religious MIL

hi, first time poster here.

for some background: i’m 20F, SO is 23M. we have been together for close to a year and a half. his family are fundamentalist christians, he has not been part of their church since he was 16 because he never held the beliefs associated with it. he stopped going just to please them fairly recently. i’m an atheist, raised by atheists.

i’ve met his family a few times and while they’ve been nice enough to me, there have been a few things that have really bothered me, and to an extent SO. the first being that if i’m at their house, we must be downstairs being supervised. this is a problem. not because we want to do anything sexual, but there’s nothing for us to do there. we can’t watch tv downstairs because they don’t approve of the shows we like and won’t allow them to be watched. we can’t really talk openly because his mum is listening in from the dining room.

we tend to go to my house instead. my parents don’t care what we get up to at my house as long as it’s not anything stupid and we’re not making a racket. 95% of the time we just watch tv and cuddle.

i recently brought up to him that i don’t really see his family much so he agreed he should try to integrate me with them more and invited me over to watch the f1 on sunday with him and his brother. i was happy with this. until his parents said again that we would all have to watch downstairs on an old tv because me being upstairs with SO and brother would be “temptation” to them both. perhaps you see what’s being implied here. SO was maaaaad about this and argued with his parents about it. they did not budge.

it went fine, but it was certainly weird. they keep me at arm’s length. don’t really interact with me when i’m there unless i’m interacting with them. we even had to ask for me to be included in his birthday celebrations. i can never fully get an idea of how they all feel about me.

they have a habit of snarking about people between them, but never with SO around. they’ve snarked about SO’s enjoyment for collecting transformers, they snark about their other family members, there’s a chance they snark about me. but SO won’t know unless he walks in on them snarking. they never tell the person they’re snarking about what their issue is, they just wait for that person to conveniently find out through walking in on it or through someone else.

a few weeks ago they were discussing how weird it was that someone from their church had announced their engagement on instagram before even telling their family. SO immediately said that in this situation he would absolutely tell them first. cue dead silence. you could cut the tension in that room with a knife, apparently. i wasn’t there. they immediately changed the subject and SO felt so bad about it he couldn’t finish his dinner.

we do plan on getting engaged. not totally sure when, but the “official” timeline says some time between next year and early 2028. this is something the both of us have agreed on. we’re saving for our first home as well. we plan on a long engagement of at least a year and a half.

SO does defend me to his family when possible, but he’s finding it difficult to stick to their rules while knowing it’s hurting me. we resist them by not going to his. he’s trying to find a solution that makes me feel seen and respected while also not getting himself disowned. he has said many times that if he had to choose, he would choose me with no hesitation.