My husband 37, married 5 years and together for 10, is extremely sensitive to percieved control and loss of independence. Whatever my ask of him, he says I am manipulative, abusive, etc etc. Over the years i feel this has made concede on so many things, lower my standards on what i expect of marriage/my husband and pverall has left me doubting myself (and at times i feel like I am losing my sanity)
I fell out with his mother a few years ago; they are extremely close and the adult children deeply loyal to mum and each other. The entire family outcast me pretty quickly. My husband said if he stood up for me he would be outcast too and he made it clear he was not on my side. He also outcast me in many ways; he just dropped doing anything with his family with me included. Everything became private and exclusive. I am not entirely estranged from most his family. This has caused bitter rows, in the midst of fertility problems and IVF.
I have sometimes asked him to avoid certain events with his family as I was feeling so utterly excluded in not being invited; he refused and said i was controlling him. In the middle of IVF as well he insists he should be able to do this; when i tell him how much the stress affects me and that i feel its why the IVF is failing, he says I'm manipulating him with IVF, etc and i will manipulate him more with pregnancy, child, etc if he lets me get away with it. I have had a miscarriage and I begged him during the pregnancy to not go to an event as i was stressed about it; he went anyway. Another time he left me without giving me my trigger injection and went to a family dinner (simply because i has asked him not to go and he couldnt allow that for principles sake).
I have not asked him to never see any of his family again; some of them have been brutal in their rejection of me and i am really hurting from it. I have simply asked him to avoid intimate one to ones with them for a short period of time, particularly as we're commencing IVF again; i have clearly said the request doesnt apply to larger family events, dinners, Xmas, etc but he has simply refused. He says he will not ever discuss again with me on who he sees, when, how, etc period. If i ask him about being a team and putting us first, he says the marriage is most important to him but he absolute detests the talk of priority or primacy.
Am i being unreasonable? Is it normal for a person to feel they need to exercise their independence to this degree? Are my asks manipulative. He exagerrates my asks when he relays it back - "you dont want me to see my family" he insists - but that is hardly what I have asked for. I am so so utterly heartbroken and stressed. I literally feel sensations in my body from stress when these arguments come up and recently i got my period 5 days early in the middle of an argument - he says this is all manipulative and controlling. I am just losing touch with reality i feel; I cant tell anymore if i am right or wrong. I am terrified I am letting myself down but I am also desperately in love with him and want to make my marriage work.