Newlywed Looking for Advice

[lostintranslation]

Hello, first time posting on here and hoping to gain some insight on how to improve my mental health while navigating difficult circumstances with my in-laws and husband.

I don't want to give too many details in order to ensure anonymity but will give a brief overview that will hopefully provide enough context.

I recently married my husband and we are in our mid 30's. We have been together for about 3.5 years. We have been discussing having children, however, I have some significant concerns regarding his relationship with his parents and his ability to support and care for me and possible future children.

In short, I feel both my husband and I are family oriented and generous people. So only recently have some of the issues come to light. We had to make a difficult decisions recently regarding a sibling with BPD and his mother strongly disagreed with the decision. Although my husband understood my decision, he never fully supported me or communicated the decision to his parents. It then fell on me to tell his parents and since then there has been significant fall out with his mother. She has been distant, cold and in my opinion directly retaliatory towards me. I have brought this up to my husband and at times he acknowledges the behavior as hurtful, but more often than not, he minimizes and makes excuses for it. My mother-in-law is very intelligent and is very passive and discreet with her remarks/behavior. It isn't blatant disrespect so in some ways I can see why he isn't fully aware of her behavior. However, I am very uncomfortable around her and his father, as I feel his father enables and shares his mother's feelings. I still attend family events and engage with his parents with respect and kindness. His mother does act civil with me for the most part. However, when she has disagreed with her other daughter in laws in the past, she typically is kind when they are present and talks poorly of them when they leave, so I feel it is safe to say I am now in this same camp since making the decision that she did not agree with.

I do find myself trying to justify my discomfort and anger with his mother, which turns into me giving examples of the ways his mother has hurt me and been inappropriate but I understand that this puts him in a defensive position. Ultimately, I feel very lonely in my marriage and that I can't rely on my husband for support or protection. I do feel he is enmeshed with his parents. When his parents are involved he often overrides my opinions and wants and I feel forced into situations and gatherings that I do not feel comfortable at, but I go to try to avoid conflict with him. However, now when we go he tends to get annoyed and angry with me if I am not in a good mood or engaging with his parents enough.

We have recently started couples therapy which makes me hopeful that things will get better. I do see that he is trying to address some of my concerns and issues, however, it has been going on for some time and the adjustments have been relatively minor. Right now I feel so angry, resentful ad burnt out. I feel like I have been trying to talk to him about these things for many years but I have now been labeled by him and his parents as being difficult. I feel that he thinks I am difficult because I refuse to let his mother's emotions and wants dictate my decisions and it makes him very uncomfortable to not have his parents approval.

This has all taken a significant toll on my mental health. I want to stay married to him and I would like to work towards growing our life together as a couple but have lost trust in him and am worried the current dissatisfaction with our marriage is only going to get worse. I don't think we are in a good place to have children together, but we are both in our upper 30's and feel that we also don't have time to wait. I'm hopeful couples therapy will help but also feel desperate to improve my mental health while we work on our marriage.

If anyone has any advice or insight on how to feel better or improve my relationship while navigating these family dynamics it would be so greatly appreciated, thank you for taking the time to read this!

[GoodPesto]

Hi lostintranslation,

I know you are in a very painful position, and I am sorry you have to go through this. Hoping to have a baby one day while having serious doubt to be with the right person and being under pressure agewise because of mother nature's restrictions is a very tough spot to be in.
In addition you are describing a pretty painful family dynamic with your in-laws which might or might not change.
If you only started couples therapy recently, I'd say give it some time before you judge it's effectivness. Change, if possible, needs some time. So although your anger and frustration is understandable it might help to open up space for development if do not expect any change for some time while you continue working through the issues with your husband in therapy. You might be surprised by it after a couple of months.
You could also step back from hurrying to fix it all asap (your marriage, the family dynamics, your mental health) and prioritize what is most important to you right now or you might be putting too much pressure on you to finally feel improvement you are so anxiously awaiting on all "battlefields" and end up in running out of energy.
I'd suggest to focus on your health because you will be stronger for whatever lies ahead of you when you protect your sanity. Without it change may come because you were significantly weakend and from my experience thing do not get better this way but you lose power to fight for the life you want to live and start living one being defeated in some way.

Wishing you the best on your journey.