Dear Roe,
I’m 31 and was living with my parents in Dublin until after Covid. I have a degree and have always worked but couldn’t make enough to rent in Dublin while saving anything. I love my parents and my mam and I are really close, but living with them did feel stifling. When lockdowns lifted, I was desperate to travel and applied for teaching jobs abroad. I was away for nearly 18 months and it has been life-changing. I met incredible people, including the love of my life who I’m now engaged to. He’s passionate, romantic and makes everything an adventure. I’ve never felt as understood or alive as when I’m with him. We’re moving back home and hope to start saving for a small wedding. Originally, the plan was for me to move back home for a while before finding my own place, but my mam seems angry that I’m engaged. She keeps interrogating me about my fiance (who she has met once and spoken to on Zoom/FaceTime a lot) and my “plan”. She doesn’t seem to like him and has openly said she doesn’t think we should get married. It’s causing a lot of tension and making us delay coming home. I think she’s angry that I didn’t get with someone local who she knows and is feeling left out now that I have some independence. But I’m happier than I’ve ever been and don’t know why she can’t be supportive.
It might be that your mother is a little enmeshed in your life and is feeling isolated from your new life developments, and she may be reacting to that loss of control or involvement in your life. But I will say that it takes two people to create a dynamic, and I wonder whether you’re acknowledging your role in this – and what you’re asking of your mother, explicitly and implicitly.
The housing crisis and cost of living crisis are, as we know, forcing many adults to live with their parents long into their twenties and thirties. Your experience is sadly not common, nor is it your fault. But what often goes overlooked is how difficult it can be for parents, who expected to have some freedom at this stage of their life and are instead still living with their adult children, often stuck in a parent/child dynamic both parties were hoping to grow out of. These situations can also limit the parents’ choices, for example, they may want to move or downsize but feel unable to, knowing that their children will be left in a vulnerable state with few options for affordable housing. They may also feel under pressure to keep some of their own savings aside for their children, preventing them from spending their hard-earned money as they wish. I will stress again that this should not be the responsibility of parents – these are systemic failings, but it’s silly to pretend that some parents won’t internalise the need to support their children.
If we consider that your parents not only let you live with them for years and felt a sense of extended responsibility for you, and that you have expressed a desire to move back in with them for some (apparently unlimited?) time when you come home, then you have to acknowledge that your life choices do have a serious impact on your parent’s lives – so they are going to have concerns and opinions. You have been living independently while travelling, but you do not plan to live independently when you come home. You – and possibly your fiance, who they have met once? – plan to live with your parents. And so the rhetoric of “I am an independent adult, you don’t get to express an opinion about my life” doesn’t really work in the same way.
For example, I’m unclear of your financial situation. You were saving to afford rent but then went travelling. Does that mean you spent your savings, or have you continued to grow them? You’re now planning to save for a wedding. Will you then be able to afford a wedding and rent, so you can move out of your parents’ home? What’s the timeline? Your parents absolutely have the right to ask what your plan is, because your plan affects them. I suspect that this fear and uncertainty of how your life decisions will impact them may also be fuelling your mother’s wariness of your fiance. She may be on high alert for signs that this marriage may not survive because history has told her that when your plans don’t go well, there are tangible impacts on her life.
She may thus be asking questions that feel intrusive to you. But if you were to step back and take her concerns seriously – both her concerns about your relationship and her concerns about the impact of your decisions on her life, then you may not only be able to evaluate your situation more clearly, but speak to her openly about her concerns and either assuage them, or come up with a plan that works for everyone. For example, her wariness about you getting married may be about her own fear of having no influence over this huge decision in your life, or it may be based in some wisdom, or it may be a combination of both.
You met your fiance while travelling and living a life of adventure, and are now planning to return home and settle into life here and hopefully find your own place. That’s a huge lifestyle transformation, and you’re committing to a life together without having seen each other in that context. That means there are important things to consider, which your mother may be thinking of.
You can’t truly get to know people in a vacuum. Life is relational and interactive. While you may know this person’s innermost dreams, their love of getting up and watching the sun rise, and their ability to turn a flight delay into a fun adventure, there are things you will not know about living a more settled life with them until you actually do it. Will they do their share of household chores and tasks and share the mental load of running a home? Are they reliable and consistent in their communication and behaviour? Can they be happy and fulfilled in a life that’s more routine-based, and are they happy to co-create that routine with you, considering your needs as well as theirs? If you’re thinking of buying a house together and having children, are you on the same page about financial goals and responsibilities, and parenting styles and values? How is your communication when you argue?
[ I saw a video of my ex-girlfriend on a porn site but I don’t think she knowsOpens in new window ]
These are not unimportant considerations – they are vital. And if your mother doesn’t feel like you’ve addressed them, she may be fearing the impact on her if things get rocky.
You’ve found both the love of your life and some belated independence, both of which are wonderful. But you are also planning a life that is still enmeshed with your parents. You want them to offer you some childlike support, while still treating you like an adult – but I’m not entirely sure that you are treating them like fully-rounded human beings who have concerns and desires of their own.
Part of being an adult is being able to plan responsibly, communicate clearly, and consider the impact of your actions on others. I suspect that when you start doing all of those things, your relationship with your parents will improve immeasurably. If you don’t, you may have to consider how you are actively contributing to your own infantilisation.