There is a fair bit of backstory here... My husband and I have been together over 10 years and married for just over 6. His mother was diagnosed with stage 4 cancer in spring 2016. I was there for all the tests, the hospital stay, was driving across the city every day after work for over a week to the hospital to be there to support them etc. We then got married very quickly (within 6 months) because we didn't think she would have long. I planned the whole wedding by myself as well as moving house to live with husband during that period, and getting a puppy together. We never had a honeymoon and instead went away with his parents for 2 weeks. On our first wedding anniversary, my husband went on holiday with his mum, also missing my birthday (without discussing this with me at all).
I spent 6 years commuting over 1 hour and then this became 1.5 hours each way so that we could live 5/10 mins drive from his parents. We have been away on holiday with his parents nearly as many times as we have been away together as a married couple.
I finally had a bit of a breakdown with the commuting and we decided to move to be closer to my work (I am a teacher) and I also moved to work part time for my mental health. Within a month his parents moved 10 mins drive from us and spent a week living with us before they could move in.
Throughout the Covid pandemic, my husband was constantly on edge that I as a teacher would catch Covid and infect him and he would then infect his mum. I was so super careful about this and really anxious to avoid this happening but nevertheless he would ask me on a regular basis about had I had contact with positive people, if I was going out somewhere reminding me all the time about masks and hand sanitiser etc. In the end, it was his dad who caught Covid when I was 8 months pregnant. I then said yes to his mum coming to live with us even though she had therefore been exposed. My husband basically moved into the spare room with her as she needs assistance walking and going to the bathroom. It turned out she had caught Covid from his dad and then my husband also got it. She had a bad reaction and had to go into hospital for a few days, and when she left for hospital, it turned out she had wet herself and vomited all over the spare room bed. I carried the mattress out to the garden and spent hours scrubbing at it - at 8 months pregnant. My husband barely thanked me.
More backstory - his dad shows 0 interest in me at all, still doesn't know what I do for a job (I am a languages teacher - it's not that hard to remember...) and creates lots of conflict with my husband every holiday we go on together. Once he took off at 3am and left his wife (who was very ill at that point having deteriorated) with us for us to sort out getting her home in our car.
I thought now that we have a baby together that we would become his priority. I ended up having a traumatic birth and a emergency c section delivery. On the day this happened, he was pushing for his parents to come to the hospital. Fortunately the visiting hours didn't work out! The following day when we came home, he had his parents come over and his dad made comments about me looking fat and asked how long it would take for me to look normal again. At first, my husband was sympathetic to me being upset at this, but then told me I am overly sensitive and I should now his dad by now doesn't mean bad by those comments. I needed a lot of care for the first couple of weeks as I couldn't drive, couldn't stand up or sit down or get out of bed by myself. Still, my husband didn't do any housework and only offered to cook for me once. As soon as I was more able he was back to having his parents over all the time or going round to theirs, and commented that he feels bad for spending the time at home with me rather than looking after his mum.
I ended up feeling extremely depressed, even suicidal, and highly anxious in the first couple of months. I felt like I had no support and wasn't a priority. I voiced all this but was essentially told it can't be any other way. My husband works 3 days a week and before Christmas all of these were from home. He was still seeing his parents three times a week on average and making time for bike rides, gym sessions, and online language lessons, plus developing an app he is working on. Meanwhile I was still doing all the housework, arranging everything for our baby like health checks and a passport for her so we could go on holiday with his parents at Christmas, and cooking for all of us.
During the first 6 weeks he also tried to get me to let him take our baby daughter to his parents place without me. She is breastfed. He tried to get me to agree to using formula so he wouldn't need me to be there. I was distraught at this and couldn't bear the idea. He finally relented but then would raise the subject a couple of days later again and this went on and on until he realised I just couldn't agree to this and so his parents would come round ours every other day.
The holiday at Christmas fell through because his dad hadn't been organised enough to arrange more medication for his mum before going and I lost hundreds of pounds I had spent on flights there and back. I had also spent so much mental energy getting myself feeling robust enough to fly with a 2.5 month old whilst still managing my depression and anxiety.
My husband also blocked my parents coming to stay with us in October, a month after our daughter was born and on my birthday, saying he would feel it was an intrusion on his space. This was after they had had a row in the summer when they came to stay with us (I was 6 months pregnant) and my husband spent the whole time up in his office playing computer games.
Finally I persuaded my husband to let my parents stay at the end of December and it made a world of difference to me to have my mum around cooking dinner and just knowing she and my dad were there for me and I could rely on them. Finally I no longer felt depressed and my self esteem was getting better.
In the meantime I have flagged up to my husband on multiple occasions that I'm not happy with the state of our marriage. I have voiced that I feel like I'm not a priority and things need to change. He has finally agreed to do more housework, he now empties the dishwasher, hoovers and wipes the kitchen surfaces once a week (I do these all the other days a week...). And he walks the dog when he is around - but in reality he is now going into the office one day a week and helping out at his parents on the other days.
He has again now raised the issue of taking our daughter to spend time with his parents without me and that I am not meeting his emotional needs by not being okay with this. I said actually I would probably be fine with it if he can let me know the day before so I can pump milk for him to take. Apparently that's not good enough and he wants to be able to go at a moment's notice and doesn't care about her having a nap schedule etc.
He hasn't been helping out at all with nappy changing, bath time, bedtime, coming to any baby classes or appointments on the days he isn't working. He has only just started playing and reading to her at my suggestion. He said he wasn't doing any of that stuff because it was too painful for him to accept I can't let him take her without me spontaneously to his parents.
For context- his mum's cancer hasn't got any worse in 6 years, but she now can't walk unassisted and struggles with speech. She needs help with basic tasks like bathing, bathroom, eating, and getting dressed - largely from the radiation therapy that she was treated with. His dad is only just pursuing getting some help with carers.
I'm at breaking point in our marriage. I have started to contact mediators and solicitors for separation to understand how this would work. I know I've partly engineered the situation by allowing myself to be on the back burner our whole marriage, but I thought him becoming a father would change things and it hasn't. I don't want our daughter to grow up seeing me not being prioritised and think therefore that it's okay for her to not be number one for her future partner.
If you're still reading - well done! I'm sorry it's so long, but it has been years of this and I feel like the examples are relevant.
Am I being unreasonable? I am so scared about starting a separation / divorce process, but I feel like I need to think about our daughter and what we model for her in a marriage.