My wife (30F) and I (28M) are married for almost one year now, and our relationship is amazing, we get along great and enjoy our marriage. I also have a sister (36F) who is single and my mom (60F) is divorced 2 times.
At the beginning everything was great, they were getting along pretty good, but the problems started around the time I proposed to my wife. My family was quite against the idea of me buying an expensive diamond ring for her (around 2 monthly salaries at that time and I wasn’t broke, I could afford it) but I didn’t care because I wanted to show my commitment to my wife with something beautiful and I don’t have a problem to splurge on her.
Then the wedding came. Her family offered to pay for the honeymoon and some additional costs from the wedding, such as live music, while I was supposed to cover everything else. I asked my family if they could pay for the wedding as I was struggling a bit at that time, which they did, and I returned back to them the amount that we agreed on a couple of months later (around 25-30% of what they gave me).
The real problem started around November, when my sister, out of nowhere, made a rude comment to me that if we get a baby now, we will end up in a lot of debts and that we will be forced to return to my home country because we will not have enough money for anything (I am working full time while my wife is unemployed for the last 1.5 years because she was completing her Master’s degree). She then joined forces with my mom and they started to attack me together how it is absolutely crazy idea to have a baby now, even though I told them explicitly multiple times that we are not planning to have a baby at that moment. It didn’t help when I said that my MIL offered to help us with anything when the baby comes, to which they started to berate me that I am not a real man if I would allow my MIL to give us money.
I first ignored it but after Christmas and very weird atmosphere that was going on, especially from my sister, I started to overthink about this, I fell into a bit of depression and had overall hard time because of how shocking those comments were and how our marriage was treated as a joke. My wife of course noticed something is going on, and after a few months I decided to tell her what happened, which completely broke her heart. She wanted to talk to them immediately, but I assured her that I would talk with them, which I did multiple times about it and they promised me it will never happen again and that this interaction came out of genuine care about us and they only want the best for us, but I told them that we are adults and that no one asked them for their opinions about our situation.
My wife is full of pride, integrity, and morals, which I love about her, and she pays a lot of attention to some small details, treats everyone with respect, kindness and puts in a lot of efforts into her relationships with others, especially if it is my family and wants to get back the same treatment that she gives to others (which is why she gets disappointed in people often). For example when she brings the gift when we visit my family, she expects to also get the gift when my family comes to visit us, which didn’t happen the last time my sister visited us (she took us out to the restaurants however). My wife got mad and said it is very disrespectful to come to visit someone empty handed and we had quite a big dispute over it, with her mentioning that her family always brings us gifts and also takes us to the restaurants and cafes, so that the same treatment from my family would be the only fair thing. I personally do not think it is coming from the materialistic attitude, but from the fact that she puts much effort into bringing something nice to someone, and they don’t even put a minimum effort doing the same thing.
Fast forward a month ago, we had a huge argument about my family again, and she decided to write a message to my sister, stating that she knows about the comments, that she really hurt her deep and that she should first think about her own private life instead if ours, and that she embarrassed herself. No response came from my sister.
2 weeks ago we decided to call my mom because I insisted on it and thought it would be helpful, but I was very wrong. She was downplaying the whole situation , saying that it was just a small comment that came from the genuine care and why are we discussing about this 8 months later. When my wife said that those words hurt me very deeply, my mom laughed sarcastically and started saying that we have a problem if no one can say anything to us. My mom demanded us to send her that message, saying that she never saw it (which she did) and when my wife said that my sister should apologize to her, my mom said that she thinks my wife should actually be the one who needs to apologize. My wife got extremely mad, said to her that this is unbelieveable and that she will never allow them to be near us or our kids.
I tried to talk to my mom the day later, saying that my wife is hurt very deep and that our marriage is suffering because of some ruthless comment, and that they should accept the fact that I chose my wife and I am forever going to be on her side. My mom just said that she cannot talk right now and later sent me the message that we are not welcome home this summer. I decided to block both of them as I have to fix my marriage first, which is seriously damaged because of this incident. In the last 2 weeks, they went to speak with my psychologist, convincing her that my wife is manipulating, controlling me and that she is materialistic, they told my uncle to forbid us staying at his house for the summer vacation, and demanded that I return the laptop they gifted me for the wedding.
I am really struggling with this situation and don’t know how to process it and how to continue with my life. The comments they made were absolutely unacceptable and I believe my wife really deserves an apology, and at the same time I want them to be around us and our kids because they did so much for me during my whole life and I cannot forget about that. On the other hand, I find it a bit strange to get mad at someone when they don’t bring you a gift when visiting (but taking you out to eat), and this tracking of the scoreboards just puts the burdens on relationships, especially since we come from different cultures. When I tell my wife to move on with our life and focus on our marriage, she is saying that she cannot move on from such a disrespect coming from someone who should be the closest to us and always support us no matter what.
How to deal with this situation? I know I am to blame for many things, such as telling my family things about our marriage (such as finances and planning for the baby), and disappointing my wife that I only defended us when she told me that I should have done it a long time ago.
TL;DR – my sister made some rude comments a while ago regarding having kids, I told my wife about it and the whole relationship between them went downhill. I think it is my fault because I was talking to my family about our private stuff and didn’t protect us at the right moment when we were attacked