MIL is here indefinitely and it’s like a night terror

[u/exhaustedcheerleader]

Honestly, I’m mostly here to vent. I need to get this off my chest and hear from people who have experienced something similar, even if their situation wasn’t exactly the same.
I’m looking for empathy and perspective, not judgment.
I know what my options are. I know I can leave. I know I can tell her she needs to go. I know I can give my boyfriend an ultimatum. I know what the obvious Reddit answers are.
I’m not looking for “leave him,” “you’re doomed,” “your relationship is over,” or “you knew what you signed up for.”
I literally know my options.
I’m interested in hearing from people who have had difficult in-law/parent situations, particularly where there is enmeshment, guilt, alcoholism, blurred boundaries, or a parent who has overstayed their welcome, and somehow managed to navigate it without immediately blowing up their entire relationship.
I want to hear from people who understand that sometimes you can love someone, have empathy for their circumstances, AND be completely fucking exhausted by them.
Because that’s where I am.
My boyfriend’s mom has now been staying with us for two months, indefinitely, and I am reaching the point where I’m genuinely struggling with resentment.
For context, she hasn’t seen her son in about four years. When she came to visit, I had empathy for that. I understood why he wanted her here, and I genuinely had no problem with her visiting.
The problem is that she came with no return date, seemingly no real financial plan, and no clear plan for what she’s doing here. She is also an alcoholic, and her behavior is extremely unpredictable.
One day she loves me. The next day she’s making little comments that feel intentionally intimidating. One day we can laugh and have a perfectly normal interaction. The next day she’s acting like I personally offended her simply by existing.
And I have genuinely tried.
I have never been rude or disrespectful to her. I’ve been kind, helped her, included her, ran errands with her, etc. But I’ve started feeling like she is constantly pushing buttons to find a reason to dislike me.
The first week she was here, she got drunk and compared me to my boyfriend’s ex-wife—the same ex-wife she constantly says she hates. I had made my boyfriend a birthday gift/list of 32 things I loved about him and put it on the fridge. She saw it while drunk and said something along the lines of, “What’s that shit? Looks like some [ex-wife] type of shit. I’ll tear all that down.”
My boyfriend immediately intervened, which I appreciated.
Another morning, she woke me up around 8 AM on my day off because she wanted me to take her outside to smoke. I was half asleep, my brain wasn’t even functioning, and I forgot what she had asked me. She then called me his ex’s name.
There are also little things constantly.
I let her borrow my hoop earrings. She lost one.
Another time she asked me to help her with a bracelet. I genuinely thought it was mine because she has used my things before without asking. I looked at it and said, “Are those mine?”
She responded, “Lucky I like you. I would’ve cussed you out.”
Like…what?
She makes jokes that aren’t really jokes. They’re just insults delivered with a laugh.
She’ll say things that seem designed to get a reaction, and I’ve gotten to the point where I mostly ignore her.
She also gets offended when my boyfriend’s young daughter gets her feelings hurt. There have been situations where she has bullied the child and then gotten upset because the child is upset.
When my boyfriend stands up to her or tries to establish a boundary, she either cusses him out or assumes I’m somehow behind the boundary.
If we’re having a conversation in our own home, she assumes we’re talking about her.
And she is ALWAYS THERE.
He picks me up from work? She’s there.
He drops me off? She’s there.
We’re home? She’s there.
We want to relax? She’s there.
I want to decompress after work? She’s there.
There is literally no place to mentally escape.
I’m an introvert. I love my own space. I’ve always had my own space and independence. If life hadn’t happened the way it did, I honestly could see myself happily living alone.
I love my boyfriend. I chose him. I chose this relationship. I accepted that his daughter is part of our lives.
I did not sign up to live with his mother indefinitely.
And that’s where I’m struggling.
We currently live in a one-bedroom apartment. Before she arrived, we gave up our room because the bed gives me horrible back pain, so she has been sleeping in there.
We’re moving THIS WEEK into a bigger place specifically because we wanted his daughter to have her own space and for us to finally have our own bedroom and privacy.
She was not part of that equation.
Now she’s taking over his daughter’s room, and his daughter doesn’t want to sleep in a room with her grandmother, so I went out and got his daughter a little bed next to ours.
We’re literally moving into a new space hoping this is the beginning of a better chapter for us, and I’m sitting here thinking:
“Is she coming with us indefinitely too?”
Because we planned on moving with basically no furniture. And I would feel like a complete asshole saying, “Well, she can’t have the bed she’s been sleeping on.”
But honestly?
I would be perfectly fine with her being here this long if she wasn’t living in my home.
I can love this woman from a distance.
I can spend time with her.
I can visit her.
I can talk to her.
I can respect her relationship with her son.
But living together is a completely different thing.
She also complains when she’s left home alone because we work.
One day I was working from home and she kept bothering me about getting off the computer to spend time with them.
She constantly wants me to run little errands with them after work. I used to happily do it when she first arrived. Now I’m exhausted and thinking, “Ma’am, I have a life.”
If I make plans with my friends, she’ll say, “Why can’t my son go?”
WHY DOES HE HAVE TO GO EVERYWHERE I GO? 😂
It has started feeling like my boyfriend has to take turns between the women in his life.
Me.
His mom.
His daughter.
And his daughter? I can manage that. That’s his CHILD. She needs her dad.
But his grown mother?
That’s different.
After work, my boyfriend will sometimes take her out with him while he does DoorDash because he knows I need some peace and quiet.
And to be clear, this is AFTER HIS 10-HOUR WORK SHIFT.
So instead of coming home after working ten hours and getting to decompress, spend time with me, eat, shower, relax, or simply exist, he’s often taking his mom with him to DoorDash because she complains about being left home alone and he doesn’t want her sitting there by herself.
I appreciate that he’s trying to accommodate everyone, and I know he’s caught in the middle.
But at the same time, I want to spend time with my man.
And I feel guilty even saying that because I’m not asking him to abandon his mother. I’m asking when there gets to be some space for US.
This is starting to feel like a three-person relationship.
And I genuinely wonder if part of this is because she doesn’t have many close people in her life anymore. She apparently has friends/family who haven’t really come around to spend time with her, and from what I’ve witnessed, she can be incredibly belligerent, rude, and difficult.
So I have this theory that her son is basically her primary source of companionship and emotional connection.
And honestly, I understand why that might be the case. But I also think it’s unhealthy when her son becomes responsible for filling that void, especially when ultimately some of the behavior that has pushed people away is coming from her. He has his own life to live. He shouldn’t have to sacrifice his relationship, his peace, his work schedule, or his future because his mother doesn’t have other sources of companionship.
And there is also this emotional guilt that happens whenever he and I don’t agree with one of her suggestions about how we should structure or “architect” our lives.
She’ll say things like:
“I guess I should go be with my father since I’m not needed.”
Her father has passed away.
And it’s like…what are we supposed to do with that?
We’re allowed to make decisions about our own lives without it meaning that she’s unwanted or unnecessary.
But somehow, disagreeing with her can turn into this emotional situation where she’s suddenly the victim and we’re made to feel guilty for having our own opinions.
She’s also gotten extremely drunk in front of his young daughter.
Another time, she had someone pick her up from an hour away, got completely drunk, and then called my boyfriend to come get her. He told her no because it was a work night and he needed to sleep.
She cussed him out.
He basically told her, “It’s a work night. You don’t have consideration for anybody else.”
And honestly, good.
I’m watching my boyfriend try to do something that is clearly difficult for him—set boundaries with his mom.
He is used to her silencing him, so I can see how uncomfortable this is for him.
But it doesn’t seem to matter.
She either cusses him out or says:
“Y’all are rushing me to leave.”
Except…we aren’t.
Nobody has given her some impossible deadline.
She simply has no plan.
A family member came to the country with her and then left. Apparently that family member has been sending her money, but it seems like she has little control over her finances and trusts this person more than her own son.
And when money gets sent, from what we can tell, it goes toward alcohol and cigarettes instead of actually creating a plan to get home.
And I’m sitting here thinking:
WHY WOULD YOU COME TO ANOTHER COUNTRY WITH NO RETURN TICKET, NO CLEAR RETURN DATE, LIMITED MONEY, AND NO PLAN?
I genuinely don’t understand it.
And now I’m starting to resent my boyfriend because I’m thinking:
Sir. Please blow up this family member’s phone. 😂 We cannot keep living like this.
We’ve talked about it.
He told me, essentially, that I need to admit that I have feelings about her being here.
And I said, YES. I DO.
Because it’s uncomfortable.
I can’t be myself.
I can’t relax.
I can’t have privacy.
I can’t have my boyfriend to myself.
I wake up annoyed because she’s still here.
And I hate that I’m feeling this way because I don’t WANT to dislike her.
There are days where we genuinely get along. We laugh. We talk. She’s affectionate.
But then the switch flips.
And the tension in the room when my boyfriend calls me “his queen” or prioritizes me is palpable.
What’s weird is she’ll simultaneously call people and tell them how much she loves me because I’m important to her son.
So I genuinely don’t know what is happening emotionally with her.
She also has some VERY blurred boundaries with her son.
My boyfriend has told me stories about her getting drunk and becoming overly touchy/lovey with him in public—not sexually inappropriate, but enough that even her ex questioned the dynamic.
At one point she would try to be in the bathroom with him while he was showering.
I told him flat-out, “Even if nothing is happening, that’s weird as hell.”
I asked him how he’d feel if the genders were reversed and it was my parent doing that.
He immediately understood and told her to stop.
The room she’s staying in has a door connecting to the bathroom. When I’m in the bathroom, I lock both doors because I want privacy.
Sometimes I forget to unlock one.
She gets irritated and says things like, “Y’all act like somebody wants to rape y’all.”
No.
People just want privacy.
She does clean up after herself, and I appreciate that, but sometimes it’s the illusion of clean. We’ve told her she doesn’t have to wash everything, but she insists.
I’m particular about dishes, and I’ll pull something out of the cabinet and there will literally still be food stuck to it.
So even the “help” creates another thing for me to manage.
And that’s what I think is getting to me most.
There is no decompression.
No privacy.
No separation.
No end date.
No plan.
No ability to just exist in my own home without considering someone else’s mood.
And now we’re moving.
We’re supposed to be starting this new chapter, creating a home for ourselves and his daughter, and I feel like we’re bringing this chaos with us.
My boyfriend has even admitted that she has overstayed her welcome.
The biggest problem is that we don’t currently have the money to buy her an international flight home, because we’re literally moving.
And I feel like the asshole because he hasn’t seen his mom in four years.
Part of me keeps thinking, “Who am I to be the reason his mother can’t stay?”
But another part of me is screaming:
“I DIDN’T AGREE TO THIS.”
I agreed to let her stay because I understood how important it was to him to have his mom around after four years apart.
I did NOT agree to an indefinite stay where she has no return plan and we’re expected to just absorb the consequences.
I’m starting to feel resentment toward both of them.
And honestly, I’m scared.
Because if nothing changes by the end of the month, I don’t know if I can continue living like this.
I don’t want to become someone who hates her boyfriend’s mother.
I don’t want to fight with my boyfriend over his mom.
I don’t want her to feel like I’m trying to take her son away from her.
I don’t want to be the “evil girlfriend” on her list of people she hates.
I just want boundaries, privacy, peace, and an actual plan.
So Reddit, please be gentle.
Again, I’m really here to vent and hear from people who can relate or have been through something similar. I’m not looking for a pile-on or strangers telling me what my only options are.
I know I have options.
I know what the obvious answers are.
I’m asking for the people who have been through the uncomfortable middle part and figured out how to navigate it.
How did you establish boundaries with an intrusive/enmeshed parent without destroying your relationship?
How did you get your partner to stop feeling guilty about setting boundaries with their parent?
How did you establish an actual move-out/return-home plan without making yourself the villain?
How did you maintain empathy for someone who is clearly struggling while also saying:
“I love you, but you cannot live in my home indefinitely.”
Because that’s honestly where I’m at.
I don’t hate her.
I don’t even think she’s necessarily a bad person.
But I genuinely believe she is someone I can love from a distance—not live with.

[u/botinlaw]

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[u/FuckYouMeanItsButter]

Currently in a similar situation. MIL was a Crack head and is now a pill popping alcoholic on SS I strongly dislike her. On top of everything my SO and I work from home.

We didn't choose to not have kids. Just to house her mom. I expect her to move out within the next year.

My plan is to rehash my feelings with my partner. Give them a timeline to have the get your shit together conversation. To at least allow her some time.

[u/Vibe_me_pos]

I had to give the me or her ultimatum once. I put it off until I didn’t really care what his choice was. Thankfully, she was gone within the week. Don’t let this situation continue to the point that all you feel for bf is resentment.

[u/Just_Mixture8362]

Why hasn’t your boyfriend had the guts to tell her that three of you are moving not four?
If she can’t be responsible for herself and only makes all of your lives a misery then this NOT tenable.

[u/RelativeFondant9569]

I haven't been through this but I wanted to send you a whack load of empathy. This is no way to live, you're nit the bad guy for wanting basic human respect. She has way over stayed and is using emotional manipulation to prolong her presence. You're feelings are valid, you deserve your space back and so does your bonus daughter. 💚

[u/Hungry-Emergency8992]

I’m so sorry! I think the elephant in the room is she is an alcoholic. Until she decides to get sober, NOTHING is going to change, and NOTHING will be predictable.

How does your boyfriend feel about her being an alcoholic? Is he willing to give her tough love and require her to go into treatment in order to stay for a time in your home?

Even with her in treatment, her attitude and personality may not change.

Maybe consider going to ALANON for YOUR mental health and a break outside of the home. It might help you process what is best for you.

I feel so bad for you, OP.

[u/Emotional-Dog8118]

Wow 😮. That sounds beyond horrible. I’m so sorry you’re going through this right now.

Your situation doesn’t sound like it’s going to get any better anytime soon if she ends up in the new apartment with you.

I feel bad for the little daughter in all this.

[u/memequeen137]

It really sucks we feel the need to put huge disclaimers at the beginning of our posts like this. I’ve taken down so many posts because the people in this sub are so fucking rude. I’m sorry you’re going through this. When I went through something similar I was very lucky that my mother in law thought our home wasn’t good enough for her so she moved out by her own choice. Now that she’s out I just don’t talk to her or see her anymore.