This is going to be a long one, and it will have a lot of backstory, so bear with me here.
My wife and I have been married for 8 months, and have been living with my parents while attending graduate school. Before getting married, my parents helped a ton with our wedding, and offered us the chance to stay with them as long as we needed, rent-free, in order to save up as much money as possible and buy a house. We live in a very high COL major city, and houses are north of $1 million. However, living at home after marriage has not been easy due to several dynamics.
My mom and wife have had a very hot and cold relationship since they have met. Since she moved in, my mom has been highly critical of my wife, both privately to me, and in front of my wife. She has criticized her cleaning ability, her family’s (my in-laws’) cleanliness, her willingness to work hard, her commitment to “family values” (more on that later), her personal hygiene, and her treatment of me. This is all what comes to mind in the moment, and I am sure I am missing a lot. Mom believes my wife has “changed me” and made me less involved with my family, and turned me into an “unclean person.” She called my wife a filthy animal because of her not agreeing with how my wife takes care of herself, as it relates to her shower routine and how she maintains our room. My parents have always been clean freaks, and while I would consider myself a clean person, I am not as obsessive about it as them. As alluded to, mom comes into our room and reorganizes stuff, when we expressed a desire for privacy (I know its their house, but a new couple, cmon). She also has this fixation on “rules” and my wife doing things exactly the way my family does, with cleaning and maintaining the house, amongst other things. To put it simply, my family and my wife’s do things very differently.
Now to be very clear, I have stood up for my wife, and have sternly denounced any commentary about her, but this has not dissuaded my mom
My mom and wife also have different overall worldviews. Mom is radically enmeshed with her family (Parents/siblings) and if anyone remotely criticizes them or their ways, she explodes, and says something along the lines of “How dare you, they did so much for you.” It is basically guilt tripping one into thinking they are indebted to her family. Yes, I will admit my grandparents/aunts and uncles have done a lot for me, but to leverage this to control one’s actions feels wrong. She was sheltered by her parents, and has the exact same mentality and worldview they do. They come from a rural village, and did not achieve higher levels of education, so possibly lack critical thinking ability. All she knows is family.
My wife on the other hand is a very simple soul, and had a simple upbringing. She can be temperamental and confrontational, which at times has exacerbated issues between them, but she does not want to cause problems. Like me, she just wants to have peace, and a good marriage, with the same autonomy that an average couple would enjoy.
My wife and I are very religious, and because of our views, we could not attend a family member of a different faith’s function early on in our marriage. My mom threw a fit for a good few weeks, saying that I was selfish, losing my family values, and insulting other religions. This family member attended my wedding, and I care for them very much, and I have no qualms about their beliefs. But I stood my ground and said “You are telling me to respect other beliefs, but you are not respecting mine.” I was very respectful, while insults were levied at me left, right, and centre.
From this, other issues built up, and things reached a point where my wife and I had to stay at her parents’ place for 2 weeks in December.
Things improved gradually when we got back, and there were smaller hiccups here and there, but nothing major.
This was until about a month ago, when I used some of my savings (money we got from our wedding gifts) to pay for some courses and counselling.
I transferred the money from my savings account (which is joint with my wife) to my chequings account (which my mom is my guarantor on and I am the same for hers) to pay my credit card off.
She flipped out, because I had initially agreed to use the money for a down payment on a property. While that was still the plan, I don’t want to accrue interest on my credit card, and I’d rather borrow from myself than pay interest, and refill my savings later on. I was called “selfish” for seeking out counselling, for the previous issues, and this turned into a big fiasco. Mom insisted on seeing the bank statements, but I told her no, its not her concern, but she leveraged my grandparents again, and said they were hurt by my behaviour, and that I broke their trust. This did not bother me, as I knew it was empty threats. However, I had no choice but to show her because of relentless pressure and it affecting my wife’s academics (she ended up failing her midterm because of all the stress my mom put on us).
From there, things got better again, but the lingering fear of another outburst has been in the back of my head and my wife’s. The comfort of home and sense of security has all but disappeared.
This was the third outburst my mom had. Now, I have not mentioned my dad, and he has his share of issues too. He initially was on my side throughout all these issues, but when faced with my mom, he switched up on me, and levied insults about my wife and I. He told me that we got married to soon (he got married at the same age I did), were immature, that we did not contribute around the house (which is false, we contribute to the cooking and cleaning as much as everyone else. But due to us being the new couple, there seems to be an expectation that we do more, despite being in grad school), that she was spoiled, lazy, and not prepared for marriage. He also told me that I was abandoning my mother in favour of my wife.
Whenever my wife cooks (she usually cooks for the whole family, but sometimes for just me and her), she cleans up after herself, but he goes back and cleans up again, when there is negligible to no mess, and he in turn points out the small things that were missed. He does the same when she cleans the bathroom or sweeps the floors, but when me or my sister do those things, he leaves it be. He also always hovers over my wife when she is cooking, telling her to place dishes in a certain place or other small technicalities, when he himself does not cook at all.
Being in school, we also tend to sleep late some nights, and in turn sleep in the next day ( we sleep the same 6-9 hours as everyone else), and in turn get called lazy. This is largely due to us having to contribute around the house on my parents’ schedules, and put aside our own work. We cannot do any focused work in the earlier parts of the day, and it tends to get left to the later parts of the day, after housework and any preventive maintenance work is done. By the time we are done working, and spending some time with one another (as is the norm for new couples), we finally go to bed around 2 to 3 am most nights.
Now despite all of the above, besides tempers flaring a few times on our end, my wife and I have stood up for ourselves, while trying to be respectful, despite being insulted at every turn. I have been told I am selfish, lacking family values, and that I am a disgrace (never once stepped out of line growing up and have always been well behaved and good in school).
So after all the issues, wife and I decided to look for our own place, without telling mine or her parents. We found a place and signed a lease. My FIL owns a business, and cosigned with us, so we told him first. We then told my MIL and SILs because we were staying over this past weekend when we got approved and signed the lease.
Now, the hurdle is breaking it to my family. I told my sister first thing when I got home, and told my dad the next day. My sister told me it was a mistake not telling my parents I was looking for a place, but if I did, they would have tried to veto my efforts relentlessly, due to a deep held belief her and my grandparents hold, that renting is “throwing your money away,” as well as a superiority complex with home ownership. My mom literally told me “do you want to rent a ghetto apartment like…” She stopped herself, but was going to say my wife’s uncles, who rent and are happy doing so.
I told my dad, and he had mixed emotions, as he thought I was gonna stay for 2-3 years as initially planned, but given the situation, I want to preserve the integrity of my family ties, and believe that it is best for everyone if wife and I move out. I also want autonomy, as my family is very controlling, and expects us to do things the way they did. Now, dad said it was an eventuality, but said he felt betrayed and deceived by me not consulting him and mom. He also said he was confused and did not know how to feel, and I could see he was holding back tears when I told him. He said it was a slap in the face, and it showed I thought very little of my relationship with my parents. Also said that it was embarrassing for him and mom because we were moving out, as it would signal to the rest of the family and my in-laws that there were problems.
Now, I have not told my mom yet, because she will go nuclear and throw a huge fit, as she did when I previously did things my own way. Nor have I told my grandparents, who i argued with previously about this subject. They all want me to buy a house or condo, which will cost me 6-10k or so monthly after all expenses, whereas if I rent, I can keep my and my wife’s expenses under 3500.
The purpose of my post is to ask how should I approach the situation now, in terms of telling my mom and grandparents. I also want to know if I was wrong in any way possible. I talked to 2 different therapists, 1 in my culture/religion, and another who was secular, and they both told me to move out ASAP. I want to know if I was justified in doing what I did, without consulting my parents, and if there was any potential strain or ending of ties, if it would have been my fault.
Thanks for reading my long post, and I appreciate any help.
​
​
​