OH won't 'leave' his mother

[gretanonie]

My dad has just got married and moved into his wife's house. He owns a lovely 3 bedroom country house 1 hour and a half away from where OH and I currently live in a cramped 1 bed rented flat. My dad has offered me his house as he doesn't really need to money from selling it and would have wanted leave it to me in his will anyway. Also I am 8 months pregnant so he wants to give my own family a good life (he was never really there for me when I was growing up).

I have been discussing this as an option with OH to move there when baby is 6 months old or so but he refuses. I could sell the house and get one here but it really isn't a nice area, I want to give my daughter the best life I can. I don't want to be stuck in the same shitty town all my life either. He doesn't want to move because he wants to look after his mum. She is 50 and is in perfectly good health but he is her little errand boy which is quite frustrating but I just leave him to it.

I have said that I will move (and leave my mum, Nan and friends behind) because I'm putting my child first and he said he will have to move back in with his mum then. We currently live 2 minutes away from her. An hour and a half really isn't that far away. I am concerned that he doesn't yet realise what being a parent will be like. I have raised the point that if he is so concerned about his mum then she should be in assisted living or move to be with her family but he just laughed and said that's stupid. You simply can't raise your child, run around after your mum everyday(without good reason), work full time and keep your relationship alive. He is at hers now posting things for her and walking her dogs. MIL is perfectly able to do those things and works 10 hours a week so has the time. She has plenty of friends and SIL lives 10 minutes away but is a full time step mother so obviously puts them first. She might even find a partner soon.

AIBU to think he's being precious, a tad ridiculous and should put his child's future first? He's acting like I want to move to Australia and he'll never see her again

Men like that rarely change to be honest, I'd take the house. Thing about what's best for your DD if he won't

I can see why he wouldn't want to live in your father's house considering that is also employed by him. However, assuming things are as they appear to you, his relationship with his mother is very odd and not at all healthy. A 50 year old in reasonable health does not need to be looked after and there is absolutely not need for him to live so close to her. I'm sorry, but it doesn't sound as if your relationship has much of a future. Don't revolve your life around him.

Good god - go - he will never leave his mummy. Please think very carefully before marrying this manchild.

He's a mummy's boy and you're a daddy's girl. You need to BOTH sit down and work out how you BOTH want to live. You both sound stubborn and childish. Sell your Dad's house and buy somewhere in the middle. I'm not surprised that he doesn't want to move in to your Dad's house - if you split up, he would have no rights whatsoever. How do you even know that your OH likes your dad's house? It seems like you expect him to just be an appendage to you. He is an adult, and has a right to have a say in where he lives. It sounds like you expect to be the boss in the relationship just because you have rich parents, and that just isn't fair. If you want to make this work, tell your dad and his mum to butt out, and buy a place TOGETHER that you BOTH choose, BOTH pay for, and BOTH names are on the lease.

Three words - fuck that shit.

Go, move to a nice house in a great area. If he comes great, of he doesn't then cut your losses

TBH I'd feel pretty claustrophobic living in my FIL's house and wouldn't like it at all, especially if I'd also just moved away from my friends and family. In fact I wouldn't go. Are you sure it's just his mum? There's more important things in life than a big house.

I'm amazed at how many posters think your partner has no right to say that he doesn't want to move. You can't tell an adult what to do, even if you're married to them. I would guess that what you're saying sounds to him like 'we're moving or else because daddy's giving me a house so we're going to live in it because your way of life isn't good enough for the baby and you can't be trusted to provide for your child.'

Something I learnt when I married my DH (and married into a thriving family business) is that it can be a gilded cage, and no amount of money makes up for not choosing where to live. In our case, that meant we couldn't move, my PIL thought we couldn't move. I would have lived on beans to get the freedom to choose where to bring my DD up. The financially lucrative offer is not always in the best interests of the child - usually not, in fact, if it's coming at the cost of a stable home life.

The biggest unknown in all this is the accuracy of the OP's description of her DP's relationship with his DM and the DP's reasons for not wanting to move. I have a hunch that there is more to this. At the end of the day, he doesn't need a 'good' reason not to want to move into a house paid for by his FIL. I can think of many men who simply couldn't live with such an arrangement, and while I wouldn't think less of someone who could do it, I'd also be inclined to think more of a man who couldn't. It would depend on his reasons. But unless they're on the poverty line, he has the right to provide for his own child without help if he chooses.

If this was a female poster describing how her DP was forcing her to move house and basically threatening a life in which she'd probably not live with her child if she refused, the responses here would be very different.

Taking all the issues aside the fact that he would choose his mother of you & his child is very bad and must be heartbreaking to hear. You're not asking him to never speak to her again just move into a lovely, free house in a nice area 90 minutes away. I don't get what his problem is. Is he anxious about being a parent maybe and using this as an excuse?

I could understand his reluctance to move an hour and a half away but it's worrying that he is completely unwilling to compromise by selling the house and buying somewhere in between and instead wants to build a house in his mother's garden It sounds like he is never going to put you and the baby before his mother. There doesn't seem to be a lot of common ground between you not wanting to be stuck in the same town for the rest of your life and him not wanting to move more than 5 minutes away from his mother. I think you would really end up resenting him for making you miss out on this opportunity to improve things for you and the baby.

Google "spousification"

I mentioned that my first 'mistake' gave me the same ultimatum regarding his mother and moving further away, greta. This was the MIL who told me, forcefully, "I can give him everything you can except sex."
She didn't view herself and me as having separate places in her son's life - we were, to her, rivals.
This definitely infected my marriage. He treated me as a disposable mum substitute with added sex. It was not a balanced or healthy relationship.

I'd like you not to make the same mistake.

Reading some of the other responses, I agree with pp that if genders were reversed people would not think it reasonable for the woman to move away from the support of her friends and family into a house owned by his family giving her precisely zero rights if he decides to throw her out.

I'm pretty shocked at the number of posts basically saying "end your relationship, havibg a nice new free house is so much better"

He sounds very immature. I'd move into the house and let him know that when he's ready to be a grown up, you'll be there. But he'd better choose quickly or you're choosing for him and he can find a new girlfriend.

Ffs at all the trite "ltb" replies on this thread.

Or he and mother could move in. Mothers in law can be very useful around the place.

I have to agree with another PP on here, you work for Daddy's business want to move into a free house provided by Daddy (or use the money from the sale of said house to buy elsewhere) yet he is a Mummy's boy? Ok, so maybe he is, but maybe he also does not want his livelihood and his home dependent upon your Dad. What happens is you DO split up, does he then lose his job and his home? What rights would he have to the home etc, either the one your Dad owns, or the hypothetical one you could buy from selling that one.

Sounds like he does have some serious issues surrounding his mother if his history is as you say it is. Have you suggested he could seek some help with this, as opposed to just giving him an ultimatum?

Why are posters assuming the fiancé has different motives from what he's actually said? What he says is he needs to be with his mother so often that he can't contemplate being a 90-minute drive from her.

He has made his relationship with greta conditional on proximity to his mother. He has made it conditional. She's perfectly within her rights to say that isn't a condition she can accept.

I would certainly say the same thing if genders were reversed. It is reasonable to not want to move into OP's fathers house especially considering that it is an hour and a half away. It is not reasonable to refuse to move anywhere unless it is a very short distance from his mother considering that she is a healthy 50 year old.

He is in some kind of toxic co-dependent relationship with his mother. Maybe he hates her but he is also a small boy desperately trying to win her approval.

BUT none of this is your fault or something you can fix.

If he'd split rather than move with you and your child, then DO NOT marry him. Move and get on with the rest of your life.

Don't accept rubbish about men not being Dads until the baby is here either. If he isn't grown up enough to realise he has created a life therefore he has a responsibility to that life then he really needs to grow up, emotional response is not enough. Just emotions are not enough to get you through the tough times.

Maybe because of his background, and his lack of professional help for it, then maybe he can't grow up.

I would not marry this man. I would also be worried that he is in your father's business. I would move to the new house, OP, and see where his priorities lie.

If my IL offered me a 3 bed house free (ha, trying to imagine this alternate reality), and I was in a cramped 1-bed & expecting, I'd marry my oh asap and move, nope advice not gender specific here either, this is simply about quality of life. The oh can get his name on the deeds through marriage so what's unfair about that? If they split, it is halved.

I think many posters are warning the OP to not marry him but the truth that when he moves, he has nothing to fall back upon at all. He will be totally dependent upon OP for somewhere to live and also his employment. It's possible that the OP's father (in offering job and accommodation) is unwittingly contributing to the polarisation in the marriage. There's nothing wrong with a man not wishing to be beholden, and this could easily be a factor. And who to say he is being the unreasonable one? The OP's father seems to have an enormous role in the life of this family.

I also think that some of the comments made by the OP's partner sound like the kind of silly, flippant throwaway remarks that a 27 year old often makes under pressure, irritated, in the heat of the moment. I don't know if she's getting (or interested in) the truth about why he won't move.

The OP's argument would be a lot stronger if her DP wasn't working to support his own family, but he is.

I think many posters are warning the OP to not marry him but the truth that when he moves, he has nothing to fall back upon at all. He will be totally dependent upon OP for somewhere to live and also his employment.

He doesn't have "anything to fall back on" in the first place. He is already dependent on the father for employment. Whether or not he moves doesn't effect that. He doesn't own the flat he lives in. He just rents it and could do that again if he and OP split up.

the argument for staying would be stronger if the polarization in the lifestyles on offer wasn't so extreme - cramped 1-bed rental vs 3 bed house in the country (for free). Of course babies don't need their own bedroom yadda-yadda-yah but let's face it, having dc is easier if you're not constantly piling toys up on top of cupboards etc, have no floor space to play & live in a nice area with good parks, nice playgroups, good local swimming pool and library etc.