quote:Originally posted by Michele: Nicky, Why is your mother living with you? Parents who live with their grown childre, no matter how wonderful they might be, can put stress on the marriage. Your husband may feel left out of your close relationship with your mom and doesn't have a good way of talking to you about it. He might not even recognize it himself. He might just feel angry all the time and unfortunately, take it out on your mom.
Is there an alternative for your mother? Michele
Hi Michele-- thank you for the response. My mother is going through a period of financial problems-- she's legally disabled and on a very limited income and when she and her fiance broke up, she didn't have another place to go. She is currently saving money and trying to work with different assistance programs so that she can get a place of her own-- ETA right now is that she should be able to move by December.
I can understand that this is how he may be feeling, but that also really doesn't point to anything attractive about him emotionally because prior to my mother living with us, his younger sister and his mother lived with us... His mother lived with us for a little over three years and his sister lived with us until she finished college-- almost five years... and in his sister's case, he specifically told me that he was going to help his sister regardless of how I felt and that he would not ask her to look into finding a roommate or another housing option (and you have to understand that this "younger" sister is only a year younger than me-- so I wasn't being mean or anything, I just couldn't see why he expected more from me in regards to being responsible for myself, our family, my financial obligations for our family and attending college fulltime than he expected from a person only a year younger than me with no responsibilities to anyone but herself)... and also he didn't have any problems with his mom coming to live with us when she and her ex got divorced-- despite the fact that 2 out of 3 of those years she didn't work...
So I guess that's what makes this sitch between my H and my Mom so bad-- his family lived with us and really mooched and I still managed to treat them with respect and courtesy-- and this while they treated me completely disrespectful... but when it's my mom's turn to need help because she really can't do anything else, he's allowed to act pissy and mean? His behaviour isn't fair-- and it makes me extraordinarily angry with him... Both because he isn't willing to give what he expected from me and also because it puts me in a bad situation with my own family because he is in effect saying that I can't freely help my family when they need it unless it some how doesn't involve him at all, but when his family needs then WE have to rise to the occasion, no matter what sacrifices it calls for...
The one real positive about this is that he's been really putting forth an effort to work on the other problems we've had in our marriage... I just needed to learn the right way to approach him and to have some potential solutions available when we discussed the situations... I'd like to be able to do that in this case, but I'm afraid I don't know the right way to go about it without offending him or putting him on the defensive...
I mean I've been taking a look at my part in this situation and I can see several things I've done badly:
*When we were dating, I didn't actively encourage my mom and H (then boyfriend) spending time together to get to really know one another
*I've really bragged about my mom... not on purpose, but I can see how it would look that way to him based on the fact he doesn't have a great relationship with his own mother and knowing that she has been an undercover alcoholic for at least as long as he and I have known one another (11 years). And whenever we've had confrontations regarding our relatives, I've always compared his to mine unfavorably-- as in your mom does x and x to me, but my mom would never do that and has never done that to you... I know that this has caused him anger because he's taken to saying "Oh, so your mom is perfect?"
* He feels like he's always the bad guy because I call him on situations that she tells me about which occur when I'm not there... and he feels like I ALWAYS take her side because he never sees the times when I tell her that I disagree-- that I don't believe he was in the wrong and I believe she's expecting more than is fair to expect. The thing is, I used to always take his side because the things he did were usually done when I wasn't around and I just couldn't believe my H would be so callous--I just thought my mom was being extremely sensitive... it's only recently he hasn't really been able to hide that he really dislikes my mom and can't stand to be in the same room with her... he actually told my stepdaughter that her voice bothers him...
I just feel like we're at this horrible impasse... and I know I can't make him like my mom-- but it's so damn infuriating when there's no real reason for him to dislike her so intensely...
I'm sorry for venting so much-- I just strongly want to find a solution... and sometimes I have this overwhelming desire to tell my husband "oh grow up!" because his actions with my mom seem so childish to me... I mean, his mom has been flat out cruel to me but I realized that she's not going anywhere--she's his mom-- and that I need to be a bigger person because even if he and I broke up the children would need to be able to interact with their grandmother... and both grandmothers have long lives ahead of them since they're fairly young (43 and 45 respectively) so they'll be in our lives for a while to come.
I'm thinking about meeting with him to discuss the two of us creating boundaries about what is and is not acceptable behavior from our families... I'll go think some more about that on my own thread, but I'd love to hear advice from any body who might have ideas-- obviously I appreciate Michele's advice tremendously, but everyone on the board is an angel to me and has such tremendous wisdom...
