I clearly remember the story of Hang - a former colleague. After getting married and living with her mother-in-law in Hoang Mai (Hanoi), she once lamented: "I live like walking on eggshells. I check everything, I adjust every dish. I went out with friends, but my mother-in-law told me not to worry about my husband.
Initially, Hang chose a gentle way to fight back: less talking, keeping distance, trying to " live according to her mother's wishes". But the more he did, the more the indoor atmosphere became heavier. Meals like a battlefield. Each sentence is a thin emotional slash. She said that once her mother-in-law only left a sentence: "If you were a daughter-in-law, you would probably know better", which Hang had to spend three days swallowing up her resentment.
Things only changed when she stopped analyzing right and wrong and started... observing. She discovered that her mother-in-law did not hate her, only feeling lost. The woman who once decided on each meal and daily routine of her son has now been " encroached upon" by a young girl without permission. The feeling of being replaced made her react as if a "female general" defending to last.
Hang changes her tactics. Instead of "silence is golden", she chose to be proactive in small things. She let her mother-in-law choose dishes every week, asked her opinion when shopping for her husband, and sometimes " pretended" to ask her mother's opinion on how to cook sour soup - even though she knew how to do it.
You are not cheap, I am a diplomatic worker - she joked. Not long after, her mother-in-law began to introduce her to her neighbors as a "good daughter-in-law", invited her to sit close to her at family meetings and for the first time... scooped up soup for her.
The key, as Hang said, is not patience, nor is it "taking the heart". It lies in understanding: In all power structures, everyone is afraid of losing their role. If the daughter-in-law knows how to give her mother-in-law a feeling of "still having the right", the conflict will resolve. The smart people do not need to win, they just need to turn the "war zone" into a "family meal".
I once told Hang: "If so, are you living a life of artificial intelligence? Hang said: "It's not artificial intelligence, I encourage understanding the system because "one has memories, the other has a future", I'm solving that overlap".
In modern life, mother-in-law - the bride does not need to become close friends. They just need to sit on the same side, eat on the same side, and see each other is not boring. Everyone took a step back, not because they were weak, but because the whole family needed peace. Because the man in the middle does not need an referee, they just hope for peace at the table. And the wise are those who know how to keep that peace - with the strongest gentleness.
