Husband is overly attached to his mom

[Anonymous]

Do you have kids or not?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:If you don't have kids, leave.

+1,000,000

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:OP, you need to get a great job across the country or abroad. Distance is the only thing that will solve this.

Also, how old are you?

I would be tempted to divorce and start over. Kids with this man will be a disaster.

Agree. Don’t have kids. Let him take that trip w family. Don’t go. Use the time to plan your escape.

[Anonymous]

No kids? OMG, leave. You can be free! This dynamic will be 1000x worse with babies in the picture.

[Anonymous]

My husband's family is similar, but my husband has managed to break out of the hold quite a bit since having met and married me. He does sometimes talk about "going home" and I have to remind him "this is your home, we are your immediate family." Thankfully his sister is a single crazy cat lady (without any cats) and has an extremely odd codependent relationship with his parents, so I think they focus most of their energy on her and not us.

[Anonymous]

As much as I love my DH, this is a dealbreaker. He needs an ultimatum or you are gone. This is no way to live, shocked what people will put up with.

[Anonymous]

If you don’t have kids, get out now. I know this sounds dramatic but your situation sounds miserable and resentment will only build with more time. Things will be so much worse with kids.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:As the mother of adult men I think this is the mothers failure to raise a boy into an independent man. I’ve seen this happen with friends and I think it is a form of mental abuse. It is our job as parents to be out of a job.

As one of my sons would say, “I’m a grown ass married man”

Mom needs to “stay in her lane”.

+1. My DH’s aunt has a son who has lived with her his whole adult life and their relationship is deeply toxic. If he goes out with friends she calls him incessantly to make sure he is safe. The man is 40 years old. He is so broken and it really is hard to watch. He finally moved out of state so here’s hoping he can finally successfully date someone and create some boundaries.

I imagine if he were to marry his wife would be in the situation you are in. You’ve got to move on OP, you deserve better than this.

[Anonymous]

It sounds like The Godfather. Get out.

[Anonymous]

You have to move. Your husband and MIL will never change. My marriage only survives because the looney lives too far away to drive over. Plus, I refuse to move from this shoebox I call a house since there is no place for them to stay when they visit… the cheap people have to pay for a hotel. It limits how long and how frequently they can visit.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:As the mother of adult men I think this is the mothers failure to raise a boy into an independent man. I’ve seen this happen with friends and I think it is a form of mental abuse. It is our job as parents to be out of a job.

As one of my sons would say, “I’m a grown ass married man”

Mom needs to “stay in her lane”.

You clearly have not met most Indian mothers and their sons.

Sadly this is true in many cases with Indian families. In my case, I am the daughter of Indian parents but married to a non-Indian with a (luckily) very functional family. In my case, my brother and parents are extremely codependent and expect the same from me, though I have my own family. My brother is unmarried and childless, and has intertwined himself so completely with my parents, that I always fall short of ‘being there’ for my family. In hindsight, my mom set the scene for this dynamic when we were children, that we must always be there for our blood family and any amount of abusive behavior should be forgiven, because ‘he is your brother’.

My husband has been frustrated with this dynamic for years. My family has always dictated the terms of our interactions and admittedly, I fed into this dynamic and was part of the dysfunction, mostly because I was afraid of upsetting my mom and brother.

Finally, my husband had to basically issue an ultimatum and while I was initially upset, it helped me realize how dysfunctional my family dynamic is and that something has to change if I want to stay married. So I started drawing boundaries with my parents and brother, and as you can imagine, this has not gone over well with anyone. My brother decided I am useless in his life and my parents still cater to his emotional outbursts, but since I have taken myself out of the equation, slowly things have started to change. There have been many bumps in the road, but I am hopeful that things will get better over time for everyone.

I wanted to tell you as someone in your husbands position, that it is possible for the dynamic to change if he is willing to really look at his own behavior. It was very painful for me but I had to realize that it was very unfair to my husband and kids to continue with the dysfunctional dynamic.

Hugs, this is very difficult and we don’t always know when we get married how things will turn out, it’s not always easy to say no to someone because they have a difficult relationship with their family. I hope you are able to find some resolution but I definitely think drawing boundaries, at least with your own behavior/reactions is a start. In my husbands case, he simply started saying no to requests, and I eventually came around to doing the same.

In *some* Indian families but not all - in your case, it sounds like you need some therapy because my family is not like this AT ALL. I am also Indian, married to a Caucasian Mama's boy. It has taken me 10 years to get him away from calling Mom about every little thing. Even now, I think he shares way too much info, but at least she no longer has any influence over our decisions.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:As the mother of adult men I think this is the mothers failure to raise a boy into an independent man. I’ve seen this happen with friends and I think it is a form of mental abuse. It is our job as parents to be out of a job.

As one of my sons would say, “I’m a grown ass married man”

Mom needs to “stay in her lane”.

You clearly have not met most Indian mothers and their sons.

Sadly this is true in many cases with Indian families. In my case, I am the daughter of Indian parents but married to a non-Indian with a (luckily) very functional family. In my case, my brother and parents are extremely codependent and expect the same from me, though I have my own family. My brother is unmarried and childless, and has intertwined himself so completely with my parents, that I always fall short of ‘being there’ for my family. In hindsight, my mom set the scene for this dynamic when we were children, that we must always be there for our blood family and any amount of abusive behavior should be forgiven, because ‘he is your brother’.

My husband has been frustrated with this dynamic for years. My family has always dictated the terms of our interactions and admittedly, I fed into this dynamic and was part of the dysfunction, mostly because I was afraid of upsetting my mom and brother.

Finally, my husband had to basically issue an ultimatum and while I was initially upset, it helped me realize how dysfunctional my family dynamic is and that something has to change if I want to stay married. So I started drawing boundaries with my parents and brother, and as you can imagine, this has not gone over well with anyone. My brother decided I am useless in his life and my parents still cater to his emotional outbursts, but since I have taken myself out of the equation, slowly things have started to change. There have been many bumps in the road, but I am hopeful that things will get better over time for everyone.

I wanted to tell you as someone in your husbands position, that it is possible for the dynamic to change if he is willing to really look at his own behavior. It was very painful for me but I had to realize that it was very unfair to my husband and kids to continue with the dysfunctional dynamic.

Hugs, this is very difficult and we don’t always know when we get married how things will turn out, it’s not always easy to say no to someone because they have a difficult relationship with their family. I hope you are able to find some resolution but I definitely think drawing boundaries, at least with your own behavior/reactions is a start. In my husbands case, he simply started saying no to requests, and I eventually came around to doing the same.

In *some* Indian families but not all - in your case, it sounds like you need some therapy because my family is not like this AT ALL. I am also Indian, married to a Caucasian Mama's boy. It has taken me 10 years to get him away from calling Mom about every little thing. Even now, I think he shares way too much info, but at least she no longer has any influence over our decisions.

Quoted PP here. I mean, I AM in therapy so not sure what you meant by that? Regardless, I said it’s true in many cases, not ALL. And I never said it couldn’t be true in non-indian families. You are very lucky it’s not the case in your family though. Perhaps we ALL need therapy or maybe not to take everything so personally?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:As the mother of adult men I think this is the mothers failure to raise a boy into an independent man. I’ve seen this happen with friends and I think it is a form of mental abuse. It is our job as parents to be out of a job.

As one of my sons would say, “I’m a grown ass married man”

Mom needs to “stay in her lane”.

You clearly have not met most Indian mothers and their sons.

Sadly this is true in many cases with Indian families. In my case, I am the daughter of Indian parents but married to a non-Indian with a (luckily) very functional family. In my case, my brother and parents are extremely codependent and expect the same from me, though I have my own family. My brother is unmarried and childless, and has intertwined himself so completely with my parents, that I always fall short of ‘being there’ for my family. In hindsight, my mom set the scene for this dynamic when we were children, that we must always be there for our blood family and any amount of abusive behavior should be forgiven, because ‘he is your brother’.

My husband has been frustrated with this dynamic for years. My family has always dictated the terms of our interactions and admittedly, I fed into this dynamic and was part of the dysfunction, mostly because I was afraid of upsetting my mom and brother.

Finally, my husband had to basically issue an ultimatum and while I was initially upset, it helped me realize how dysfunctional my family dynamic is and that something has to change if I want to stay married. So I started drawing boundaries with my parents and brother, and as you can imagine, this has not gone over well with anyone. My brother decided I am useless in his life and my parents still cater to his emotional outbursts, but since I have taken myself out of the equation, slowly things have started to change. There have been many bumps in the road, but I am hopeful that things will get better over time for everyone.

I wanted to tell you as someone in your husbands position, that it is possible for the dynamic to change if he is willing to really look at his own behavior. It was very painful for me but I had to realize that it was very unfair to my husband and kids to continue with the dysfunctional dynamic.

Hugs, this is very difficult and we don’t always know when we get married how things will turn out, it’s not always easy to say no to someone because they have a difficult relationship with their family. I hope you are able to find some resolution but I definitely think drawing boundaries, at least with your own behavior/reactions is a start. In my husbands case, he simply started saying no to requests, and I eventually came around to doing the same.

In *some* Indian families but not all - in your case, it sounds like you need some therapy because my family is not like this AT ALL. I am also Indian, married to a Caucasian Mama's boy. It has taken me 10 years to get him away from calling Mom about every little thing. Even now, I think he shares way too much info, but at least she no longer has any influence over our decisions.

What a weird response. Just be happy that your family doesn't have these issues. The first poster is sharing her personal story, being the one with a dysfunctional function, which is hard to do, even anonymously. it seems pretty weird to come in clarify that not all Indian families have this issue. NP, also Indian.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:You have to move. Your husband and MIL will never change. My marriage only survives because the looney lives too far away to drive over. Plus, I refuse to move from this shoebox I call a house since there is no place for them to stay when they visit… the cheap people have to pay for a hotel. It limits how long and how frequently they can visit.

This. We don’t have a guest room. They complain incessantly. Sorry, not sorry.

Like OP we got married young (24/26) right out of grad school. We hadn’t lived together beforehand and it was unclear to me at that point exactly how up in his business of every sort his mother/parents were. It didn’t strike me as terribly odd that he’d talk to them about school loans, car decisions, etc. as neither of us had previous experience with those types of things. But when we got married and he continued to share financial information at their request and other decisions that didn’t impact them at all, I was not amused. Thankfully we have never lived close to them (across the country) and the distance allows him to see the absurdity of many of their requests/insinuations. But if it weren’t for the distance I’m 99% sure we wouldn’t have made it last a year of marriage. If you have no kids, I’d suggest getting out. With you living near them this will never end. As PP said only time and distance have helped and some meddling on their part gone horribly wrong that the distance actually allowed him to see.

[Anonymous]

Did OP say how old she is?

Regardless, she needs to move ASAP or divorce ASAP. You need a minimum of 1,000 miles between you and his family for your marriage to have any chance at all. You are destined to fail at the rate you’re going.