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The Woman's Way

I believe that in order to understand Korean men, we must know something about their beliefs and culture first.

The Koreans in general do believe in the Confucian doctrine. The Rule of three Obediencies states that a woman is a subordinate to:

(1)her father before marriage,
(2)her husband after marriage, and
(3)her son(s) once she is widowed

This belief of Chosun system of male family has persisted to the present day (even the guys don’t agree sometimes) despite the countervailing demands of industrialization.

The doctrine itself is somehow a key to understand why men thought of their selves as the head or the “king” of the family.

In the courting period, this isn’t a problem. Of course, all of us may vouch for this that, the courtship period is not the reality, the reality starts once you married the man and live together in the same house. After a few years time, you’ll get to know each other and somewhere between life will be a little tougher than before.

But before life gets tougher, let me give you some tips on how can you manage your marriage at the same time keeping your beliefs intact with you.

I’ve mentioned a while ago that, husbands think of their selves as kings or at least more powerful than their wives. Aside from the Confucian belief that I mentioned before, the society in general has gender roles that may also add to this behavior of men.

I believe that even in the 20th century men are always the same. They expect woman to take care of him and your very own family. In simple words, he’d like to see you making breakfast for him, doing the house chores and taking care of your kids. On the other hand, we’d like to see our husbands too to be breadwinners--- sustaining our family’s financial needs. So, what do you think if your husband doesn’t have a job? Or he never gives you allowance? It’s the same way how men feel when the wife doesn’t give in to their expectations. Do you agree with me?

SO the best advice that I may give you is going to be hard. But I assure you you’ll reap good results after.

The first year of marriage is tough. It’s the get-to-know period of the couple. I believe wives should be wary at this stage. The honeymoon period is the time where both of couples are starting to build trust with each other. Wives play a major role at this time. As a good wife, we should be the ones who should try to be patient, loving, or better if I say make an “impression” to our husbands at first. This is the hardest part. An immigrant woman at this time is faced to diferent problems: language barrier, home sickness, cultural shock and marriage adjustments.

Emotions are high at this point, but I care to say that if you could set aside for a while the other problems and take a much cheerful view of your present life, it might work a little magic after.

Okay, so what I mean is making the best of your marriage at this time. Take the initiative to learn! Please your husband with your good work as a wife, take care of him and show good flexibility with his family and his culture. Express your best interest and let him know you mean these. I told you this will be difficult but take risks, if you give him these good impressions at first, he will trust you for sure and think of you as his loyal partner. He would be proud of you to his parents and friends. He’ll be your most faithful fan.

And this is the time you should use wisely.

This is the time you may tell something about what you believe in. When the two of you have already established trust, he will learn to listen to what you want to say. Think of this, if in the beginning of your marriage you have already complained a lot to your husband about a lot of things, I’m missing my country and family, “in our country it’s not like that” stories, do you think he would like it? (Reverse the situation and you’ll know what I mean) but as I said, if in the beginning you showed how good are you as a wife and showed him your good qualities and enduring a lot of cultural differences, I assure you he’ll appreciate it and thank you for what you have done. Men are not stupid not to know what you have been going through. He knows how hard it is for you to give up your life and your family, be a thousand miles away from home and be here just for him. So, instead of making your life miserable, take command and make yourself a life!

Always remember that a good communication is the key for a successful marriage. It is love why we came here and we must trust that love too, to last and to stand troubles of our marriage. WOMEN can change men little by little with our own good way.

Comments

Kayni said…
Hi! Bumped unto your blog. It's interesting to hear about this Confucian doctrine. I'd like to learn more about it.

Greetings from DC.

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