rgs1400 Posted April 2, 2010 Posted April 2, 2010 Hi everyone, I stumbled across this forum today and read a lot of interesting topics and good advice/arguments so I wanted to post something of my own. Hopefully I can make everything clear and concise, but I know it's going to be a long post so I apologize in advance. I welcome and thank you for your feedback. My girlfriend and I have been dating for a little over three years and she's the first serious relationship I've ever had. We've been with each other through thick and thin (really some of the best and worst moments in each others' lives) with both our school and personal/family stuff. We love each other and would go out of our way for one another. For the most part my mom and girlfriend have gotten along well over the course of our relationship. There have been issues where my mom has lashed out verbally (she's not one to hold her tongue when she feels wronged) and my girlfriend has gotten mad, or when my girlfriend has made a comment that was unintentional and my mom has gotten mad. I truly feel that they've each been right or wrong in certain situations. I apologize for being vague about these situations, but I want to make a long story short. I am an only child, my parents are divorced, and my mother recently separated from her boyfriend of several years on and off. We recently moved because once they separated they obviously weren't going to keep living together. I'm still living at home until I get my post-graduation plans in order. Anyway, my girlfriend helped my mom do most of the packing for this move (she also helped us with our previous move) because I was away at a summer training program for three weeks and I couldn't get out of it. My gf really went above and beyond helping out and even sleeping over there to help multiple days in a very tense/uncomfortable environment. My gf has helped my mom out with plenty of smaller things, and of course my mom has made many meals for us when we stayed over, done nice things for my gf as well, gotten her gifts, and so on over the course of our relationship. Both my mom and my gf are sensitive and they had some little spats and issues. My mom occasionally felt that my gf was taking advantage of her kindness by not offering to help out around the house when she stayed with us, or sometimes she would get upset that the two of us spent a lot of time in my room isolated from her and her bf and didn't include them. She is also a vegetarian and occasionally my mom would complain about having to cater to that all the time. As I stated before, some of the things my mom said were untrue/possibly out of line and other things were accurate. It's difficult for me to be hard on my mom because she's got a lot of work related injuries and is constantly in pain, but she's working to support her sick mother and her live-in caretaker in addition to herself and me. There are a lot of other family issues as well and my mom is basically making ends meet and living from check to check. Since we have no other family in the country, I'm the only other person in my mom's "unit" and she needs my help for a lot of things physically. When we moved, I think it was emotionally difficult for my mom to have my girlfriend hanging out at the house a lot and she started complaining that if she was going to spend a lot of time at our house, she'd have to pitch in financially and help out around the house. The reason my girlfriend was hanging out at my house more often after the move is because I decided not to live in the dorms my final year at school to help ease the transition for my mom (and to save money), and my girlfriend shares a room with someone else so it's difficult for us to get privacy there. In general, my gf would spend time at home with my family because her family lives in another state and she doesn't see them often. It was like having a home away from home/family away from family in addition to spending time with me. To make a long story short, after a few verbal comments my mom made, my gf decided not to come to my house anymore because she feels too uncomfortable. She hasn't been here for almost three months and even though she's had some contact with my mom I am constantly being asked why she isn't coming around. My gf is upset that my mom said some mean things to her and she feels that my mom is manipulating me because it's difficult for her to start detaching as a parent. Meanwhile, my mom at times has said that my girlfriend gets upset when things don't go her way and that she can be young and disrespectful. I've been spending weeknights at home for school and work and weekends at my girlfriend's place, but it's starting to get uncomfortable as you can imagine. I guess to a reader it appears to be the classical case of mother vs. girlfriend and each one thinks the other is at fault. At this point my girlfriend does not want to approach the subject with my mother. My mom can get hot-headed during arguments and my gf doesn't feel that she'll get the apology she is looking for. Conversely I think my mom might feel ganged up on and that she shouldn't apologize because she wasn't wrong, although maybe if they actually confronted the issue it wouldn't be the case. I of course don't want to pick one over the other, I just want to figure out how to best resolve the issue. For the people who might say pick family over gf because family is forever, I agree, but keep in mind my relationship is a serious and mature one of over 3 years and not a high school drama. Please let me know if you need more specific details. Thanks!
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