Why i HATED my Japanese Mother in-law [3jVaLR19dqQ]

So as most of you know, I was married to a

Japanese lady, and obviously that involves

having Japanese in-laws. And I did have a

Japanese mother-in-law, a Japanese

sister-in-law, and I guess also a Japanese

brother-in-law because the sister-in-law

was married and had a husband. You may

have noticed that I didn't say that I also

had a Japanese father-in-law, and I'll

explain why later. And even though it

would be a nice topic to be able to talk

about what it was like having Japanese

in-laws, unfortunately I don't have any

experience of meeting my in-laws because

they never showed any interest in meeting

me at all. It's just so weird that I was

married to my ex-wife for nearly 2 years,

and during this entire time I never met my

in-laws even once, and they showed no

interest in meeting me either. In what

kind of world can you be married to

someone for nearly 2 years and not even

meet any of their family members ever?

Not even once. My ex-girlfriend introduced

me to her entire family after only dating

me for a few months, and I even saw her

grandmother naked. But my ex-girlfriend

was Dutch and my ex-wife was Japanese, so

obviously there's cultural differences

there. So I didn't really care that much

about meeting my Japanese in-laws anyway,

because usually I'm not really that

interested in meeting the family or

friends of the girls or women that I'm

sleeping with. And that's mainly because

in general I don't really enjoy a lot of

social interaction, and usually most of my

relationships end up in failure, and then

I feel like I've just wasted all this

time, energy, and effort into meeting her

relatives and meeting her mum and dad,

and I didn't really enjoy it, and it just

stressed me out, and all of that was for

nothing really. But I do feel a little bit

insulted that they showed no interest in

meeting me. I just feel so insulted that I

came all the way from England, all the way

to Japan. I learned your culture and I put

time and effort into learning your

language, and I chose your daughter as the

person I wanted to marry, and you didn't

even have the decency to meet me even once

before making up your mind if you liked me

or not. Right from the very beginning, my

ex-wife's mother didn't even like me, and

she opposed us being together and getting

married for no other reason than just

because I'm a foreigner, which is my only

guess. Have any other idea why her mother

would dislike me so much without even

knowing who I am. It's kind of funny

because I still remember very clearly the

day that I was supposed to meet my

ex-wife's mother. And we had this plan

where my ex-wife would meet her mother at

some restaurant and have dinner. And at

the dinner, my ex-wife would tell her

mother that we were together and we were

planning to get married. And if the mother

was happy with the idea, then I would get

dressed and I would go meet them at the

restaurant. And my ex-wife would message

me telling me to come to the restaurant,

and then I would meet the mother

mother-in-law and everything would have

been fine. That's what I thought would

happen. I didn't think that the

mother-in-law would go crazy and then get

really angry and upset over the idea of

her daughter getting married. It's just

such a bizarre thing to get upset and

angry over. You'd think that she would be

happy that her daughter finally found

someone that she wanted to be together

with and that she would be happy for us,

but no. So I was sitting in the apartment

all dressed and ready to go to the

restaurant, waiting for this text message

which never came. And after about half an

hour of waiting, my ex wife comes home

alone and she's crying and she's really

sad and she tells me what happened. She

said her mum was really upset and really

angry at the idea of us getting married,

and she threatened my ex-wife that if we

go ahead with it, then she would disown

her and write her out of the family will.

And I remember just feeling so hurt, so

insulted, because, well, usually I'm used

to people not liking me and I'm used to

people disliking me for usually good

reasons. Usually I deserved not being

liked, but I've never been hated before

even meeting someone. Her mum didn't even

give me a chance to give her a reason to

dislike me. She just disliked me straight

away. And I think I know why her mum

didn't like me straight from the

beginning. It's because I'm not Japanese.

It's because I'm a foreigner. And also

because my ex-wife's dad had an affair

with a Korean lady. He then divorced my

ex-wife's mum and then married the Korean

lady, got her a spouse visa, and when he

passed away, he left all of his belongings

and money to the Korean lady instead of my

ex-wife's mum. And I think that's why my

ex-wife's mother was so salty. Maybe

because of her own personal experiences,

she just saw me as the same kind of

trouble. And I think it's kind of unfair

that she just painted me with the same

brush. It's not my fault her marriage

failed. Maybe if she was a better wife,

then the husband wouldn't have cheated

with this Korean woman. So as you know,

we went ahead with the marriage anyway and

told the mother-in-law to shove it. And

relations between my ex-wife and her

family were pretty rocky and not great

during during the time that we were

together. The only times my ex-wife

managed to get closer back to her family

was when we had arguments, and then my

ex-wife would go back to her parents' home

and then basically whine about me to her

family, which didn't really paint me in a

very good picture. It actually got to the

point where my ex-wife couldn't go back to

her parents' house to whine about me to

her family every time we had an argument

because the family would just say the same

thing each time. They would just say, why

don't you just divorce him? That's what

they wanted the entire time. They wanted

my ex- wife to divorce me. Well, I guess

they got what they wanted, and my ex-wife

didn't do a very good job at proving the

mother wrong about me being her husband.

And I felt kind of sad about it because

ever since I was 17 or 18 watching anime

and dreaming about this perfect fantasy

life that I would have in Japan with a

Japanese wife and a Japanese family-in-law

that would be accepting and welcome me

into the family and show interest in me

and be impressed with my Japanese skills

and think I'm such a great son-in-law,

none of those dreams ever came true. And

instead a complete nightmare just

happened, and the complete opposite

happened where they all hated me for

literally no reason from the beginning.

And I really think the main reason why

they disliked me straight from the

beginning was just because I'm a

foreigner. You hear so many stories of

Japanese women getting disowned by their

family because they wanted to marry a

black guy, or they wanted to date a white

guy, or marry a Spanish guy, or whatever

foreigner guy. And I'm pretty sure one of

the biggest reasons why Japanese women

only date Japanese men is mainly because

they want to please their family. They

don't want to get disowned. They don't

want to have arguments with their really

strict conservative dad. They want to

please their parents. And in most cases,

most Japanese parents are just not happy

and they're not okay with their daughter

marrying a foreigner. This whole

experience has just really highlighted to

me how xenophobic and how two-faced

Japanese society can be. Japan's always

bragging about how respectful and how

humble they are and how welcoming they are

and how great their hospitality is. To

foreigners coming to Japan, but then they

completely freak out at the idea of their

daughters marrying foreigners, and they

say all this horrible stuff like, you're

not my daughter anymore, you're not part

of the family, I'm disowning you, you're

not going to get any of the inheritance

money, blah blah blah. I just think it's

so childish and immature that they can't

be accepting to who their child has

decided to fall in love with. Sure, maybe

if the person that your child or your

daughter is getting married to is some

kind of criminal or some kind of horrible,

terrible person who seems dangerous, then

sure, I can understand understand why

you'd be against your daughter marrying

this guy, but if you're against your

daughter marrying this guy purely because

he's just a foreigner, then that's kind of

weird. I just really find Japan's blatant

xenophobic tendencies to be so bizarre.

It's like they don't want to have anything

to do with the outside world in any way at

all. They don't want to be involved, they

don't want to participate. They're happy

to shut the borders for nearly 3 years to

foreign tourists. They just have a really

old-fashioned and outdated mindset, and I

don't think this is going to change

anytime soon. One of the weirdest

experiences I had when I was married

involving my ex-wife's mother was that

every time we'd go to the supermarket, on

the way to the supermarket, we would walk

past this bar. And my ex-wife's mother

used to really like going to this bar.

She would go to that bar almost every

weekend to drink. And we would know that

the mother-in-law was inside of the bar

because we could see her bicycle parked up

outside. And we would go past the bar as

quickly as we could in case we

accidentally bumped into the

mother-in-law. And I always used to think,

this is so weird. In any other kind of

normal relationship, relationship, we

would go into the bar and say hi to the

mother-in-law, maybe join her for a few

drinks and have a chat and have a good

time, have a catch-up. But no, in our

weird marriage, our weird relationship,

we would sneak past the bar and pray that

she didn't see us go past. Because when we

nearly got divorced the first time and we

nearly broke up, but then we got back

together again, my ex-wife didn't tell her

mum that we got back together again.

Actually, her entire family thought we had

gotten divorced when really, we got back

together again and we were together,

still married, for nearly a year. And we

had to kind of keep it a secret, and it

was a bit risky because her family lived

in the same town, the same area that we

lived in. And on the way to the

supermarket, there could have been a

chance that we bumped into the

mother-in-law, and then the whole secret

would have been revealed. We also had to

be careful that the friends of the

mother-in-law didn't see me and my ex-wife

walking around together, because then they

might say something to the mother-in-law

and say, oh, I didn't know your daughter

was seeing someone. I saw her holding

hands with a guy. So we always had to be

careful going to the supermarket or

walking around the area in case someone

found out that we were still together.

The whole situation was just so

ridiculous, and my ex-wife couldn't tell

her family that we were back together

because then she would feel really stupid

if we actually did get divorced and we

actually broke up for real. So I guess in

the end, the mother-in-law and my ex-wife

were both right, and the mother-in-law can

say, I told you so, because she was right

about our marriage not being a good idea.

And my ex-wife was also right about not

telling her family we got back together

again because we did indeed end up

divorcing and breaking up for good. So

that was my experience having Japanese

in-laws. Needless to say, I don't really

like them and I don't really like the

mother-in-law. And I'm glad I never had to

meet them because it just would have been

a massive waste of time. And even if I did

meet them, what would have happened? I

would have went to the house with my

ex-wife, they would have been all chatting

and talking, and I'd just be sitting there

in the corner by myself looking at my

phone probably. I can't really imagine any

of them talking to me much apart from

hello and how has your day been. Also, my

sister-in-law, or my ex-wife's sister's

husband, was a policeman, so it would have

been really awkward me meeting a policeman

when I don't really have a proper job

either. My job was and is being a

YouTuber. I don't think your average

Japanese person, or an old Japanese person

who's probably kind of traditional, could

ever get their head around or grasp

someone making videos on YouTube

that's just messing around, just a silly

hobby that you do for fun. It's not a real

job. They would never understand that this

is a real job. They would just think I'm

weird for not doing anything else like

teaching English or doing some kind of IT

job. They would think I'm some kind of

weirdo loser who just stays in his room

all day playing video games whilst his

wife goes out and works and brings home

the money, when in reality that wasn't

what it was like at all. I can just

imagine how awkward it would have been,

me sitting there on my phone whilst

they're all chatting away in Japanese and

I can't be bothered trying to understand

what they're saying, because it actually

takes quite a lot of brainpower to stay

concentrated and actually take in what

people are talking about in a foreign

language. So I guess in hindsight, it was

good that I never had to meet them, and I

saved myself a lot of trouble. I still

just can't help but feel a little bit hurt

and upset that they just didn't really

care about me at all, and they just wanted

me to be out of the picture, and they

wanted my ex-wife to divorce me.