u/Devanshi_13658

I genuinely don’t understand why wanting to live separately from in-laws after marriage is treated like some kind of moral failure in the arranged marriage space.

For me, it’s not about hating in-laws or “breaking the family”. It’s about understanding the power dynamics of the situation.

Imagine my MIL doesn’t like me. She is perfectly pleasant in front of my husband, but privately she taunts me, makes passive-aggressive comments, excludes me from things, or just generally makes it clear that I’m not welcome.

Who am I supposed to talk to?

My husband is obviously going to be the one person I feel comfortable opening up to because he’s the person I’m building a life with. So I tell him what’s happening.

Except she knows how to play the game better than I do. It’s her house. Her son. Her family. She has known him for decades. She can very easily be the loving, reasonable mother who “only wants what’s best for everyone”, while I become the new wife who apparently “has a problem with everything”.

And then I’m expected to survive this dynamic every single day while simultaneously trying to build a healthy marriage.

Why the fuck would I voluntarily put myself in that position?

Men generally aren’t expected to marry into their wife’s family and then spend every day navigating their FIL/MIL’s approval, household politics, traditions, expectations and subtle power dynamics. They get to come home to their wife and have a space that is theirs.

So why is it unreasonable for women to want the same thing?

I want a home with my husband where we can figure out our own routines, build our own relationship, have disagreements privately, make our own decisions and grow together without a third party being part of the marriage by default.

And somehow this very simple request gets catastrophized into:
“Women nowadays want to break families.”
Break whose family?

When I get married and leave my parents’ home, am I not leaving my family too? I wasn’t raised in an orphanage. I have parents who love me, a home, relationships and a family of my own.

Nobody calls it “breaking the family” when a daughter leaves her parents to start a new household.
But when she wants that new household to actually be a separate household, suddenly she is selfish, westernised, disrespectful and apparently personally responsible for the collapse of Indian civilisation.
I don’t want to take anyone’s son away from his parents.

I want him to have a relationship with his parents, visit them, support them, spend time with them and be there for them.

I just don’t think being a good son requires him to make his wife live permanently under his parents’ roof.

A couple having their own home isn’t the destruction of a family. It is the creation of one.
And honestly, if a marriage can only survive when the wife has no physical or emotional space away from her in-laws, maybe the problem isn’t the woman asking for a separate house.

I think this might be an unpopular opinion, but after ~3 years in core finance, I’ve realised something.

The people who actually last in fields like IB, ER, PE, etc. are usually the ones who genuinely love the game.

A lot of people get into these roles because of the compensation, prestige, or because social media makes them look glamorous. But once you’re in, the novelty wears off pretty fast. What’s left is the actual work. Reading hundreds of pages, building models, writing reports, questioning assumptions, tracking companies, and constantly learning.

If you’re only there for the money, I honestly don’t think it’s sustainable. The hours and the mental load eventually catch up.

Personally, I’d still do what I do even if it paid significantly less. That’s how much I enjoy understanding businesses and markets. The money is a great bonus, but it’s not what gets me excited to open my laptop every morning.

I’m not saying you need to be obsessed from day one. But before chasing the “IB/PE/ER dream,” spend time understanding what the day-to-day work actually looks like. Don’t fall in love with the exit opportunities, compensation, or the title. Fall in love with the work itself.

Because that’s what separates the people who build long careers from those who burn out after a couple of years and end up wasting their time.

Curious if others working in core finance feel the same, or if you’ve had a different experience.

(Reframed this post using AI because i was too angry while writing this rant out and i don’t wanna be banned from the sub so…bear with me.)

People keep calling Mumbai the financial capital of India. Great. Then where exactly is the infrastructure that supposedly comes with that title?

Every monsoon it’s the same story.

If you own a car or somehow manage to get a cab, congratulations. Your reward is spending 3-4 hours crawling through crater-sized potholes and flooded roads just to travel a few kilometres.

Don’t have a car? Then your option is to squeeze yourself into a local train where commuting feels like a daily survival challenge instead of public transport.
And before someone says “Metro aa gayi na.”

Which metro?

The network still doesn’t connect a huge chunk of the residential areas in the central suburbs beyond Ghatkopar in any meaningful way.

Half the city still can’t rely on it for their daily commute. Even the Versova-Ghatkopar line is packed to the point where it feels like another local train during peak hours. The only metro I’ve found genuinely comfortable is the Aqua Line, and that barely solves commuting for most people.

Meanwhile we’re paying some of the highest taxes in the country.

Income tax.
GST.
Road tax.
Fuel taxes.
Stamp duty.
Property taxes.
Everything imaginable.

Where is that money going?

Because it certainly isn’t visible on the roads.

It isn’t visible in drainage.

It isn’t visible in public transport capacity.

It isn’t visible in basic urban planning.

Every year we get the same flooded streets, the same traffic paralysis, the same overcrowded trains, the same promises, and then everyone collectively forgets until the next monsoon arrives to remind us that nothing actually changed.

The biggest joke isn’t even the rain anymore.
It’s that one of the richest cities in India somehow manages to provide infrastructure that feels decades behind what taxpayers are funding.

At this point, paying taxes in Mumbai feels less like contributing to public infrastructure and more like making a donation with absolutely no receipt.

Regards,
a girl born in this shithole just trying to get home after work but still stuck on this stupid road since 4 hours