r/marriedintoenmeshment

I (22F) have been with my boyfriend (25M) for about a year and a half. I love him, but his relationship with his family has become one of the biggest problems in our relationship, and I desperately need outside perspectives because I don’t know what is normal anymore.
When I first met him, he was living independently, and our relationship felt completely different. Eventually he moved back in with his parents and started working for his dad’s business, and since then it feels like his entire life revolves around his family. His work, money, schedule, living situation, and free time are all connected to them. There doesn’t seem to be much separation between “him” and “his family.”
His parents seem very involved in his decisions and his schedule, and it feels like plans between us are constantly dependent on what his family wants or needs. We’re currently long distance, so seeing each other already requires planning. There have been times where we’ve gone weeks or over a month without seeing each other, yet I still feel like creating independent time for our relationship is treated as secondary.
The relationship with his sister is another part that makes me extremely uncomfortable. They are VERY physically affectionate with each other, including cuddling and spooning. I understand siblings can be close and affectionate, but this goes beyond anything I’ve personally seen between adult siblings, and I have tried explaining that it makes me uncomfortable.
The worst incident happened on my birthday. I was already upset because he was cuddling/spooning with his sister. I tried waking him up, and during the situation he smacked me hard enough to give me a black eye. I know physical violence is a separate and serious issue, and I’m not trying to minimize that. It affected the way I see him and his family dynamic, and months later I still haven’t been able to fully get past what happened.
To his credit, his behavior toward me has improved significantly since then, and I have seen changes in him. That’s part of why I’m so conflicted. If everything were horrible all the time, this decision would probably be much easier.
But I still feel like I’m dating someone who hasn’t actually separated from his family as an adult. I don’t expect him to abandon them or stop being close to them. I actually think being close with your family can be a great thing. I just want normal adult boundaries and to feel like our relationship is capable of becoming its own unit.
I’m also starting to resent the situation because I don’t want my future to look like this. I don’t want to spend years waiting for him to become independent, move out, establish financial boundaries, and start making decisions without his family’s involvement.
I also want to acknowledge my own part because I don’t want this to be a completely one-sided post. I’ve handled some of these conflicts badly before. I’ve gotten extremely angry, said things I regret, and allowed my resentment toward his family to build instead of dealing with it productively. I’m working on my own behavior. But even when I remove my reactions from the equation, the underlying family dynamic is still there.
I guess what I’m trying to figure out is:
Is this actually family enmeshment, or am I interpreting a close family through my own discomfort?
For people who have dated or married someone from an enmeshed family, did your partner ever successfully establish boundaries while remaining close to their family?
And most importantly, how do you know when it’s worth waiting for someone to become more independent versus accepting that this is simply the family system you’re signing up for?
I love him, but I’m starting to realize that loving someone and being compatible with the life they currently have might be two different things. I really need outside perspectives.

Has anyone went through this?

So I am with an enmeshed man with this family of origin, something I found out the terms to the last few months.

We are currently in couples therapy and myself in individual therapy.

After years of this dynamics, I feel like I am going crazy.

I am hypervigilant and anxious. I have good and bad days.

What gets to me the most is that I dont know if I they are doing gaslighting / gult triping/ DARVO/ love bomb/ breadcrumbs. Which i am pretty sure they are. I am constantly also silence by violent out burst and him threating to end the relationship.

When I state how I feel about things, the paper quickly turn about how I am gulting him and he is now the victim. He constantly says that he takes me in decision making but somehow things goes his way and I end up being left alone.now I dont know if I am also guilt tripping my partner or manipulating the situation.

Its to the point that I think maybe I do these things and have became a narcissist. I am always being told that I am controlling (which i do I guess in a way to control the situation) manipulating and trying to dominate my partner and every situation in life as a protagonist by his family.

Has anyone been through this? Is this normal? Or is this part of the healing process? Or are things getting worse?

Did anyone experience this?

So I am about 20 weeks pregnant soon to have my anatomy scan and every time we see my mother-in-law she keeps on bringing up the fact that when we make our nursery, we don’t need to get a baby monitor because she thinks they’re useless and she says that I’m gonna be checking on the baby every 20 minutes or so anyways, so there’s no need for me to get a camera because it’s a waste of money.

She also hasn’t cleared out my husband‘s room in her house since we got married, which we got married December 2024 and we moved into our own house right away.
And now that I’m having this baby, she told me she’s thinking of clearing out his room finally and I’m thinking OK well, she’s probably gonna turn it into a nursery. She hasn’t explicitly told me that it will be a nursery, but I can see where this is going. She’s also extremely enmeshed with him and he’s supposed to be setting boundaries this week and I am waiting on that to happen. I requested that I’ll be there when the boundaries are set to whether in person text or phone call at first he refused and told me no because he doesn’t want his mother to feel like she’s being attacked or ganged up on, so then I suggested OK. You can do it through text or phone and put it on speaker and she won’t even know I’m there. And if you do it in person, I won’t speak. I will only let you speak, but I need to be there not because I want to control everything but because I don’t trust that you’re actually going to follow through. or the fact that you’re not gonna make the boundaries be extremely vague because he’s the avoidant type and she’s the type to guilt trip him and get away with things and since this is his first time setting a boundary with his mom over our marriage, I don’t trust that he’s actually gonna follow through because we’ve been having conversations about setting a boundary for over a year now and he still hasn’t done it. He kept saying I’m gonna do it and he never really does follow through. He’s all the words no actions. So this time I requested I’d be there because I need to see this done. He said he’s gonna tell me everything in the way that everything went down so I don’t need to be there, but I don’t trust his word at this point. It’s also because of the past he’s kept things from me and I found out later on because he wanted to “avoid conflict.”

Edit: she’s also automatically invited herself to be in the delivery room and assumes that she’s just gonna be coming even though we’ve never had a conversation with her about this or about who’s gonna actually be there because I’m not letting anybody in there other than my husband
She keeps on making comments like oh. I hope you give birth at the x hospital so that I’m closer to you and I can get there.
I also plan on having no visitors at least for the first 3 to 4 weeks other than my own mother to take care of me. Husband has agreed to this.

And I find it kind of weird that she’s insisting on having no baby monitor every single time. Also, if she does end up making a nursery, there’s no way I’m letting my baby go to her place overnight or even be there when I’m not around.

She has ended up purchasing so many clothes ready for the baby and they’re all neutral tone and she’s insisting that she just couldn’t help herself when she sees these items even though we told her to wait until we know the gender. I only have bought our child one outfit so far because we are waiting to find out the gender and she already gave me a bag full of clothes that she found at Old Navy or she saw somewhere and “just couldn’t help herself”.

She also has been insisting that she cannot be called grandma and that she’s gonna think about a name for herself when the baby is here. 🙄🙄🙄

And for more context, my husband is her only child and she was cheated on when she was pregnant and FIL left her since, and now has multiple different families in different states.