My mother raised me with one simple rule: marriage is a team sport. “Pick a teammate,” she used to say, “and even the storms will feel like drizzle.” I carried that advice with me into adulthood, believing wholeheartedly that when I chose a husband, I was choosing a partner—an equal.
When I met Christopher, I thought I had found him. He was funny, attentive, ambitious, and charming in a way that lit up every room we walked into. He promised me we would build a life rooted in love and respect, and for a while, I believed him.
But marriage has a way of revealing truths that courtship conceals. Within the first year, I realized that Christopher, too, had been raised on a script—one I hadn’t agreed to follow. In his family, wives didn’t just contribute. They ran the household, cooked the meals, and served the guests. His mother, Margaret, was held up as the gold standard. His sisters used to joke that she “raised three kids and a husband.”
Christopher claimed he supported my career, and maybe in some ways he did. But whenever his family gathered, the expectations fell squarely on me. It didn’t matter if I had just worked a full week or was drowning in deadlines; the unspoken rule was that I belonged in the kitchen.
It started small. At our first holiday together, Margaret handed me the carving knife with a sweet smile. “A wife serves her family,” she said softly, as if passing down wisdom. Christopher nodded along like it was the law of gravity.
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