My husband is from another country (South Asian). He immigrated to my home country in 2018 and we started dating shortly after he got here. Now, we’ve been married a few years, we both have good full-time jobs, own our house, and we don’t yet have kids but are talking about having them soon. He has permanent status here now and will be eligible for citizenship soon. His parents don’t live here, but his brother recently immigrated here too (his brother hasn’t found a good job here, so he might end up going back).

My issue is, sometimes when we are fighting or going through a rough patch, my husband starts saying that maybe he’ll just just go back to his country with his parents, and not stay here. When I press him about it after, he’ll say he didn’t mean it or he would only go if we separate, but he also talks about how it would be good for him to live there with his parents. I get wanting to be closer to his parents, but if makes me very worried that he casually says he might leave me/my country, especially when thinking about having kids. I think about my career and my life here (my mom is unwell and I take care of her) and I worry, what if someday he decides he wants to go back, and I would have to leave my job and my life to go to a country where I can’t work? I love him, but when we got married he said that he wanted to stay and build a life in this country, and now I feel like that wasn’t entirely true?

I mean even if we were to separate (which we don’t want, but my parents got divorced and I know it can happen even to the best of couples), how could joint custody of kids work if he’s on the other side of the world? What if one of us would lose access to our kids?

He’s said it a couple of times now in arguments, and every time I feel like I lose trust in our relationship and the goals I thought we shared.

Am I overthinking it?