The guy loves his mom, I can understand that. However, I’m often turned off and disturbed by the extra close nature of their relationship.
We have been together for about 6 months, so I haven’t found it particularly pertinent to bring this up to him until now since we have started talking about our future and becoming more serious.
Personally, I’ve always been super independent of my parents. I moved out when I was 16, have supported myself entirely and even put myself through school, I live very far away from my family. So I can admit that I may not fully understand his position and I want to be sympathetic to his feelings if I address this with him.
Now on the other hand, he lives with his mom and he doesn’t need to work while in school. He isn’t charged rent, she does the grocery shopping, cooks for him, cleans his bathroom, does his laundry and dishes. Considering he’s 25, I’m of the opinion that he’s quite babied by her. She seems to expect a certain level of immediate responsiveness to her needs from him because of this. Our time is often interrupted by her whether we are at their house or not.
His dad passed away a couple of summers ago. And I didn’t know him then but I feel like that event must have played a huge role in this dynamic. The behavior that I notice between them is almost intimate? They are in constant communication, texting all throughout the day and often he abruptly pauses a conversation or ignores me in order to reply to his mom. A couple times a week he declines going out with me or coming over to my house because she’s home and he needs “mom time”.
When they pass by each other in the kitchen he holds her from behind and kisses her cheek and it’s like I’m not even there. He’s usually very affectionate towards me except when we’re around his mom, it’s kind of awkward, like being teenagers. And when we encounter normal relationship problems, he always tells me about his mom’s input on the matter.
On one occasion, I had returned from a long trip and we had a special night planned together but his mom had some last minute needs which conflicted and caused a big problem and a lot of stress.
When we talk about the future I can’t imagine the step of moving in with him, for example, because I don’t know if he can be away from his mom. (Of course, I think it’s important that he experiences living in his own or with roommates before we could even bring this into real consideration.)
At the very least, I’ve thought of asking that when we are having alone time together, if he wouldn’t mind putting his phone away and not texting with his mom. But I do not want to cross a line.
The way I see it, I could break off the relationship sooner or later over this or I could try to talk to him about this and see if it improves (risking pissing off him/his mom).