| Mother In Law taking advantage of us
My girlfriend and I love eachother very much and we have a wonderful little boy called Alex who is now three (I am 34 and she is 25). Her mum looked after Alex for well over a year as both of us worked. We payed her £300pcm for that as she had bus fares to pay for from her house to ours, which she never used as she decided to sleep on our couch most nights. (We have a two bedroom house so there's wasn't a spare bed). Eventually, Anna could see that Alex's grandmother was becoming too much of a maternal influence on Alex and we decided she should give up work to concentrate more on his upbringing. Obviously this left us with substantially less money but we figured it was worth it to reinforce the relationship between Alex and his mum. I also was glad to have the space to ourselves again as her mum is quite a large woman who is very clumsy, doesn't tidy up after herself and generally has no respect for other peoples belongings (or her own for that matter). That said, My girlfriends family (she has two sisters) are VERY close and won't hear a word said against their mum who takes great pride in (reminding people of) the fact that she brought up the three girls all by herself.
So much so that a couple of years ago they decided to buy their mum a basset hound for her birthday - we all chipped in about £200 each. I was the only voice of reason but was dismissed in all seriousness as a spoilsport. My argument was how was she ever going to manage to keep and feed the dog with zero income, when the £300 per month we were giving her finished - obviously looking after Alex was never going to be a permanent job.
She lives in a small village about 15 miles "off the beaten track" in a council house in complete squallor - cat pee, peeling wallpaper, threadbare carpets, broken bed, overgrown garden, you get the picture. My partner feels a huge responsibility to get her out of this situation (which her sisters don't seem to worry about at all), but obviously that would involve the council finding her a flat "back in civilisation". Unfortunately she has no motivation whatsoever to approach them not to mention their inability to find her something.
Since she finished looking after Alex, she has been on "job seekers" benefit, meaning that she has to do some sort of unpaid work placement every now and then. Recently she just finished a 12 week placement in our town when of course she was back on the couch. Dog peeing on the floor and dog hair everywhere, open dog food tins left lying around the kitchen, unflushed toilets and generally not much fun.
She finished that a few weeks ago and things were fine once more - once I'd cleared up the mess. That done, we have now decided to invest on a new suite and new carpets throughout the house - these get delivered in time for Christmas.
A couple of weeks ago my girlfriend excitedly told me that her mum has just had some great news - after about twenty years being unemployed she has finally landed a job working nightshift at the bakery at our local Tesco's on Thursday to Sunday nights. Although I'd love to be delighted for her, this unfortunately means that she's not only back living at our house, but she's sleeping in our bed all day Thursday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday. (While I'm trying to decorate!) Incidentally we're barely started paying up the £1200 for our new bed and the dog peed on the mattress a couple of nights ago.
My girlfriends family still think I'm the son of Satan for mentioning their mum's lack of self respect about 6wks ago and she is understandably sick of trying to keep her family happy as well as me.
Any act on my part to help the mother-in-law-to-be find new accomodation is seen by all of her family as an act of war! Their attitude is that I think their family is crap compared to mine (who incidentally are more the middle class Hyacinth Bouquet type). Apart from this blind worship of their mother, this couldn't be further from the truth - I am generally very understanding and unjudging of people and like them all for who they are, but they don't believe me when I say that.
Since her teens, my partner has (understandably) suffered from severe depression, and I desperately want her to become more independant and confident - neither of us have any friends or social life apart from with family. She is currently undegoing councelling and I'm sure her mum thinks she is doing her a favour by being around to help.
Everyone I talk to can't believe what I'm putting up with, and all say that they could never do that, but I love my partner so much, and my son is my entire world. My dad and mum split up when I was young and I know that I could NEVER do that. All I'm asking for is a bit of quality of life, without becoming the hated son-in-law/brother-in-law who poisoned my girlfriends mind against her family. Most of all, I want Anna to get though her depression and live a normal, outgoing life without feeling torn between me and her family. Is that asking too much???
By the way, if I try to talk to her mum about any of this, she gets ashamed and walks out in a huff before I can finish the first sentence, then gives me the cold shoulder for a couple of weeks (while still living in my house!) - Awkward to say the least.
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