First time posting, and I'm sad to have it in this forum! But I'm starting to fall apart.
My fiance and I had been together for five years and living together for three when he proposed this past September. The problem is classic: my parents don't like him. And he doesn't like them. They are totally different people. My parents are very pragmatic, clannish, hard-working, and perfectionistic. They rarely offer the benefit of the doubt to anyone, can be very critical, and will never admit they are wrong in any situation. I love them anyway - they are also loyal, giving, and determined. My fiance on the other hand is generous, intellectual, and unfailingly emotionally supportive, which are traits that make him a caring partner but that my parents are hard-wired to never appreciate. They see him as unambitious, lazy, and a little snobbish. They frame their concern as being worried that he won't step up to the plate to provide for me and our new family if anything happens and I can't work (I currently earn more than twice as much as he does, but also work longer hours in a more demanding job). In reality, he is struggling a little with his career - grad school is wacky expensive, his current job is a dead-end, and he isn't in love with any potential career alternatives. I see their concerns, but I wish they could see his good traits!
They don't think he is a worthy person, and he doesn't think they are worthy people. All three of them are also proud, and deeply offended by the (known) fact that the other party dislikes them. It's bad enough that I had a small panic attack after he proposed and before we gave them the news, which cast a pall over our engagement (he's partly convinced I don't actually want to get married to him).
To mend fences, I suggested that they be involved in the wedding planning, which I imagined at the time would be a string of fun and pretty activities. Disastrous. They disagreed with everything we liked, and we had several phone conversations that ended with me in tears because my parents said things like, "If that's what you decide to do, don't expect your father to come," or "We feel like we don't even know you any more," or "You are turning into a very selfish person." In response to things like: wanting to use a local decommissioned ferry-boat for the venue (it's beautiful, tons of people I know have been married there), wanting to have the wedding on a Sunday versus Friday, or forgetting to explicitly invite my mom to come with me to go back to the shop and inspect/pick up the wedding dress I had tried on with her previously. All of this has been painful and stressful, and I've struggled to set boundaries with them while trying to keep the groundwork for an on-going healthy relationship with them. Over Christmas, I told them that while I still would keep them in the loop around wedding stuff, I didn't want them to be part of the decision making anymore, because they aren't able to disagree with me without taking the position that it's because I am wrong and they are right. There is no room for compromise with them. It's hard to feel like I have hurt them in the short term, but I do hope that it will help us in the long term.
On the other side, I am juggling my fiance's feelings about my parents, which are very, very negative. He doesn't see any of the good in them, just the ways that they have hurt me and insulted him. We are going to a couples therapist, which has helped to articulate some of what we are feeling, but it doesn't feel like there is a solution. When I'm not actively angry at my parents, it's hard for me to hear him say mean or cruel things about them. Not only do I still love them, but a lot of who they are has shaped me as a person. I am also pragmatic, hard-working, perfectionistic, even if it's to a less extreme degree. My personality sometimes conflicts with his for the same reason that his conflicts with my parents. So when he says things about them, it feels like he is saying them about me, too.
Three months into our engagement, every element of trying to plan the wedding has ended in tears one way or another. I'm exhausted. He's depressed. My parents are alternately trying to stay involved and offended by our reluctance to talk about anything related to our lives. We don't want to find an officiant, book a photographer, ask friends to be our attendants, or even choose wedding colors, because it feels wrong to pull more people into this unhappy experience. We did, at least, send save the dates, so that's something. Our friends are on my fiance's side - my parents are hard to sympathize with if you don't already love them. My younger brother wants to stay out of the whole thing.
I guess my question is, how do I climb out of this "pit of despair"? I never really elaborately imagined a dream wedding as a little girl, but I did always think that it would be a happy time where I felt supported by the people closest to me. I have no idea how to even try to get back to that dream.