My boyfriend’s mum is really getting to me, and it’s really hard to navigate because she’s actually a really nice person. Help!
My boyfriend lives at home with his parents. His mum is lovely and so welcoming, but she’s *so* unhealthily attached to him.
At first, I thought she was just fussing over him, but it’s way more than that. The first thing I clocked was a few months in when we were having dinner at their house. They were telling me about the family, his siblings and his brother and brother’s girlfriend.
Boyfriend’s mum said the girlfriend had to cut up his food for him when they moved in together because that’s what mum used to do for him.
I laughed because it was clearly a joke about him being a mummy’s boy, yes? No. It turned out yes, this was entirely true.
I realised this when the next week I was round for dinner and mum brought his plate to him, put it on the table and picked up his knife and fork… asking him if he wanted it cutting up. Yes, it was a thing.
Then there’s the other stuff. She takes over any kind of life admin for him, and his siblings who are moved out with families of their own.
Got a letter that needs a phone call making, a reply posting? She’s on it.
Need to call someone about a problem or issue? She’s doing it for you.
Have a driver’s licence or passport problem? She’s doing it.
And I mean she’ll literally hold out her hand when boyfriend gets a letter to open it, read it for him and tell him what she’s going to do.
When he says he’ll do it himself, she gets offended. I was helping him with a form and she said she’d said she’ll do it because she “knows everything about him.”
And here we get to the current situation. His mum uses his bank account for her money. By this, I mean ALL of her monthly payments come out of HIS account, and she’ll pay cash in at the bank to cover it by taking his bank card.
This has caused no end of inconvenience for us making plans or when we’re at my house. It also means we get calls at my house from her, literally taking the last money out of his account until she can get to the bank to replace the money.
She looks at his online banking, looks at his payments and when he’s been spending money, asks what he’s been doing, and it’s so weird and intrusive.
We’ve been making plans for the future, and I gently explained his current situation is harmful to his future finances. He’s bouncing his own payments, and incurring late fees, because she’s using his money, and I said it’s going to be a problem when he (and we) eventually want to buy our own place. His mum refuses to use online banking which has led to this.
I’m starting to feel like I’m third wheeling in their relationship and I really don’t know how to deal with someone who’s incredibly pleasant to me on a day to day basis, but who is so unhealthily attached to her son that it could potentially ruin our relationship.
What shall I do?