Feeling Homesick After Marriage

Ever since I got married, I have been living in two worlds.

One world is my present reality, where I live in a home with six people and a dog. The other is my maternal home, where there were only three of us—my mother, my brother, and me.

We have witnessed the darkest of times together, yet we never left each other's side. Even when my brother had to move to another city for two years, my mother and I held each other's hands and got through everything together.

Now that I am married, I don't find either of them around me the way I used to.

It has been a little over seven months since my marriage. I have the best husband I could have ever dreamed of, and I am deeply grateful for him. Yet, I still feel homesick.

It isn't that I face any abuse from my in-laws. Nor do they make me feel like an outsider. They have always treated me with kindness. But even then, I can't fully accept my new reality.

Every night before going to sleep, I find myself imagining a different life—one where I had never gotten married and was still living with my mother and my brother.

I often cry over the smallest things. When my husband asks me, "What's bothering you?" I simply say, "Nothing."

Because how do I explain something that isn't caused by anyone?

How do I tell him that I simply miss my own people?

Before I got married, I used to wonder why some married daughters would visit their mothers every single week, even years after their wedding. I couldn't understand it then.

Now I do.

A woman never stops needing her mother.

And I often think how fortunate those women are whose in-laws never stop them from going back home whenever they want. Sometimes, only a woman can truly understand another woman's silent ache.

But when it comes to me, every time I visit my parents, I don't want to come back.

Because where am I coming back to?

To my husband's home, where every routine, every decision, every tradition already existed long before I arrived. Where everything naturally revolves around him and his family. Where I have to constantly remind myself that this is my home now.

But my heart still searches for the place where I never had to remind myself that I belonged.

I want my home.

I probably won't share this blog with anyone because people might judge me for saying this. They may think I am ungrateful or that I dislike my new family.

But do I?

Am I wrong for missing the place where I could simply be myself?

The place where I danced while cooking.

Where I never had to think twice before stepping out.

Where I didn't have to ask for permission.

Where I laughed loudly without wondering whether someone might find it childish.

I am not saying, and I will never say, that my in-laws are bad people. They aren't. They are kind-hearted. They take care of me whenever I fall sick. They have never intentionally made me feel unwelcome.

But kindness and familiarity are two different things.

I still cannot be my complete, unfiltered self around them.

The only person who sees that version of me now is my husband. He appreciates me, loves me, cares for me, understands me, and accepts me exactly the way I am.

And for that, I am endlessly grateful.

Maybe this isn't about choosing between two homes.

Maybe this is simply the quiet grief that every daughter carries after marriage.

The grief of leaving behind the place where she never had to earn her belonging.

Perhaps one day this new house will feel like home too—not because someone tells me it is, but because my heart finally believes it.

Until then, I will continue living in these two worlds, carrying one in my memories while slowly learning to build the other.

Love,

Manveen
(I don't wanna go to his home, yet I have to- with tears in my eyes and smile on my face.)