I posted the longer version of this in another sub so delete if it isn’t appropriate. Apologies for the formatting, I’m on mobile. The title is also slightly deceptive, because I didn’t know how to explain this briefly. There’s a TLDR at the bottom.
I (26F) have been in a relationship with John (29M) for the last decade. Due to circumstances surrounding my family, I’ve lived with him, first with housemates and now on our own, for the last 9 years.
We have had our issues over the years but we’ve worked hard to get through them. We are now in a better and more stable / secure place than we ever have been and talking about marriage / children far more seriously than we ever have in the past. The only issue is his mother and immediate family unit. His extended family are amazing people, and tellingly, none of them have anything to do with John’s immediate family. They are such a point of contention that at 20, I told John I didn’t want to ever marry him for no other reason than his mother, Anna (50F). It took a few years and a lot of therapy for us to process and me to relax on that.
Anna, essentially, took one look at me 10 years ago and decided I was not good enough for her son. But she took it to extremes.
The first time I ever visited her under a year into our relationship, she felt it was appropriate to passive-aggressively comment about me choosing not to wear makeup to dinner in torrential rain.
At said meal, she & her friends openly shit on the fact that John paid for me and we didn’t split the bill there and then.
After that visit, she relayed to John that she didn’t approve of me because she had decided that I didn’t shower enough, since I didn’t wash my hair every day that meant I wasn’t showering at all.
A year or so later, Anna, her husband Bill and their 2 sons (55M, 21M, and 19M) came to help us move along with my parents. My mom caught Anna complaining to Bill about how lazy I was and the fact I wasn’t helping by carrying boxes up and down stairs instead I was unpacking. My mom reminded Anna that I have a fairly well hidden physical disability that affects my coordination and movement and so that wasn’t easy or safe for me like it was for everyone else. Anna just went silent and did not apologise.
Those are just a few examples that really illustrate her character. There have been many more comments made about me, and probably even more than I’ve been told about. I have only seen her twice since. It’s made easier by the fact she doesn’t care to visit her son and expects him to go to her. I am never invited to these plans, and I am a-okay with that.
Recently John has been rather obviously hinting that he’s going to propose soon. I want to marry him, I do, but the big issue for me is that he never argues against anything his mother says, concerning me or not. He says that’s just how she is and there’s no point in starting an argument over it because she’s never going to change anyway. I’ve been telling him for years that I NEED him to understand that either he has my back and he puts her in her place, or our marriage will not include her family and neither will the lives of our future kids and that is the hill I am willing to die on in this relationship. However every time I have brought this up in the past he’s entertained the topic for all of five minutes and a then he’s just shut off and stopped engaging.
So I guess my actual question through all that backstory is: how do I communicate that this is a very real boundary for me if he wants to marry me without seeming like a petulant child?
TLDR – 10 year relationship and my boyfriend is thinking of proposing. Him not standing up to my MIL on my behalf or about me is going to stop me saying yes unless he goes NC which I don’t want to force him to do. How do I navigate this conversation??
17 comments
>How do I navigate this conversation??
> I NEED him to understand that either he has my back and he puts her in her place, or our marriage will not include her family and neither will the lives of our future kids and that is the hill I am willing to die on in this relationship.
Let him propose to you when he thinks he’s ready then you flat-out tell him no and that he knows what he has to do with his mother in order for you to say yes. It’s as simple as that. No other way around it.
As someone who’s married and has very toxic and immature inlaws trust me, you want this settled before you go all in.
If after ten years he hasn’t stood up for you to his mother then he never will. And remember if you do have kids with him you won’t be able to stop him bringing them around to his parents house. Look up “sunk cost fallacy” and consider if your relationship falls into this category.
You don’t seem like a petulant child—you seem like a person who is tired of being treated with such disrespect. It’s already been a decade and I think the talk of marriage is making you realize that if you say yes, the rest of your life will be like this.
I’d explain it to John exactly as you did here. Straight up tell him you won’t marry him if he keeps allowing his mom to treat you this way.
Would he allow one of his friends to act this way towards you? A stranger? No? What about if you said the same things about his mom that she says about you? Would he be fine with that? Also no? Then why does ONLY his mom get the excuse of “that’s just how she is.” He knows it’s unacceptable, it’s just easier to deal with your discomfort than his mom’s… Is that really someone you want to make your husband?
I’m not a fan of ultimatums, but I think you should go stay with your family the next time your MIL acts like this and he rolls over. Let hime know that your separation will be permanent if he doesn’t handle her behavior.
How much contact do you have with his mother?
Your partner cannot control what his mother thinks or says about you. And he’s correct in saying that arguing with her is pointless. But there’s no consequence for her behavior. I’m not sure why he can’t set a boundary with her along the lines of “Mom, I won’t hear anything negative said about Wicked_Witch. If you say anything negative about her in my presence, I will need to leave/hang up. We can talk about anything else you want, but I won’t stand around and hear you disrespect my wife. It hurts me when you disrespect her.”
Have you had a conversation with him about how you would expect to carry on as a family? Are you expected to appear at holidays? Is he planning on leaving you alone to be with his mom? What happens if you have children? It would be outrageous for her to have contact with grandchildren if she badmouths their mother.
Its been ten years. What does he say about these incidents? About his mothet bullying you and saying horribke things about you? Im confused why after 10 years this hasnt been addressed ever? It should have already been taken care of. I think you may have let him and mom walk all over you like garbage for fear of being alone and now youve wasted 10 years of your life. If you have been to afraid to fix this so far thats a really bad sign. If you’ve tried to fix it and it hasnt been done thats also a terrible sign.
Well, I don’t think he takes you seriously because you continue to stay with him. What’s really the difference if you live together and have been together for 9 years and you stay with him despite his mom…vs saying you won’t marry him unless he stands up to your mom? Seems like he’ll just be like, ok I won’t propose then and we’ll stay together until maybe she concedes and we get married anyways, or maybe never marry.
Like, unless you draw a hard line, there’s nothing motivating him to change.
>You wrote: ***As sad as it sounds, I think he genuinely is banking on just continuing that trend (atm we do a few days with our respective families, separately, and then spend Xmas Eve and day at home, but this has only been the last 2 years!) and if we have kids, alternating who the child visits every year***.
Umm, that wont be practicable at all. Solve it now! Just think what will happen at a wedding?
IMO, **before he proposes**, have a serious conversation. It’s in effect you proposing to him, but… and be prepared for the worst because setting boundaries is “easy” but maintaining them is a whole other matter.
You’ve a difficult road, but seem well placed to follow through.
He’s of course not going to talk to her about this. This all works for him. He doesn’t get any repercussions from this behavior of hers other than you complaining. That doesn’t seem to bother him, right? Your unhappiness isn’t enough of a factor for him to do anything because he isn’t feeling the consequences.
Being passive and unwilling to stand up to her is his toxic behavior that he might be not be interested in changing.
I’m sorry to tell you, but he’s not going to fix this and never will. He won’t fight for you against his mommy and dysfunctional family. If he was willing he would have done it years ago and not let continue as it has. I suggest moving on if I were you.
As someone with a dysfunctional mother and family (mom’s side mostly) I haven’t and won’t let them hurt my sexy (partner) or future kids or other partners (if that happens which is doubtful unless she cheats or something similar) and have enforced that currently with my NC mother right now.
Frankly, he got his priorities wrong and needs to cut off his r/justnoMIL and r/justnofamily like his healthy family has done. I doubt he will unless they betray him in an extreme manner (for example in my case my mom tried to kill herself a bunch when I was a teenager).
Going by past experience I wouldn’t wait for the highly unlikely chance he will step up and just start moving on. I’m sorry your partner is like this and hope everything works out for you no matter what he does.
I think you already have your answer. He hasnt done it for ten years, why would he start now. Also, why would you have to tell him you wont marry for him to do this. Youre unhappiness and his mums obvious shittiness should have been enough.
Can you agree that you’ll never see her, she’ll never set foot in your home and any kids you have will never meet her? Thats a more likely-to-happen compromise than him telling her off and putting her in her place.
OP, head over to your sisters at r/JustNoMIL, and read their stories – and make your bf read them, too, so he’ll know that not taking a stand is not an option.
OP, my mother treated my then-girlfriend, now wife similar to how your boyfriend’s mother treats you and I no longer speak to my parents and haven’t since 2018. I chose my wife over my mean-ass parents and their fucking hateful attitudes.
You two aren’t ready to be married. I would recommend shutting it down before a proposal, and demanding pre-marital counselling.
He’s been dodging these issues for years, and you’ve been allowing them to be dodged. That style of communication and problem solving will not a happy marriage make. Your much bigger issue is your boyfriend, and how you two deal with the problems in your relationship, rather than the mother he barely sees, who you don’t see at all. Frankly, had you two set boundaries, and found compromises years ago, you wouldn’t be here now.
>It took a few years and a lot of therapy for us to process and me to relax on that.
Unfortunately you have to acknowledge that really all you did was really put off the confrontation of this reality. Therapy didn’t help you relax, it just made you more efficient at tolerating it. But the hurdle to marriage she represented never actually changed and now it is here again and the only difference is you have many years additional sunk cost to try and process.
It’s the same conversation as it always was. He has had 10 years to stand up for you and now that marriage and kids are on the cards the only thing that has really changed is that you can’t put it off any more. In my eyes he has already failed, it is clear this is the pattern he is comfortable with. But clearly it isn’t for you.
You’ve been together ten years. If you can’t communicate openly then really that is a problem in and of itself.
Ask him point ask who he choose to make happy. You or his mother. Tell him that he needs to prove that YOU are his priority before you say “Yes” to a proposal.
“So you’re saying that you’re going to allow your mother to disrespect me, insult me, and verbally abuse me, b/c that’s who she is. An abusive person. And that’s who you are, someone who stands idly by and let’s their partner take the abuse, so long as you don’t have to.”
It’s been ten years. He’s not going to change any more than his mother is, b/c he doesn’t want to, and you’ve tolerated it.
Honestly? You deserve better. But he’s not going to give it to you. If he was, he would’ve. And he may say anything to prevent a breakup, but he’s had TEN YEARS to show you who he is. Believe him.
You’ve been with him for 10 years and the only thing that’s changed is that you “relaxed on the MIL issue”. What did your bf do in therapy? Whatever it was, it seems pointless since:
>He says that’s just how she is and there’s no point in starting an argument over it because she’s never going to change anyway.
> every time I have brought this up in the past he’s entertained the topic for all of five minutes and a then he’s just shut off and stopped engaging.
what he’s actually telling you is that _he_ doesn’t plan to change anything about how he interacts with her, and you can choose to either make peace with that or walk.
>that is the hill I am willing to die on in this relationship
If you’ve stayed so long while deliberately ignoring your own so-called dealbreaker, then what you communicated was that he shouldn’t take you seriously and that it’s all bark and no bite. He may be a mama’s boy but you tolerated it for a decade hoping that he’d change, and tacitly encouraged it by staying. You don’t say “I will not tolerate this”…and then proceed to tolerate it for 10 years, without contradicting yourself and losing all credibility.
If therapy wasn’t able to do anything for your relationship, then Reddit definitely can’t help either. Assuming you tell him (again) “I won’t marry you until you take care of the MIL issue”, what do you think will happen? He says “yes, dear” or gets angry, you two end up fighting and reconcile after awhile, and the issue is still there _because he doesn’t see it as something to be solved, even though you do._ Repeat ad nauseam until you’re either too exhausted to argue anymore, or you’re fed up a few more years in and finally walk away.
And if you have kids with this man, you better be sure there’ll be blowout arguments every major occasion/holiday about whose house they’ll spend it at, and you’ll have to pick between spending it at home together upset at each other with him resenting you for “ruining the holiday” OR him taking the kids to his mother’s place and you staying home alone and seething — the kids, of course, witnessing all this circus.