Severe Trouble Adjusting to and Accepting Different Familial Behavior in Partners Family

We hear horror stories about In-laws frequently, but I don't see much discussion about serious psychological pain that comes from different familial beliefs/behaviors with a partners family.

I suppose this might be associated with horrible in-laws, but I think it's much more subtle and it is not discussed very often.

For instance, my husband's family had some habits that I found to be very disturbing. One was picking someone that they believed to be less intelligent or honest than themselves and making it a family thing to talk bad about that person. This really disturbed me when I first cam into contact with his family at 15.

Another thing was a problem that his family had-a discrimination against girls. They made no bones about having a preference towards boys. I think it was because his mother liked to be the "center of male attention" and she viewed other females as competition for the attention of the males.

How does one psychologically deal with pains that were caused by these things and the pain is still going on many years later. I am deeply angry and hurt and I keep trying to tell my husband. I know that he understands what I am telling him. I was very young when we got together and I was often shocked by things that were said, but I always thought-no, I'll just ignore it cause I thought his family was admirable because of his mother being an artist and because they were more social than my birth family. But as time has gone on, I kept getting hurt psychologically and now, I have no idea what to do with the anger.

I wouldn't ask you guys, but I don't get to see my therapist again until the 11th, so I had a big blow-up over these issues last night and in part it was because of the female hating threads on here the last few days in combination with an unwelcome reminder of things that happened years ago and it just created a perfect storm that really took me by surprise last night.

Does anyone else struggle with things like this and how do you heal from it. Maybe time is the healing thing. Mother-in-law is dead and I miss her and I didn't want her to leave us, but she died. There is so much unresolved and my husband is so defensive it makes it harder. We fight and he will finally admit to what happened-he knows, I know he knew about it then and looked the other way cause it was easier and it was what they expected him to do so he got a positive reward for looking the other way. But I don't know what to do with the hurt.