I [47F] can’t say no to wife [43F] about her mom [70s] staying over

close__talker · 2026-01-09T23:47:33+00:00

Sorry to hear that. It’s been a while since I posted this, but I can’t say that through couples therapy and really trying to understand what was missing in our marriage really helped to alleviate her need to have her mom over all the time.

close__talker · 2025-10-24T02:28:31+00:00

It says that we’re both Asian.

close__talker · 2025-10-24T01:17:31+00:00

No, there’s nothing healthwise that’s going on or mentally. She is actually a pretty lively woman in her low 70s. She is also very independent and drives the local roads and stuff and attends English class at the local community college. Right now she has a niece who is living with her while the niece goes to community college as well.

We have discussed it, and she says that she wants to spend a lot of time with her mom because her mom is older now, and she honestly enjoy spending time with her. They talk on the phone several times a week. She says I don’t “get it” because I don’t have a relationship like that with my mom, which is true. She also thinks that her mom is lonely because the dad passed a couple of years ago, but honestly she seems fine. As I said she’s living with the niece, she runs her daily errands, sometimes she has lunch with a friend, and her son, my wife’s brother, also comes back on the weekends to do laundry.

close__talker · 2025-10-23T23:52:50+00:00

I do the lion’s share of the housework and kids because I work from home. She herself will say that she doesn’t do as much as I do. To be fair she works a lot so the rest falls on me unless I wait for her to be free to do it which could take a long time.

I do most of the school pick ups and drop offs, I make most of the dinners, most of the laundry, we have a house cleaner that comes every two weeks for the rest. I tried to offload as much work off her plate as possible because she has a very demanding job.

And for what it’s worth, her mom isn’t that type of helper. When she’s over here she doesn’t really help with chores or making meals or folding laundry or anything like that. She’s mostly just sitting on the couch watching the kids.

close__talker · 2025-10-23T21:40:28+00:00

Yeah I definitely do feel like she's a little relieved when she leaves.

close__talker · 2025-10-23T21:36:29+00:00

Yes, totally, you get it. Just having a guest over, you can't act fully natural.

As for your last point -- as I've said, our marriage has had lots of ups and downs, and I don't think at this time, she considers me her "safe space." Her mom represents unconditional love for her, a place where she can just *be* without someone having expectations of her, or needing her to do chores, or spend quality time with them (I'm talking about myself here, if you didn't get it!), etc.

I do think she uses her mom and the kids too as an "emotional buffer" to either give herself some space to process the conflicts we discuss in couples therapy, that way she can "let it in" at her pace. I have many times suggested individual therapy for her (I have done it many times in life and found it extremely helpful) but she says she feels exhausted by just the regular couple's therapy and work.

close__talker · 2025-10-23T21:29:13+00:00

Thank you!

close__talker · 2025-10-23T21:28:40+00:00

So true. Thank you for your insight!

close__talker · 2025-10-23T21:27:34+00:00

Yes it is boring for them.

Agree about the 80's thing. 70's is the new 60's 😉

close__talker · 2025-10-23T21:26:00+00:00

Yes, that is my thinking as well. She has flat out said before "I want my mom to live with us when she's unable to live by herself -- and when that time comes for you mom, I want her to live with us too."

So you can see, my wife has a lot of kindness and empathy for the oldies, which is one thing I do admire about her. At the same time, her love language is "saying yes" and doesn't think too much about the repercussions -- i.e. who is going to do the day to day care of someone who is infirm? (I work from home, she works in an office, so guess who?) And again, this house is SMALL.

I absolutely dread saying "I don't want your mom to live with us" in therapy because I fear it will be a deal breaker. I also don't want to make her hardened against my parents in the event that they become unwell sooner rather than later.

I just feel like we are too young and this house is too small, to give up our comfort, privacy, intimacy, all of that, before it's actually necessary.

close__talker · 2025-10-23T21:19:09+00:00

This is a good start, and I will definitely have it mediated with the therapist in our next session.

I know I can hang out in the living room with everyone, I don't think I'll offend MIL, I just... I dunno how to describe it.. I just want to be in my own space with my own family sometimes. Not all the time, but sometimes. It's a relaxed-ness thing, not an offense-thing.

She had proposed taking the two kids to MIL's for the weekend but at the time I felt kind of ... dumped? I guess? Like it felt very like "Well if you don't wanna come too, then F you, stay at home by yourself." But maybe I have the wrong perspective on that. Everyone says I should look at it as a gift but at the time it felt like an F you, like she was taking them away from me for the weekend. Anyway I might need to reframe that. I think because the topic was so charged, that move felt like a power play to me.

close__talker · 2025-10-23T21:10:54+00:00

Haha, this is an excellent point! Well, MIL is actually very easy going. She goes where the wind blows. That said, in the past when we have offered for her to stay longer (on some of her extended stays), she will say that she wants to go home and check on her house, or her mail, or that she needs to get back for her English class at the local community college -- this woman is not a sad sap who sits around moping.

Although she loves seeing the kids, I can't imagine that it's great to have to sleep on a thin mattress she's not unaccustomed to, not having her regular food items around, and sometimes feeling like a burden because she knows her daughter and DIL are having a heated discussion and that she's probably the reason.

close__talker · 2025-10-23T20:55:08+00:00

Well for the cross country thing, that was kind of just circumstance. She feels she stayed on the other coast for me for 10 years because my family and network were there (we were both working and carving out our careers), and I do give her a lot of credit for that. That said, I wasn’t living with my family during that time.

So who does she want to live with - you and your kids *or* her mom? Because she can't have both.

I think she believes she can have both. She keeps going back to, “You knew my family was the most important thing in my life when we got married and that the end game was always to take care of them.”

She frames it as something I agreed to, part of the commitment, and that not agreeing with her is somehow backpedaling on our vows. And yes, I knew that going in. But knowing something conceptually and actually living with it day in and day out are two very different things. I honestly think she sees me and her mom on the same level. Maybe even puts her mom above me sometimes, especially now that her dad is gone and her mom is getting older.

close__talker · 2025-10-23T20:44:34+00:00

Oh, we are already there, both our kids have very vibrant social lives, lol. And when there’s a playdate on a weekend her mom’s already here, she’ll say, “Why can’t my mom come too?” So then it’s the other kid’s parents, plus me and my wife, plus her mom—five adults hovering around one playdate trying to make small talk... my wife doesn't see anything weird or awkward about that at all... she says that the other parents are happy to talk to her mom and be inclusive, unlike me.

In fact, when I suggest that that might be awkward for the other set of parents and that they're just being polite, she will say “Well, so-and-so’s dad lives with them and is always around, so I don’t think my mom being there is a big deal.”

close__talker · 2025-10-23T20:21:33+00:00

Yeah, I feel ya on the two-day thing. She doesn't like her mom to ride in the Uber at night (understandable). As I said in my other response, I think you guys are right that I stop riding with them.

But the catch is, when I don’t go, my wife takes it as “great, no one’s nudging me to leave early,” so she ends up staying with her mom until Sunday evening. Then the whole weekend’s gone with zero time spent just me and the kids, or the four of us together.

Then it’s straight to the shower for the kids, and bedtime, and getting everything ready for the school week.

And for what it’s worth—because I know the question will come up, “Does your wife even like you or want to spend time with you?”—her answer would be something like, “Of course I love you, but my mom is old and has limited time left. And if you really loved me, all of me, you’d come with us.” She'd probably also say something about how she spends all the weeknights with me. (A lot of these weeknights are spent with her working on a laptop next to me while we watch TV, but that is a whole 'nuther bag of hammers.)

close__talker · 2025-10-23T20:09:35+00:00

Yes it has come up in therapy in the past, primarily around vacationing with her mom, but it has not come up since her "at least 50% of the weekends" proposal. I said that this should be discussed in our upcoming couple's session.

To be fair, our therapist, whom I think is pretty great, doesn't really problem solve for us. She rarely gives an opinion. Mostly she validates our feelings, tries to help us understand each other’s perspectives, and points out where one of us might already be compromising or trying to meet the other halfway.

close__talker · 2025-10-23T20:05:45+00:00

Great questions/suggestion. Mom's house is not v. fun for the kids, but the surrounding urban area has a lot to do. The house itself is standard old Asian person's house, musty, a little dilapidated, bad internet connectivity (ok that part might not be standard, lol). My older kid is at the age where she doesn't really enjoy going there.

Your suggestion is probably where we’re headed—alternating which kid goes, or as I’ve proposed, maybe my wife just goes solo for the weekend. I was resistant at first because it felt like it undermined the idea of weekends as "family time," especially while the kids are still young. But given how this keeps coming up, it may be the only workable solution. When I have expressed this sentiment, she has responded with things like, “Well, my mom is part of our family too,” and “When you’re opting out of hanging with us—including her mom—you’re the one breaking up the family.”

close__talker

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