'Just adjust, beta.' Why her advice does not fit your marriage

Your mausi says, "Just adjust, beta." She says it kindly, on the phone, the week after you told her about the fight. It worked in her house, in 1990. So you try. You adjust. And three weeks later you are having the same fight, only quieter.

So here is the question. Why does advice that held her marriage together sit so badly in yours?

She is not wrong

Start here, because it matters. Your mausi is not wrong. In her house, it was true.

Picture that house as she tells it. One landline in the hall, where everybody could hear. One salary, and one salary slip. A table laid for nine: her in-laws, his brothers, the children. No door she could close.

In a house like that, "adjust" had a job. If she had fought every small thing, nine people would have lived inside the fight. So she let some things go, and the house stayed steady. And she was not alone with what she let go. Somebody at that table noticed. A sister-in-law made the tea that day. Her mother-in-law took her side the next week. The adjusting went round the table.

That is not a weak way to live. It is a skill, and she is proud of it, and she is handing it to you because she loves you.

Then the line breaks

Now draw a line from her house to yours. For a while it runs straight. Two people, a marriage, a family that has opinions. Then the line breaks, because your house, now, is not her house.

Two phones. Two salaries, and two salary slips. A small flat, and a table for two. Both of you come home tired, at different times, from two offices.

Put "adjust" into this house and see what it does. Here, what one of you swallows quietly, nobody else is there to notice. There is no sister-in-law at the table. There is no next week when the turn goes round. There is one other person, and if they did not see it, nobody did. So the thing you let go does not leave. It sits between two people in a small flat.

This is not a research finding, and it is not a rule about marriages then and now. It is one way of looking, and it is worth trying on your own house: advice is made for the house it grew up in. It travels well when the two houses are alike. Where the houses stop being alike, the advice has to be drawn again.

So the trouble is not that her advice is old. The trouble is that it was built for a full table, and it has been carried, without changes, to a table for two.

What makes advice travel

Every piece of advice has two parts. There is the move ("adjust") and there is the job it was doing (keeping a full house steady). The move belongs to her house. The job may still belong to yours.

That is good news, because it means you do not have to choose between obeying your mausi and ignoring her. You can keep the job and redraw the move.

The one thing to try: three questions, together

The next time advice arrives, from a mausi, a colleague, or a reel, do not take it and do not throw it away. Tonight, after dinner, sit with your partner for ten minutes over chai. Before you take any advice, ask three questions, together.

1. "Whose house did it work in?" Describe that house out loud. Who lived in it, who earned, who was at the table.
2. "What is different in ours?" Say the plain things. Two salaries. A small flat. No one else at the table.
3. "What was it for? What does that job here?" In her house, adjusting kept a full house steady. Ask what would keep your house steady.

Then write one line, on paper, and finish it together: "In our house, adjust means…"

Your line is yours to write. Here is one a couple might land on: "In our house, adjust means we take turns, and we say it out loud." The same job, drawn again for a table for two. One of you lets go of the thing about Sunday. The other one hears it said, and takes the next turn.

Keep the paper somewhere you both see it. Notice one thing over the next week: when one of you lets something go, does the other one know?

It feels like homework the first time. Two adults at a table, taking apart a sentence from an aunt. One of you may laugh. That is the awkward part, and it passes.

And when your mausi asks, you can tell her the truth. "We are adjusting, mausi. Both of us."

One more thing, said plainly. This note is for two people who are safe with each other and are sorting out whose advice fits. If "adjust" is being said to you about being hurt, frightened, controlled or kept from your own money or your own family, that is a different situation and this note is not for it. This is relationship education, not therapy or medical advice. If any part of this describes what is happening in your relationship, a qualified professional or a local support service is the right next step, and not an article.

Each Sunday: one question to ask your partner, the research behind it, and one thing to try. The free Relationship Checkup is open to everyone, any time. Take the Relationship Checkup