DEAR EMILY,
We are seven children in an upper middle-class family. We went to top universities despite my father’s death early on. Though I’ve had my share of well-to-do and educated girlfriends, I married a poor country woman who couldn’t go to college after her father died when she was a teen.
Both our mothers and some siblings were against our relationship, but we married anyway and now have a little daughter. I was able to climb the corporate ladder despite our doomsayers, and became an executive for a multinational company.
Trouble is, my mom and siblings feel that my wife is still this ignorant country girl they have to give unsolicited advice to on how to run our life and act in public. They are more strict with her than my other sisters-in-law or nieces and nephews.
When we visit each other’s homes, they treat her like a housemaid, not realizing she was among the top of her class in high school. Now that we’re married, she keeps on learning to better herself, befitting the wife of an executive.
While I don’t hate my mom and siblings, I feel they should already accept her, that my choice of her was right. They should respect how she has improved her lot and how she has become so much a part of my success. Had we listened to them, we would not have gotten to where we are now. Do I really need to put up with this?
DISREGARDED
A writer once said, “There is overwhelming evidence that the higher the level of self-esteem, the more likely one will be able to treat others with respect, kindness and generosity.”
This doesn’t augur well for those in your family who are infinitely doing their utmost to make your wife’s life miserable, does it? Their ill manner toward her “lowly” status allows them to mask how they truly are—subconsciously inferior and latently sadistic, making the guise of teaching her how good society supposedly behaves.
But what’s truly happening is that they cannot accept how this unpolished stone, a virtual nobody, is becoming a gem before their very eyes. That’s way too much to bear for them.
Your love and loyalty to your wife is commendable. You both can only grow better, because you never allowed outside interference to mire your belief in yourselves. You had nowhere to go but up while fighting all these doomsayers.
While the two of you are reaping the harvest of your hard work, your siblings and blood relations must be going blind with rage and envy, trashing you and finding that their vicious intentions are not going anywhere.
Continue the course. Even without lifting a finger to seek redress on anybody or anything, remember that fate is fair and always just. Nothing goes unpunished or unrewarded—ever!
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