Husband is too attached to his brother

I just got married a few days back. During the wedding festivities, my husband was spending an inordinate amount of time with his younger brother at the expense of spending time with me. This by itself I would have been fine with because they don't get to see each other much.

What was irritating was the way my husband kept petting and praising his brother like he was a small child. He kept telling everyone in my family that his brother was his favorite person, that he was the reason he was feeling so happy during the wedding, etc., with no word about me! And his brother is not a small kid... he's my age. He barely helped with the wedding -- certainly not even a fraction as much as my own brother did -- but the way my husband praised him, you would think he organized the entire thing himself. He uses very sweet pet names for him, but has never called me by anything other than my name.

During the mehndi, my husband barely looked at me, and later, he said he doesn't even remember the color or style of my lehenga (which I selecting partly according to what I thought he would like), and instead, he spent the entire function cajoling his brother to eat. His brother seems like the fussy type who refuses to eat without someone pestering him to, which is ridiculous for a guy in his late 20s.

Husband was more attentive to me during the actual wedding, thankfully, but after the ceremony, he disappeared, again running after his brother to eat and cuddling him and telling everyone what a perfect person he is. At the reception, he made his brother sit with us on the stage! It was so humiliating being up there with the two of them, when it should have been about the two of us.

The kicker came when he was leaving to go back to the States. (I'm following after two weeks, but due to jobs, we won't even be living together in the same place for some time, and will only be seeing each other every other weekend, if that. There's no honeymoon or any time alone together.) My parents asked him to come to dinner at our home before his flight so we could all spend some time together, and even invited his brother to come along as well. He refused because he wanted to spend time alone with him. And we weren't even married 5 days by then!

Now he's back in the US and I'm sitting here seething about this. I don't know if I'm overreacting, but I'm feeling very hurt and concerned about whether the future will be like this -- me and our future family taking a second seat to his younger brother. (I've heard of husbands being tethered to their mothers and sisters, but this seems like a unique case.)

He already spends a lot of money on his parents and brother, which I ignore, and so far, absolutely nothing on me (I earn my own so I don't care, but still). His parents are listed as beneficiaries on his bank accounts, because I can financially support myself, but they can't. We've been dating for some time, and I've tolerated this sort of behavior all these years. But I really think he needs to let go a little bit of his family now that we're married. How do I explain this to him without sounding insensitive?

 

He doesn't want to ever change the beneficiaries, he said. He also started saying he wants to schedule regular Skype sessions with his brother, but he's always too busy to talk to me, or even visit me. I just wish the first days of married life were a bit more pleasant.

 

I don't know. It would have been fine if I had my brother or family members too. Or if he had other family as well. But just the three of us, especially after all the attention he showered on him during the wedding, was strange.

 

Greedy despite the fact that I and my parents paid for the entire wedding and reception, and he and his folks didn't contribute a penny? We even paid for all their clothes and hotel bills for their relatives. I honestly don't care about getting his money for myself, but when we have kids, I don't want them to be shortchanged because of his brother! (His brother doesn't have a career and will certainly try to get money from him as time goes by.)