u/Existing_Excuse_6703

Throwaway account to stay anonymous. Sorry in advance for the long post... I'm not good at keeping myself short.

I (F32) have been together with my boyfriend (M28) for 6 years. We moved in together 3 years ago. Our relationship had a rough start due to our 4 year age gap... His mother was vehemently against us because I'm older than her darling son. She also didn't like that I'm an immigrant (even though she is one herself, just from a different country).

Nowadays she pretends that nothing ever happened and acts friendly towards me. I frequently invite her to have meals or to go out to go shopping with us to keep the peace and she tends to gift me clothes and sweets every now and then. From the outside I guess we seem to have a good relationship. In front of her sister she even claimed that we are friends. But I can't help feeling resentful towards her for all the things she said about me and all the things she keeps doing... AITAH for this?

Here's the story:

Boyfriend and I met online and started going out after a few months. We stayed long-distance (around 400 km apart) for around 2 and a half years due to us both still being in our respective universities. He lived at his parent's place, I had my own rented apartment, so back then he would usually visit me there. I hadn't met his parents during that time. Never even talked to them. I wasn't interested in meeting them because right from the get go his mom would make up all kinds of shit in an attempt to break us off. Here are a few examples of the things she tried to tell him to make him leave me:

• She only wants your money (I had a higher education than he had, so no idea why she assumed that I would be interested in scamming a 22 year old guy who had no career yet)
• She wants to baby trap you
• All [people from my birth country] are the same, she just wants to exploit you for your inheritance
• She's manipulating you into moving away from us
• She is a bad influence on you (she literally knew nothing about me and wasn't interested in knowing anything)

...

I don't do well with being hated like this for no reason. I have CPTSD from childhood trauma, so I'm extra sensitive about certain kinds of social situations. For me all of this reads as super toxic and I wanted to have nothing to do with her. I have a difficult relationship with my parents due to my upbringing (I'm no contact with my father due to physical abuse). Because of this my boyfriend used to dismiss my concerns over his parent's actions, saying that I don't know what a healthy family looks like (ouch).

That was long ago and we have worked through this conflict. Generally, we have a very loving and caring relationship. The only arguments we ever had were about things his parent's had caused. Over time my boyfriend learned to understand my past and my struggles better, and he is very supportive. I'm supporting his growth too of course, since he does now acknowledge that things in his family haven't been as perfect as he wanted to believe.

His father was a very difficult (also physically abusive) person and has since passed away, so there my boyfriend agrees that he was problematic. With his mother it's more difficult though. She was a very caring SAHM who focused her whole attention on him (he is her only child), so he got a lot of help with school and stuff. However, he had basically zero privacy, even as an adult.

Whenever we were video calling I would see her just enter his room unannounced to make his bed, to pick up his laundry or his dishes and she would vacuum his floor. For me, watching this, as a woman who had moved out at age 20, this was so jarring and ngl, I was very turned off. I hate it when men don't clean up after themselves. When I met him he knew nothing about how to do laundry, how to load a dishwasher, how to cook anything. His mom would always do everything. Even at that point I already felt too old to be teaching a man how to be an adult. Well, I ended up teaching him these basics later anyway.

Back to the privacy-issue... There were TWO occasions where she went into his room when he wasn't home and she found gifts I made for him that were NOT MEANT FOR HER EYES. He hid them under his bed and she found them and yelled at him about it later, thinking that some minor flirting was dISguSTinG. The gifts were meant to be cute, btw. They weren't overly erotic...

Anyway... so far to giving you an idea of her character. She always came across as very controlling to me. Now moving on to how the moving-in-together went...

I graduated first and started my career with a remote job, anticipating that we would move in together once my boyfriend also graduated (a few months later). The biggest conflict of our relationship quickly ensued... My family lives high up in our country (not the USA), and his parents live 300+ km away from there. I had to move away to be able to study in my field. After around 8 years of living alone I missed my relatives desperately and wanted to move closer again. I didn't even ask to move to their city, I just asked for a compromise to choose a city in the middle so we would both have around 150 km to go in each direction. The city we agreed on together was even closer to his home.

His mommy didn't like that. She literally threatened to break off contact if he were to move away, because she saw that as abandonment. I'm sure she would've wanted to disinherit him if that were legal in this country. She allowed no compromise. I'm not sure what his father's position was, but he wasn't happy about it either because he relied on my boyfriend to take care of his properties (the parents are landlords).

My opinion at the time was that she was just bluffing and that it's awful of her to emotionally blackmail him like this to get her will. But my boyfriend was understandably very hurt and afraid of actually losing them if he chose to move away with me. We discussed this over weeks and weeks. I hated it. The city he came from is a really bad place, with little opportunities for jobs, a high crime rate, lots of abandoned buildings - the only benefit was that the rent was cheap. I hated the idea of moving there, of building a life there. And I hated the idea of living so far away from my support system. Completely isolated. But I realised I asked him to do the same for me by going for a compromise. His mom would also keep saying that I've been already living alone for so many years, and that it wouldn't bother me to keep living so far away from everyone I know (I was very offended by this statement tbh).

...

I caved. I moved to his city. We rented an apartment there. At least we found a nice part of that ugly city. Even if I feel paranoid when I transit/walk home from work after night shifts (yeah I have a new job). My only boundary was that we move into a different district away from his parents so they don't get the idea to call him over for any minor inconvenience they want us to fix (it later turned out that my concern there was justified). I also didn't want them to just stop by uninvited. I need time to mentally prepare myself for guests.

The first time I met his parents was when I came over to help renovate our new apartment. It was so awkward. My mom was there too. Everyone pretended to be nice. And I stayed at his parent's apartment for one night to get as much work done as possible.

My relationship to them remained tense for over a year, if I remember correctly. I always felt very nervous about coming over for dinner or something. They were always so quiet and I didn't know what to talk about. They were dead set on pretending like nothing ever happened. There was never an apology. Never any closure. My resentment remained. And I felt very anxious, thinking that they just silently kept hating me, while pretending to smile. It's definitely a me-problem, I know. I'm probably projecting.

The next conflict point in our relationship might be where I'm the AH, idk. My boyfriend quickly found a job near his parent's place. I was a bit disappointed, because I knew it would mean that he would keep relying on them for meals and such, while I wanted him to grow more mature and independent... And I was right. He would stop there every morning to have breakfast with his mom. His father didn't bother to wake up at 7 am for this nonsense. But his mom insisted on cooking him breakfast every morning before he left for work. I watched him agonising over too little sleep for months because he had to wake up so damn early for this dumb breakfast routine. Get ready at home, drive over, eat breakfast there, then run to work. Often he overslept and missed breakfast entirely, going to work hungry. He would also go to his mom for lunch break EVERY DAY. There were also many incidents where he would eat dinner there after work without telling me while I made dinner for us, waiting for him...

It took 2 years, but eventually, he reluctantly agreed that this was too much. It was also a lot of stress put on his mother to wake up so early just to make breakfast and then go back to sleep. Her health isn't the best, so this routine wasn't good for her either. He changed things so he would eat breakfast at our home. He could sleep longer and he liked that he could eat whatever he wanted instead of having fried or cooked eggs everyday.

For lunch he only visits her two days per week now. On his longer work days where he likes to have a larger meal. I felt like this was a good compromise. On the other days he would either take left overs to work (prepped by me) or he would buy a sandwich from a nearby bakery shop. His wake up call was when his boss carefully approached him that it would be nice if he could spend some of his lunch breaks with the other employees to socialise with the team. He was quite embarrassed that his boss noticed the frequency of his mom visits. (His mom even came to his workplace once to bring him food...).

So, while these boundaries are now set, my boyfriend still goes over to his mom EVERYDAY after work. It started with every other day, but since his father suddenly passed away he visits daily. After their loss of course I understood that she needed a lot of help, both emotionally, and with managing the inheritance and properties. I helped out too! With the grave and garden work. But now it's been over a year since. The situation hasn't changed. She relies on him for every little thing.

He is always exhausted after work and is still emotionally forced to go there and spend another 1-2 hours at her place to call with tenants or to do paperwork for her. He wants to help her, but it's clearly too much. Sometimes he cries himself to sleep because it feels like he has too little free time to just chill and due to this he ends up going to bed too late everyday. He lives on too little sleep constantly. But he sees no way to change his situation. I'm worried that he might burnout if this continues for long.

I can't help but feel resentful that his mother refuses to take care of things herself. She could hire a janitor part-time or in general, just hire people to do this kind of work, if she thinks she's unable to do anything herself... There are property management agencies she could negotiate with for a maintenance contract. But no, she'd rather exploit her son for free. She is one of those people with the opinion that her child owes her support because she raised him.

I feel resentful for this, I feel resentful for all the attempts to break us up in the past, I feel resentful for how much she eats into his free time, I feel resentful that she demands daily visits and when he can't come she'll call him to either yell at him or chat about her day. She can't go a day without talking to him. My boyfriend knows how much this annoys me and every time I give him a 'look' he just says, "I know, I know...". Sometimes it even seems like I'm jealous of her and that thought grosses me out so much. Like there was one time where he planned a date with me, but I had to go to a work-related emergency so he... he fricking took his mom to our date!!! Wtf is this!! He apologised profusely when I confronted him, because he immediately realised how stupid that was. I had been looking forward to going to these places with him, and he just went without me - and took his mom along. Ugh.

I have so much anger in me and no where to let it go...

But anyway, I'm not here looking for a solution. I'm looking for judgement.

AITAH for resenting his mother after all this time even though she objectively treats me well nowadays? When we interact directly I mean.

Vorweg: Ich suche dringend Rat. Hat jemand schon mal mit extrem verantwortungslosen Verwandten zu tun gehabt, die sich einen Hund angeschafft haben? Wie geht man da vor?

Ich bin über 30, wohne 300+ km entfernt. Meine Mutter ist körperlich stark eingeschränkt (Arthrose, Rheuma, Bandscheibenvorfälle) und bezieht Erwerbsminderungsrente. Mein Bruder und ich haben ihr mehrfach und deutlich davon abgeraten, sich einen Welpen anzuschaffen --- vor allem weil sie ihn nicht artgerecht halten kann.

Trotzdem hat sie sich heimlich einen Russian Toy Welpen (jetzt 4 Monate) bei einem Vermehrer gekauft. Ohne Plan, was passiert, wenn sie krank wird oder in Urlaub fährt. Meine Tante hat sie noch bestärkt ("kein Problem, ich helfe"). Die Vermehrer haben wohl Druck ausgeübt, sodass meine Mutter impulsiv die Entscheidung traf ihn zu diesem Zeitpunkt zu kaufen und abzuholen. Direkt nach dem Abholen setzte sie diesen fremden Welpen mit ihrer 7-jährigen Katze zusammen und fuhr dann einfach weg in einen 8-stündigen Kurs. Sie sieht darin keinen Fehler und tut so als hätte sie keine andere Option gehabt.

Das Muster seitdem: Sie lässt den Welpen stundenlang allein, geht fast nie mit ihm raus und wollte ihn mit Pipitüchern wie eine Katze erziehen. Die Katze ist durch den Welpen extrem gestresst. Als sie 3 Wochen nach der Anschaffung plötzlich in den Urlaub fuhr (Tante war ebenfalls weg), blieb es an der Familie hängen. Hundepension lehnte natürlich ab bei einem ungeimpften, unerzogenen Welpen.

Ich habe ihn dann betreut und folgendes vorgefunden: Überall Pipi und Kot, starkes Beißen, Trennungsangst (heult das Haus zusammen, wenn er allein ist), zittert viel, manchmal Durchfall, ständige Blähungen, Übergewicht und braucht Körperkontakt. Die Wohnung war voller Gefahrenquellen für einen Welpen. Ich ging täglich mehrmals mit ihm raus, habe mit ihm gespielt und versucht, Grundlagen beizubringen. Dinge, die meine Mutter ihm nie bieten wird. In den Tagen wo ich dort war, hatte sich seine Gesundheit verbessert. Keine Blähungen, kein Durchfall mehr.

Ich konnte nur ein paar Tage bleiben, weil ich heute wieder arbeiten muss. Gestern ist viel Streit ausgebrochen, als ich erfuhr, was deren Plan dafür war, wenn ich weg bin. Die meinten ich soll einfach morgens wegfahren und ihn bis 19 Uhr allein lassen (dann käme meine Oma von der Arbeit). Oma hätte dort übernachtet und würde Freitag früh wieder los zur Arbeit fahren und den Welpen wieder den ganzen Tag und die ganze Nacht allein lassen. Meine Tante kommt heute Nacht vom Urlaub zurück. Ich hab mich an meinen Bruder gewendet und wir haben uns beide mit unserer Mutter und Tante gestritten. Letztendlich hat mein Bruder den Welpen zu sich genommen. Aber er kann den nur bis heute 14 Uhr behalten, weil er auch mit seiner Familie in den Urlaub fährt (hat das schon um einen Tag nach hinten verlegt wegen dieser Situation).

Jetzt ist meine Mutter beleidigt, macht sich zum Opfer und zeigt null Einsicht. Meine Tante ist ähnlich drauf ("er lebt ja noch, stellt euch nicht so an"). Beide finden es völlig in Ordnung, einen winzigen, untrainierten Welpen stunden- bis tagelang allein zu lassen.

Ich bin fassungslos, wie verantwortungslos die beiden mit einem lebenden Wesen umgehen. Für mich ist das Tierquälerei.

Was würdet ihr an meiner Stelle tun? Ich habe ihr schon angedroht, den Hund ins Tierheim zu geben, falls sie sich nicht radikal ändert (u.a. alle Urlaube storniert). Sie fliegt ungefähr alle 3 Monate in die Türkei. Für mich passt dieser Lebensstil nicht mit Hundehaltung zusammen, vor allem nicht mit einem Welpen im ersten Lebensjahr.

Ich weigere mich tatenlos zuzusehen wie dieser Hund vernachlässigt wird. Aber was kann ich realistisch tun? Kann ich rechtliche Probleme kriegen wenn ich ihren Hund hole und ins Tierheim bringe ohne ihre Zustimmung? So als letzte Konsequenz wenn sie sich weiter weigert auf mich zu hören... Jetzt aktuell ist sie dramatisch und stellt sich als Opfer hin, tut so als ob sie ein guter Mensch sei und alle anderen böse zu ihr sind. Ich kenne diese Tour von ihr schon.

TL;DR: Meine Mutter hat sich trotz Warnungen impulsiv einen Welpen gekauft, lässt ihn stundenlang allein, geht nie mit ihm raus und zeigt null Verantwortung. Tante unterstützt das Ganze. Die Familie muss ständig retten, was die beiden verbocken.

Edit: Hab ein paar Infos entfernt, die mir dann doch zu persönlich waren.

Update: Danke für all die Kommentare. Ich habe alles gelesen. Die Situation ist gerade sehr dynamisch, darum kann ich gerade nicht viel berichten. Aber mein Bruder wünscht sich eine friedliche Lösung, darum versuchen wir erst mal meine Mutter dazu zu überreden mit mir einen Welpenkurs zu besuchen (den ich bezahlen würde). Wenn alle Stricke reißen und sich dennoch keine Einsicht zeigt, dann wird eine Meldung beim Veterinäramt die letzte Konsequenz sein. Bis dahin dokumentiere ich Missstände, damit ich genug in der Hand habe für den Fall der Fälle. Und natürlich hänge ich mich dran, dass der Welpe seine Impfungen erhält und dass sich seine Gesundheit verbessert.