So, I grew up in a West Coast city that now has a very high cost of living. My entire family and all my friends still live there. After college, I moved to the midwest for grad school, where I met my husband, who is from Missouri. After I graduated, we were faced with the choice of where to look to live–by his family, or by mine? Well, at the time we had extremely low income and no savings, so moving to my home area was near impossible. We elected to move to Missouri where we would actually be able to afford an apartment.
I became a teacher and my husband is an EMT and obviously we do not make good money doing that. For reference I make below 40k annually and he makes even less. My husband is floating the idea of changing careers for something with more earning potential down the line, but that obviously would require some sort of preparation program/going back to school which is another expense.
I desperately miss my hometown and my family/friends every day, but here we can afford to own a small home with a yard for our dogs, take the occasional weekend getaway, and put a little money away into savings, too, and would be able to afford my husband going to community college to change careers if he wants to.
Anyway. My mom has always been upset that we don’t live closer. Now that we are expecting our first child, she messages me nearly daily bemoaning the fact that she will miss so much of her grandchild’s life. It was always our vague plan to move back to my hometown “someday” if we could ever afford it but it’s becoming kinda clear that we never will be able to. Yet, she is CONSTANTLY complaining that we live far away, why can’t we move back, etc, etc.
She says why don’t I “just get certified” to teach in my home state because teacher salaries “start at 60k here”…so I feel like she is delusional about the COL there because the average home price there is over $900,000 and rent for a 2 bedroom apartment–which we would not want to live in anyway with a child and 3 pets–in an okay area would absolutely be $2500+. When I point this out, she gets huffy and says well we could live in a “nearby” town with lower cost of living (note that even in the surrounding areas, a fair drive off, very mediocre homes are still like $5-600k).
This is building resentment with me because my mom herself lives in a 5 bedroom, 3 bathroom home in a highly desirable part of the city. My parents are divorced, and my mom (who doesn’t work and recently got a large settlement from a legal thing- not divorce related) lives in the house by herself. When she found out we were pregnant, she excitedly suggested we move in there with her and use 3 of the bedrooms that are on the opposite side of the house that “she doesn’t use anyway.” I was so thrilled and said definitely, let’s make a plan for what that could look like, which is when she came back with “of course, you would pay me the market appropriate rent, I’ll research rents in the area for 3 bedroom houses”… I told her we were absolutely open to living with her but would never be able to afford the market rate for that neighborhood, let alone market rate rent for a 3 bedroom house–at least not for *years* at the absolute earliest. She goes “awwww. really? that’s too bad” and then right back into complaining that “in that case” she won’t get to know her grandchild. It just felt ingenuine I guess.
Like…Idk. I know I am not entitled to living with her for free or anything, but it really bothers me that she complains and nags so much about me not living there when I have made it soo clear what the obstacles are to us moving there, and it’s like she pretends she doesn’t hear them or believe them?? Or that they aren’t legitimate, and I’m just being lazy to not find a way to magically afford it?
It kind of reminds me of this time in college when I had a very wealthy friend who frequently complained that I “never wanted to get dinner with her” when she was constantly only choosing super expensive places to eat, and when I said I couldn’t afford it, instead of being willing to go somewhere else, she just pouted and would go with a different friend… but then would be back to nagging me about how lame I was for “never joining her” the very next day.
I guess this has been more of a vent than anything. I want to salvage my relationship with her before it goes too far south because I love her, and this strain on our relationship is fairly recent, developing only in the past 5 years or so and then accelerating rapidly now that I’m pregnant. **Does anyone have any advice for how to respond next time she brings up how unfair it is that she won’t have a close relationship with her grandchild if we don’t move home?**
**tl;dr** mom recently came into a lot of money and lives in a high COL area. She nags me and my husband to move there so she can have a close relationship with her only grandchild, who isn’t yet born. We do not make enough money to afford living there so cannot move there despite really wanting to, but she refuses to accept that as the reason and continues to nag.
2 comments
Why doesn’t she move closer to you?
>When she found out we were pregnant, she excitedly suggested we move in there with her and use 3 of the bedrooms that are on the opposite side of the house that “she doesn’t use anyway.” I was so thrilled and said definitely, let’s make a plan for what that could look like, which is when she came back with “of course, you would pay me the market appropriate rent, I’ll research rents in the area for 3 bedroom houses”
>
>
>
>She goes “awwww. really? that’s too bad” and then right back into complaining that “in that case” she won’t get to know her grandchild.
I guess she doesn’t want you to move there *that* badly, then. If you could afford to rent a 3-bedroom house, you wouldn’t need to live with her!
She’s also being fairly manipulative. “If you don’t do the impossible, then I guess I’ll never know my grandchild!”
I don’t know if she’s being deliberately obtuse or is just completely out-of-touch, but it doesn’t sound like you’re going to get through to her. Maybe once the baby is here, she’ll have a change of heart, but in the meantime, when she starts nagging/complaining again, you’ll have to try to nip it in the bud by cutting her off and saying, “Mom, we’ve talked about why it’s not financially feasible for us to move there. That hasn’t changed, so let’s change the subject.”