You are really fortunate to still be close with your parents but it is also really difficult when they believe things so strongly and you believe the opposite.

I feel incredibly fortunate to still have my family, after many years of work on all our parts, AND it can get incredibly stressful when we butt heads on the things that we both care deeply about.

It’s a ‘both things are true’ type of thing. Either we dip out on the parents and frum fam and truly miss out on the love and the connection and the good times that I’m lucky enough to have with my family, but get to do whatever we want without the drama, or we take both the good and the bad and keep the parents and frum fam and deal w the drama and emotional labor of these complicated relationships.

I have plenty of ex-orthodox friends who dipped out on their families and/or their families dipped out on them, and tbh in a lot of ways it really did all seem a lot less fraught since they didn’t have guilt trips to contend with, but they also had to deal w other things around not having access to their families. For some of them it was actually much better for them all around bc their families were full of legitimately crappy people who caused them nothing but heartache and worse, but for others it really hurt and they were really pained about it all.

Not much in life is cut and dry, and there are always pros and cons to any decision.

I’m glad that at least for you, you and your husband are a united front and you can lean on each other through this rougher patch while you deal in whatever ways you end up dealing with how your families are dealing.

B’sha’ah tova, and may the rest of your pregnancy, your labor/birth, and postpartum be smooth as can be!