How Conflicts with In-Laws Are Really a Story About Trust Between Partners

Most South Asian couples who come to therapy cite in-law relationship problems as the reason they're there. The sense that your marriage is a three-way relationship you didn't sign up for.

Conflicts with in-laws are real, and they cause genuine pain. But after working with South Asian couples for years, I've come to believe something that surprises a lot of people when I say it out loud:

The in-laws are rarely the actual problem.

What's underneath the in-law issue almost always, is a question between two partners: Do you have my back?

What I see in the therapy room

In many South Asian families, men grow up with a deep, internalized sense of responsibility for their parents. This isn't a character flaw but rather a cultural script that was handed to them long before they got married, often before they could question it. Taking care of your parents, keeping the peace, not rocking the boat — these are values that were built into them as expressions of love and duty.

The problem is what happens when that script gets carried into a marriage.

When a husband defaults to agreeing with his parents in order to keep the peace, he often, without realizing it, extends that same pattern to his wife. She becomes, in his mind, an extension of him, which means that keeping the family harmonious requires her compliance too. He's not trying to be controlling. He genuinely believes he is managing everything well. But from where she's standing, she has no voice, no advocate, and no room to set boundaries with in-laws without it becoming a conflict with him.

The only tool she has left is anger. And the anger looks, to him, like she's attacking his family , which makes him defend them more, which makes her feel more unheard, which produces more anger. The cycle is familiar to almost every South Asian couple I've worked with.

The question that's really being asked

When a woman in a South Asian marriage raises concerns about her in-laws, whether it's about how decisions get made, how holidays are spent, how much access his family has to their home and their lives - she is usually not primarily asking "can you fix your family?"

She is asking: Are you on my side?

She's looking for evidence, in small and quiet ways, that her husband has evolved beyond the cultural expectations he was raised with. That he sees her as a partner with her own needs and perspectives, not as someone whose job is to slot into the family system. That if something happens : a comment that stings, a boundary that gets crossed, a decision that affects her - he will stand with her, not in opposition to her.

This doesn't play out in dramatic confrontations. It shows up in small moments: whether he notices when she's uncomfortable and says something. Whether he backs her up when his mother questions her choices. Whether he asks her how she's feeling after a difficult family event, or goes quiet and hopes it blows over. His nervous system may be in peace-keeping mode. Hers is tracking something much more important: Am I safe here? Can I trust this person to see me?

Why her nervous system is paying such close attention

For women navigating South Asian family structures, life has often involved a constant, low-level awareness of being watched, evaluated, and found wanting. Whether it's the extended family, the community, or the cultural narratives about what a good daughter-in-law looks like — there has been scrutiny. The nervous system learns to stay alert.

When a woman marries, she is hoping — often deeply and quietly — that this relationship will be different. That here, finally, is a place where she doesn't have to manage how she's perceived. Where she can put the vigilance down.

When the marriage doesn't feel safe in that way — when she can't trust that her husband will stand up for her, even in small ways — her nervous system doesn't get to rest. The in-law tension is real, but it's often the context in which the deeper question lives: Is this a relationship where I am truly safe and seen?

That's not a question that gets answered in one big conversation. It gets answered in a hundred small ones.

What actually helps: building the couple back to each other

The couples I see who move through this well are the ones who learn to decenter the in-law problem and re-center the question of what they need from each other.

This is where the work of Dr. John Gottman is genuinely useful. His research on what makes relationships stable over time comes down to something that sounds simple but isn't: partners need to turn toward each other, again and again, especially in moments of stress. Bids for connection : a look, a question, a touch, a moment of acknowledgment, are the building blocks of trust. When those bids get missed or dismissed consistently, trust erodes. When they're met, trust accumulates.

For a South Asian husband who has learned to manage everything by keeping the peace, learning to turn toward his wife — especially when she's expressing something he'd rather smooth over, is often the most important skill he can build. It means tolerating the discomfort of his wife's unhappiness without rushing to fix or minimize it. It means choosing her, visibly, in the small moments.

For her, it means learning to voice what she needs before it becomes anger — and trusting that voicing it is safe enough to try.

Neither of those things happens overnight. But in my experience, when couples are able to make that shift — from "how do we deal with the in-laws" to "how do we rebuild trust between us", the in-law dynamic often becomes a lot more manageable. Not necessarily easier, but no longer the thing that threatens the whole relationship.

If this sounds familiar

Marriage problems with in-laws are among the most common things South Asian couples bring to therapy. If you and your partner are caught in this cycle where every in-law conversation ends in conflict, where you’re processing past instances of hurt within the relationship due to differences with in-laws, where you feel like you're choosing between your partner and your family, or where one of you feel alone in the relationship, it's worth talking to someone.

I work with South Asian couples navigating exactly this. I see clients virtually throughout California, and in person on Wednesdays in San Francisco's Financial District, near Union Square. A free 15-minute phone consultation is a low-stakes first step.

You don't have to keep having the same fight. There's usually something different underneath it worth finding.

Manali Deolalkar is a licensed therapist (LPCC) and founder of Spiral Up Therapy. She specializes in working with South Asian individuals and couples, women, BIPOC clients, and tech workers throughout California — in person on Wednesdays in San Francisco (FiDi), and virtually the rest of the week. Learn more at