Submitted by Illustrious-Way5738 t3_11gt11y in tifu

Tifu By telling my mom(56f) she could move back into my(26f) apartment after she broke up, and subsequently got kicked out of her boyfriend's apartment... Without checking it with my fiancé. Btw throwaway account.

My mom hasn't been the best mother to me or my siblings our entire life. I am the youngest of three, with decently large age gaps to my siblings. My brother is 8 years older and my sister is 6 years older and so the moment they could get away, they did and went limited to no contact with her. When I was young, I definitely felt a little bit abandoned by them as I was the one who had to deal with all of her BS the longest. She was with her ex husband for 15 years and chose him constantly over us. This pattern of her choosing PoS men over her own family will be a constant in our relationship.

So back in November of 2021, my mom, being properly medicated and seeking therapy, wised up and finally left her ex. I had moved across the country right before the pandemic and went NC with her after. She got my aunt to contact me and essentially begged me to help my mom get away from her ex husband. I stupidly said, "Alright, but I have some rules."

  1. She is to go NC with him unless it is to deal with divorce proceedings. (Come to find out, they technically got divorced 10 years prior when she last left him, and never got remarried)
  2. Under no circumstances is he to know where I live.
  3. No dating for a year.
  4. Continue therapy

I didn't think my rules were that hard to accept. She's a serial dater, and always jumped from one relationship to another without any focus on herself, which is why I implemented Rule 3.... She broke that rule in 2 months, and even went behind my back. She also stopped therapy, even though it was all online.

My fiancé and I started dating in Jan of '22 and quickly fell in love. My mom's excuse for dating was that she felt like a third wheel around us. She quickly stopped spending time with me, and spent all of her free time going to the local bar and going on dates. By May, she started seriously seeing this guy she worked with and "slowly" moved in with him. I had my niece and nephew visiting for the summer, and on nights that I worked, instead of staying home to "watch" her grandkids, (they're preteens, not much babysitting needed) she'd drag them over to her boyfriend's house. The last weekend of July, I took them back home, and my mom moved what little she had left at my place and I barely spoke to her for the rest of the year.

This hurt me, I thought that for once in my life, I could regain somewhat of the mother-daughter relationship I was owed. I cried a lot, and this hurt my fiancé to see me like that. I found out that I was pregnant with my first in late August, and while she was happy for me, there was still very little contact with me. My fiancé moved in October, and we've been really happy ever since.

Until today. My mom comes over, unannounced, and is bawling. Her and her boyfriend broke up, and it was over something that I'd consider "trivial" and frankly "none of his business" (her car payment). I never liked the guy from the beginning. The three biggest reasons being:

He's racist : He's made racist remarks about my mom's family (she's from Portugal) and has said that my Puerto Rican fiancé is marrying me for a green card. (PRs are US citizens for those who don't know)

He's homophobic: He mocks one of their coworkers who is gay, and has told my nephew to "knock off that f-word shit". My nephew isn't gay... To our knowledge.

He's an alcoholic: This guy always has a beer in his hand. Always. The first time I met him, he slammed a tallboy beer in my spare bathroom and left the can sitting on top of my counter. Every time they go out to eat, always drinking. I'd understand a casual beer after work, but he's been drinking and driving HER CAR. I lost my dad to a drunk driving accident (he was the drunk driver) when I was 7 and my mom knows how I feel about that.

So good riddance to that piece of dog shit. The problem is now she doesn't have a place to go. Her friend has offered to put her up for a couple of nights, but she can't move in. However I have the room. Her old bedroom has been converted to a storage / cat room. I told her she can stay on the couch or bunk with the cats. There's a spare bed in the room, but she'll have to rearrange the room to sleep comfortably in it. I STUPIDLY said all of this to her before I spoke to my fiancé about it, and he's rightfully pissed off. I definitely spoke with my heart and not my brain. She said she was going to pay us rent, like before, and save up to get her own place. Ideally an easy feat considering she makes about $20k more than me, and she wouldn't be wasting her money on expensive outings... ideally. My fiancé was already having a bad day at work, and I feel like such an asshole by piling this on top. He did say that at the end of the day, my name is the only one on the lease, so it's my decision. But he lives here too, and I know what it's like when someone you might not be on the best of terms with, suddenly moves into your space. I have a few hours before he comes home, and while I currently can't erase this situation, I still want to figure a way to ease his anger, because I definitely F'd Up...

TL;DR: My mom broke up with her boyfriend, got kicked out, and I told her she can move in with me without checking it with my fiancé first, this him being rightfully pissed off.

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Comments

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Aussiealterego t1_jaq93lb wrote

There is really only one solution to this. You tell your Mum that upon reflection, she can't move in to your place either, based on her complete disregard for your boundaries/house rules the last time she stayed. Help her find a place, sure, but don't take her in. She has a couch for a few days.

Tell Fiance that you weren't thinking straight and that he is right. It has to be you two making decisions as a couple. ASK him if it is ok if she spends a week on the couch while she organises a place. Do not allow her to move in.

It is not your responsibility to cover for your MOTHER'S fk-ups and lack of planning.

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OkVolume1 t1_jaqp8rm wrote

Mom is 56. She gotta stand on her own two feet.

You gotta smooth this over with your fiance before anything else happens.

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Vanners8888 t1_jaro1bq wrote

I was too. I definitely can’t word it close to that well, so, well said Aussiealterego!! And good for OP for realizing she made a mistake, even better that she’s trying to fix it.

When having chaotic relatives your entire life, the storm they create has a different impact when you’re in the centre of it as opposed to being outside looking in. The chaos becomes the norm, we accept that’s how it is and live with it, without realizing that we don’t need to, nor are we obligated to. A change in life (spouse, kids, pets, graduation, career move etc), helps us to see it from a different perspective, that other peoples problems are not our own and are not our obligation to clean up.

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Several-Plenty-6733 t1_jarubqg wrote

OP… You realize this is gonna be your life until you cut your mom out, right? She’ll leech off of you because you’re being a doormat and think you can build a relationship with her. The sad thing is, you can’t build a healthy relationship with someone who uses you. The only way to live your best life is to cut out the people that use you. Including your mother.

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Illustrious-Way5738 OP t1_jatjted wrote

Update:

My mom got back together with her boyfriend, and my fiancé and I told her that she can't just demand to live with us like that, especially since we have a baby coming. My fiancé told me that he wasn't mad at me, just mad that she constantly takes advantage of me. She started to get snippy and I told her to stop being so ungrateful. In the end, she decided to stay with her boyfriend and look for a place of her own in the meantime.

The real reason why I give her so many chances and try to help her is that I just want a mom. Especially since I'm in such a vulnerable spot emotionally right now. And sometimes I think that if I help her, she'd give me some semblance of being a mother to me. I know it's a fruitless effort, and I'm just digging myself into a hole, but the day my dad died, I felt like I lost two parents. That's a whole other wound that 20 years later, and 4 years of therapy still hasn't healed.

Thank you to all who put your input, I guess my fuck up has been resolved.

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