How to deal with my [F32] marriage to my husband [M36] who has a totally different cultural background I wasn’t aware of?

How to deal with my [F32] marriage to my husband [M36] who has a totally different cultural background I wasn’t aware of?

We are both Indian and were born and raised in the US. This is a love marriage where we dated for a few years before we got married. He knew that my parents were very liberal and he loved that I was opinionated and not scared to stand my ground with things. During the dating period we would go out, we would drink together, stay out late etc. All very Western stuff. He told me his family were modern and that they would love me etc. and I was really excited to gain a second family.

We have been married for a few years now and I have never met such a backward thinking, openly sexist, enmeshed family in my life. They treat all their daughter in laws with so much disrespect and this is the norm. The father is at the top of the hierarchy and what he says goes. He wants all his children living right by him and taking care of him both literally and financially. The mother has said that she did whatever her mother in law told her to do and that I must do the same. Everyone is scared of the parents and so there are no consequences for their actions and they keep their children financially dependent on them. (Fortunately we are not).

My husband has his own issues with guilt with his parents and is inclined to do whatever they say otherwise he faces emotional abuse and exclusion. His brothers put their wives second and stand by as their parents treat them badly. I am so confused as to why my husband chose to marry such a liberal, opinionated person like myself because he knows I would never conform to his family’s demands. If he wanted a quiet life and a housemaid that would take care of his parents and obey them, an arranged marriage to someone more subservient would have made sense. I am very annoyed that he was not honest about the family dynamics and expectations prior to marriage.

Therapy has not been successful, and I know he often wishes I would just play along to make his life easier but I refuse. So much so that I have reduced how much I see his family as they were unkind to me and trying to cause problems in our marriage, and I now see them very little. However, I am now married to someone who wants to constantly put me second to his sexist, aggressive, manipulative family and I am not sure how to deal with this?

tl;dr Husband has old school family dynamics which treat women like shit and have no respect for marriages. He does not agree, nor follow this but is scared to rock the boat and just wants to keep everyone happy

Submitted November 10, 2019 at 12:42PM by Impermanence5 https://ift.tt/2CykA4o