r/enmeshmenttrauma

My boyfriend and I have been together for a little over a year. He is the youngest son and became very close to his mom when his parents divorced. Since she was a SAHM, he stayed with her to support her and took on a significant role in the household. His parents eventually reconciled and remarried.

When we started dating, his mom became upset about him spending weekends with me or coming home late, so he decided to move out about eight months ago.

She still hasn't accepted it. She regularly asks him to come back, calls him a bad son, says he's destroying the family, and repeatedly warns him not to let "other people manipulate him." Initially she blamed me directly, until my boyfriend shut that down and made it clear that his decisions were his own.

He still visits about once a month for birthdays and special occasions, but even those visits often turn into arguments about him leaving. I've only been to their house once because of all this.

Now to the text I sent his brother yesterday.

My boyfriend and I travel together, and we realized I don't have the contact information for anyone in his family.

He has my parents' and my sister's numbers in case something happens to me. So I asked him for someone in his family I could contact if there were ever an emergency where HE couldn't contact them himself.

His brother is around our age, so he gave me his number. He was perfectly nice to me when I met him before.

So I sent him basically:

"Hi brother-in-law, this is X, Y's girlfriend. He gave me your number for any emergency. So here I am if you ever need anything."

That was literally it.

He didn't respond.

He immediately blocked me and messaged my boyfriend:

"Y, your girlfriend messaged me. I would appreciate it if before sharing my contact information you asked me whether I consent."

My boyfriend explained that it was only intended as an emergency contact.

His brother responded that if my boyfriend has an emergency, he should contact their mom or dad because "they support you in everything no matter what happens." Which... idk, weird thing to say.

Then he said my boyfriend could contact him directly if he needed help.

Which completely misses the point. I would only need his number if my boyfriend COULDN'T contact his family himself.

And ofc he told their mother about it.

His mom started blowing up my boyfriend's phone, criticizing him for giving me the number and bringing everything back around to the same pattern of him making bad decisions and being a bad son.

It feels like there is no room in this family for my boyfriend to simply build an independent adult life.

He doesn't even like telling them when we're traveling because he expects his mom to react badly. Eight months after moving out, his independence is still seen as a literal betrayal.

His father mostly stays out of everything. From what ive heard he's very hardworking and helped his family and his sons a lot, but during any conflict or decision making he just sits there and doesent say anything.

The thing I'm extremely grateful for is my boyfriend's boundaries.

He has never asked me to tolerate disrespect or expected me to manage his mother. When she tried blaming me for him moving out, he immediately shut it down.

Even now, his response to me is basically: "I'll handle my family." And he does.

But I can see how exhausting this is for him.

I think part of him hoped his relationship with his brother existed outside of this dynamic with his mother.

Maybe I'm too close to this now, so I'm curious how this looks to people who have dealt with enmeshed families.

For those whose partners came from families like this: did things eventually calm down once the family realized their adult child wasn't coming back?

TL;DR: My boyfriend's mom has struggled with him moving out and still treats his independence like a betrayal, including repeatedly warning him not to let "other people manipulate him." I texted his brother after my boyfriend gave me his number as an emergency contact. He blocked me, involved their mom, and a simple text somehow became another family crisis.

Hey guys. I can’t thank you enough for your support on my previous post. It means so much.

His family has, once again, caused trouble after we tried setting a boundary. This is definitely pushing me in the direction of calling off the engagement.

About a month ago, my family surprised my fiancé with a fishing charter for his birthday. It wasn’t for another month, but we felt we had to tell him in advance because he was already making plans to go home and see his family on his birthday like he always does. My dad invited his dad to come on the fishing excursion, and he said yes. Trying to be the bigger person, I invited his mom, sister, and BIL to come visit for the day and hang out with my mom and me while they fish.

Shortly after the plan was revealed, we met his parents for lunch. His mom immediately started shitting on the birthday plan, asking “well how are we all supposed to celebrate his birthday if they are fishing all day?” I told her the plan was to have a big cookout after at my parents’ house. His mom pushed back, saying his sister and brother in law probably can’t make that work because they have 2 little kids who need naps. I couldn’t help but get the feeling that his mom is weirdly threatened by my family “taking over” his birthday.

Despite how bizarre it is, I wasn’t surprised that she was speaking for their 35 year old daughter because that is what typically happens. So, I decided to reach out to his sister directly, telling her they could come later in the day if that works better. She tells me they aren’t worried about it at all, and that the kids can nap on the way home. Okay. Great.

About a week later, I overhear my fiancé on the phone with his dad. His dad was still saying the same BS about the plan not working for the sister and BIL. So I’m starting to get pretty annoyed. At this point, the fishing excursion was only a week away, and I needed to tell my mom how many people were coming to the cookout. So my fiancé tells me he will do another call with his dad in a few days to get an answer. A few days later, he tells me he got the confirmation that his sister, mom, and BIL were not coming because it’s too difficult. It sounds like they were trying to get him to make the trip to them to celebrate his birthday the following day, but he pushed back and said he didn’t want to do that. Good for him.

I decide to text his sister one more time to let her know that my parents have a guest suite they can use if that makes it easier. I am completely shocked when she replies, “say what?? We never said we weren’t coming!” I immediately tell my fiance and he loses his shit. He calls his dad to figure out what the hell is going on. His dad doubles down that his sister has always been up in the air about coming. He then tells me he feels guilty for raising his voice at his dad, which irritated me.

So then his mom starts texting me trying to get the ball rolling again, saying she and his sister want to do a group call with me to discuss plans for the day of the fishing excursion. I’m extremely annoyed and confused at this point. I don’t respond for a while, so then his mom starts texting my mom asking what the plan is. Eventually I respond to them, and a plan is made. So my parents go out and buy hundreds of dollars worth of food and start prepping it for the party.

A couple days before the party, I ask his sister what time they plan to get here. She acts like all is well. Then, the night before the party at about 6:00, she texts me saying that she and her son have coughs, and they are both on medicine but didn’t want to worry anyone. I told her I’m not worried about it, especially if they’re on meds. She doesn’t reply.

Then at about 9:00 at night, she texts my fiance and my mom saying she and her son have bronchitis, and that they won’t be coming. She offers for her husband and son to still come, saying that her son has been on meds longer than her. That doesn’t make sense to me, because in the same breath she said she and her son went to the walk in clinic together that day.

My fiance tells them to just forget it, so no one except for his dad comes. No one ever bothered to text me to apologize.

If this were a one time thing, that would be different. But this is a pattern. It happens every damn time. Mind you, we had plans to meet his family for a day at the aquarium just a few weeks prior, and his sister bailed last minute claiming she had strep. But this time I’m even more upset that they insulted not only me, but my parents too.

After the fishing charter, his dad showed up to the cookout and basically just ate and left. The next day, I was in a funk and very upset about everything. My fiance asked what’s wrong, and when I told him, he said “I can’t believe you’re doing this on my birthday.” So I guess it’s okay for them to destroy his birthday plans and our relationship, but he’s choosing to be angry with me.

It turned into several days of my fiance and I not speaking. That following weekend, we were supposed to leave to go on a trip with his family that I begrudgingly agreed to several months prior. I was so fed up, that I told him I wasn’t coming anymore. I told him I am 100% done with his family. He freaked out at first. But also said he understands why I feel this way. Once his parents found out, they said they wanted to talk to him on the phone. They had about a 20 min conversation. While I didn’t listen in on it, I was hearing my fiance say a lot of “I love you”s and “more conversations will need to be had in the future.” After he hung up, he said he thought it went well, and that his parents love me very much and want to do whatever it takes to fix things. I stood my ground and doubled down on not going on the vacation with them.

He still ended up going on the trip, having a grand time with the very people who are destroying our relationship. I’ve spent the last few days alone in my thoughts. And yeah, I can’t fucking do this anymore. He’s about to get home, and sadly, I am not looking forward to it. I can’t imagine ending things, but I also can’t imagine my life continuing like this. Eventually his mom and sister both texted me and apologized, but only after my fiance told them to. I didn’t reply. I have given these people enough chances.

I think I finally know what I need to do. The problem is I’m too weak to end it. We’ve been together 10 years. I’m 30 years old. I can’t imagine starting over now. I’m just so scared…any kind words/support is appreciated. Thankfully, I have a therapy appointment tomorrow.

[TW: mention of emotional neglect, domestic violence, emotional abuse, enmeshment]

After my recent struggles within an enmeshed friendship, I've started to fully acknowledge to myself that I do not want to be the 'therapist friend' anymore.

I had realized that the life experience, that had been driving my co-dependent relational patterns as a 'therapist friend' the most, had been my persistent effort to stave off the feelings of utter powerlessness that I had to endure as a child at the mercy of an emotionally unstable, abusive and neglectful 'caregiver'.

Back then, I had become my "mother's" therapist in an effort to take control of her out-of-control emotions, in an effort to give me at least a moment of peace and reprieve in a home environment which was dominated by her fear, rage, depression and shame on a daily basis. Of course, I was completely powerless over her emotions, but the denial of my powerlessness, the mental escape from these otherwise overwhelming emotions, is what helped me to go less insane in a physically inescapable situation. It was reassuring to believe I still was in control somehow.

But reflecting some more on the 'Why?' behind my child self's co-dependent coping mechanism, the 'Why?' behind her stepping into the parental role for my 'mother' in this way, I also noticed that it wasn't only control that I must have been looking for.

I realized that this form of enmeshment also gave me access to another resource that I so urgently needed in order to survive, but which my 'caregiver' was never willing to give to me freely:

Connection.

When I remember my 'mother' all I can see are memories of her looking away from me, staring off into the distance with a bitter and dissociated gaze. I can only see her back, hands shrugged behind her, as she is walking ahead of me for the entirety of the way from my school to our home. The only times she ever bothers to actually look at me is during one of her frequent rage attacks which usually leave me so shocked, frozen and dissociated, that there is still no connection to be found.

But when little child me sits next to her on her bed, as she lights a cigarette and tells me all the horrifying, graphic details of how my father, her siblings, her parents, the police and many, many other people have failed and hurt and abused and betrayed and abandoned her, I can feel a fraction of what I had always longed for: To feel connected to my mom emotionally.

In this moment, I don't mind that all of these big emotions, that she is venting out into the smoke filled room that we're both sitting in, are already starting to suffocate my own. I don't mind the fact that this is now all about her, and not at all about me, and that her rambling is further adding to my deeply ingrained sense of abandonment. I don't mind that her detailed retellings of her domestic abuse incidents traumatize me, again and again and again.

I don't mind that I have to perform a version of me that is not really 'me' in order to become the therapist that she needs, because — at least for once — she is talking to me without yelling and this is what I so desperately need.

So I learn to find comfort in this enmeshed arrangement that we now have. And I learn to dissociate away from everyone within in me who might sabotage my 'therapeutic work'.

I dissociate away from the parts of me who feel rightfully angry over how unfair it is that our 'mother' is pushing the parental role back onto her little 8-year old child.

I dissociate away from the parts of me who feel so confused, unsettled and overwhelmed from the mature and completely inappropriate content that our "mother's" vents contain.

I dissociate away from the parts of me that feel absolutely nauseated and disgusted over our "mother's" complete lack of boundaries and repeatedly overstepping ours with her never-ending trauma dumping.

I become the child who can truly 'be there for her' when everyone else in her life has already walked away. Subconsciously I know I don't have the freedom to go anywhere else, so might as well become the best emotional support child that has ever existed.

Who knows, maybe she'll even change her mind and start loving me one day?

He chose his mom/family over me. I feel awful, and I feel like he’s going to move on and find a woman who values family and I’m gonna feel like crap because he made me feel like not being accommodating to his family structure was a character flaw.

So, I broke up with my partner of two years due to his family, mainly his mother. His mother is a 48 year-old woman, and he is 29. She is a widow of four years (husband was 30+ years older), and she also lost her mother four years ago as well. I tried to be accommodating in the beginning, understanding that he is her only son/child and essentially all that she has left in the household. She’d have panic attacks often. She has a bunch of family, but she really clings onto her son. I moved in with them at the beginning of our relationship because my job was closer to their house. But after a while, I got tired because it just felt like we were kids under her rules. She constantly had family coming in and out staying for extended periods of time and I felt like we had no privacy. It felt like there was always somebody coming around, someone to always hang out with. I wanted to build on our relationship between each other, but there was always somebody tugging at him. So, I urged him and we got a place of ourselves together after almost a year of being together.

I thought this was going to be the change that we needed, but it didn’t even feel like we had our own place, being that he would still have to constantly go back to her house multiple times a week to help her with the household things as well as to console her because she felt alone and that he just abandoned her. She called 3 to 4 times every single day. This led to a lot of arguments, because I felt like he would prioritize his family (extended family, cousins, aunts/uncles, mothers friends) constantly over us, and it felt like I was just dating him and his family. He was tasked of helping take care of his family, being that his stepdad used to take care of his mom‘s family before he passed. I started to lose attraction to him, and our sex life dwindled. And he complained about that. His family would often comment on how quiet I am, but I just didn’t feel comfortable, and I got tired of spending every holiday and almost every function with them. His mom’s friends would make little comment sometimes, throwing shade and it just gave that they didn’t really like me that much.

I know I was not a perfect girlfriend, and I have flaws that I need to work on, but I really tried because I cared about him. However, in our last arguments, he said that his family will always be a priority, they were a priority before me and they’ll be a priority after me. He also doubled down and said I don’t know anything about having a family. I have an estranged family, my mom passed away, and I was raised by my grandparents. I never had extended family or just family constantly around. I grew up alone pretty much. For him to hit that low broke me. He gets mad and he says some really hateful things. I’ve just had enough. But, I can’t help but think about how he’s going around probably slandering my name and how he dragged this on knowing that I was not the person for him. Because I wasn’t extremely close to his family, we couldn’t work out. I feel awful.

Our lease is ending in a couple weeks, and he essentially moved back home like three months ago, periodically stopping by. He stopped helping me with the rent, so I’ve been having to pay for months rent these past two months by myself. I just feel abandoned. It feels like in his head, he’s justifying his behavior because I don’t get along with his family and that’s like a huge character flaw to him almost as if, I don’t value family. Which isn’t the case, it’s just his family and his mom are just so overbearing. I just can’t take it. It’s like they have no ambition or drive to do anything else except lean on their family for everything. He says that he’s gonna pay me back, but every time I ask, it’s always he has to get money out of another account. I’m turning 28 years old and I feel like I have to start over. Choosing myself is not easy, it’s very hard. He’s going back to a support system, a community of full of people that care about him. So he’s gonna be OK. He’s gonna go off and he’s gonna go find somebody else who adores his family dynamic and they will ride off into the sunset together. I don’t have a support system, I don’t really have community. And that’s something that I want so badly in this lifetime. It just feels lonely. But I felt like I had to go, cause I do hope to be married one day and I don’t want to be tied to a person who wouldn’t ever prioritize me. It’s been two years and no talks or actions towards getting more serious/marriage. How do I get over this feeling of just feeling like shit, and that I was at fault here and this is somehow a reflection of my character?

I’m 30F and my boyfriend is 35M. We’ve been together for 1 year and 2 months. I love him a lot and he is genuinely a very kind and loving person, but during our relationship I slowly started realizing how much his entire life revolves around his mother. I didn’t know all of this when we started dating. I found out little by little the more time I spent with him and his family.

He lives with his mom, who has depression, and he seems to feel responsible for almost everything about her wellbeing. She calls him while he is at work because she feels lonely and wants him to come home. She has also threatened to hurt herself when he leaves her alone, which obviously puts a huge amount of pressure on him. Sometimes she gets scared at night and sleeps in his bed because she doesn’t want to be alone. When he is at my house he often worries about what she is going to eat because he says that if he doesn’t take care of it she might not eat for days. He even pays their cleaning lady to go every day partly so his mom has someone there with her.

She also calls him when we are together for really small things, like something on the TV or whether the dogs have eaten. Twice when he stayed late at my house she called saying she heard strange noises upstairs and was scared. He didn’t go home either time and later there was nothing there. I can’t say whether the noises were real or not, but the timing was strange.

The biggest issue for me is that she really doesn’t want him to move out. She tells him that she lived with her own father until he was 85 and “never abandoned him.” My boyfriend has told me that of course he CAN move out, but that when he does “Troy will burn.” So I don’t think he is completely unaware of the problem. I think he knows, but he is scared of the reaction he will get if he starts living more independently.

Something happened recently that kind of summarized the whole thing for me. We had spent Sunday together and stopped briefly at his house before going to mine. He had already told me we were just dropping some things off and then leaving. His mom started asking why we had to go to my house and why we couldn’t just stay there with her.

At some point I heard him tell her, “The thing is SHE doesn’t want to stay here.”

That bothered me a lot because HE wanted to leave too. I told him privately that I didn’t want him using me as the excuse because he was afraid to tell his mom that he wanted to go. If he actually wanted to stay, that was fine, but if he wanted to leave with me then he needed to say that himself instead of making me look like the reason.

He immediately told me I was right and apologized. About two minutes later he got up, went back to his mom’s room and told her himself that we were leaving. Then we left.

Those moments are what confuse me, because he actually can recognize what is happening sometimes. He has refused to rush home when she calls scared, sometimes tells her “I have to live my life too,” and he has spent entire weekends with me without constantly checking on her. He has also been open to the idea of therapy.

But I can also see how much resentment all of this has created in him. One time he became extremely overwhelmed after an argument with his mom and said that when she eventually dies he will finally feel free. He was so upset that he had to step away from what we were doing for a while to calm himself down. Afterward he apologized to me and tried to make up for ruining our plans. It was one of the moments where I realized this situation isn’t only affecting me. He seems trapped in it too.

Then there is their house, which is honestly another huge issue.

They have six cats and three dogs. One of the dogs is paralyzed from around the chest down and cannot control when he goes to the bathroom. They don’t use diapers because they say he hates them, so accidents happen inside the house. The other animals are not properly trained either, and the whole house smells like urine.

His mom also doesn’t like throwing old things away, so there are boxes and clutter everywhere. His bedroom is much more organized than the rest of the house, but lately even his room sometimes smells like urine.

There are things that genuinely shocked me because they seem completely normal to him. Once one of the dogs peed on his pillow and he cleaned it with alcohol, let it dry and kept using it. Another time his mom was recovering from major intestinal surgery and a cat peed on her blanket, and instead of replacing the blanket he just turned it over.

His sister, who lives abroad, also tells him that the house is too dirty and that the animals need more training, so it isn’t only me noticing it.

Recently I was sitting in his bedroom and the smell was strong enough that I was covering my nose with my coat. He noticed and asked if I smelled something strange. I told him I could smell pee. He didn’t argue with me, but he lit a candle and covered the smell instead of looking for where it was coming from.

For some reason that small moment stayed with me. It felt like a perfect example of the whole situation. The problem exists, everyone knows it exists, but instead of actually changing it they have learned how to live around it.

There has also been a separate issue between us that affected my trust. Recently he took intimate pictures of me without asking me first. We had never discussed taking pictures like that and I had never given permission. When I noticed something was wrong, he denied it at first and later admitted it. He apologized and deleted everything in front of me when I asked him to.

I chose to forgive him, but it still affected my trust, especially because he initially tried to hide what he had done.

What makes everything difficult is that I don’t see him as someone who is completely blind or unwilling to change. Sometimes when I point something out, he actually listens. Sometimes he puts limits with his mom. Sometimes he recognizes that he needs his own life.

I don’t want him to abandon his mother. I don’t want to compete with her either. I just want to be with someone who can love and help his mom without feeling responsible for whether she eats, sleeps, feels lonely or emotionally falls apart.

I also don’t want to become “the girlfriend who took her son away” simply because I want a normal adult relationship with him.

I love him, and I think that is what makes all of this so hard. Sometimes I see the small changes and feel hopeful. Other times I look at how deeply this dynamic is built into his life and I get scared that I could spend years waiting for those small changes to eventually become a completely different life.

I just needed somewhere to finally say all of this.

I have recently realized the extent of my enmeshment with my parents. I am way older than I feel someone should be when realizing this.

I FEEL CONSTANTLY EXHAUSTED after decades of this. Like all I want to do is sleep, which obviously isn’t possible.

Does anyone else feel SO TIRED?

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(Read the rest if you feel like it, if not, I’m mostly curious about the question in the title. I just wanted to get the rest off my chest)

I know my feelings are not reality so when I feel hopeless that I can make my life better I know this is not true. And this also makes me feel exhausted. It’s daunting. I know it’s doable.

I’m at the beginning of truly changing things, even though I realized this quite a while ago, I just didn’t realize the extent of the damage to me.

I am working on it, seeing a therapist, etc. I am trying to find a level of relating to my parents that works for me, but it’s going to take time.

Seeing my mom‘s reactions in real time to me stepping back is very eye-opening. They’ve been happening for years, but I guess I didn’t want to recognize them for what they were: Not fair to me.
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I (32M) believe I have finally come to a breaking point when it comes to my 68 year old mother. For brief context, I was an only child to a single mother. I knew our relationship ship was different, but I always attributed it to our mother-son dynamic.

Recently, she is becoming too much for me to deal with. She does not like my partner of the past 2.5 years, the most serious relationship I have ever been in. My mother believes that my partner is trying to tear us apart, when to me this feels like the most healthy and loving relationship I’ve ever been in. My mom insists that my partner continually disrespects her, and refuses to accept any blame. This is something I’ve spoken with close friends about, and have been validated that my mother’s behavior is not normal.

I’m quickly coming apart at the seams after my mom’s most recent visit, when she insists my girlfriend is trying to come between my mom and myself. She told me marrying my partner would be the biggest mistake of my life, amongst other things. Further details can be provided if wanted/necessary.

I’m worried it will result in losing her, whether it be through suicide or no longer having her in my life. As twisted as it is, I still love her and care for her deeply in spite of everything. She has expressed to me multiple times that I am her everything, and how she has nobody in the world that loves her. Classic manipulation techniques, but that doesn’t mean they don’t work in making me feel guilt and responsibility for her wellbeing and mental health.

I’m realizing things cannot continue this way, as my anxiety has been through the roof. I’m not sure how to proceed. I had a panic attack tonight after making the mistake of calling her to check in, and being met with screaming and awful comments about my partner and myself to the point about lying about what I was doing and turning off my phone so she wouldn’t have my location.

I realize I need to create boundaries with my mom, but I don’t know how to do it and not feel the guilt and pain I’ve come to associate with her.

Looking for any help, advice, or commiseration to feel less alone.

I (22F) have been with my boyfriend (25M) for about a year and a half. I love him, but his relationship with his family has become one of the biggest problems in our relationship, and I desperately need outside perspectives because I don’t know what is normal anymore.
When I first met him, he was living independently, and our relationship felt completely different. Eventually he moved back in with his parents and started working for his dad’s business, and since then it feels like his entire life revolves around his family. His work, money, schedule, living situation, and free time are all connected to them. There doesn’t seem to be much separation between “him” and “his family.”
His parents seem very involved in his decisions and his schedule, and it feels like plans between us are constantly dependent on what his family wants or needs. We’re currently long distance, so seeing each other already requires planning. There have been times where we’ve gone weeks or over a month without seeing each other, yet I still feel like creating independent time for our relationship is treated as secondary.
The relationship with his sister is another part that makes me extremely uncomfortable. They are VERY physically affectionate with each other, including cuddling and spooning. I understand siblings can be close and affectionate, but this goes beyond anything I’ve personally seen between adult siblings, and I have tried explaining that it makes me uncomfortable.
The worst incident happened on my birthday. I was already upset because he was cuddling/spooning with his sister. I tried waking him up, and during the situation he smacked me hard enough to give me a black eye. I know physical violence is a separate and serious issue, and I’m not trying to minimize that. It affected the way I see him and his family dynamic, and months later I still haven’t been able to fully get past what happened.
To his credit, his behavior toward me has improved significantly since then, and I have seen changes in him. That’s part of why I’m so conflicted. If everything were horrible all the time, this decision would probably be much easier.
But I still feel like I’m dating someone who hasn’t actually separated from his family as an adult. I don’t expect him to abandon them or stop being close to them. I actually think being close with your family can be a great thing. I just want normal adult boundaries and to feel like our relationship is capable of becoming its own unit.
I’m also starting to resent the situation because I don’t want my future to look like this. I don’t want to spend years waiting for him to become independent, move out, establish financial boundaries, and start making decisions without his family’s involvement.
I also want to acknowledge my own part because I don’t want this to be a completely one-sided post. I’ve handled some of these conflicts badly before. I’ve gotten extremely angry, said things I regret, and allowed my resentment toward his family to build instead of dealing with it productively. I’m working on my own behavior. But even when I remove my reactions from the equation, the underlying family dynamic is still there.
I guess what I’m trying to figure out is:
Is this actually family enmeshment, or am I interpreting a close family through my own discomfort?
For people who have dated or married someone from an enmeshed family, did your partner ever successfully establish boundaries while remaining close to their family?
And most importantly, how do you know when it’s worth waiting for someone to become more independent versus accepting that this is simply the family system you’re signing up for?
I love him, but I’m starting to realize that loving someone and being compatible with the life they currently have might be two different things. I really need outside perspectives.

my mom is super scared of everything, even getting the mail that is only a few steps away from the house. she’s scared to get out of her car to get food in a restaurant and scared to be in the garage because she thinks the garage door doesn’t lock on its own so someone could break in.

i’m going to college soon, and she was telling me how i would have to go to the store to get things (soap, bathroom stuff, food) and i was saying how there are stores near campus.

she told me that i shouldn’t walk alone and if i do i will be murdered stalked and raped. not that these things don’t truly happen to people, but i am very hurt that she said it in this fashion (she said those words exactly) and i just can’t stop thinking about how she was point instead tell me how to be safe or offer to take me to the store on the weekends (i am less than an hour away)

i can’t believe she boils my existence down to being raped. it’s all i can think about. i was so excited to go to college but now im really scared. i know this behavior is the reason im leaving but it is still getting to me. i dont know anyone at the college campus so its not like i will have a walking buddy, and she reminded me that i dont know my roommate (we met off instagram) and that she could be crazy too. im scared to do anything without my mom around but i know i have to in the end

i started crying thinking about it because maybe i should stay home.

Any advice on how to maintain a relationship with a clingy enmeshed parent?

My mom is a really unhealthy person. She hates her husband, doesn’t have a social life, doesn’t have hobbies, and is generally very fearful of the world. She works from home, doesn’t have a lot of social interaction, and barely connects with other humans. Her best friend is her mom (my grandmother). She is someone that is very comfortable with the life she lives and doesn’t want to change anything, even though she complains a lot. I grew up very isolated & enmeshed with her, and have been healing in my adult years.

I find it extremely difficult to maintain a relationship with my mom that doesn’t end up hurting me at the end of the day. Whenever I share details about my life with her, she latches on very heavily and starts projecting her fears. She pushes her agenda heavily and feels as though she can share all her thoughts bc I am her child. She finds danger in everything - health treatments, travel, fitness, eating too much protein, etc etc. It makes it really hard to talk about anything. I find that I don’t even want to share details about my life because then I have to deal with her neurotic thoughts in my brain, or defend my choices.

Secondly, she doesn’t have much to bring to the table herself. Most of the time, she’ll just complain about my dad, talk about the same 3 things, or hyper-focus on my life. Additionally, she doesn’t really respect my privacy and will share things I tell her with my grandma or my dad; as if my life is fuel for her gossip.

I have coped by going lower contact and creating distance, but I struggle with the guilt of this. I feel like I owe her some level of connection because she’s still my mom. And the empathetic side of me also feels bad for her, even though I know she is responsible for her own life and her choices.

Any advice, words of wisdom, or similar stories that might help me feel more normal at least?

Like many of you with children in this dynamic, I'm deeply concerned about transmission. What are you doing to keep enmeshment from reaching them?

My son recently said to me "Daddy doesn't care about us, he just cares about his mom and dad." It absolutely broke my heart and I did not install that. He's SEVEN.

I have them in general play therapy to practice identifying emotions. I co-regulate with them and validate that they are people with their own feelings. I make sure I repair and model repairing with others. I constantly tell them I love them and there is nothing they could do to change that.

I would be interested to hear other tips/ideas on building emotional intelligence.

TD;LR at the end of post/ Hi. I'm a middle aged women living with my mother (we rent a place together) who is in her 60s, and I'm struggling to understand where my responsibility toward her ends and where her expectations of me become unreasonable.

Today I offered to take my mom to a food festival. She had just gotten some money, the weather was nice, and I thought she might enjoy getting out of the house (I don't mind treating her either if she didn't have any money). Instead of being happy about the offer, her initial reaction was suspicion and uncertainty. She was genuinely shocked that I offered to spend a Saturday with her because she has become very used to me prioritizing my boyfriend and friends on weekends .Because of that, she felt she needed reassurance that I *genuinely* wanted to spend time with her and wasn't simply making her a potential "backup plan".

To further justify her reaction, she pointed out that in the past, when she asked me to change my plans to spend time with her, I usually didn't (that's me *trying* to maintain my boundaries).So from her perspective, her skepticism isn't coming out of nowhere. She feels that she has learned from past experiences that she isn't necessarily a priority for me, and therefore she believes it is reasonable for her to ask whether I'm actually choosing her.

I genuinely wanted to spend time with her!! I wasn't asking because my plans had fallen through. I offered because I thought it would be nice to do something together. So when she responded by asking whether I was ONLY asking because I didn't have anything better to do, and then asked why I didn't ask my boyfriend to treat me if the food festival was expensive, I felt *hurt and *invalidated ( I did not expect my mom to buy me stuff so I don't know why she said that)...

To me, I had just made a *genuine* effort to choose her, and instead of feeling appreciated, I felt as though I had to defend my motives!?
I also have a lot of history with feeling extremly criticized by my mother, particularly regarding my boyfriend and my friends. She has made it clear that she greatly dislikes my boyfriend, and almost ANY opportunity for her to compare herself to him (she wants things fair) or point out his wrong doing can turn into an argument.

My boyfriend has his own issues, and my mother is absolutely entitled to have concerns about him. However, I feel that the * constant * criticism of my relationship has become exhausting and a source of much conflict between us... it's now become emtional abuse!

For context, my boyfriend is off on weekends. Because of his health and autism, he is often mentally and physically exhausted during the week, so although we sometimes see each other during the week, weekends are generally when we have the most opportunity to spend time together. We have been dating for two years and we are not hardly sexually active so to make up for it, I really value our time together...

My mother doesn't work and doesn't have many obligations during the week outside of helping with stray cats/a small cat colony, which I also help with. Because she has ADHD and anxiety, the week often goes by without us doing much (she is smart but disorganized), and then she wants to do things on the weekend BUT I have already asked for some of that time to be my own!?

She feels that family should come first and that I should therefore be available to her on at least some weekends. I am available about ONE weekend a month, but she feels that isn't enough.
She wants to feel "special" and "chosen."

It's driving me crazy having to feel responsible for making my mother feel chosen in the particular way she wants to be chosen—meaning that she comes before my boyfriend and friends???

I have told her that I am an adult and need to prioritize my own life and relationships. When I choose to spend time with my boyfriend or friends, that ***doesn't mean*** my mother is less special or that I don't love her.
She disagrees!! I feel engulfed by guilt and frustration as a result.

About me:

I am neurodivergent and struggle with CPTSD, anxiety, and BPD-like symptoms. When someone speaks to me in a critical or confusing way, I can become extremely overwhelmed and feel like I'm preparing for a meltdown.

When I initially told my mother that her comments about my invitation had hurt me, I was upset, but I wasn't yelling. She became defensive because I was bothered by what she said. It was me getting anxious...

She says she was asking for reassurance. I experienced her questions as suspicion and criticism.

I don't think either of those feelings necessarily cancels out the other.
I can understand why my mother might need reassurance based on our history, while also feeling hurt that my genuine attempt to spend time with her was immediately questioned.

But I also don't want to live in a situation where every time I prioritize my boyfriend, friends, or myself, I have to reassure my mother that she is still special and that I haven't "chosen" someone else over her.

Do I have a responsibility as an adult child to make my mother feel special and chosen?

Was I being unfair by feeling hurt when my mother questioned my motives, given that she says she was simply trying to reassure herself that I genuinely wanted to spend time with her?

I'm trying to understand both sides here.

I don't want validation that my mother is simply "wrong." I want to ***understand** whether I'm missing something about her perspective, while also figuring out whether I'm being asked to take responsibility for feelings that aren't actually mine to manage.

Thank you

.......

TL;DR: I (F late 30s) offered to spend Saturday with my mom (F early 60s). She was surprised because I usually spend weekends with my boyfriend or friends, and she questioned whether I was only asking because I had nothing better to do. She says she was simply looking for reassurance that I genuinely wanted to choose her as she was worried she was a backup plan.

I understand why she might feel that way, but I felt hurt because I was sincerely trying to make her a priority and felt like my intentions were being questioned.
My mom believes that family comes before my boyfriend and friends. I believe I can love and prioritize my relationship with my mother without putting her first in every situation.

Am I responsible for making my mother feel special and chosen in the way she wants, or is that an emotional need she ultimately has to manage herself?

i dont like, enjoy venting but this has been a horrible secret weighing on me for my entire life. until about 14 i had to share a bed with my mother, then for a year instead of giving me the empty bedroom in the house she made me sleep in her bedroom closet with a mattress on the floor. it still feels like my fault. like i was too clingy or didnt grow up fast enough or that i could've fought it more, but when i was around 10 she said i was too sick to sleep on my own and if i did i'd die in my sleep and that kind of prevented me from asking for years.

it feels so perverse, and not like in a sexual abuse way it feels like a genuine perversion of nature. of what's right. of what a parent is supposed to do, of how you're supposed to treat a child.

anyone else have a similar experience?

I (M19) first started seeking psychiatric help in 2020, back when I was 13. I was severely depressed and anxious due to my parent's divorce, and this was the main topic of my therapy sessions with my therapist back then. After 2022, I've came to terms with a non-nuclear family and we talked about other things pretty much.

I've always had a good impression of my mother as a child growing up, as she was a stay-at-home mum that spent most of her time with me.

I should also add that during 2021, my mother would ask me and my sister to visit her on the weekends. I reluctantly went, probably for the reasons I'll explain later. However after 2021, she started deteriorating mentally. She refused to seek medical help and from her behaviour and what my sister tells me, I am almost certain she struggles with schizophrenia or some psychotic condition.

However sometime early last year (2025), I developed immense persecutory anxiety due to an event triggering my PTSD. I developed hallucinations, both visual and auditory. Knowing that schizophrenia has a genetic component, I went to my therapist for counseling. We revisited the day me, my sister and my father left our house to live somewhere else. I also told her about my interpretations of my relationship with my mother in more detail, as I've had time to process these things.

"I think you were abused," said my therapist.

My mind went blank, and I could not grasp the fact that my therapist could describe my mother in such a way. Then it all came back to me.

In retrospect, little me definitely felt like he had to make my mother happy, to listen to adult trauma, and disturbing things my mother had experience growing up. As a teenager, I felt like the only time she saw me as a real person was when I opened up to her about my trauma, because she probably saw herself in me. The reiteration of "you're like me", "I'm like that too", etc. wasn't normal. The times when she would reprimand for going to therapy citing "money" (my dad works a job with a very comfortable pay, so it didn't really make sende) because she never found the courage to do so herself. The time when she would make me to open up to her, even when I begged her to stop making me, only to dismiss my experiences and make me feel like trauma was a competition. And I regret this whole experience so much, because it has affected the way I interact with older women now.

Now I have a deep resentment for my mother, and for people that tell me that "I'm mature for my age". I never wanted to grow up that fast. I don't think I actually grew up properly at all. My mother gave me an adult load as a child.

It's been about a year in a half after that ephiphany. Nearly 4 since I last saw, or interacted with her. About 9 since the first incident of mistreatment I could still remember. And now I still find myself wanting validation from people, I want people to tell me that I wasn't in the wrong, and that I was just a child, because sometimes, I still have difficult labelling her as somebody abusive, or at the very least, in the wrong.

I understand that she might have had a hard time growing up, but I've developed a sense of self-justice to believe that she should have made me her psychiatrist.

Please do ask questions, as I'm still processing this, bit by bit, to this day, and maybe those can help : ) thank you for your time.

I am post separation from a partner who was severely enmeshed with his family of origin: a classic case of covert emotional incest and coercive control. At 40, he relies completely on family employment and family management of his money. On paper, he projects a false veneer, but behind it sits a personality disorder and numerous addictions.

I had actually already moved out of his house before I got pregnant. We were never married, but he kept dangling the carrot of a shared future; promising marriage and even going so far as to buy an engagement ring to buy time and keep me quiet. It was pure "poser" capacity; he had zero ability or intention to actually step out and build a sovereign, independent life.

Looking back, the warning signs were everywhere, but one specific incident during the early postpartum period still leaves me speechless.

When my daughter was around 3 weeks old, I explicitly asked for space. I wasn't taking visitors not even my own mom because I wanted solitude to settle in. Instead, his mother pushed her way into my home, bringing useless gifts to buy access and steamroll my boundaries. And even after 10 years with her son and having a baby she still wanted me to refer to her as Mrs. (last name).

Whilst there, without asking permission or even saying, "Hey, do you want me to change her?", she automatically started changing my newborn's diaper. I popped down for a few seconds to get a fresh diaper from the under caddy of the bassinet. During that brief moment, she handled my baby with such rough, aggressive force that she literally ripped off my daughter's well adhered umbilical stump.

What makes it so chilling wasn't just the physical force required to do this. It was the absolute silence afterward. She said nothing. She owned nothing. She offered zero apology, zero remorse, and zero care. She just acted like nothing happened to avoid accountability. All she said was "oh."

Because I was vulnerable, exhausted, and operating under the weight of his coercive control, my brain inverted the trauma: I felt shame, I felt embarrassed for her, and I immediately panicked, wondering if my ex was going to blame me for it.

When I confronted him about it months later, he proved where his true allegiance sat. He acted as his mother’s defense attorney, saying: "I told her you were upset about it. It was an accident." He framed my natural maternal protection as an "overreaction" while defending the woman whose psychological cord he was never able to cut.

It took me almost a year after that incident to cut his family off completely and my life improved immediately after doing so. I blocked them all and haven't looked back. He spiraled further out of control afterwards which made the enmeshment hyper obvious. He still denies that he is enmeshed and told me multiple times that I am.

I'm posting this cathartically because I still have a bag of their "gifts" sitting in my house that I am finally throwing straight into the trash where it belongs. Has anyone else dealt with this level of physical boundary bullshit combined with severe family enmeshment and covert control? How did you finally purge the residual physical items and energy from your home?

Many parent with various personality disorders or mental health issues see their children as extensions of themselves, this often involves the parent(s) assuming the kid(s) will like and dislike the same things as the parent(s).

This is pretty common with Cluster-B disorders (Narcissism , Borderline , Histrionic , Antisocial)

But to a large extent I had this situation reversed, where my Mom would suddenly become excited, interested, involved, curious with something simply because I chose to do it.

And this wasn't stuff I was coerced into either, I freely chose these things that she initially had no opinion on at all and then suddenly it became the biggest deal ever just because it was an activity I picked up.

Sure if I picked something unusual she hadn't heard of before, extra curiosity would make sense.

But she'd react this way to things that are completely mundane and common for the place and culture we were born into (born and live in the USA, white) so it wasn't some 'exoticism' angle or anything like that.

The issue this caused was that she seemed capable of having a "normal" reaction to something as long as a stranger does it, but it was (nearly) always something worth raving about when it's me.

It made doing anything feel very uncomfortable and weird.

I would start something and then stop soon after because this behavior was so irritating, and I initially didn't know it had almost nothing to do with what activity I had picked, and everything to do with the fact that it's ME.

I'd start something, she'd do all this stuff, which would deeply irritate me, and then I'd stop and try something else, hoping she wouldn't care about my next hobby or activity. Lather, rinse, repeat.

To top it all off she was irritated that I "couldn't stick with anything" I could stay with stuff just fine if I wasn't being constantly interrogated about it, and without the raving, and without her constant insistence on direct involvement, but there seemed no way to really stop that for most interests.

There were a tiny set of things that she was so completely put off by that she would leave them alone, but that was very very rare.

I even went out of my way to pick things that I thought would be boring, uninteresting, or repulsive to her, but it did nothing.

I saw a comment somewhere about this a few years ago that I saved:

>Yep. That’s cause she’s empty inside. She has nothing to define herself so she’s picking up pieces of those around her. You like the color blue? She looks inside, sees nothing in the favorite color slot, and thinks, "That must be my favorite color too!"

Anybody else here have experiences like this?

My husband grew up enmeshed with his mother because of her emotional lacking husband. My FIL still around, married but don’t have the best of marriages. Good and physically healthy guy truly, but probably has undiagnosed adhd and anxiety making him difficult to live with.

Long story short, my husband and I got married 5 years ago and he’s come a very long way to understand his enmeshment and has set up very clear boundaries now with his mum. Wasn’t easy but we got here and I’m proud of him.

3 years ago, his mother got diagnosed with stage 4 lung cancer. The cancer is stable at the moment but she’s weaker and needs the care of her husband. I don’t want to kick a person while they’re down, but she’s not a great human. Narcissistic, manipulative, annoying lol but can appear kind and compassionate to strangers and to her son if it benefits her. I have low contact with her and only see her when she sees my young son.

Recently she’s shared (overshared?) with my husband that her husband (my FIL) has been extra difficult to live with. Gets mad a lot, complains a lot, high anxiety. My husband believes he should see a psych and get on some meds which I agree with.

Usually I’m not ok with the mum sharing about her marriage to my husband because I feel like it crosses a huge line and historically it’s never gone down well with my husband overthinking and becoming too emotionally attached to his parents’ marriage.

But given her cancer diagnoses and his dad’s poor mental health, is this something that my husband should step into and try manage? Typing it out now, I think yes?? To help the mum and dad? I’m just traumatised from past events and don’t them to be overly reliant on us.

If the answer is yes to assist them, how can I be supporting my husband so that he’s not sucked in by her manipulation/oversharing? I’m just trying to be compassionate to the situation while also protecting my husband and marriage. Note that my husband feels the same way but obv it hits different because it sucks that his parents are struggling.

Thanks for your help! Please be kind ahha

My (22F) enmeshed mom (41F) told me I should ask the dentist if I can keep my wisdom teeth so she can have real teeth for a spooky jar on her witch's potion shelf

Not necessarily a weird request (we're a Halloween enthusiast family), but I'm uncomfortable with the thought of her essentially owning another part of me. Especially when this past year, I've fought so hard to create distance between us

I still have issues figuring out if something is weird, an autistic interest (whole family has autism), or really weird, so thoughts?

I don't plan on giving her my teeth, I don't know if I even personally want them

My father is a pathological people pleaser and treats the entire family like trash but also expects us to be people pleasers like him too. If we don’t it’s outrageous and he will scream and insult and verbally abuse us because we dared make him look bad to strangers.

A few days ago we had the pleasure of hearing our next door neighbors screeching and wailing at the top of their lungs— they have some kind of emo “rock” band and they sing and play instruments while screaming and shrieking. They did this from around 6pm to 7pm and I left the house bc I couldn’t handle listening to it. I got back at half past 9 and they were silent then but restarted around 10pm.

I don’t know them so I asked my parents if they have their contact info. Apparently my father has talked to their parents before and has their phone number. I asked if he can text them to ask their kids (who are pushing 30) to keep it down, it was almost midnight and we had been assaulted by the sounds of their screeching and drumming and “singing” for hours.

My father LOST it at this, he started shouting at me to “calm down” and said these people are “young and enjoying their youth” and “just enjoying some music” which is completely ridiculous because they were screaming. I shouted back that they were wailing (which we could all hear) and then he shouted at me to stop shouting because I said one sentence too loud for his liking, while voraciously defending the people screaming for hours outside.

He then yelled that they were “not hurting anyone.” I said they were hurting US and he started yelling saying if he says something to the parents they will “get mad” and their “feelings will be hurt” and they will “be upset at him” because he dared to complain about their children not being perfect. He said I can go sleep in the garage if I’m so bothered by this noise and that “they’ll stop when they go to sleep” (they did not stop until 3am).

I told him to think about how it impacts us and how we deserve to have peace too, and how they are being inconsiderate. He replied yelling about how we can deal with it because we can’t “antagonize” people and it seemed like all he cared about was staying on our neighbors good side. He refused to utter a single word to the neighbor parents or even consider the idea of letting on that it bothered him/us.

Is anyone else’s enmeshed parent also a relentless people pleaser to their own detriment like this? It’s crazy how they don’t realize it affects their livelihood and even the people around them bc they’re so terrified of “losing face” or looking bad that they are willing to suffer to no end just to avoid any conflict or confrontation.