Soooo… I got married recently to a Japanese man and have some questions for others in interracial relationships.
I am from Mexico but lived in America for a long time so culturally, I identify most with the American culture. That said, I am used to being independent, living alone, and working a lot.
Before getting married, we discussed important things as we should have and I thought I had prepared myself mentally for my biggest challenge which included moving in with him and his family (elderly parents).
Keep in mind I moved out of my parents’ home when I turned 18 and I was also married before but lived alone with my prior spouse.
I noticed my husband and his mother both had very specific ways of doing things and they didn’t like or accept my ways at all (cleaning, cooking, etc). In their views, my way is “wrong” or “not good enough”. I am also more on the messy side but I manage okay because I don’t have a lot of possessions (by choice), however, my in-laws’ house has a lot of clutter but it’s very clean and everything has its place.
I am starting to wonder if I should cave in and try my best to copy the way they do things even if that makes me feel inadequate, if I disagree, or if it makes me feel like it’s not my home.
There is also a big “this is mine”/ “this is yours” mentality that I am not used to. I think families should all share everything (within reason) such as items around the house, food, etc. I wonder if this is a matter of personality or generally Japanese families tend to separate things?
We also had a baby recently. My spouse mentioned that it is common for the baby and mother to sleep in a different room because the baby wakes up at night so the father could not get enough rest to go to work. Coming from America, this seemed unreasonable to me but I gave in as I thought this may be a potential cultural difference. As such, there is also “my room”, “your room” matter that I really don’t like, particularly for a marriage. In my view, spouses should share the same room. Right now, he only sleeps with us (me and the baby) on weekends. Has any of you dealt with this issue? At the moment I am not working because of the baby so in some ways I get that my spouse needs more rest than I do.
Have any of you been in a similar situation and can give some insight into these problems?
I would also love to hear advice in dealing with cultural differences you may have encountered.
TIA
16 comments
My wife is japanese and she insisted that we slept in different rooms for the first few months after our baby was born. I like the full nights rest but I also compensate by doing a majority of household task. Thats just my two cents
> my husband and his mother both had very specific ways of doing things
Yes. You won’t change them.
> a big “this is mine”/ “this is yours” mentality
Yes.
> it is common for the baby and mother to sleep in a different room because the baby wakes up at night so the father could not get enough rest to go to work.
Yes. This is common.
I’m an American man, but I dated a Mexican woman before coming to Japan. Japanese people are generally colder than Mexicans. Roles are compartmentalized. Depending on where you are, I’d make allies with other foreign wives. There are lots of Philippinas in the countryside.
Here we go with another future divorce thread. Just kidding. It’s a bit complicated maybe but I’d say it goes somewhat case by case for me. My wife did an excellent job of masking her OCD tendencies before we got married. It depends on the particular situation. If theres a particular way to clean something, usually I’ll do it because why not? If it’s something annoying then I’ll just tell her to do it herself. Cooking though, nah. I’ll take her tastes into account but I won’t jump through hoops with it. If she doesn’t want what I’m making she can get her own dinner. Finally, if it’s a polite request then usually that’s alright, but if it’s rude then it can end in a fight.
I’m wondering about the mother’s influence though, was he not like that before you moved in there?
I believe the sleeping situation is pretty common. I slept in the same room, did the night feeds quite alot and I was a zombie at work so I’m not opposed to it at all. Luckily I was able to half ass work for those months because it would have been a struggle to do anything with particularly high stakes.
There is a lot to adapt to, and as others have said, you’re encountering cultural differences. Your “within reason” is different from theirs. You folks do need to adapt to each other, but you are living in their house. You haven’t mentioned how old your in-laws are. That will be a factor in expectations both of themselves, and of you.
The baby thing is extremely common here. That doesn’t mean you have to do things that way. In our case we slept in shifts for the first few months until baby was sleeping through the night reliably and then we shared the bedroom again. Perhaps you could come to some similar compromise.
The other part sounds like just a personality thing, or at least my husband is the opposite: he views most of the stuff in the house like we have equal rights to it and will just do whatever he wants with it, which ends up pissing me off sometimes. I think there should be a balance of “family” things and “personal” things. Like don’t throw out my frikkin hair tie just because you found it on the floor! At least ask!
As for cleaning, I just ignore his suggestions lol. And for cooking I made it very clear that I did not want constructive criticism unless asked. He respects that. On the flipside he asked me to be brutally honest with my opinions about cooking because otherwise he’ll end up making things I don’t like and it’s a waste. It makes me kind of uncomfortable because I see it as rude, but that’s what he asked for so that’s what I do.
Knowing what’s a cultural norm can help you understand better where he’s coming from, but in the end it boils down to finding compromises where you both feel OK.
I don’t understand? You should’ve checked this before having a baby and committing to live with his parents. It sounds so miserable imo.
Good luck I guess
Re: sleeping in different rooms
This is normal here, and many families (tho not all) do it.
Try to compromise – you and baby head to sleep earlier, ask him to be in there with you until you fall asleep, then he can move. Maybe have him supplement with a nap if needed.
Right off the bat I will say that in this arrangement -> You living in THEIR family home. Will always essentially mean that you are a guest in your own home. Sorry to tell you but this will never change. They will not compromise to fit your methods or ideals and instead it’ll constantly be you bending to their methods and ideals. Which may work for a while but the longer you live under someone else’s home the more you’ll feel like you don’t have ‘your’ family and ‘your’ home.
It may not bother you now but it will one day.
I don’t know how attached your current husband is to his mom but I’ve met quite a few men that were soooo reliant on their mothers. Essentially their mothers word and company was always above the wife they married. I’m not saying this applies to your husband but it sounds like it could. It’s honestly a toxic and uncomfortable dynamic when trying to build your own family because you as a mom will always be undermined by the ‘real mom”.
You said you talked about all this stuff beforehand but idk it really seems like you have a lot to work out. However from experience, these matters don’t really sort themselves out.
Your only hope of trying to fix your family dynamic is to frankly move out and get your own place and try to have more of a balance so that you have as much say in your home as your husband. Because currently your mother-in-law has the most say, followed by your husband (who seems like he’ll side with his mom over you), and then you last.
Good luck.
Are you sure you’re not straight up wrong about the cleaning stuff? A lot of it works differently here than what I was used to because of the MASSIVE HUMIDITY. I don’t know too much about the US or mexico, but things that worked well in europe were an invitation for mold here and I had to relearn a lot of cleaning stuff.
The other stuff… what others said. It’s mostly pretty normal for japan and you should’ve tried to learn about it in advance :/
Marriage here for many people is a social contract and about having children and the children come first, and gender roles are still unfortunately kind of prevalent. If you don’t want that then you have to make sure your partner is on board.
The one concerning thing is the “my things/your things” thing. When you’re not working to take care of the baby, and thus not getting income, you’re going to be getting a lot less of “your things”. If he wants you to be a full time mother maybe he needs to give you control of the wallet and accept pocket money like other couples in this arrangement. Or does he just give his salary to his mother who does all the accounts for the family?
Unfortunately you, a very independent woman, have married an extremely un-independent man. He’s a mummy’s boy and his mum rules the house.
What is the plan for living with his parents btw? I assume by “elderly” you mean you moved into their house to care for them – but if she’s spritely enough to dictate the cooking and cleaning then she can live on her own in a house without you guys imo lol.
Is the plan for you, your husband and your baby to live with the inlaws until they die? That’s a long old road if so. It isn’t sustainable because you’re clearly not happy. Frankly I think you guys should move out and get your own space because as someone else said, that house will never be your home.
I’ve slept in different rooms for like 2 years now, it doesn’t really bother me we just have a small bed that can only fit two people and that’s for the wife and kiddo, but she has never had the this is mine vs this is yours and neither had her family, they are always worried I won’t like their food and has always said what theirs is mine and I shouldn’t apologize for it
The baby and separate rooms thing is normal, when in Tokyo, my friends moved back into the maternal home for the first month so their mothers help to care for wife and baby (and i mean, they cooked and cleaned and helped with baby duties, also helped with caring for older children) and they would visit the father on weekends, that way the father could focus on work and uninterrupted sleep whilst mum focused solely on bonding with the baby without the pressure of keeping house. I’m not sure if it fully the norm now, but it was common around my friends to do this.
Ok, so you really put yourself in a difficult situation by moving in with your in-laws… It’s not gonna be easy. How traditional are they? How long have you been in Japan?
You say they are very set in their ways and they don’t like how you are doing things. Could you perhaps give us an example or two?
Is there a possibility of adding an in-law suite to the house? Or could you guys build a house right next to theirs?
Sorry for being so blunt but you’re screwed. Start planning an exit strategy.
A lot of this is pretty typical for a family with traditional expectations for gender roles, which it sounds like you’ve married into. It sucks you don’t feel comfortable with it, but what you’ve written doesn’t sound extreme or outrageous by Japanese standards.
Traditionally in Japan the bride leaves her family and joins her husband’s. Moreso than both breaking off and forming their own new nuclear family unit (an arrangement that sounds more comfortable for you). The daughter-in-law is lower ranking than the MIL, and a “good” DIL defers to MIL and uses respectful language with her. MIL has no obligation to return the same level of respect as per usual in Japanese hierarchical relationships. Especially when one party is much younger than the other, in that traditional way of thinking, naturally the younger person is “inadequate”–it’s just considered a feature of being young and less experienced, not necessarily a moral judgement. Perhaps remnants from a time when most families survived by running a small family-owned business or farm: FIL and MIL were like the CEO class, the son/husband was middle management, and his bride was a new hire lol. A lot of traditional marriage and inheritance norms etc. were shaped by the old ways of running a family business like that.
Of course not every Japanese family is like that but that’s the gist of the old way. You’ll probably make better relationships within a traditionally-minded family if you adopt MILs ways when you can, especially in small issues that don’t really matter at the end of the day.
The ownership of items in the home probably depends more on each individual family. My in-laws are also Japanese and I wish they had more boundaries in that regard lol.
But I think living happily with inlaws is really difficult even with a shared culture…maybe that’s my American side talking…it’s just a lot of adults in one house! all with their different needs, expectations, preferences and boundaries or lack thereof to deal with. It isn’t easy or fun for a lot of Japanese young people either, why many opt to live separately from the older generation.
I agree with the other posters. It’s not your house so you will never get to do things your way. But it’s more culturally normal to have multi generation houses where the owner is the older couple. Not sure I could accept living in someone else’s house.
Regarding the sleep. This just sounds sensible to me. If he’s working and cannot take maternity leave (true?) then he really shouldn’t be sleep deprived when you are currently a full time mother (and have the grandparents to help?). That seems unnecessary. Personally, I never understood couples who sacrifice sleep to be together at night. Snoring, movement at night, etc. sleep is incredibly important for performance and health, both long term and short term. My issue would be, has he taken maternity leave or asked for Flex Time at work? Then he could perhaps take a night shift with the baby and still get enough sleep.