Update: I want to go to my brother’s funeral but my husband says its too hard.

Let me clarify. Not too hard emotionally. He says it’s too difficult to get there. We live 3 hours from where the service will be held. We have an 18 month old who has never gone longer than 30-45 minutes in her car seat. (She’s hated it until she was like 16 months now she tolerates it). She is still breastfed. (Like every 2-3 hours. Still nurses to sleep for naps and bedtime and through the night wakings). My husband has a slight fear of cars and car accidents. He avoids long car trips whenever possible. He’ll say it’s too expensive (even though family has offered to help pay for anything we need including a rental and a hotel). To put it plainly, he doesn’t like my family (nor they him). He is protective of me and our daughter and my family sees him as being overbearing and controlling (even though no one will say those words, I know that’s what they think based on the few conversations I’ve had with them). They never see eye to eye, my husband says it will only cause more stress to our family (meaning to our marriage and our daughter). I don’t know what to do. I feel the need to go. But my spouse is not supportive of it. We didn’t really have a conversation about it. He just treated it like all the other times we’ve been asked to visit (like when my mom had another medical emergency) and it was like a “we obviously we can’t go” he gave me the same reasons without really discussing it. I feel sad. I don’t want to resent him for making me miss my brothers funeral, but I don’t want to argue with him and cause more stress in our relationship (he’s really good at arguing and I am, what he calls, submissive).

Update: I asked my husband if he’d help me get to my brother's funeral. He said “oh okay” and went silent for a few moments. And said let’s clean the house. I thought for a second that we were cleaning to get ready to leave the house (so we could come back home to a clean house after travel). He then started talking to me about it and he said I was about to ruin our relationship now that I’d asked. (He thought we’d already decided and understood why we couldn’t go). He said that he used to be a more cold person before I met him and that he doesn’t want to become that person again. He said I won’t like him talking about and being the way he is toward death and funerals. He said he doesn’t want to be depressed for a long time again, that he would be no good to me in that state and that he was trying to take care of me through this difficult time. He said he woke up that morning and thought to himself “how can I help her be happy today” and then he said “but then you opened this can of worms”. His father died when he was a teen. And he was depressed (obviously) and he started to get really depressed and anxious talking about me going to my brother’s funeral. He said “I’ll say go ahead go but I’ll be lying” (and my husband doesn’t lie). He said that he’d just be home depressed, thinking about it and that that’s what I was going to come home to. And I was ruining our marriage and exposing our daughter to a lot of negative emotions. He has a hard time letting himself cry. I swear it’s like the worst thing. He feels so depressed if he cries (whereas I feel relieved when I cry). There was a lot more to the conversation, but sadly, the whole conversation and the rest of the day made me feel more worried about his sanity and depression than missing my brother’s funeral… he had so much anxiety that day and night that he had a difficult time breathing, started to feel sick and couldn’t sleep. Sadly, I called my mother the night before the funeral to tell her that I would not be attending… she was understanding and supportive. Didn’t make me feel bad about it. I’m upset for missing it. But, my husband isn’t depressed so I guess that’s a plus. I can’t say that I feel any resentment toward my husband because I saw his emotion and tears and I was seriously concerned for him. Do I wish he was emotionally stronger for me? Yes, but that doesn’t change who he is.

So to clarify again, he did also mean to hard emotionally.

Say what you will. Thank you all for the encouragement. You encouraged me to at least ask him for his help…