Hi Reddit
My Wife and I (newly married for 1 year) stay with my mum 59F and sister 24F. We have a very comfortable life and staying in a huge home with all the the nice quality of life things (cooked food, daily washed and ironed clothes everything cleaned for us etc). We all have good paying jobs but the home is clearly too big for us and expensive to maintain for my mum who pays for majority of the expenses. Our home is very sentimental to my family because we built it from scratch and represents our family’s achievements. So my mum, sister and I will find it very difficult to leave.
Before getting married my wife and I agreed to stay at home for a year and figure things out as we go along and save enough till we can afford a similar lifestyle for ourselves. My mum also just completed treatment for cancer and is healthy again which is also the reason why I wanted to stay at home for a bit incase things get bad again. I have communicated with my Mum and sister that my wife and I will stay at home after we get married and see how things go.
A year has gone by and wife and my mum & sister don’t get along great, everything is still very respectable but the personalities are just not clicking well.
My wife wants us to move out and I have hinted to my mum that i am thinking about moving out in a years time. She was very upset that I am thinking along those lines and expected me to stay at home for a few more years and wants 3 years notice so she can sell our home and get things ready before we move out.
This is too long for my wife and I as we agreed privately that 1 to 1 and half years notice is fair.
My sister is also not happy as she wants to get married before we sell the house. She is planning to get married in the next 3 to 4 years.
My wife is not happy and it is causing friction between us. I agree that we should move out but I am finding difficult to approach the topic again because I do not want to upset anyone.
I don’t want to ruin the relationship with my mum and sister. Waiting for few more years will benefit my wife and I financially but may ruin our marriage if things carry on like this which I do not want.
Please provide your thoughts and advice on how to approach this topic with my mum again.
TL;DR My wife and I want to move out in the next year but mum and sister are not happy and want us to stay at home for a few more years.
5 comments
This is where you have to choose:
if you want to live happily with your wife, I suggest you move within 6 months or less. It’ll just get worse between your wife and your mom/sibling and you don’t want it to escalate. It’s better to always leave in the best terms as possible.
Is money saved worth giving up a relationship with your wife? Or to make your wife hate your mom?
If you want to stay to make your mom/sibling happy, will you want to risk your wife feeling like you are choosing your mom/sibling?
>wants 3 years notice
unreasonable (way, way too stressful for your wife)
>I do not want to upset anyone.
Families get upset, that’s life. For here, you’ve parties with diametrically opposed objectives, avoiding *everyone* being upset is the only reasonable objective imo.
And if you have to choose, you might as well choose to please the one you’ll live with, your wife.
Your wife is right.
For no other reason than she is your immediate family now and you have to do what’s right for your family.
If you all have well paid jobs you could compromise and contribute to costs for a year after you move out. You did get to stay there cheaply after all.
Don’t put your life on hold. Because your sister has vague plans.
There were a lot of way to do suchlike that…
I don’t think there is a special combination of words that is going to make your mum ok with this. She’s unhappy with your decision, but you’re both just going to have to live with that. You can’t spend your whole life pandering to your mum’s desires. You just have to tell her that this is a choice you and your wife have made, that it’s not personal and doesn’t affect your love for her.
Your relationship with your mum seems a bit codependent. You’re 30 and married. It should be a reasonable expectation that you move out and go and live your life. An adult moving out of their parents home shouldn’t be such a big deal that it could potentially ruin their relationship. It’s a normal course of events.