'AITA for refusing to go on vacation with my boyfriend's helicopter mother?'
"AITA for refusing to go on vacation with my boyfriend’s mom"
OddDragonfruit3245 writes:
My boyfriend (24M), “John,” and I (21F) have been together for 1.5 years and living together for almost a year. We live with his dad (55M), but he isn’t home often and we all get along well. He is divorced from my boyfriend’s mom (48F), “Sally,” who cheated on him with a coworker.
John’s entire family is Albanian. Sally is a helicopter parent and John is an only child. John told me early on that he has issues with his mom, primarily her not respecting boundaries. When he tries to set them, she manipulates, gaslights, and guilt trips him. She speaks poorly about all of John’s friends and their parents (all Albanian as well), has rocky relationships with her family, and has no friends or hobbies of her own.
Sally texts, calls, and asks to see John often, and she tends to act out when he says no. She frequently comes up with outlandish reasons to see him, like sending her mail to her ex-husband’s house and calling John to have him do very basic things for her (making her a DMV appointment or finding her credit card statement online).
The most frustrating thing she does every single day is drive her dogs 15 minutes to our place, walk them around the complex, pass our front door, and sometimes knock unannounced. She says she does this because she used to live on the property too and one of the dogs is familiar with the smell in the area.
John and his mom have gone on trips together to Albania, most recently last summer, and John complained about her the entire time. She gets upset when John goes to visit his dad’s parents, when he is not spending enough time with her and her family, and if he tries to go anywhere on his own.
John and I have talked about going to Albania together, and that recently came up while he was with his mom. He explained to her that we would only spend a few days in their hometown and would want to do some other traveling as well.
She assumed she would be coming with us and asked if she could join us for the other parts of the trip. John said he tried “beating around the bush” to tell her that we wanted to do the additional traveling alone, but she “wouldn’t take no for an answer.”
I told him I don’t feel comfortable going with her at all. I want to enjoy a vacation and not be around, or be the cause of, their fighting the whole time. He told me that if she knows we are planning to go to Albania, she will absolutely insist on coming.
When I suggested her going another time or even meeting us during the few days we will be in their hometown, he said that she is scared of flying and refuses to fly alone. Any situation where she is not flying there and back with us, doing all of the traveling with us, and making sure John spends enough time with her will become a huge headache.
I really want no part of it. He doesn’t want her to go either but feels like he “doesn’t have a choice,” and I get the sense that he thinks I should just accept it. I told him he could go with her or go with me, but I will not go if it is the three of us together.
We have had many conversations about her, and he does tell her no fairly often. He has also set a rule of only seeing her once a week. But when she shows up unannounced or walks her dogs by our front door every day, nothing else gets said. I feel like he sees that her behavior is a problem, but he doesn’t want to argue so he does not enforce those boundaries. AITA for refusing to go with her?
Here's what people had to say to OP:
RiverDragon64 says:
NTA. Also, get out of that relationship now, not later. His whole life will be just like you’ve seen, and unless that’s the way YOU want to live, you need to go. Now. He’s never gonna change, and neither is she as long as those tactics work on him. Personal peace of mind is something you cannot let go of. Choose happiness, with someone else.
overfly00 says:
NTA. Your boyfriend’s mother is though. And your boyfriend. If the umbilical cord hasn’t been cut after 24 years, you have no reasonable expectation that it ever will be. You’ve got a choice to make here - either resign yourself that your life will be reduced to sharing him with his mother (trust me, she’ll be moving in with you at some point in the not too distant future) or find yourself a man whose testicles have actually dropped.
OverTap3069 says:
NTA- your boyfriend won’t take a stand to protect your collective well being so you will have to just protect yours on your own. His mom sounds terrible and traveling with her would be a mess. That’s a horrible waste of your time and money which I’m sure are precious.
blueskyoverhead says:
So all she has to do to disrupt your life is insist?!? What about your insistence? He is showing you how the rest of your life with him will be and he is showing that you come a distant second to a mom he complains about. Time to have a big come to Jesus conversation with him. And if he refuses to get it AND make change to put the two of you first, you need to make the hard decision.
What do you think?