A little background before I explain my current situation: I'm 31 years old and have been with my partner for
2 and a half years. We've just had a baby together and bought a house after renting. Up until I moved in with my partner, I lived with my parents as I was saving for a deposit. My mum is 75.
I believe my mum is a narcissist, or at least has a lot of narcissistic tendencies, as I don't like to throw that word around lightly. She never really wanted me to move out from the family home, who she lives in now just with my dad, i know this because we have had discussions in my early and mid twenties were she would get so angry with me if I said I wanted to eventually move out. She seemed to take it very personally.
Fast forward to when I met my current partner, I moved in with him fairly quickly, after about 2 months, however we are extremely good together and he's never had a red flag, he is the most supportive caring person. It was an easy decision, and 2 years later, I have no regrets. I think I also moved in with him so fast to escape my mum, although I wasn't aware of it at the time.
When I first went on a date with my partner and told my mum about it, bear in mind I was 29 at the time, she got mad at me - kept saying I was waxing on about him and how pathetic it was- I wasn't overly talking about him at all, I simply told her what he was like. But I did really like him and, of course, wanted to share that. My mum was obviously the wrong person to tell. She was also very angry about me moving out, I could understand her thinking it was pretty quick, but we had a huge arguement and she would refuse to come to my new place which I shared with my partner for a good few weeks after we moved in.
Since then, she seems to have it in for my partner. She never has a good word to say about him. He has tried to build a relationship with her, asked her to lunch, and made an effort to always be polite and make conversation. She will come to lunch and chat with him perfectly normally. But then she will slag him off constantly to me and my sister. She has no problem with my sister's boyfriend.
Her dislike and bitchyness has become really bad since I've had a baby (now 2 months old). She keeps insisting the baby looks like me, and he's more like our family than it is my partners. She made me feel like I was pathetic for letting his last name be after my partners. She even has given my partner evil looks when he has been holding and cooing with his son. So he feels incredibly uncomfortable around her. It's at the point where if I mention him to her, she'll say something negative. She came to mine the other day and referred to my partner not by his name but as my 'boyfriend', such as 'oh you went out with your boyfriend on Friday did you' (he wasn't there at the time). It is just constant and he has done nothing to provoke it. He works in the Navy, and the last few months she was asking when he is leaving to go on ship, continually. Now he is at sea, and it's like she thinks she'll have more access to her grandchild or more rights over him... idk.
My partner came home for the weekend last week and she was really annoyed by it, making snide comments, as if it would stop her from spending time with her grandchild (she has always been very welcome round ours, anytime, she just doesn't want my partner there it seems)
Besides all of this, when she isn't continually trying to demean him and our relationship, she and I have always been very close and got on very well. I hate a bad atmosphere, so I tend to let a lot slide. When I do call her out, she says I'm imagining it or she plays the victim.
Anyway, my partner has hinted about proposing (we have always talked about marriage happening), I am unsure when he will, but possibly in the next 2 years, if I could guess. I am just dreading telling her when he does, as she will have some backhanded comment to say, im sure. Even more worrying, I feel like I couldn't get romantic or soppy at our wedding, as she would roll her eyes and suggest I'm pathetic or making a fool of myself.
Does anyone else have a similar mother? Or advice? I feel like a lot of people might suggest I cut her off entirely. But that is not in my nature, plus she is getting older now. Also, when my partner is at sea, I don't have much other support other than my mum and sister.