I (31M) married my wife Isa (30F) 2 years ago and we've known each other for 5 years. She comes from a very close family who always spend holidays together, meet up when and where they can and are very in each other's lives. It's nice and they've welcomed me which I really appreciate.

My background is very different. I was a foster kid who was in and out of the system because my bio parents kept getting second and third and fourth and fifth chances with me. They weren't together so I was bounced around a lot. I was originally taken at 20 days old and the longest I ever spent with either parent was 3 months. My longest foster home was 6 months. None of the homes I was in were loving. Not my bio parents and not any of the foster parents. By the time I was 14 my bio parents stopped trying at all and I bounced around foster homes until leaving. I lived in fear a lot as a younger kid and learned how to stay out of the way and hide so that I couldn't be treated like shit by any of the people I was living with, which happened a lot when I was younger. I aged out of the system and my late teens and early 20s were rough and very lonely.

Isa's family are the first time I've been welcomed by people like this and it's an adjustment. One part of me loves it and another part of me doesn't know how to fully immerse and it doesn't help that I don't have happy memories from before Isa and them. This is all especially true when they sit and share memories during holidays. They'll look back on childhood stuff and they don't really talk about recent things or even family stuff. I don't have happy childhood memories or fun stuff to share. I don't have traditions or customs to bring up and incorporate like they suggest. Isa has told them to let me sit out when they start bringing up the past. She has told them to use their common sense and they say they they don't expect me to lie but they want me to try and find some happiness in the past. They believe there's probably stuff that got overshadowed by all the bad that happened back then. But there really isn't. And I don't like talking about how bad my childhood was and especially not in front of young kids. Isa gets this and she's very supportive.

But her family confessed after Easter celebrations that it's frustrating that I seem so closed off and they're not sure what else they can do. They just want me to feel like I'm truly a part of the family and can talk as openly and honestly as everyone and they want to feel like they can help. They thought that when Isa and I became parents to our little one it would make me more open but it hasn't.

It's not that they don't my past. We have discussed it before but outside of therapy I don't want to keep bringing it up and I certainly don't want to search for happy memories that don't exist.

Isa told them to just let me be and welcome me and shower me with love and acceptance and that's the best they can do. She told them pushing me like that is not going to make me feel like a full part of the family. They said they just hate feeling like I don't feel good around them.

And I feel bad because I don't want them to feel bad in any way. They are the only people I ever considered actual family before. But I don't have the joy and nostalgia and traditions to share and I'm not someone who is extremely open about all the shit I've been through. Talking about it doesn't help me. I don't know if that's me being unfair to them though.

AITA?