are you adjusting?

A couple of weeks ago, Brooklyn Beckham's Instagram post broke the internet.

He posted a six-part Instagram statement calling out his parents publicly.

For context, famous football ex-player David Beckham’s son Brooklyn alleged that his mother Victoria "hijacked" his first dance with wife Nicola at their wedding.

They told Nicola she was "not blood, not family" the night before the ceremony.
And David refused to see Brooklyn unless "Nicola wasn't invited."

This post went viral instantly, and it brought in 1.37 million views.

Brooklyn quoted that "I'm not being controlled, I'm standing up for myself for the first time in my life."

Standing up for his wife cost him his family.
Most Indian husbands would choose differently.

Last month, I was helping out a cousin’s wife in the kitchen.
After a family get-together, she was washing the dishes, not looking at me.

Suddenly she said "You know what's funny? Your cousin will argue with me about everything. Which car to buy, where to go on vacation, how to raise the kids. But when his mother says something nasty to me, he suddenly can't hear."

She chuckled.

I didn't know what to say, so I just listened.

"I'm not asking him to cut her off or anything. Just... acknowledge it happened. Say 'that wasn't okay.' That's it."

She turned off the tap. "But he acts like I'm making it up, or I'm being dramatic."

That conversation stuck with me for days.

36% of Indian divorces cite family or third-party interference as the primary cause.

Research analyzing parental interference across Indian marriages found something about couples experiencing high parental interference had a 45% divorce rate compared to 20% for couples with low interference.

That's a 2.25x difference.

The presence or absence of boundaries with parents can more than double your divorce risk.

But the gender split reveals where the real pain lives.

72.4% of women report disagreements about relatives versus 58.7% of men.

Women feel the conflict more intensely because they're living it daily while men can compartmentalize, go to work, and maintain distance.

They are expected to "adjust."

51% of all female suicides in India are housewives. 23,178 housewives died by suicide in 2021.

That's 63 housewives daily.

"Family problems" is the leading reason.

This isn't about poverty or lack of education.

Research shows the probability of suicide death jumps over 200-fold for an Indian woman solely by virtue of being a housewife.

What kind of family problems drive educated, financially secure women to this point?

I recorded this after talking to dozens of couples about this exact pattern: Marriage in India is incredibly hard for women.

I started asking the men in my life why they don't speak up.

Why silence is never neutral

Psychologist Murray Bowen called it triangulation.

Bowen found that "a two-person system is unstable because it tolerates little tension before involving a third person. A triangle can contain much more tension without involving another person because the tension can shift around three relationships."

When a wife and a mother-in-law are in conflict, the husband becomes the third point of the triangle.

In Indian marriages, this status quo always favors the mother-in-law. 

She's been in the household longer, has the husband's lifetime loyalty and controls the household decisions.

So when the husband says nothing, he's actually choosing his mother's side.

Silence equals consent to the power structure, and the wife becomes an outsider in her own marriage.

the research 

Taiwanese researchers Wu et al. studied 125 married women dealing with mother-in-law conflict. 

They measured four types of husband behaviour: taking the wife's side, problem-solving strategies, ignoring the conflict, or taking the mother's side.

When husbands actively supported wives (took their side or used problem-solving), mother-in-law conflict had no significant impact on marital satisfaction.

It isn’t the conflict that is destroying marriages, instead it is husbands doing nothing about it.

Women can handle difficult in-laws.

What they can't handle is fighting alone while the one person who should be their partner pretends not to notice.

The mother-in-law isn't the villain in this story.

Most mothers-in-law were once daughters-in-law themselves. They adjusted, stayed silent, and swallowed every slight. 

They were told "this is what good wives do."

Now, decades later, they've finally earned some power in the household. And consciously or not, they're replicating the same control they were denied in their own marriages.

This is coming from generational trauma dressed up as tradition, usually not from a place of malice.

The system that hurt your mother is now hurting your wife.
And your silence keeps that system running.

The question isn’t who to choose

Brooklyn Beckham spoke up and lost his family.

In Western culture, that's seen as tragic.
In Indian culture, it's seen as inevitable. “what did he expect?”

But I think that’s the wrong question.

Should a husband choose between his wife or mother?
No. Then why is he silent when both people he loves are in pain?

Just acknowledge it happened

I keep thinking about my cousin's wife at that sink.

"Just acknowledge it happened. Say 'that wasn't okay.' That's it."

That's the entire ask.

And most husbands still can't do it.

Hit reply and tell me: Have you seen this pattern play out?
I read every email.

Until next week,
Ritesh

P.S: Boundaries with parents aren't disrespectful. They're mature. The ability to say "I love you, and this needs to change" is the mark of an adult son, not a bad son.