I [28F] am feeling very hurt by some things that my husband [26M, married 3.5 years] did unintentionally, even after he apologized. Are my feelings irrational?

Sorry in advance, this is really long. I’m having a hard time condensing everything down because my brain is in a million places at once right now.

BACKGROUND INFO

I’m going to start out with a Reddit cliche and say that in general, my husband is a great person and we have a pretty solid marriage. We were friends before we started dating and then waited a good bit before getting engaged and then married. We had a baby about a year and a half into our marriage, which meant that we had to do a lot of growing up together pretty quickly as we learned how to balance being parents and spouses. I also have some issues with a jerk brain that sucks at keeping its own chemistry balanced, but my husband is incredibly supportive and I have a great team of doctors and an awesome therapist who has helped me to learn how to manage things healthily.

My in-laws are wonderful people. My MIL and FIL have been exceptionally kind to me, and my three brothers-in-law were skeptical at first but have warmed up a lot as we have gotten to know each other.

My husband is the middle child with a set of older twin brothers (30M—one single and one married to 26F) and a younger brother (24M married to 23M). My husband’s general MO his whole life has been to, as he puts it, “win the game by choosing not to play.” As in, he just doesn’t get involved in family conflicts. That’s fine, but he also tends to be so excited during the rare times when all of his brothers are together that it’s like he forgets about the family that he has with me and our son. Not maliciously. Just... obliviously.

As with any family, they have their own quirks, and while I love them all, I have encountered some situations before where I have felt that boundaries were crossed or my feelings were hurt, and I have felt that my husband did not appropriately address those things—mostly because he never even considered that something that didn’t really bother him might be hurtful to me.

Which I think is why this is bothering me so much this time. Because even though he is a truly wonderful husband and father in every other way, this is just a piece of what feels like an ongoing thing, and I feel like it’s contributing to my feeling resentful toward him and his family, who really don’t deserve that. But the whole jerk-brain thing sometimes means I can’t really tell if my feelings are valid or if I’m just being overly sensitive and unreasonable.

THE ISSUE AT HAND

My husband’s parents have recently moved to our city. We alternate celebrating Christmas and thanksgiving with each side of our extended family, and this year we celebrated Christmas with his family, which his parents were super excited about because all four of their sons and their partners were going to be under the same roof. Which I totally understand because I can imagine feeling the same way eventually!

The plan was to have Christmas morning with our nuclear family, have some breakfast, and let our toddler enjoy his gifts for a while before heading over to my in-laws’ place to open gifts there, hang out, and have lunch. There wasn’t really a set time that we were supposed to get there, just “whenever y’all make it over here.” Somehow, that ended up with us being rushed out the door to fly over to their house. We ended up staying there so long that our toddler didn’t have his afternoon nap and then proceeded to become super cranky, so we headed home. My husband was supposed to run back after we put our son to bed to pick up the gifts because we couldn’t get everything in our tiny car safely with his car seat. We got home about 4 PM, hung out doing our own thing while trying to get our son to nap, and then eventually fed him dinner, got him bathed, and put him to bed.

My husband headed out around 7:30 to pick up the gifts, and we made plans to spend some time together when he got back. I figured he’d probably hang out over there for a little bit, but when it hit about 10 and he hadn’t responded to any of my texts, I started to get kind of annoyed and concerned. He eventually made it home between 10:30 and 11, and when I asked where he was, he said “Sorry— (BIL) brought a really nice bottle of scotch, so I decided to stay for a drink and play cards against humanity.” That hurt my feelings for a couple of reasons: One, he had made plans with me and then blew them off to hang out with his family, who he had been with literally all day. Two, that meant that I was the ONLY one of the siblings and spouses that wasn’t included because I was home with the toddler—which I get, but ouch. Three, he couldn’t be bothered to let me know or even answer my texts, so I ended up spending Christmas night alone waiting for him to come home.

That night, I told him that I felt hurt, and he apologized. It still stung, but I accepted his apology and decided to try and let it go, chalking it up to the combination of holidays, alcohol, and excitement at seeing his brothers.

Then, yesterday, he had plans to go out with his brothers. Again, great! He was going to take our son to play with my MIL and let me enjoy a bit of quiet time. He had planned to come home after lunch. Somehow, in the course of all of this, the plans changed, and they ended up going somewhere and staying until 4:30 PM. Which, okay, fine. At least he told me this time. But after he had come home that evening I found out that in the course of all of the changing of plans, the other brothers’ wives were both invited and went too. Which means that once again, I sat home alone while literally everyone but me did something fun together. Only this time I could have actually gone if he had invited me because I wasn’t watching our son.

When I asked my husband why he didn’t let me know once the other wives were invited, he said “I don’t know; I just didn’t think about it.” This really, really hurts me. I don’t know if I am being overly dramatic about it, but I felt so excluded. I think it hurts more because we had literally just discussed that the night before and it STILL didn’t cross his mind. And once again, he’s apologized, but I’m finding this really hard to let go of. And he doesn’t seem to be fazed by it at all. Like, once he’s apologized, it’s like everything is supposed to just be fine. But it’s really not right now. I feel really sad. But I don’t want to tell him that because it’s not like he can do much else except apologize.

Am I being stupid about this whole thing? Like I don’t care if he hangs out with his family. I want him to. And I know that those times are not always going to include me, as they shouldn’t. But it just really hurts my feelings when it’s a situation where all of the siblings and their wives are included except for me and I don’t even cross my husband’s mind. And it’s not going to hurt my feelings if y’all say that yes, I am being irrational—Either way I’m going to discuss it with my therapist at my next appointment. But having some third party perspective is helpful because it’s really easy to convince yourself you’re totally in the right when you don’t hear anyone else’s take on things.

If you made it this far, thanks and sorry for the novel. I just haven’t had a chance to process all of that and needed to get it out while asking my question.

tl;dr: I have felt very left out the last few days as my husband has spent time with all of his family except for me. Am I being irrational in being hurt by this?

Submitted December 28, 2018 at 12:18PM by Guerilla_Physicist http://bit.ly/2EWSMtH