My fiancé and I have been together for over a year, we're both young. 19. We have an apartment right down the street from her. She is constantly calling and texting him, asking if he's OK, throwing in an "i love you and miss u" every time. She texts and calls around the time we wake up and throughout the day then one last time at night to make sure he's safe. I have the hardest time with it. She really nags on him. We get interuppted in the middle of a movie or dinner or even sex. And if he doesn't reply to her text right away or answer the phone right away she'll call back to back until he answers. We just had an incident about a month ago where me an him had an argument and he ran to her then she came over to my apartment that I pay for because MY name is on the lease NOT HIS, she came over here with him and started going off on me and pointing him and barking instructions to him to get presents they had each given me for holidays or birthday. Or just anything he had bought for me. "so he could get his money back", I was furious, and of course he came back an hour after they'd left and was crying and apologizing. She just has such a strong grasp over him. As I observe his reactions to her, he feels like he has to talk to her everyday or she won't survive. If he ignores her for a day because god forbid we have lives of our own, she tells him about how sad she is. I've never seen a mother like her. I know she means well, but we're trying to start our lives together and it makesme angry having daily life interrupted with these absurd phone calls and text messages. I've told him to talk to her about it, and he has on more than one occasion. She'll stop for a couple of days then gradually start doing it again. I do not want this to continue and if it will not stop I want to end the relationship. How should I handle this? Or word it carefully so he doesn't think I'm trying to ruin their relationship? I just want her to lay off and have a little respect towards us and trust him that he can make it to work or vo-tech just fine without her checking on him like he's still an 8-year-old boy!

You can't compete with his mother, and he's not helping at all. If you marry and/or have a child, oh my!

If I were you, when the lease is up, pack up and move. Alone.

You are dating a momma's boy and that is something you will never win, until he sees the problem and addresses it.

If you plan on staying, plan on a LONG road of this and much more... so either make her your best friend as well or leave him. Your choice.

But you will NOT loosen the attachment.

She treats me as though nothing else in the world is as important as her son, he does nothing wrong. He's perfect. I've tried to be friends with her but I feel like its fake. I think I'll just wait it out until the lease is up and see what happens.. how things go? I feel like the longer I wait the harder its going to be to get away.

It is his responsibility to step up ,be a man and tell her the way it is.

I am very close to my two adult sons but if they said to me * Mom,back off and let me live my life,you did your job*. I would back off!

The ball is in his court and he needs to understand that if he doesn't stop this now,it will only continue and get so much worse if and when children come into the picture.

He has tried talking to her about it, she still wiggles her way back in. She doesn't care about him living his own life she's too worried about her own insecurities

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Originally Posted by mmmbopdoodle

He has tried talking to her about it, she still wiggles her way back in. She doesn't care about him living his own life she's too worried about her own insecurities

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He is just going to have to give her an ultimatum,either back off and let me live my life or I'm cutting all ties with you.

Try to make her feel as positive about it as possible.*Mom,you did a good job with me and now you need to trust that all those lessons you taught me have sunk in. Right now I am a man and you need to show respect for me*.

He needs to stick with it.Her irrational behavior should not be rewarded by his giving in to her.

Your husbands needs to tell his mother that he love her, and tell her that she is destroying his marriage by her behavior and he is not happy about that.He needs to unattach himself from his mother apron strings.He also should Never run to her again when he is having a problem with you. That only make things worse.Tell him that he is disrepecting you and it hurt you, when he behave that way.

He doesn't seem to want to do that. He sees nothing wrong with her behavior. He tries to explain how she wasn't there when he was a child and as he and his brother got older she started caring more. They're 21 and 19 and she has to have at the least, 2 phone calls a day so she knows they're safe. The brother and my fiancé, both, live right down the street and right around the block from her. She's a saint.

I am telling you until he sees the problem it won't change and him telling you that he doesn't see the problem so you where your place with him is right now.

You have to accept this or move on. UNTIL HE SEES THE PROBLEM there will not be a solution that you will like and even when he stands up to her, she will still be his number one. YOU HAVE TO ACCEPT THIS or don't be with him.

Imagine she is ill or her health takes a turn for the worse, you are planning a life with him. This will effect you tremendously, if you can't accept this while she doesn't live with you imagine what it will be like if she needs more from him and you.

Without making her your very best frienemy she will continue to challenge you in her son's life, because no matter what you will never be good enough for "her baby" so you have to find your common ground that she can appreciate you and realize you are not a threat to her relationship with her son.

I'm just going to ignore the situation for a bit. Try getting closer to her again, our relationship was fine before she got involved in our fights. He's been doing good at keeping her out of things now. Any tips on coping with this? Fighting that irritation I get when she calls?

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Fighting that irritation I get when she calls?

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I would try to be as far removed from the both of them during these reconnection times as possible.

Its all very silly as she can't make up for lost time and it sounds as if he wants this as much as she does.Hopefully they will both grow out of it one day.

Good luck Hon... your going to need it :)

In the end, he has to put his foot down, if it is a cell phone, change her ring tone to silent so you never hear her rings

But he has to tell his mom to stop it that it is interfering with his life.

You cannot change a relationship in which you are not a party. But it sounds like the real issue here is your own relationship with your boyfriend and the fact it is being intruded upon, which happens to be by his mother.

All you can do is work with your boyfriend to set up boundaries for the relationship between the two of you. It should not be centered around his mother but rather on the two of you. That is, the rules apply to everyone... not just to her.

I would suggest these:
- The phones are turned off during dinner. Only emergency calls are answered after 10 pm and an emergency is truly an emergency - not an "I'm so mad at your Aunt Lois!" but rather, "I've had a heart attack, please come to the hospital".
- Phones really have to be turned off during dates, movies and when you are having an intimate discussion or sex. Unless you are brain surgeons on call, there's no reason in the world people have to have instant access to you 24/7.
- Disagreements and other private matters between the two of you are only discussed with people other than the two of you if you both agree first. That is, neither of you is to take your arguments to the family or friends or to blab about personal stuff like whether you might be pregnant, or how you'll pay the bills or whatever. You cannot have intimacy without trust, and you cannot have intimate trust if neither of you can be assured that you can bear your souls in your upcoming marriage without fear that you are bearing them in the town square!

As for specifically dealing with mom, I would suggest your fiancé could:
- Start a new tradition with her. He might decide he will spend every Tuesday evening with her, having dinner at her home and perhaps helping her with things she needs done that are too much for her... putting the heavy salt in the water softener, or figuring out her television remote or whatever.
- Stop responding to every call. Cut back over time until he's perhaps checking in with her briefly every day, reserving longer conversations for when they are together, or when he truly has time to speak to her at length.
- In addition to the weekly visits, perhaps always have something else looming in the future to look forward to together whether it's a plan to go see a particular movie when it comes out next month on a Sunday afternoon, or plans to celebrate one of your birthdays in a few weeks, or to try that new restaurant when it opens. Maybe something once a month or so on average that you can get excited about doing with her, so she knows you want to be with her.
- Be understanding that she's clearly having a rough go of letting her son go this young. You are marrying very, very young and she's right to have some nervous feelings about it. She expected more time before her son married and it's hard to extricate yourself before you've caught up with where your child is at! Build a positive relationship with her and don't create a situation where he has to choose between the two of you, or she feels you are taking him away from him. It's not a competition but rather a negotiation for him to determine an appropriate distance with his mother, and an appropriate closeness with you... with time to himself in between.

I think if you make it all about the mom, even though she's the only and worst offender of inappropriate interuptions and demands, it will become a matter where he feels you're making him choose. If it's rather a matter of, "you know, we're starting a new life together and we just need to have some time that's sacred, that nobody can interupt no matter who they are or what they want. Can we do that?" And have reasonable, concrete things you want from him... men are concrete beings and if you tell them something reasonable that can be done to solve the problem, they feel like heroes. If you just generally complain about something they haven't figured out how to resolve, they feel inadequate. They can understand, "let's turn our phones off during dinner".

I love it, I've tried doing something very similar to this such as him spending time with her, I understand the empty nest syndrome thing, which is what I believe she's experiencing. And we've tried the no phone after certain times or while we're on a date but she gets so upset starts calling my phone and leaving absurd messages.