“I don’t think I want to get married.”

I looked up from my book and stared at my cousin, my eyebrows slightly raised. It was a surprise coming from her. I have always thought that marriage was a big issue for her.

“Ok,” I started slowly, putting my book down on the bed. “Why this all of a sudden?”

“I don’t know. I feel like there’s too many problems. I mean, not only are there all the issues with the wedding itself but there’s also the insecurities after marriage. Who knows if my husband will stay loyal  to me. And what about the in-laws? What if they pretend to like me but after we get married, they’ll start treating me badly?”

There it was, I thought to myself. The dreaded word when one talks about marriage; in-laws.

I come from a family where, unfortunately, the in-laws are not exactly the nicest of people. Yes, yes, I’m sure that there are many people who married into perfectly nice and warm-loving families. I know some of my friends and family did, but if you knew the horror stories we have  seen and heard, you’ll know why in-laws are often referred to as ‘monsters-in-law’.

Anyway, just to summarize a little bit about my family’s in-laws (just so you know that _I_ know what I’m talking about), here’s the synopsis. The siblings of the in-laws were all nice and friendly in front of our faces but once our backs are turned, the slander and bad-mouthing start. Partly because of their interference and story-telling, my parents are now separated. May their black souls be condemned to hell for all eternity.

So, back to my post. Sometimes I think, in my humble opinion, the family that we are marrying into expects too much from the new-comer, be it man or woman. It is a little daunting to be setting such a high level on someone who’s not from the family and who’s only starting to learn the family’s ways. It’s somewhat like expecting a newly graduated business student to write a business plan that is guaranteed to bring in a billion dollars. It’s one small step at a time, just like how babies start out.

There is another reason that may be the cause of rifts between the in-laws and the newcomer; jealousy. I’ve seen, in my own family, how just a little bit of attention can cause a person to turn into an evil green-eyed monster. Just because the parents-in-law like the newcomer’s cooking more or decided to give a present to the newcomer, the original sons and daughters, and sometimes even the other son and daughter-in-law, feel threatened. “Who does this person think he/she is, coming into the family and thinking he/she should get such attention?” It’s irrational, it’s immature, but yes, face the facts, it does happen.

I’m not trying to paint a bleak picture of marriage nor am I trying to discourage people from getting married but sometimes it is the in-laws who start the crumbling of the marriage. Like my mother often said, ‘When you marry, you’re not just marrying the girl/guy. You’re marrying their family, and their problems, as well’.

There are nice in-laws, like my sister-in-law’s family who are very close to each other and the newcomers, but it is your duty to figure out (1) if you want to marry into the family, whether they like you or not, and (2) if you can tolerate the family if they don’t like you. For example, one of my ex-boyfriend’s mom took him aside one day and asked him if he really wanted to marry someone with my kind of family background. What she said was, “Children usually follow their parents. If the parents are divorced or from a divorced family, most likely the children will repeat history in their own marriage.” Do I really want to have a judgmental mother-in-law who branded me without even knowing me indepth?

Not everyone is lucky enough to get in-laws that are warm and welcoming. Those who do, are indeed very lucky. Even luckier are those who have a spouse that believes in them, who stands up for them when confronted with the in-laws. My friend’s mom is lucky to have a husband who believes nothing his siblings tried to inform him of his wife, which were all exaggerated stories, slander and half-truths. He stood up for her because he knows her for who she is. After all, it is he who married her, who sees her everyday, who goes to bed with her every night, who talks to her about every little thing, who is taken care of by her, who went through tough and good times with her.

Pray that all goes well for you before and after marriage and pray that you will at least get along with your in-laws. If not, then try your best to stick through it all with patience and determined understanding. I hope all goes well.

Have you heard of stories or have a personal experience of being locked in a toilet? Well, just to cheer myself up (and all of you out there), I thought I’d share some ‘toilet humour’.

One day when the cousins had an outing at Midvalley Megamall, the eldest girl needed to go to the loo. Since it was a public holiday, the rest of us knew that there was going to be a very long queue so we told her we would wait for her at the nearby shops. After nearly 10 minutes have passed, we all went to see what was the hold-up. Surely the queue couldn’t be that bad.

As we stood outside the entrance, one of us went to check the line but when we couldn’t find her anywhere, we thought she must still be in the loo or has gone out to find us. Just as I was about to dial her number, her name popped up on my caller screen.

“Where are you? Still in the toilet?” I asked.

“You have to come help me. I’m stuck,” my eldest cousin replied, slightly panicked.

“Stuck? What do you mean stuck? Stuck where?”

“I’m stuck in the toilet.”

“How can you be stuck there?”

“I can’t get the door to open. I’ve been trying and trying. Pushing, pulling, it won’t open,” her voice rising slightly through the speaker.

Laughing, I told the girls what was happening and all four of us went helter-skelter into the washroom. We called her name to find which stall she was in and she stuck her foot out from under the very first stall. The women queuing for the toilet just watched the impromptu entertainment show as we tugged and pushed the door. It was true, it wouldn’t open. We asked her to try the lock again but she said she had turned it all the way and it still wouldn’t open.

Just as we thought we needed to get hold of the maintanence people, I saw that the outside lock had a groove that would just fit a Malaysian 10 cent coin. Vaguely remembering a scene from somewhere, I dug out a coin from my jean pocket and fitted it into the lock and turned.

Lo and behold, the toilet door opened.

When she saw us, she fiercely hugged the closest cousin to her and instead of coming out, she dragged the cousin into the stall to prove that the lock was indeed faulty. Apparently, even though the latch was turned all the way, after years of wear and tear, a small piece of it managed to get stuck in the lock, creating (cue eerie music) ‘the toilet stall that can never be opened from the inside’.

And so we left, laughing and teasing her as we went on with our shopping, and later in the day, we returned to the same washroom as another cousin needed to answer the call of nature. There, we discovered that yet another poor soul has gotten herself stuck in the toilet and her friend had to call the cleaning lady, who was there at the time, to open the door. She used the exact same coin trick I had earlier. The thing is instead of locking the stall to prevent further use (and further imprisonment), the cleaning lady just left it as it is. I pity the woman who would be the foul demonic stall’s next victim. I’ll pity her even more if she was all alone and it was near the mall’s closing time with no one around to notice her predicament.

Sometimes I wonder…

How deep is a sister’s love for her younger/older sister?

I don’t have a sister of my own, only a brother, so I wouldn’t really know how it feels like to have an older or younger sister. I tend to look at my cousins and my friends for some input on sister-relationship and, well, I don’t know if it’s the limited girls I know who have sisters or if all sisters are this way, but what I find is that sisters fight ALOT. And that the emotion involved between them is usually JEALOUSY.

Is it the difference in ages that spurs the many cat-fights? Is it the vying for attention from the parents?

I know not ALL sisters fight. I mean, take my mother and her three sisters. They don’t really fight, they just argue because of the difference in opinions and views, and they don’t go spreading rumours or talk about each other behind their backs. But some of the sisters I know do that, even though they’re blood-related and in the same family.

Take my good friend for instance. Her elder sister hates her. Truly, I’m not exaggerating. The rumours and untruths she told her mom about my friend created such a rift between them that her mom has disowned her, without even bothering to listen to my friend’s side of the story. What kind of sister is this? And apparently this is fueled by the sister’s paranoid feeling that the father loves my friend more. What’s the connection there? “Our dad loves you more so I’m going to take our mom away from you”?

Another pair of sisters I know are always fighting. The eldest has been picking fights non-stop with the youngest. Nothing the youngest sister say or do is right. I find it kinda weird if you can even berate your sister for using your towel. I mean, it’s a towel. Wash it and it’s clean all over again, and it’s not like you don’t have more than one towel.

The reason why I’m talking about sisters is because my father has a second wife, who gave birth to a girl. The girl, or perhaps I should say my step-sister, is about 11 years younger than me. Though we don’t hang out, we don’t talk and we hardly see each other, she seems to hate my guts.

Society always has this misconception that step-family hates each other. I don’t hate my step-sister (I hate my step-mother but that’s an entirely different thing), but maybe she hates me, I don’t know. My reaction to her is simply indifference. I accept the fact that she’s my father’s daughter and she’s considered a step-sister, but that is all. Other than that, I don’t know how to act with her (partly ‘coz she’s in that teenage angst period of her life, which is damn scary). Another part, which I’m not sure how true it is, could be perhaps of the stories her mother tells her of me and perhaps a mild jealousy of me since I am the first daughter from the first family.

Truth be told, though my dad wants us to mingle as a real family and take care of each other when he’s gone, I’m not sure if that can ever happen. The tension and the wariness is too strong between the two family of siblings. I wonder at how some step-families can get along with each other. I think that takes tremendous courage and open-mindedness. With my step-sister, I think we both still can’t get over the fact that each other exists so perhaps it’s best that we remain apart and aloof for the meantime. Time will tell if we ever get to relate with each other like some sisters or whether we’ll end up fighting and slandering each other like those sisters. Before that, I’ll just keep observing the sisters that I know so I can learn more about this weird relationship called ’sisterly love’.