Jan 14, 2020
Here’s the (edited) story we discuss this week:
“I guess I write as a daughter and a mother at the same time. Almost two years ago my mother had a financial crisis and the only solution I saw at the time was to offer her to live with us until she could figure things out.
She is 70, very active and independent so she struggled to share the space with us. We also struggled, our youngest son moved to our room so we lost privacy and intimacy as a couple. Also my mother is an extrovert and my husband and I introverts so she felt rejected when she wanted to chat about her social life while we just wanted to sit down together (just the two of us) with a glass of wine and listen to some music at the end of the day.
We all made an effort to tolerate one another for a little more than a year until she bought a house that was under construction. The construction was delayed and she needed to wait months before moving in.
My youngest son needed his own space and we needed our marriage back desperately so I offered my mother to help her to find a cheap place where she could live while she waited for her house. She accepted but took the whole thing as a rejection from my husband who by the way made a huge effort to accommodate to her in his own way but wasn't what she expected.
I felt all the time in between them and I was exhausted, there were times where they didn't even speak to each other in a passive aggressive dance that was draining for me.
She found a room for rent in a friends' house, and my family and marriage recovered the lost space. However she suffered because of this decision, she feels unwanted in this new place too and I feel guilty about what happened. The relationship between her and my husband is now damaged probably forever.”