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Bf mother issues, on top of that trying to find a home
My boyfriend and I have been dating for almost a year now. We are very close and we've been thinking about getting a place together. We enjoy spending a lot of time with each other and enjoy each others company. We recently got new jobs in a town near my family and his fathers family.(BFs parents are divorced) At the moment he is staying with his mom, which is another reason why we have family issues.
His mom and I do not talk much now like we use to and since i'm out out college for summer break, I haven't been around her or his family at all. My college was very close to his home and me and my bf spent every moment together when I had free time. She is very close with my bf, I understand because he is always their for her and her side of the family. Things have changed the longer me and my bf have been dating, his mom treat me differently in a negative way.
She haven't answered my phone calls when I call her and after our arguement we had when she told my bf that I wasn't happy with him and that I'm selfish and ungrateful, and I told her that she was wrong and had no right to do what she did. She haven't tried to patch up our relationship or admit she was wrong at all which I knew I shouldn't expect. Anyway, recently my bf and I start our new jobs in a few weeks and she isn't happy about it, she want my bf to stay with her.
She got upset and told him, "I can see where this is going now, you're going to be around your dads family and your gf and you won't have any time for me." My bf told her he didn't have time for this. She is trying to get him to spend money on fixing her car, her garden etc. Especially on weekends when my bf and I see each other. I get really frustrated sometime because I try to stay away from her, I do not want to see her at all but I know eventually I will again someday.
Ever since I came home from college, I felt a heap of stress lift off of my shoulders. His mother caused a lot of stress on me and my relationship but honestly I think my bf and I became stronger because I have my space and she isn't around to isolate me verbally and emotionally. I just dread the day I have to see her again, I have nothing to say. The first place I found was an apartment complex, it was so nice but it was 10 min away from her home.
I bypassed that instantly. I'm just trying to focus on a home for my bf and I and to separate his moms issues from our plans. I think her issues are more than just her son having a new gf and we are planning our lives. I think it's a racial issue as well. When his family found out that I was not white, they were shocked in many cases. His cousin told him that "you're lucky she's pretty because they ain't usually pretty." When I asked her cousin about her comment, she made up a lie about how he asked her for his approval to date me because I'm not white.
I was soo furious and offended on the inside. His mom also made many remarks on occasions about "colored people." She even bought me a pink monkey and made a joke saying, "what little monkey is missing from it's home..it's (my name) She and her neice even had the audacity to ask me if me and her son/cousin have sex, and how big his "part" was. I told them that it's not their business in what we do or not. His mom also assumed we have sex and demanded I need to use contraceptives..what the he**.
I bite my tongue a lot. My strategy far as finding peace in my relationship, is to not be involved with her. It has been working great for me.
Re: Bf mother issues, on top of that trying to find a home
My bf usually tell me to not listen to his mom when she is being rude. Sometime when he put her in her place, she'll do this crying thing and get all emotional. He'll tell me that her feelings get hurt easily and her eyes tear up..I'm like hmm and so what? When she hurt my feelings or being a "mom", she don't care about how I feel, she keep it moving so now I return the favors. He thinks that i
t's rediculous the way me and his mom act because when she want to get her point across to me, she go through my bf and sometime it is hurtful as if he's not on my side when Im 99.99 percent right. I get out the situation/battle which I cannot win, in her home and her in general.
I stepped back out of the situation far as being around her to let my bf see how she is because he use to think she was an angel, helpful and old sweet mother..now he is dealing with the things that I had to deal with, minus the bitchiness she give me, she is just nosey, intrusive and naggy to him. When I told him about the racial comments, he brushed it off and said that his mom isn't racist because she call him little monkey all the time when he was little, then I told him about his cousin telling me that he's lucky because they ain't usually pretty..he just replued to her I know I'm lucky..he just doesn't get it.
If you're both in college, then it's completely age-appropriate to have some turmoil and growing pains when it comes to separating from the parents. Often one person in the relationship is ahead of the other as far as that goes, and it causes strife. That's where you are now.
My advice is to keep trying to navigate this, and take a wait and see approach. Don't get more serious, like getting engaged or moving in together, because at this age and stage of things, the odds are pretty even on whether he's going to end up an independent adult or a kowtowing mama's boy, and you don't want to potentially feel stuck with the latter. Only time is going to tell with this.
At 19 and less than a year in, you haven't come far at all. Relationships are hard because life is hard, not because the relationship itself is hard. When people say that relationships are hard work, what they mean are things like not letting external stressors like job woes impact your marriage, or remembering to make the other person a priority and not take him/her for granted. What you have here is a relationship that is making your life harder, not easier. The relationship IS the stressor.
Really, at 19 you shouldn't have to "see if you can make it" with anyone. Being 19 is all about how many choices you have ahead of you, how many awesome people you're going to meet, and how many life experiences are out there for you to soak up. Giving all of that up to mire yourself in a situation with a controlling guy who lives with his racist, controlling mother is exactly the sort of thing that leads to a mid-life crisis.
I'm caught up on the fact that his family is racist, makes openly racist comments to you and him, and you both are semi tolerating it. HAVE SOME SELF RESPECT!
My personal experience has been that you cannot make someone have a healthy relationship with their parents or make someone insist that their parents respect you as a partner. It is hard enough to become part of someone else's family when their family respects you. It is damn near impossible and unendingly stressful when their family doesn't respect you, and your partner lets them treat you disrespectfully. It sounds like he and his Mom have huge boundary issues; I would not move this relationship forward until he addressed those issues on his own.
I was in a relationship like this (he was black, I'm white, his family said racist things about me TO HIM and he had a crazy Mommy and would complain about her being crazy but continue to let her invade his life). I am so much happier married to someone with healthy family relationships. He's had three failed engagements, two illegitimate kids since. I dodged a freight train on that one.