soon as we did, she would get angry with us.

Because he was truly good for nothing, and he wasn't willing to stay honestly in the countryside, city girls looked down on him, and rural girls didn't dare marry him, so it dragged on until he was 28. My mother-in-law was extremely anxious, but there was nothing anyone could do about such things, and others couldn't help either. Finally, now someone was willing to marry my brother-in-law, and my mother-in-law was very happy, trying to figure out how to arrange his wedding. But over these years my brother-in-law had no savings at all, and my mother-in-law's savings had also been mostly used up by him, so she started setting her sights on me and my husband. We bought this new home ourselves over several years after marriage, but she directly said to me: "Anyway, your brother-in-law is getting married, so I'll give you two choices. Either you lend my son money to buy a house, or give him your new home."

In the past, when I saw she was confused, I couldn't be bothered to say anything, but now that she had even said something like this, I didn't want to accommodate her anymore either. At the time I told her: "Mother-in-law, my brother-in-law is your son, not mine. As his elder brother and sister-in-law, we have no obligation to raise him. Anyway, we have neither the ability nor the desire to take care of the house matter. If you think this is our responsibility, then go to court and sue us. If they rule that we must pay this money, I won't run from it even if I have to sell everything we own." She left resentfully, and while walking away she still loudly cursed me for being heartless. Everyone, tell me, is it she who is heartless to us, or we who are heartless to her?