u/Key-Poetry3003

Hi everyone, I’m an expat living in The Hague and I’m in a temporary financial situation due to delayed salary payments. My salary is expected in about 3 months, but I currently need short-term cash for basic expenses.

I’m looking for a legitimate pawn shop or place in/near The Hague where I can temporarily pawn gold jewelry (not sell it permanently) and later repay the amount to get the gold back.

I’m specifically looking for:

- trustworthy/legit businesses
- fair rates
- proper paperwork/receipts
- places that actually offer “belenen/verpanden” and not only gold buying

Preferably near Fahrenheitstraat, but anywhere in The Hague is fine.

If anyone has personal experience or recommendations, I’d really appreciate it. Thanks.

I (22F) feel like I’m slowly hitting my breaking point because of my mother-in-law. My husband and I live separately, but every time I talk to her on the phone, she finds subtle ways—through comments or metaphors—to make me feel inferior. No matter what I do, it’s never good enough for her.

What confuses me the most is how differently she behaves depending on who’s around. In front of my husband, she’s kind, supportive, and appreciative. But when we speak privately, her tone completely changes. It makes me feel manipulated and question myself a lot.

For example, I gifted her a mobile phone. She told my husband it was a great gift, but when I spoke to her alone, she complained that it wasn’t functioning properly. Another time, she told me: “There are girls who never find a good man and remain unmarried no matter how beautiful or capable they are. Good men are so rare these days.” It felt like a jab, especially because before our marriage, she was worried whether my father would even agree, since she believed I was “out of her son’s league.”

I don’t understand what changed after the marriage. Why does she take every chance to undermine me? I keep wondering if I’ve done something wrong, but I genuinely can’t figure out what.

This is draining me emotionally. I feel confused, hurt, and mentally exhausted. Cutting contact isn’t really an option because I feel like that would just give her more opportunity to play the victim and create more issues between me and my husband.

Has anyone dealt with something like this? How do you handle a mother-in-law who is nice in public but constantly puts you down in private?

I am newly married. I live abroad and I have a very good job. About a year before our marriage, my husband started suffering from severe migraines, because of which he could not continue his job. Since his mother is divorced from his father, my husband has been the one supporting his mother and younger brothers financially since childhood. Because of his situation, he was not in a position to tell his family that he had left his job.

So, for the last one and a half years, I started giving him more money every month than the salary he used to earn, so that his family would not face any problems and he could also focus on recovering. I give him 100,000 taka every month. After that, I married him and brought him abroad at my own expense. Even here, I am supporting him in every possible way so that he can find a job.

Even after all of this, my mother-in-law says hurtful things to me. Indirectly, she tells everyone that I have separated her son from her. Whereas, it was my husband’s and his entire family’s dream that he would go abroad, but because his father was not there, it could not happen before, and my husband also had a lot of pressure on him.

My mother-in-law never directly appreciates my work or my efforts. Instead, she cannot tolerate it if someone else praises me. She is always busy finding faults in me. My husband has told me to keep my distance from her because she never gave him peace in life either, and she did not fulfill her responsibilities as a mother. Still, I personally do not want any injustice to happen to any mother, so I try to keep them comfortable by spending my own money.

But when I maintain some distance, she calls my husband and complains that his wife does not check on her.

Now I am very confused. Am I doing something wrong? Even after doing so much, why do I not get appreciation, but instead I become the target of blame and criticism?