To be Concerned about husband's reaction to Xmas planning making it about race

How I got through living with an emotionally unavailable person with no insight into his own or anyone else’s feelings or behaviour was to feel lonely, depressed, unheard and sad. For 23 years. I did eventually get the strength to leave. My biggest regret is wasting so many years feeling less than and having my confidence and self-esteem worn away to a wafer thin, fragile shell. Once I was away from him, I built up my life from scratch in my mid-40s. For 20 years I’ve grown in strength, in my ability to be able to cope with life on my own, to have made wonderful friends and to feel happy and at peace . I wish I’d done it when my DC were small. His influence in their lives has been negative and a very bad role model regarding what a healthy, mutual partnership should be.

You understand your cage and your keeper really well. That is something you have worked hard and faithfully to do. But understanding that the bars are irin and the keeper is sad doesn’t make the cage tolerable. You are on a journey to understanding what life you have to sacrifice to pretend everything is ok. He will accept nothing less than total capitulation to his whims and unreasonable thoughts and actions. His hostility must be respected or you myst collude with him when he insists it was just a joke. His moods are righteous and reasonable and yours are signs of disease—you are crazy, mental, sulky, abusive.

It is going to take you a while, perhaps, to accept what we are saying. A while and a lot if pain. Because he is going to keep hurting you as long as you stay.

Experience is a dear teacher. But men will have no other. —Ben Franklin

It’s a book, yes. A few relevant excerpts.

But he’s not doing that, he’s not accepting you one bit.

When you say it won’t help, what do you mean, though? As I suspect you mean it won’t help you because you want to stay with your husband, whatever happens. You have family that actually loves and respects you, go to them and let them help you.

People who love you SHOULD resent someone who hurts you. YOU should resent someone who hurts you. It’s really worrying that you don’t.

I posted a link to ‘Why Does He Fo That?’ a few times, yesterday. Are you willing to read it?

I do understand where you're coming from.

I reacted the same way when I was given the same advice. All I wanted was for people to say it was my fault and all I needed to do was X, Y, Z and everything would be ok. Leaving is scary. I can only imagine how much harder it seems when you're pregnant.

I think most people saying to think about leaving have been in a similar situation and that's why they are saying that.

I do know it's not easy and I hope you can reach out to your friends/family for support. It sounds like you have good people around you who would listen to you.

so you are going to sit and be sad miserable and lonely in silence.

when is baby due ?

With the best will in the world, your DH is not going to change. Stop trying to make him understand, he simply doesn't want to and he won't however much you keep on at him. He has told you this quite plainly from what you have said

The only way you will get change is if you make it yourself. How you do that is entirely up to you of course and depends on whether you want to remain is this dreadful situation or if you want to give yourself and your baby the best chance in life.

You can't psychoanalyise him out of this, no amount of therapy speak will work.

Codlingmoths. I’d be leaving him and going to my DPs for 2 weeks (at least). I’d be telling him why and then let him see if he realises he needs to shape up or you will be reconsidering this relationship. How he reacts to being left to ‘think’ will be revealing . How much is he prepared to fight to improve his marriage and commitment and involvement to his baby, once they have been born. OP needs to show that she will not put up with this.

This evening he said he is going to take a break for two weeks if this happens again where I drag something out because it's not healthy.

this is totally unacceptable and if you don’t react to it you are basically giving him a green light to continue this bullshit.
i would be telling him to get out of your house and take the 2 weeks now.
i would be talking this through at length with your councillor as when are you due and this behaviour will escalate and l ramp up land you will be much more vulnerable

The truth is that your dh is not ready to be the father to a mixed child with a different culture.
My cousin is married to a lady of Nigerian origin.
Before they married they had extensive discussions about how they were going to navigate an interracial relationship particularly in terms of bringing up the children.
They discussed the wedding, naming the children ( as cousin’s wife wanted her kids to have a Nigerian middle name) .
My cousin understood that his mixed children would not have the same experience as he had ( him being a white male) and would likely experience racism.
My cousin and his wife are happily married

Op’s dh wants to leave the ‘race’ issue.to his wife . I pity those kids

Please listen to me op. He is trying to bully you into compliance and never challenging him. You must challenge this now. You need to say I am about to have our baby, this is a challenging and emotional time for a woman learning to look after a new baby while physically recovering from giving birth. I had expected to have your support during it, but here you are telling me you will leave if I am upset about something. I want you to leave now- take those two weeks. I won’t bring up a baby with the man who said that to me, I won’t have the world believe I’m supported as a new mum while my husband tells me if I’m unhappy I need to hide it. If this is you our marriage will not survive a new baby and I am far better off setting up my own home now so I have a plan to cope. If you won’t leave I will, I will move home for two weeks.

and do leave. Let him realise marriages are fragile, they die if you don’t care for them, and women giving birth need support not abuse.

i agree with most of this. However, I am not sure that the marriage will be fine

The difficulty is, OP knows it wasn't a joke. Her Husband knows it wasn't a joke.

Everyone knows the difference when someone says something spitefully to hurt them and when it's a joke.

Jokes aren't said angrily or spitefully.

I really don't think OP should just pretend to believe it was a joke when she knows it wasn't.

This is not how good people treat their spouses OP.

He's trying everything he can to silence you.

He's spiteful to you to deliberately upset you when you disagree with him, then he lies about it, pretends it's a joke and gets annoyed at you for being upset.

He then gives a half-hearted apology, but also with more accusations that it was basically your fault and if you don't immediately crush your (valid) emotions he'll leave you for 2 weeks.

It's not right.

As someone in an interracial marriage with an often-defensive husband, let me break down what's happening for you:

He senses his family's discomfort around your family, your culture and your food. He's hoping you haven't noticed but in case you have, he's launching a pre-emptive strike that portrays you and your family as the problem, rather than his. If you ever point out his family's discomfort, he will accuse you of making everything about race. He will tell you that that's just how they are. This is 100% toxic.

But two things can be true at once.

Now, a question for you: how do you really feel about his family dynamic? Yours is younger, larger and less traditional- it sounds more fun and warmer. You are probably (understandably) more drawn to spending time with your family. Do you visibly have more fun with them than with his family? Are you less relaxed around his family? However you feel about his family dynamic, he has probably picked up on that too and likely feels hurt by it. He can't change his family and needs you to be a good sport. Not all the time. Just often enough that he realises you're on the same team. That might encourage him to make an effort to see things from your perspective too.

Problems like this tend to get worse once babies arrive so nip it in the bud while you can. Host a joint Christmas. It is a beautiful thing when two families from different cultures can come together, no matter how different you think they are. I could have written your post a few years ago (our families are very very different) but now our parents visit each other without us (and they live in different countries!).

Good luck! Your marriage will be fine! :)

All of this

I am one if the many posters who have identified your husband as a lazy, selfish, racist, abuser. I did that on the strength of your reports of what he habitually says and how he treats you. For your information I am the product of a happy marriage of 70 years, and have been very happily married myself for 30. I am also a licensed therapist in the US and have given couples therapy (although it isn’t my specialty).

Your situation is really bad but you don’t seem to know it. That is actually one of the warning signs that you are in a toxic relationship: you come out of fairly routine and minor disagreements with your husband feeling confused, shamed, attacked, misunderstood, silenced, and mor unhappy than when you started.

Your husband is work shy when it comes to your future child. He routinely attacks and demeans you verbally, accuses you of being irrational, drags in random “friends “ to give him a spurious authority, and threatens to escalate conflict by punishing you/leaving you for the crime of not giving in fast enough or cravenly enough for him.

This is completely improper behavior in what is supposed to be a love match. Do you think this is what love looks like? Brcause I don’t. Nothing should be too good for his pregnant wife. He should be eager to pitch in with his own child. He should be concerned about their experience as a mixed race child and eager to learn how to raise them successfully. He should be appreciative of all you have offered to do for his family and eager to return the favour.

He’s basically not much of a good human. I wouldn’t take him off your hands for any price. Why waste your life with someone sho doesn’t adore you? The world is hard enough without giving yourself to this wanker.