My Enemy

The other night, we had a date to go over and eat "The Last Supper" with Suk's sister and the family because from now on, as a married woman, she may not come home as often and if she does, she'll be bring Sensei with her.

This is the story of that night, but alas...there is a happy ending, which I will write about in my next post.

On the way there, Suk turns to me and says, "Do you feel that my mother is competition for you?"

I told him the truth. Although I think she is a wonderful, nice and funny woman, I sometimes feel the situation is difficult to deal with. Not only does he suffer immensely from what we commonly refer to as Oedipus Complex (or Mazakon in Japanese), his mother is quite proud of the fact that her son likes her and depends on her so much.

He went on to explain to me that there is a difference between "love for you mother" and "love for your wife." Oh, yes, do I need that explained to me? Does anyone? God, I hope not.

What has always bothered me is that he often makes arrangements with his mother and sister before speaking to me about it. I am usually the last to know. It is as if I am on a need-to-know basis, and most of it seems to be stuff I don't "need to know," according to them.

In the beginning, it usually involved dinner plans. Plans would be made, times, places and food would be decided. All week, they would call each other using cell phones (not once would our house phone ring!), and finally, the day before the decided date (and sometimes on the day of!), I would be told about my weekend plans.

There were times when I already had my own plans. Or I just wanted to hang out with my workaholic husband on the weekend because that is essentially our only time together. But basically, I just wanted to be let in on the planning stages, so that I could be more informed.

After arguing about it for a while, we (I) came to the conclusion that since I am the wife, I should have first priority in his life, and that decisions should not be made without me, even if it is something as harmless as a Saturday night dinner.

There are other issues involving my relationship with Suk's mom, but this seems to be the main one.

When I first started this blog, I wrote about how we chose to buy our condo. We will move into it next month, so the last few months have been very busy making arrangements for a moving company, signing papers, choosing and ordering furniture, etc. Unfortunately, there are some things which I cannot do by myself, either because the condo-related stuff is not in my name, or because I am not completely literate in Japanese.

Nonetheless, I do my best to stay involved in the entire process...

Which is really hard when you have a husband who much prefers to depend on his mom for everything, and she enables him to do so.

For example, we have hired a moving company. A consultant came to our house to estimate how much the cost would be. My husband is a workaholic, so I have to do all the purging, cleaning and packing by myself. Suk made the arrangements with our current apartment manager as to when we have to be out of our apartment. Mind you, we are moving to a place just down the street (a 4-minute walk), so the ideal thing would be that we have an extra day or two to go back the old place and clean it up a bit before handing over the keys. Without consulting me (as usual), Suk arranged to hand over the keys on the SAME DAY that we move. Good-bye security deposit x 3!

When I complained, he assured me it would be okay because his entire family (including Sensei!) would be coming over to help us on that day. I thought that could be a good thing or a bad thing. Do I really want his mom taking over everything in the new place in her "helpful" way? Do I really want her cleaning up after us? But, with so little time, you do what you have to do.

(Not so! His family objected to the idea of cleaning up our old apartment while we assist the movers in our new place. THEY also want to be in the new place "assisting." Yeah, I can just see it now.

Me: Please put the table over there.
Her: No, it should go here. Yoo-hoo, put it here.
Him: Actually, I am thinking this would be a better place. What do you think, Mom?

Or

Him: Mande, why don't you stay here and clean the apartment.
Me: Why do I have to?
Him: Because my mom can make coffee or tea for the movers, and that's an easy job for her.
Her: (says nothing
Me: I can do THAT!!!
Him: It's just BETTER FOR YOU TO CLEAN!!! FINE! YOU DON'T WANT TO MOVE?! LET'S JUST CANCEL THIS WHOLE THING!

The end.)

So, back to the latest Saturday night dinner at her house. First things first, I had been low-carbing it last week due to a slight weight-gain and was surprised to see what she had prepared for dinner.



Ha! And they say Japanese food is healthy!

Second, I hadn't been feeling good all day and had an upset stomach. I knew that alcohol and deep-fried food would be a bad combination, but I couldn't refuse to partake. Halfway through dinner, I had to retire to the sofa where I could rest quietly.

After dinner and dessert were finished, Suk took his folders pertaining to our condo out of his bag and prepared to show her various pieces of new information and possiby ask for advice. Most of this is stuff he hasn't even bothered to explain to me. When I pick something up and ask a question about it, he usually yells at me and says, "Jibun de yome yo!", meaning, "Read it yourself!" Yeah, that's likely.

One of the items he brought with him was a magazine about dogs. We are in the process of looking for a breeder of French Bull dogs in our area of Japan, and I think he just wanted to show her some magazine articles about this type of dog. I was only half paying attention to their conversation.

She was basically lecturing him about how it's time for him to grow up and become an adult. We are almost 30 years old. We are buying a condo, getting a dog and thinking about starting a family. So, we should be able to do things on our own by now, and we should follow the proper Japanese customs of gift-giving and so on. I was totally with her up until the "gift-giving" part because I just don't get that. I have had problems with it before, and I don't want to be caught in another endless cycle of "This gift is really boring, but here take it," followed by "Thanks for the gift you gave me last week. It was wonderful. Here is a really boring gift for you in return," followed by another "Thank you so much for that gift you gave me. I made this for you. It's not so good, but take it," and so on and so forth. This kind of cycle tends to last forever, and all the while, you are left thinking, "A true friend wouldn't expect gifts from me every time I see her." So, if he wants to give gifts to people, that is fine with me, but I don't want to get involved with that. In any case, the first part of her lecture to Suk had a lot of truth to it even if it was embarrassing for me witness my almost 30-year-old husband getting talked to in that way. I kept my mouth shut.

After a while, Suk changed the subject and showed her the dog magazine. She started talking about whether we should get the dog neutered or not. Of course, she claimed it was unnecessary and that the only reason Japanese people do it is to keep their dog from barking, which would annoy the neighbors. I couldn't help but speak up at this point.

Of course, Suk agreed with her. I told her my reasons for getting a dog neutered or spayed, but I also let her know that I had already decided it. A lively, but not fun, argument incurred between the three of us, with SIL throwing in her two-cents, "Well, you'll be making your dog into a new-half!" Thanks, SIL, that really helps.

The argument finally ended when I told Suk's mom that she has no business giving us advice about such a thing because it something between me and Suk, and because she has never owned a dog. So, there.

Suk didn't like the fact that I yelled at his mom. I didn't like the fact that Suk always takes her side. The mood changed at that point，and of course，it was all my fault for being an opinionated American, and I went back to putting all of my concentration on the Olympics on TV.

Finally, it was time to go home. I stood at the door with my shoes on waiting for Suk to gather his stuff together. She came to door and in her most gracious voice, she said, "Iro iro arigatou gozaimashita," as she bowed deeply.

Could you get any more sarcastic than that?