Chapter 261
Chapter 261: Love Yourself Before You Love Others
Every family has its own hard story. Madam Shen’s sharp tongue and annoying, scheming way of climbing up by any means were indeed unlikeable, but in this matter, she really was a bit pitiful.
It turned out that she and her husband had once been a couple who went through hardship together. They met when they were young and started a business together. You could say that on this whole road, she shared every bit of hardship her husband went through.
Even when she was pregnant back then, she was still running around with him to get business.
Because of that, when she gave birth to her daughter, she went into labor early. On top of that, they rushed her to the hospital late because of work. During delivery, her uterus ruptured and she lost a lot of blood.
To save her life, Madam Shen had no choice but to have her uterus removed and completely lost the ability to have any more children.
At first, her husband really was full of guilt and heartache. With tears in his eyes, he stood at her bedside and swore to his wife and their newborn child that he would treat the two of them well for the rest of his life, and that this would be his only child.
Madam Shen believed him. But when her husband’s mother, her mother-in-law, learned what had happened, she threw a huge tantrum.
She was unhappy that Madam Shen had only given birth to a daughter and would never be able to have a second child, that she had not left the family a son to carry on the line.
At first, Madam Shen’s husband would still try to calm things down. Later, after listening to the fights for so long, he got tired of it and simply stopped going home.
The first time Madam Shen caught him cheating was when their daughter was ten. At that moment she really felt like the sky had fallen. After she dragged the mistress out and dealt with her, she went home and told her husband she wanted a divorce. Unexpectedly, her husband dropped to his knees on the spot, crying and apologizing, saying again and again how much he loved her.
He told her it was only because arguing with his mother every day was too painful and lonely. Sometimes, when he talked business with his partners and heard them talk about their kids, especially their sons, and when people, seeing he was the company president, asked him about having a second child, he felt sour inside. That was why he made such a mistake.
He begged her to give him another chance and promised again that no matter what he did outside, he would never leave any children behind. Mengmeng would always be their only child.
Thinking of her young daughter at home, and worn down in body and mind by her mother-in-law’s nonstop nagging and brainwashing over the years, Madam Shen slowly started to grow a terrible thought: maybe she really had failed her husband, by not being able to give him a son to carry on the family line.
In the end, she gave in. She did not divorce him. She also stopped caring how many women Mr. Shen kept outside. She only asked that he absolutely must not leave any illegitimate children who could threaten her daughter’s place as heir.
[Men’s words are lies in pretty wrapping. The real reason he didn’t want to divorce you is that he couldn’t bear to lose his free nanny and capable helper, and especially didn’t want to split his assets. It has nothing to do with love at all. If he really loved you, why would he bring up the child again and again to rub salt in your wound and use it to control you? Isn’t that just naked PUA?]
The Du family members could not help nodding in agreement when they heard this. The looks they gave Madam Shen held more sympathy than before.
For decades, Madam Shen chose to play deaf and blind. She thought that once her mother-in-law passed away and no one at home used the topic of children to stab at her anymore, the family would go back to how it had been at the start.
Reality proved she was still too naive.
After her mother-in-law died, Mr. Shen did not “turn over a new leaf.” He kept women outside and changed them one after another. He only kept a “perfect couple” image with her in front of outsiders.
It was only then that Madam Shen’s heart finally turned cold. Keeping those so-called male models and college boys was something she started later, out of a kind of spite. She thought that since you can go out and find women, I can go find men. If we both cheat, neither of us owes the other anything.
But in truth, she kept that bunch mostly just to look at. Below the neck, almost nothing happened.
At most, when she was angered half to death by those mistresses and little fourths, she would run off to touch those male models’ firm abs to comfort herself a bit.
Du An Rao was speechless: “… So what exactly did you get out of all this?”
Everyone else also fell silent: “…” So she had the desire but not the guts. When they first heard An An talk about it, they thought Madam Shen was really wild. And this was it? Just this?
[That’s why, no matter who you are, you have to love yourself well before you love someone else. If you give all your love away, no one will be left to love you. Promises are only promises when they’re useful. When they aren’t, they’re just trash, something people toss away without a thought.]
Thinking of this, Du An Rao finally understood a little why Madam Shen had such strong hostility toward Qin Yan Qing.
Maybe, in every woman’s heart, the perfect kind of love is like that between her granduncle and Grandma Qin: one couple for a whole lifetime, not about family background, not about children, not even about temper, only about each other, and only about being the one and only.
They clearly had no children. They clearly were separated for many years. But they never forgot each other, and held on to that feeling in their hearts until now. No matter how many times they were apart and came back together, they still ended up with each other.
Looking back at herself, just because she gave birth to a daughter instead of a son, she and her husband drifted farther and farther apart. After giving so much, in the end all she got was a mess.
What she had never gotten in her whole life, someone else got. How could she not be jealous? How could she not envy that? How could she not hate it?
Thinking of Madam Shen’s daughter, Du An Rao hesitated for a moment, then kindly added one more reminder: “There’s one more thing. This isn’t his first illegitimate child.”
“W-what do you mean?” Madam Shen was already badly shaken. Hearing this, her face changed even more.
“It means this isn’t the first child he’s had outside. It’s only his first son.”
That meant the so-called promise that her daughter would always be the only child had already been broken long ago.
It was just that, before this, all the children born to those women outside, like her Mengmeng, were girls. They did not pose much threat to her daughter’s status, so things had stayed calm on the surface.
But today’s child was the son her husband had been hoping for all these years. The moment he was born, it meant that awful man would very likely move against her and her daughter, make them give up their place to the boy and his mother, who would rise in status because of her son.
Realizing this, the last bit of luck in Madam Shen’s heart disappeared. She felt like she would fall apart, but she still gritted her teeth and held herself up.
Because she was not only a woman and a wife, she was also a mother.
“Bastard, animal, trash, mongrel…” Madam Shen fired off every curse word she could think of, one after another. At least she got a bit of strength back, and some light returned to her eyes.
“I was wrong today. You can punish me however you want afterward. Right now, I’m going back to settle the score with that dog of a man. After being married to him for so many years, I at least have to drag someone down with me before I die.”
As she spoke, she lifted her head again, looking all fired up and ready to charge out and fight.
But when she walked past Du An Rao, her steps paused. With an awkward look, she turned her head to the side and muttered: “Thank you. And… I’m sorry.”