I(25,f) have been married for three years to my husband(28m). We met when I was in college and have been together for a total of five years.

I genuinely need guidance on how to like him again. We just had our first child and his behavior, to me, has been downright disrespectful. Here are some examples.

First, he lets his family come before ours. In particular, his mother is the worst. She showed up, after ignoring me pregnancy, when baby was four days old. She claimed “I was coming to see my grandchild whether you wanted me to or not. It’s my right.” So I told him he can go see her, but after how disrespectful she been to us over the years, I want to go no contact. She had him as a teenager and has put him in dangerous situations growing up so she could party and have “bad boy” boyfriends. She’s lied her way through life and cannot be told anything without cussing someone out. She lies and manipulates both her children into visiting her. For instance, me and my husband are struggling financially now and I told him no visits to anywhere so we can save. He agree up until she promises to give him money and provide a room for us to stay if we visit for a weekend. He agrees without my approval. We go, she has an attic space with an air mattress for us two and the baby to sleep on with No AC unless we put it together. The average temp there is 85 degrees right now. I cried but he ignored me and refused to stand up to his mom.

Second, he will not hold the baby or pay attention to the baby longer than half an hour. He always blames his ADHD, but he is able to focus for hours on anything he wants to do. He will video game for four hours, even while the baby is crying. He will fish for four hours. But I ask to be able to take a shower and clean the house, he can only handle 15 minutes at most. As soon as she cries, he looks for me to take her even though she only cries to be fed, burped, or changed. She’s literally the easiest baby.

Third, he completely disregards and questions my opinions and thinks “sorry” is enough but will not change his behaviors. As mentioned before, he would rather hurt my feelings than his family’s when they walk all over us. Why should we take our three month old on a five and a half hours drive to see his family for the second month in a row?? It upsets the baby, he refuses to stop for her along the way unless I raise my voice and then rushed the stop to where I only have time to do one thing for her, whether feed, burp or change her.

If I say I want something, he says we don’t need it, but he feels like he can buy any hobby-like equipment. $200 fishing gear every two weeks, $80 new gaming monitor… etc. I currently am getting a masters in accounting and finance and yet he does not trust me with our own finances. I have always made more money in our relationship where he only picks jobs he enjoys ( tackle shop, lumber mill with his buddies) and not based on what is beneficial or helpful for our family(distance, convenience, more money). And yet he feels the need to dictate what u spend money on and I pay 75% of our bills and have our entire relationship.

Finally, the other night me and baby went on a small vacation with my mom because he had an intense work week. Well because we were gone, he felt he could go party until 3 am and not answer the phone for close to an hour but I saw his location at a night club. He claimed he did nothing wrong and that because we were away, he could have as much fun as he liked. I felt angry because he didn’t communicate this with me and was with a group of mostly women. I trust him, but his behavior was shady here and I’m still not over it even though he said sorry and told me to drop it. I feel like if he wants to act like that, it’s a way of showing how he wants to forget any boundaries I want to set and be young again.

I just don’t know what to do. All of this just weighs on me. I have tried serious communication with him and he shuts down or blames my attitude/my overthinking for the issues. He says “only you see the issues in our relationship. Compared to others, we aren’t doing bad” He negates my concerns and thinks as long as I’m not ever leaving him(due to religious reasons), our relationship problems are that important enough to address. I’ve tried calling him out, positive reinforcement, yelling or being calm, cold shower, everything. I feel out of my depth.

I refuse/can’t get out of this marriage because my religion is very important to me and marriage is meant to be very sacred(not judging if you do divorce, just not an option for me). I also feel like there were reasons I chose him when I was younger and it’s just this season, but I can barely stand his touch because of his behavior lately. I need help seeing his perspective and understanding how to cope with all of this.