My MIL expects a lot from my wife (30F) and I (30M) am starting to feel resentful. Am I being unreasonable?

Wife (30/F) and I (30/M) got married and moved into our own home about a year ago. Over the past year, I've learned how much my wife needs to do for my mother-in-law (MIL) on a regular basis. I'm somewhat tolerating it, but I can feel myself getting more resentful as time passes and I don't know what I can do about it.

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In a typical week, my wife is expected to go home for dinner 2-3 times a week. She has to drive my MIL home from work at least once a week (~45 minutes round trip for my wife). For context, she is fine and able take a bus to and from work, but she asks my wife to drive her because she's available at night time. Also, my MIL is semi-retired and only working part-time because she's bored. In addition, every weekend, my wife has to spend a few hours taking my MIL to run errands (i.e. groceries and such). My wife doesn't see this as a problem, but it's obvious how much effort and energy she needs to put in and how much time that takes away from us.

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This problem is also exacerbated during the winter months because my father-in-law (FIL) spends 4-5 months of the year in his home country while the MIL is still here alone. And because of that, I am somewhat empathetic because of her situation, however I feel it is affecting my relationship with my wife.

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The rational side of me thinks that it's perfectly reasonable and normal for my wife to do this as a daughter, but the irrational side feels resentful at times because it affects what we can do on the weekends (i.e. she has to spend half the Saturday driving her around). I also do majority of the cooking at home throughout the week because she eats at my MIL's home several days a week. On the days that I need her to cook, sometimes it conflicts with her schedule to go home to her MIL's so I'm stuck buying food which I do not prefer. I am a fairly busy individual myself, I work at 9-5 job and am taking night classes for a masters program, and spend a decent amount of time working out and playing sports so I don't think I am being overly needy.

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We've talked about this, but we can't come up with a reasonable solution. Sometimes I think that we're just not compatible and this problem won't ever go away. Also, the rest of our relationship is fine, we've been happily together for 8 years now and we rarely have big fights.

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What do you guys think? Am I being unreasonable? What can I do about it?

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tldr; wife has to spend a lot of time with my MIL and it's affecting our relationship

Submitted March 02, 2019 at 12:57PM by suboptimaldood https://ift.tt/2UhmeP9