Hey, I'm going to be moving out of my mom's house into a guest room in my Inlaws' house. I cannot take living with my mom anymore. I'm 25 now and I don't want to be in the same situation when I'm 30 where I'm overpaying to live in a bedroom and can't save anything.
When should I tell her that I'm moving? Should I tell her? If so, what do I tell her?
Hi.
A short story of my life is here https://www.reddit.com/r/AITAH/s/bwFbBdpkWF. I am in my mid 20s and still live with her.
So recently I made the decision to move out and I am having some doubts like: what if I don’t succeed? What if I go from this to something worse? What will I do without her support? I think that if I move out her relationship with me will become almost non existent bc I do not think she will want to keep contact with me.
I love her very much even though she she hurt me and it pains me to leave her and know that she will suffer (bc she will suffer if I move out even if she tells me sometimes she can’t stand me and that I hard to live with).
Socially I am mostly isolated, I can’t sat I have somebody I could ask for help but I am thinking of therapy after moving out. I can’t now because I don’t even have my own room and she wouldn’t be okay with it.
If anyone went through this or even if not and has some advice it would be very well appreciated.
Thanks for reading!
They make the new partner target number 1 and will try everything in their arsenal to break you up, control how much time you spend together, become more needy and controlling, hoover, overstep and take offence when you don’t feel comfortable giving them all of your private life’s details up to them to twist into strange narratives to use against you/get flying monkeys to get riled up and hate you because you’ve unintentionally upset poor vulnerable MIL or IL.
My MIL is losing her shit now because i’ve completely closed myself off once I saw the way she and everyone operates, how toxic the entire structure is etc. I stay to myself, I don’t talk about anyone ever, not even to my spouse at home. I focus on my own life. They sit around at tables shit talking me behind my back. Nothing I do will ever be good enough and i’m realizing that’s not because of me- it’s because i’ve ruined the enmeshment/hierarchy but simply not playing ball.
If I compliment something the mom makes or does, i’m apparently fake and lying and don’t actually like it.
I take notice and say something little like, did you switch up your lipstick? The colour on you is really good, I like it. Now apparently i’m again, lying and being mean.
Or she will mention that her and her eldest went shopping and found some really nice anti aging skin serums that are usually expensive on sale. So when christmas came (we got everyone stuff from Sephora for their stockings) we put in a really nice serum that I knew about that I thought she would love to try. Apperantly now i’m calling her “old”.
My mother has a "difficult personality", which, among many other things, means that she is agitated, stubborn and 100% immune to feedback. If she wants to "help" you, she will force her ideas on you no matter what: you can beg, you can scream, she will just move on with her plan. She can manipulate, emotionally blackmail, distort reality and so on, and all that "for your own good".
It sounds as if she were a horrible person, but I don't think she is evil, narcissistic, etc. I really do believe her intentions are good. Unfortunately, due to some psychological or neurological issues, she is simply unbearable.
I only started to regain some peace and sanity many years after I left and started living on my own, a 3-hour drive from home. Since then, my contact with my mother has mostly consisted of weekly phone calls, plus me visiting her once every 2 or 3 months.
She is almost 70 years old and will retire in a few months. A few months ago, my daughter was born, and my mother got this horrifying idea of coming over to our home to "help us with the baby". I told her multiple times, extremely clearly, that we don't want her to come, but recently she called my wife's parents, almost sobbing that she is very sad and lonely, that I don't talk to her anymore, and that she "just wants to help". She also shared her plan to rent an apartment near us!
She's always been pushy and never listened, but now it's clearly reaching insane levels.
I don't know how to handle this whole situation. For sure, I don't want her to come here. That is completely horrifying. When I visit her, the only semi-positive emotion I feel is relief that I've fulfilled my obligation and now I'll have some time before I have to visit her again. Our former weekly calls made me feel sick for hours. Given all that, the best approach would be no contact at all, but I doubt that it's realistic in my case, as I don't think I'm strong enough to cope with the guilt and pressure from other family members.
So the only realistic way of coping seems to be to maintain some form of contact, as limited and infrequent as possible. In order to do that, I would have to reduce my emotional reactivity to her, as currently, after each contact, I feel this boiling inner rage and sadness.
Any advice?
Me casé hace como 6 años, y con el tiempo me di cuenta de que mi esposo está súper enredado con sus papás, sobre todo con su mamá.
Teníamos un montón de problemas porque vivíamos cerca de ellos: invasiones de límites, ella me pedía que arreglara cosas que deberían ser responsabilidad de mi esposo, dejaba las cosas de sus hijos para que nosotros las cuidáramos, venía a nuestra casa diario, nos decía cómo hacer de todo, etc. Ya no me sentía yo misma; siempre estaba explosiva y enojada.
Le pregunté si podíamos mudarnos. Aceptó mudarse a una ciudad no tan lejos, a unos 30 minutos. Yo pensé que eso iba a ser la solución, pero ahora su mamá le manda mensajes casi diario con una intensidad súper cariñosa que de verdad se siente incómoda. Cada mensaje trae un "mi amor, mi corazón, mi vida" y le pide su opinión para elegir muebles para su casa, celulares, etc.
El otro día, en un parque acuático, ella le agarró la panza a mi esposo con las dos manos, como haciendo un pellizquito, aunque él se echó un poquito hacia atrás, ella siguió. Luego le hizo un chiste a su hijo más chico, que estaba acostado, diciendo: "desde aquí puedo ver todo".
Ahora siento mucha repulsión. Ya no uso apodos románticos con mi pareja porque no me gusta la idea de llamarlo con lo mismo que usa su mamá. Me siento distante de él. Sé que en realidad no es así, pero se siente como si ella fuera su novia y me pone súper incómoda, pero igual lo amo.
Le sugerí que fuéramos a terapia juntos, pero dijo que si él iba sería solo para que alguien le dijera que soy yo la que está muy mal. O sea, él no ve ningún problema, así que no ve razón para ir.
Siento que soy yo la que está estorbando aquí. ¿A alguien le ha pasado este tipo de enredo que se siente como romance?
I live with my mom and my husband
Her personality traits are ego, being selfish and too much anger. Always demands respect and she never understands when she is wrong, doesn’t understand the concept of mental health nor of pms and believes ‘I am now my husband’s and take less care of her and doesn’t give her time when practically i shadow her almost all the time still its not enough. My husband i don’t know how he is taking all this bullshit as he never signed up for this. Whenever she is home i am automatically like is she ok or is she in trouble. And i constantly make sure she is good mood she is happy. My husband is an introvert and likes to live in his own world and i m fine by it but not my mother. She cant say anything to him so she constantly in front of me keeps talking like this is not done he is also now family. But who will make her understand that u need to accept people how they are in order for them to start feeling like a family. She wants to put no effort but expects others to adjust to her tunes. I have been doing this for many years and papa used to do it but my husband wont. Why will he.? I am so exhausted mentally and sick of all this. I think they should teach in school how a single child should deal with emotionally vulnerable single parent who are egoistic and money minded and selfish
Tl;dr:
My homophobic father whom I haven't spoken in a little under 2 years reached out to get me to sign a document. I'm struggling with how, if at all, to reply.
Full story:
I went limited contact with my parents back in Nov. 2024 because they're both homophobic. They called my partner of 7 years a roommate, my mother would only refer to him as "it", they refused to visit the home we shared together, and never wanted to meet him. They were happily there for the break up though.
Things finally came to a head when I confronted them about it and said if they refused to meet any of my partners I didn't want them in my life. Things understandably fell apart from there.
My mother, the primary abuser, tried to DARVO me while my father, the "relatable" but narcissitic parent tried to pretend he was an ally despite him being the one to tell me I could never bring my partner around and, in effect, had to be in the closet around them. They both left that evening without us finishing the discussion after I brought up my mother being the first person to call me the f-slur and slipping out a. F-bomb in frustration. I'd apparently, "taken things too far."
I tried to connect with my father immediately after the interaction to give him the opportunity to actually be an ally, but he essentially said my boundaries need to be flexible with family (i.e., I'm comfortable with the same, sweep it under the rug way of life we've been living,) and that I can't blame them for my miserable life. (Mind you, I love my life, never said otherwise, and only wanted them to get over the homophobia.) When I responded as such, he left me on read and later unfriended me.
Since then he's tried a few odd ways of reaching out including guilt tripping when the family dog died, messaging my cat's instagram page 40+ times, and sending a transphobic reel to an old group chat with my brother. He's also simplified my reason for the reduced contact as, "I'm mad at them" to anyone that will listen.
I last saw them at a wedding where my mother stared from across the room and my father actively covered his face with papers every time my brother or I passed the table.
My father reached out to me today and I'm just not sure how to approach it. The guilt trip, the false time expansion, the obvious ploy to just have a conversation...it's all just too much. Would love to hear thoughts.
TW brief mention of suicide
TL;DR at end of text
context: im F17, living with mom who is enmeshed with me. dad isn't present due to being abusive. i have narcolepsy (diagnosed) !!
im currently grounded at home, not allowed in my dorm room. Mom has extreme anxiety of me dying/getting myself in trouble/being alone
I am currently struggling significantly at home with my mom. My therapist has told me that I am clearly not doing well in the home environment and has recommended that I avoid being there when possible.
A major current problem is my narcolepsy and how difficult it is for me to wake up and attend school. This is not something I am choosing to do. I can sleep through alarms and have a very difficult time becoming functional in the morning. I have already been struggling with school attendance because of this.
When I fail to wake up, Mom becomes extremely stressed and has called me things such as “lazy”, "spoiled" and “a princess.” I remember her saying these things clearly, even though she now denies saying them and denies being stressed about my situation.
Mom is extremely concerned about being unable to reach me 24/7. She calls me repeatedly throughout the day when I am asleep, even when she knows that I am sleeping. She worries that I may have suddenly had a medical episode, even though I do not have a history of such, she gets angry about how much time she spent trying to reach me.
I feel that this is unfair because I cannot control being asleep. Mom is choosing how frequently and for how long she calls me, while I physically cannot answer while asleep. I understand that her concern about my safety is genuine, but her response to that concern is awful
Mom says that she has to be able to reach me because she is “responsible for me,” since there are no adults physically present at my dorm. Because of her worry about not being able to reach me, I currently cannot stay at my dorm even though being at home makes my mental state significantly worse.
I am both the source of Mom's stress and the thing responsible for reassuring her.
Being at home is seriously messing with my mental health, driving me to borderline suicidal ideation. I cannot provide her with 24/7 access to me due to my medical condition, but she is getting angry about how long she spends trying to reach me
Due to enmeshment and dissociation, i cannot tell which of my thoughts are mine and which are her words.
I cannot keep going like this for very long
My narcolepsy makes waking up extremely difficult, but Mom calls me lazy/a princess and blames me for it. She is extremely anxious about not being able to reach me 24/7 and repeatedly calls while I'm asleep, then gets upset about how much time she spent trying to reach me.
I've realized I've been responsible for managing her emotions for a long time. I feel like I'm simultaneously the source of her stress and the thing responsible for reassuring her. I don't think it's fair to blame me for things I can't control, like being asleep. Its seriously damaging my mental health
Hello I'm scapegoat..
In all seriousness, in the last 6 months I've figured out I'm in an enmeshed family system which has been a bleed realisation as I'm the emotional absorber or scapegoat if you will.
I'm a 38M, single and sober for 5 years where I've gained a lot of clarity, growth and career success which has upset my younger, suspected narcissistic brother, and mother in particular. My brother and I fell out 5 months ago after I set a healthy boundary after he wanted validation about a message a girl had sent him weeks after he separated from his soon to be ex-wife. I asked for space as I was struggling and he flipped out. Gaslit, manipulated and guilt tripped me to which I called the behaviour out and he went to my parents. My mum then I'm attempt to 'get me back in line' gaslit and discredited my reality and when I set further boundaries I was met with subtle threats. This all came as a gut punch to me as the masks hadn't slipped they'd flew off and I knew what I was up against. I've held my boundaries, left the family WhatsApp group and I am very low to no contact with my brother and low contact with parents.
The other day I went round to my parents and discovered my brother had straight up lied and manipulated my mum telling her about a conversation me and him supposedly had which never occured (I went through her messages, I know it's bad but I knew I'd find stuff). He then claimed I'm jealous of him, I'm pathetic and I need to go to him now because I was grey rocking him (one or two word answers).
I've also recently pieces together or at least assuming that the reason my dad has never been able to meet my eye is because of his shame. He doesn't have a problem meeting my siblings eye but with me he can't hold eye contact like I'm a stranger it's very upsetting and makes me doubt myself.
I'm struggling at the moment with isolation, confusion and anger towards them. I've worked hard to get myself well in sobriety and that is now a threat because I say the truth and set boundaries?
I feel very alone and could do with some advice on how to feel a part of and find some good people to meet. Hope someone can help.
Anyone have any virtual or in MA recs for couples therapist versed in emenshment ? My husband can’t even admit it to himself