TL;DR Mom is very excited that I’m going to have a spare bedroom. I’m flooded with apprehension. I don’t know if my feelings are justified or not. ——————————————————————-
My partner [24M] and I are moving into a 1300 sq ft 2/2 townhome this week. Our current apartment is a snug 350 sq ft 1/1.
I’ve been working from home out of our bedroom since mid-March. This hasn’t done wonders for my mental wellbeing. Moving into a bigger place has been a light at the end of the tunnel these last few months.
I’m particularly happy about having a second bedroom, as my partner agreed that I should turn it into my home office. (I expect to continue working from home for quite a while longer.)
In my excitement, I told both my parents all about the new place as soon as our application was approved.
(Context on my parents: My parents are divorced. They live in my hometown, roughly an eight hour drive away.)
When I mentioned the second bedroom in the townhome to my mom, she immediately began talking about staying in “her guest room”. I told her that I was going to turn the spare room into a home office, but she just replied “with a sleeper sofa!” She then began talking excitedly about how she’d be able to drive up and visit “often”. I didn’t know what to say, but something in my gut turned.
My mom works at an airport in a COVID hotspot. I have asthma that gets worse when I get sick, so I can’t take any chances with COVID. Knowing this, my mom has been trying for months to push me to visit her, and she’s been asking repeatedly if she can come visit me. (She has outright refused to quarantine herself for two weeks prior to seeing me.)
I put my foot down and told her that any travel was out of the question, and she kind of accepted that. She still complains about it every time we talk though, and she still asks even though she knows the answer is no. Recently, she asked me if I needed her to come visit to help me move. After that didn’t work, she asked if she could come visit in August to “see the new place” and celebrate her birthday. I felt guilty about saying no, so I gave a very noncommital response.
At this point, I’m not even sure if I’d want to see her even if she did quarantine for two weeks beforehand. My mom gets way too pushy when she doesn’t get her way, and it makes me very uncomfortable. The problem is, she’s also extremely giving and generous, so it makes me feel guilty denying her requests.
She’s constantly offering to give me money I don’t need, and she tries to lend a helping hand in every situation without being asked. She has offered to pay for graduate school for me and pay for my living expenses, because she wants me back in school. (We had that arrangement when I was in undergrad, but the money was never as reliable as she said it would be. Having independence and a stable job has been a godsend. I’m never relying on her financially again.)
I almost think she’s generous so that she has leverage to push people around with. I don’t think she’s doing it in a conscious, malicious way, though. I think she does it because having control and feeling like a good person makes her happy.
In the past, when I’ve told her “no”, she has gone straight to guilting me. On one occasion, she wanted to stay the night with my partner and I in our tiny little apartment. I told her that my partner’s family, who live in town, would be more than happy to have her as a guest. In fact, they had already prepared the guest room for her. She cried and said that I “didn’t want her”, and she basically had a meltdown. I told her we didn’t have room or an air mattress, so she’d have to sleep on the floor. I told her that this was unacceptable, and that I would not allow my mother to sleep on grubby carpet. She then threatened to drive all the way back home overnight, after having driven all the way from home that day. When we didn’t back down, she went through with the threat. I couldn’t sleep that night out of fear, worrying about her crashing the car from sleep deprivation.
My partner has held my mother in poor regard ever since that incident. He really doesn’t want her to stay with us in the future. I could blame things on him and tell her that he’s the reason why she can’t stay with us, but that’s not fair to him. Plus, she might try to retaliate in some way, and I don’t want that.
***Actual TL;DR, after writing out my feelings: How do I tell my mother that my home office isn’t her guest bedroom? How do I tell her that she can’t come visit me in August?
I don’t even want to have her sleeping on an air mattress in my home office, because I’m uncomfortable leaving her alone with my belongings. She has gone through my things at least once in the past.
She keeps texting me, asking me how moving is going. Every time I see her texts, I feel a mix of discomfort and guilt. It makes me want to throw my phone away.
Reddit, please help?
Submitted July 28, 2020 at 11:46AM by sunshower-susurrus https://ift.tt/309VNjL
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