Hey Emilie
I do agree with you - after many years of domestic strife and bliss with own FH - that some of all this IS cultural. My sister is also in similar situation to yours; she's currently a stay-at-home wife and mother with two small children, aged 3 and 6, and married to a workaholic Italian research scientist - and he has been known to do the martyred 'I'm going to tidy the house properly and vaccum all the carpets at midnight because you're so a hopelessly inadequate and disorganized ( a domestic slut)' routine, too. I'd shut him in the cellar ... Except of course I couldn't/wouldn't any more than she can and apart from moments of spectacular awfulness, he has many redeeming features. But. One thing really burns in my brain though, and that is the remark that a friend made about her own husband's awful domestic tyranny. On the up side, this really was a case of true and long-term reformed behaviour after he had driven her to leaving him . He promised to reform if she would come back, and he really did. I asked her if he had any explanation for being such a horrendous control-freak and all-round bastard and she said 'I suppose he thought he could get away with it.' I don't know if that helps, but it has always stuck with me. And - after many years struggle - there are certain zero tolerance zones that I've managed to create with my own FH .., most of the time anyway. But you know the retired couple - the gendarme and Huguette characters in the Scenes de Ménage sketches on M6 - they never make me laugh. My husband says its French humour, but I can't help seeing some un-evolved and and nastily misogynistic corner of the French psyche.
The other thing is the self esteem idea.I've had huge problems with that too. I think there was some sort of vestigal Protestant ethic about it being self indulgent and half-baked. You hear the term so much in the context of sort of wishy-washy self-help contexts that I kind of associated it with dodgy popular psychology as fundamentally unsound. But then I found being the main provider and organizer, being a mother (of only one!) and trying holding down a stressful job in publishing where I felt I had to prove myself all the time had me on my knees. I was so busy trying to sort everything out and look after everyone that I kind of totally lost sight of me - I literally truly forgot what I used to like doing or be interested in, what I was even actually like as a person. But when this happens you end up as a kind of negative space, a human black hole, which is terrible for you AND just as bad for all those people who you love and are trying to look after. You HAVE to nurture and cherish and be proud of yourself just to stay viable. It's the same principle as during aircraft safety demonstrations when they tell parents of young children and babies to in the event of the emergency put their own oxygen masks on first and only then to help the children. So, you are right and all right and (please forgive me for going all new-agey, but I am a yoga teacher in training) actually the Divine Feminine incarnate on earth as well, so NO silly man throwing his weight around, can ever truly put you down or get you down - even if he can do open-heart surgery. Where would he be without you? For a start probably minus loo paper, light bulbs, toothpaste, bin bags, surrounded by under-dressed children (show me a man - even one who's been in the forces and is a gourmet cook - who knows how to put tights on a two-year-old) distraught from all that 'negative encouragement'. If it all gets too much, leave him to stew in his own juice for a few days if necessary, just as a reminder.
Just one last thing - something that happened when I was child in the 70s (early days of feminism - I was shocked to find out recently that in the UK, a woman couldn't take out a mortgage in her own name until 1976, not so long ago, eh?). There was a couple - the man was a nuclear scientist, the woman a stay-at-home housewife and they had three or four sons. The woman was a devoted wife and mother, looked after everyone, did all the cooking, shopping, washing, cleaning, etc. in their largish house and garden (and anyone whose ever done anything along those lines can imagine what extremely hard work this must have been), but the husband and sons fell into the habit (the sons imitating the husband) of talking to the wife/mother in a particular patronizing tone, making asides all the time about how scatty and not very bright she was, making her the butt of jokes and putting her down in public, etc. The family were friends of my uncle and aunt's and although this was done in a light-hearted, bantering way, my uncle picked up on it and it sometimes made him a bit uncomfortable, but the woman herself seemed to be used to it and to take it in her stride, paying any attention. That is until the day when she just waded out into the sea with stones in her pockets until the water closed over head. The husband and sons were totally shocked and almost mad with grief, but it was too late.
Lots of love and empowerment
Anna xx (NB since this is a public forum and I don't want to unnecessarily offend all the nice men out there, I would apply the same principal to the Divine Light in chaps as well - the point is about bullying/silly bugger behaviour which of course both sexes can be guilty of, but - if you are the one stuck in a foreign country with no or very little independent means, the balance of power can feel heavily weighted against you.)