▸ Column · Modern Dragon Ball Earth — Capsule Corp, holiday dinners with the in-laws
BULMA replies.
The letter
My husband and I have been married three years and have made a clear, mutual, no-regrets decision not to have kids. The trouble is his Aunt Renata. At every single family gathering — birthdays, the big Capsule Corp holiday dinners, his cousin's graduation last month — she corners me where everyone can hear and asks whether I've "seen a doctor about it," whether my husband knows my "clock is ticking," like my body is a topic open to the table. I've tried changing the subject and smiling through it; she plows right past me. Meanwhile my husband finds something fascinating across the room the instant he sees her coming. I don't want to detonate a family dinner or force his parents to pick sides, but I am done spending holidays deflecting the suggestion that my uterus is everyone's group project. Is there a firm-but-civil line I can use that will actually shut it down?
Bulma replies
Okay, let's take this apart, because you've aimed the wrench at the wrong bolt. Renata is loud and rude and she steamrolls — annoying, sure, but she's not the malfunction. The malfunction is the man who married you and then sprints for the snack table the second his own aunt shows up to interrogate his wife in public. That's the part you've quietly decided to live with, and you shouldn't.
I share a house with the proudest man in the universe — a guy who'll train a week straight to win an argument that didn't need winning — and believe me, if some relative came at me sideways, he'd be standing right there, because that's the actual deal. So no, I'm not handing you a clever solo script to perform while he hides.
You want a line? "That's between me and your nephew. Go ask him." Calm, clear, done — and then you make him answer, every time, in front of everyone. Renata plows through you because it costs her nothing, and his vanishing act is the proof. Stop absorbing the hit for a coward in his own family. You're not the community uterus, sweetheart. You're the wife he's letting take fire. Fix that. Don't make it weird.
— Bulma
Frieza weighs in
Oh, how quaint — the genius's grand solution is to fetch a husband to fight one's battles. Bulma, darling, you've always confused a partnership for a strategy. The woman doesn't need a man planted at her elbow; she needs to stop treating a tiresome aunt's opinion as though it weighed anything at all. Renata steamrolls because you flinch, you poor thing — every deflection is a small bow. So next time: smile. "How kind of you to worry. I'd never dream of taking your advice." Serene. Immaculate. Let her feel the temperature drop. Begging your spouse to defend you merely advertises that you require defending — though one wouldn't expect Capsule Corp to grasp the difference between an ally and a crutch.
— Frieza
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