Help! I Don't Want His Mom To Live With Us

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When I first got engaged, the top two golden nuggets my soon-to-be mother-in-law gave my fiancé and I was that on top of loving the hell out of each other, we should never allow anyone to move in with us. Like ever.

“That’s when the problems start,” she told us. “You open your door for people and they don’t know when to leave.”

Apparently, she wasn’t kidding. It seems that house guests can cause quite a few problems—especially unwanted house guests. In fact, one 24-year-old newlywed seems to be considering leaving her 31-year-old husband of 6 months, Gary, because he decided to move his 56-year-old mother, May, into their home without ever really having a conversation about it with her.

According to Gary’s disturbed wife, this all began just after the death of Gary’s father, which occurred around the holidays. Gary told his wife that May would be staying with them and she assumed that he meant temporarily. However, the months continued to roll by and his wife began to wonder when her mother-in-law would be going home. Reddit user MayMayGoAway explains:

After the funeral, I had to leave town on business for about 4 days. When I came home, May’s car was in my driveway. I came in, and all Gary said was that now that the funeral had been taken care of, May had come to stay with us.

I recognize now that I should have asked for clarification, but I stupidly assumed that she had just come temporarily to be with her son while they were grieving. I didn’t want to intrude on them while they were in mourning, so I just did my best to give them space, and figured she would go back home when they were ready.

Except… she never left.

She has taken over my house. I mean, completely redecorated. I keep coming home to my stuff packed up in boxes, with stuff from her house overtaking every inch. Rugs, throws, artwork, curtains, you name it, she’s changed it.

As the weeks went by they both seemed to be working through their grief and were behaving pretty normally, and I thought she would soon be going home. But… she didn’t.

Finally, she decided to have a conversation with Gary, which is when he dropped the bomb: May is here to stay.

I finally sat down with Gary one day while she was out with his sister after I noticed that May was now receiving mail at our address. I asked him how long May was planning on staying with us. He gave me kind of a puzzled look and said something like “What are you talking about? I told you she’s staying with us now.”

I asked him if he had been trying to say that she would be LIVING with us now, and he was like “well duh”.

I am flabbergasted, and he has no idea why I’m pissed that he thought it was OK to just move his mom in without even talking to me about it. He said he didn’t think he had to ask my permission to take care of his family, and he hoped that when we have kids they won’t throw us out on the street like I want him to do to his mother.

What’s even more disturbing is that just before the couple married and moved in together 6 months ago, Gary lived with his parents.

Although his wife has suggested they go to counseling to sort through this mess, Gary refuses because he sees nothing wrong with what he’s done.

Is Gary wrong or is it his wife who needs to chill out?