So for some background my fiancée (24F) and I (26m) have been together for now almost 4 years. She is great, and I don’t think we have any major fights during our 4 years being together, obviously have had disagreements and some small fights, but that’s normal. Other than that, I do really love her.
So we have our wedding planned for a year down the line, after getting engaged 5 months ago. i have been getting more and more involved with her family and seeing more shades of them, and I’m starting to get more concerned.
My fiancée has a one older brother, who has had a very tumultuous life, and has shut down. He doesn’t leave his home, and has trouble maintaining any sort of work and with my most recent conversation with him, said he has given up. That itself is a whole issue.
My future MIL is a single mother, after unfortunately my fiancés father left the family at an early age. Even though she is someone I don’t really have direct conversations with often besides on the artificial level, I have high level of respect for her to be able to work multiple jobs to support herself and her son.
However, she is intimidating and not easy to talk to, but before this situation I would not mind her being my future MIL as it felt like she would stay out of the way due to the fact she is self sufficient. However, I know my fiancée still chips in and helps the house out with finances even though she has her own bills and lives alone.
So, earlier in the morning today, I went to drop off something my fiancée gave me to my future MIL as a favor as my fiancé wasn’t available. I get there, and the MIL invites me in for tea and I say ok. I get in there and we start talking, the conversation starts to get a weird place and then she starts bawling crying about how difficult and hard her life has been, specifically because of her lonely life and her son, and now with her daughter also being taken away from her so she has nothing left.
I say her daughter isn’t being taken away, and we will always be here to support her. Then she starts opening up about how she expects me to support her because of my means and she knows how much I make. She cited reasons as she is getting older and can’t physically work anymore and the son is a lost cause, and she said she can’t continue to ask her daughter as it’s embarrassing for her.
I didn’t understand the logic and was kind of in shock, so I just nodded my head. (Why is it not embarrassing asking me?). We just then continued talking about other stuff then I left. She then also asked me to specifically keep this between us. (I make a lot of money)
In the car I try calling my fiancée because I was mad on why she would tell her mom how much I make as I told specifically to keep that quiet, but she said she’s still busy at work, apologized, and let’s meet up early morning tomorrow to talk about it. I told her the high level of what happened, but I don’t think she understands how weird it got. I was also kind of mad, so maybe was being kind of rude.
So now that I have digested this I don’t know if I’m taking this as serious as I should. Is this a big red flag? How should I handle this? How should I discuss this with my fiancée?