Dear Anita,

Answering your first question: I would have liked him to acknowledge my concerns, and try and understand where I am coming from. Instead, he told me that she has always been this way (briefly here, my complain/concern was that she never acknowledged anything that I had done for her – for example, we were at their house for my sister-in-law’s wedding, and us South Asians have huge weddings and a lot of hard work goes into it. I had prepared my SIL’s entire set of clothes, jewelry etc, and my MIL’s, as well as my FIL’s and BIL’s. She never once acknowledged it, or thanked me for any work I did. Additionally, I witnessed her thanking and praising everyone from an adult to a child from HER side of the family who participated in the wedding, but not a word to her own family, which hurt me a lot. I was also upset with the way she treats my husband – she yells at him in front of relatives and orders him around and never appreciates anything he does either). I did not, therefore, understand how that response is supposed to make me feel better – its like saying that she will always remain this way and you have to learn to deal with it, am I right?

Secondly, when he came home late, I did not say anything to him. The reason for this is because I had a massive expectation from him to at least acknowledge that his wife had been home and waiting for him all day, and had been looking forward to spending time with him. Everyone says that expectations always lead to disappointments and perhaps it is my fault that I had expected him to acknowledge that he had been away much longer than he had told me. Is this too much to ask for…. I don’t know. So I genuinely feel that a huge reason why I feel so hurt right now, four days later, is my own fault.