Dealing with the Parents (well mother really)

[MattB]

I'm at my witts end here. My mother is psychotic.

 

Currently I'm living away from home, I'm 23 so is that really a big surprise? My parents decided to fly me home for 2 weeks around the hollidays. During this time my fiance and I (parents don't know we are engaged) planned on visiting her parents for a couple of days over new years, which also happens to be my birthday. So I tell my mother yesterday, near a month in advance, that those were my plans. She immediatly flips out because I'm not spending the entire break at home. She said she assumed I'd go and visit her for a day, and then come back home. Am I really being selfish for wanting to spend more then a day with someone I've been dating this long (regardless of engagment) that I haven't seen since early October?

 

What's more, from the fact I'm meeting her parents, she gathered that I wanted to marry her, so I fessed up and told her I did. This led to a three hour argument about how my fiance is lazy, nonambitious trash just out to find some poor soul to marry and leech money off of and that I am throwing away my dreams and all my goals just to be with her. She has met her twice. I repeatedly tell her that everything she says is wrong and that she obviously does not know her, but she just replies that she was a girl once, she knows what girls are like and that she doesn't care to know her to find out. Yet she says I'm the one being childish. She assumes that once we are together that she'll be this clingy whiney thing that won't let me do anything and will just lay around the house eating bon bons. I have no idea where she's getting this idea considering she's working two jobs plus going to school right now....

 

I really don't know what to do. She's steadfast in her hate. She keeps telling me that basicly I have to make a choice between her or my fiance. Since my parents are also picking up my car payment and insurrence (which I'm not happy about but as a grad student funds are tight and I have no choice), she told me that if I spend ANY money to fly my fiance out to see me, that she's going to dump those two payments on me. If I can pay to fly her out, obviously I have the money to make those payments. Appearently my fiance is supposed to come up with all the funds if she wants to visit me, regardless of the fact that I want to visit her too.(a concept my mother appearently can't grasp).

 

 

So I really don't know what to do. She is driving me nutso. We can't talk anymore without it being a fight. I don't even know that in 5 years when we prove her wrong if she'll change her mind. This is also not the first time this has happened. Every girl I've even looked at, she started freaking out about. Back in high school I had a friend who was a girl and she was constantly harassing me because "she was sinking her talons into me and controlling me". Back in my freshman year of college she ended a relationship because she would call me nonstop to check up on me and make sure I wasn't with "her" and then go balistic if I was. She would even drive an hour and a half, calling me when she was 5 min away, just so we could have these little talks about how I was ruining my life by dating someone instead of focusing 150% of my attention on school work.

 

I am seriously at my witts end. Something is going to break here. I don't even want to go home for the hollidays now.

[slubberdegullion]

Your primary relationship right now is with your lady. It sucks to be stuck in the middle - gawd, I can tell you stories! - but from what you've written it seems pretty clear that there isn't anyone who will be good enough for your mum's little boy.

 

Don't fight with her, because there's no way you can possibly win. Even if you win the argument, you'll damage the relationship further. So just refuse to fight. "Mum, I get your point and it's clear that we're not going to agree on this. I love you and I'm thankful for all you have done for me and the family. But I'm through fighting about this." End of discussion.