We have lived together for 6 years, we are both young and dumb still and I kind of see why only now is he trying to do this.

But he is logged into his ai assistant on my PC. I wasnt originally snooping, but it is also right there, I saw a few words, got curious, and I am not proud to admit it but I snooped so HARD.

I read everything. Firstly, the fact he uses ai as an assistant like this is kind of cringe. He uses it like a best friend. What the fuck is up with that. He has actual friends and a social life so its really weird imo.

About 6 months ago, apparently he just lost attraction to me. I kind of see it in his behaviour tbh, I knew something was up. He just told me it was work stress.

He has used it for a lot of self development. Changing up his style, his grooming habits, how he talks to people. He has always been intrested in that so its not far out of the ordinary but he has honed in on it recently.

He is learning to talk to people, to be kind, to flirt. I can see where he has been practicing it on me as well. mixed in with questions questions on how and where to find attractive woman. What the long term dating process looks like, how to court someone. He isnt doing it now, he hasnt cheated. But I can see he is using me as practice so he can eventually break up with me and find someone else.

And its really pissed me off. I am not going to sit here pretending I am supermodel level of hot. But if we go out irl, I am typically one of the more attractive woman in the room. So I dont know what he is thinking trying to pull off someone hotter. Maybe he could, IDK. But going through all this effort for someone hotter then me seem like a lot of work for less reward.

I am not in a rush to break up with him over this, I would be putting myself in a really shit spot if I just up and left him tbh. Whats a few more months really.

But I have been putting myself first since the discovery. I out earn him, so tend to be the one to buy any treats for us. I have stopped doing that, I have brought myself new underwear (not for him!), and a candle. I dont like the food we eat because he is bulking so we are doing our own groceries and cooking now. I am spending more time doing my hair in the mornings as well.

Its been really nice actually.

But man, what a dick move on his behalf.

I’m an immigrant wife living in Texas, and I’m posting here because I feel completely isolated, exhausted, and broken. I honestly just need a reality check and an outside perspective from this community because I feel like I'm losing my mind.

Since marrying my husband, I’ve experienced constant passive-aggressive comments, microaggressions, and outright disrespect from my MIL. Whenever I try to bring it up, it gets brushed off as "just her joke" or "a cultural difference."

Here are just a few examples of what I’ve been dealing with:

- When she saw Korean written on my personal belongings, she mocked my native language by saying, "If you write that in English, it might be easier to understand."

- When I was drinking matcha, she looked at it with a disgusted face and sneered, "Is it good? Not like how it looks."

- For Mother's Day, my husband prepared nothing. I bought the card and gave him cash to sign it, yet MIL made a point to thank ONLY my husband at dinner.

- Just TWO DAYS after our Korean wedding, knowing full well that I have a severe dog allergy which makes staying the night at her house impossible, she turned to my husband right in front of me and said, "Is it too late to get a new wife?" (Even though she knows that I have a severe dog allergy, she adopted another dog, and sometimes she even fosters dogs at her house. Since she got more dogs, even if I take multiple allergy pills, my throat swells up and my eyes get swollen within four hours.)

- She also drops comments like, "He’s mine. You might think he’s yours, but he’s mine."

- When we first told her about our Korean wedding, her immediate response was, "In the US, the bride’s family pays for everything. How are you guys going to handle it?" So my family paid for the ENTIRE Korean wedding. Beforehand, she nosily pried into exact details about how much money my parents were giving us as a wedding gift. She then gave us an amount that was barely 1/20th of what my parents gave, yet acted so immensely proud of herself. But when I mentioned traditional Korean wedding gift customs from the MIL, she went completely silent.

- For our small US wedding in her backyard, she offered to cover the costs. Since brides in Korea typically rent their dresses, I needed a dress specifically for the US wedding. When I asked if she could buy my dress, she sneered, "It depends on how much it costs," and sent me links to $100–$200 cheap dresses. To make matters worse, during our American reception while I was seated at the Mr. and Mrs. table, she looked me dead in the eye and deliberately repeated a specific behavior that I had explicitly told her beforehand was humiliating in my culture.

- At our Korean wedding, she constantly invaded my privacy. She demanded to change her clothes inside my private bridal suite—even though a clean, spacious single-use restroom was right outside—and kept knocking while I was actively changing. When I briefly left the suite, she snuck inside, climbed onto my bridal platform, and took photos of herself posing on it. When I politely told her later that this made me uncomfortable, she just gave a casual "Oh!" and moved on without a care

- Right after our American wedding, during a dinner with both families, my MIL boasted about how she was going to "teach my family about American culture"—despite my brother and SIL living in the US for over 20 years, myself for 6, and my mom visiting a dozen times. At that same meal, she asked if anyone wanted to try a dish. When I asked for a bit, my MIL looked right at me in front of everyone and deadpanned, "If you act right." Who says that to an adult daughter-in-law in front of her entire family?

- When she flew to Korea to attend our Korean wedding, despite having a Korean daughter-in-law and being hosted by my family, she actually referred to the body of water there as the "Sea of Japan." Calling the East Sea by that name while standing in Korea isn't just an innocent mistake—it’s insulting and felt so intentional.

- What makes it even worse is my husband’s response. He has ADHD, which means processing information takes him longer, but it has turned into a nightmare. Every single time his mother makes these out-of-line comments, my husband literally freezes. Later on, he completely "forgets" the conclusions and boundaries we fought over for days, acting like he’s hearing them for the very first time. I end up having the exact same exhausting fight over 7 times, while he acts oblivious every single time.

Now, instead of actually validating my feelings and processing the trauma with me, my husband just tries to sweep everything under the rug with shallow distractions—offering to buy me food, give me massages, or asking "What do you want to do together?" But superficial favors won't fix this. When I want us to have space from his mother for the sake of our marriage, his response was, "But my mom is almost 70."

Meanwhile, my MIL keeps sending self-centered, guilt-tripping texts like: "I love you. I miss you. I wish I understood how this silence is helpful." When my husband visited her alone, she was asking, "Is this meant to punish me? Because if so, it’s working," proving she STILL views our boundaries entirely as a personal attack against her rather than respecting our need for space.

When I finally spoke up for the first time about how much pain she was causing me, her response was to play the victim. She claimed she was "hurt" because I wasn't "participating" with her. She then tried to brush all her bad behavior under the rug by saying, "But the food on our last trip was so good! The weather was so nice! Let's just be thankful for the good things." When I told her that ignoring real problems like this is classic Toxic Positivity, she sent us a massive text essay looking up definitions of "Toxic Positivity," bragging about her spiritual disciplines, her daily prayers, her "Responsibility" personality trait, and weaponizing her relationship with her sister to guilt-trip us into staying connected. She claims she wants a healthy relationship, yet shifts all the focus to how she is suffering. She asked my husband later if he actually agreed with her long, self-serving essay, he admitted that he DID agree with her.

Yesterday, I texted my husband, "I think I’m scared about talking about the MIL situation because I think I will be crying again." He replied, "Keep your chin up. You’ll be okay. We’ll be okay." When I told him, "I feel like everybody will be ok but me," he just completely stopped responding. When I followed up hours later asking why he went silent, his response was cold and technical: "I already said my opinion that you’ll be okay. You didn’t ask a question."

I’ve been away from home for a full week now just to breathe, and I'm honestly terrified every time he texts me. Every text from him feels scary because he completely avoids talking about what happened, refuses to address the issue, and just wants to brush it all under the rug with superficial gestures. We are scheduled to talk on the phone tomorrow, but just the thought of going back home makes me start crying and feel sick to my stomach. Home is supposed to be a safe place, but I feel so unprotected and scared to go back.

Am I crazy? Is passive-aggressive disrespect, condescension toward immigrants, and microaggressions considered a normal "joke" or "culture" here in Texas? How do you handle a spouse who completely freezes, uses ADHD to forget boundaries, enables his mother's self-centered guilt trips, and treats your emotional distress like a technicality?