The Assumption Nobody Announces
Your mother-in-law walks into your bedroom to put away folded laundry. Your brother-in-law calls at 11 p.m. to ask if you can drop his kids to school tomorrow. Your sister-in-law assumes Sunday lunch is a standing commitment you never agreed to. Nobody is being malicious. The joint family runs on an unspoken operating system: your time, your space, and your privacy are shared resources, available on request. The system was never written down. You inherited it the day you moved in.
