You've been leaving this apartment for a long time, why commit to another lease if you didn't intend to stay?

But if the plan is to move, why sign a new lease? It seems to me that you are adding new obstacles at each and every turn. Shouldn't the goal be to remove obstacles rather than add them?

Because we couldn't afford $1850 a month on our own and my mom can't help with any money for rent while she is still living in my grandmother's house and paying on the mortgage then.

We either had to pay $1850 on April 1 for rent or sign a lease. We didn't have the money, so we had to sign the lease.

Paying the $2000 fee to break the lease will suck, but once my mom has the money from the sale of my grandma's house, at least it will be possible. But she won't get any money until mid-May. Until then, she has nothing and has to get by on her $700 a month in disability.

We're all completely broke right now.

We got the bigger condo!

We will have to pay the $2000 fee to break our current lease, but my mom has agreed to help with that, since she is the primary reason we need a bigger place.

The new place is about 5 miles closer to my DH's work. It has a full bedroom and bathroom downstairs for my mom, as well as two more bedrooms, a bathroom, and a lovely loft/sitting area upstairs. We will have a lot more privacy in the new place than would ever be possible in our current apartment. The new place also has some great features we don't have in our current place including washer/dryer hookups, a 2-car garage, and a private yard/patio.

I'm feeling better about the situation now that I know we won't all have to squish into a 2-bedroom apartment. We will have access to the new place on May 1, so we will be able to move my mom's things directly there before she has to be out of my grandmother's house on May 15th. Hope to have all of us moved in by mid-May.

I've even found a new writer's group in the new city and some schooling opportunities for DD4 (we're thinking either another year of preschool or home schooling for kindergarten next year, since she isn't quite developmentally ready for full-blown kindergarten yet).

Things are looking up.

Good news!

I hope it will work great for you guys.

Good news writer.

Congrats on the new place writer! Keep us posted. Just curious, could you and H afford this condo by yourselves If having your mother live with you guys does not work out?

No, probably not. And we really wouldn't need this big of a place either if it was just me, DH, and DD4. But our initial lease on the new place is only 6 months, so we would only have to deal with it for that long if it didn't work out.

Update:

To say this situation isn't working out is a massive understatement. It's a disaster.

My mother is the most difficult human being on earth to live with. She's messy, she doesn't cook or do any housework, she's nasty and negative most of the time, she interferes in everything we do, talks about inappropriate things in front of our 5-year-old, and only contributes financially when/how she wants to and expects us to pay for everything else. I would say I feel like a prisoner in my own home, but I don't even feel like I have a home.

To make matters worse, our 19-year-old son has been living on the couch for the past two months and now our 21-year-old son has been arrested, lost his motorcycle for driving without a license, and is moving into our upstairs loft between our bedroom and our 5-year-old's bedroom. So, there will now be 6 people living in a 3-bedroom, 1450 square foot condo that has very little storage space.

No, I am not okay with this. Yes, I have told my husband numerous times that I am not okay with this. He pretty much doesn't care, isn't interested in POJA, and is clearing all of our stuff out of the loft right now to make room for our son's arrival this afternoon.

My marriage is a mess. We only get maybe 5-7 hours of UA a week. We have no privacy at home whatsoever. My H isn't interested in following MB or meeting my EN's. He believes marital love should be unconditional and doesn't understand why I don't feel the same way and why I'm not in love with him. SF in my marriage is literally nonexistent (it's been at least a year with nothing), conversation all revolves around discussing our myriad of problems, FS is extremely inadequate and not improving at all, there is almost no Affection, not enough RC since we aren't getting enough UA time.

I'm at my wit's end and I don't know what to do about it. I feel completely powerless and hopeless.

So when is the date that your DS19 has to get out?
When is the date that your DS21 has to get out?

When will you and your DH and DD5 be moving out?

I think you should start socking money aside bit by bit and as soon as you can, get your daughter out of there, go to a low COL state, and start a new life.

Alone.

Your D will be starting school soon, right? You might be able to get some shift work.

Sorry to be so blunt, but....you are wasting your life and it is simply tragic to watch.

I was going to say the same thing.

Writer this is the first time I've read this thread, but it was obvious to me (as it was to other posters) that this was going to be a disaster.

Before I got to your recent update, I couldn't believe you were moving your mother in, simply because she had DEMANDED it. People who demand to move in are not going to be respectful and helpful members of the household!

Your H is also demanding. He refuses to work with you and just demands unconditional love.

Without PoJA, demands and disrespect win the day.

Sadly your children have been taught that this is how to get things done too.

I am fairly certain they would learn better techniques if you were not there enabling them.

You need to save up for your own place, your own life, your own set of requirements. People demanding to be let in are barred from entering.

People can then only be admitted to your life if they show you due respect.

If people start treating you with respect they can be admitted.

Are you brave enough to do this?

Well no, not yet but that's normal.

Do it anyway and the bravery will show up afterwards.

Gosh I would just love it if you left your husband to deal with this mess of his own making. How on earth would he cope with the burdens of mother and adult children he expected YOU to handle!

This is why he was fine with your mother moving in. He just shrugged it all on to you didn't he?


Are you ready to draw a line in the sand?

As Pep very wisely advised, the solution to anxiety is to highlight ONE priority and focus on that.

I would say your priority is the imminent arrival of ANOTHER burden.

Your new catchphrase is "I won't stand for it"

Sit your husband down and say:

"DH I am dreadfully unhappy about your moving DS in without my consent. I am considering divorce. I am sorry to use such strong terms but it really is that serious and you deserve to know"

(Whatever he says.. Unless it is 'yes of course darling',do not listen and do not respond, simply say...)

"I will not stand for it". Then walk away.

Say this script exactly and then come back for further coaching.

Does your H read here?

Oh and if he follows you around pestering to know what you mean simply say:

"I will not make any snap decisions. I just thought you should know"

Repeat.

Maybe thow in the occasional "I won't stand for it"

Then take a bubblebath or go for a walk.

The key is to act super duper calm and in control. That will scare the crap out of him.

Well, the good news is, DS 21 didn't move in yesterday. But that's only because he postponed it, maybe temporarily. He may still be staying with us, though it would probably only be until November, when he's planning on going to Colorado and working for the ski resort his older sister works for.

Really, my mother is the biggest issue in this situation. And I just don't know what to do about it. After living with her for four months, I'm convinced she will never be able to take care of herself again. She has difficulty walking. She can make it around the house, but when we take her somewhere, we usually have to push her in a wheelchair. She won't drive anymore, even though she was driving everywhere before she moved in with us. She now claims she can't see well enough to drive. I have to take her to the store and doctor appointments and everywhere else she needs to go. She doesn't have anyone else. I am her only child and there is no other real family to speak of.

The thing I'm struggling with the most is the fact that my mother is a completely unrepentant OW. My father was married and had 3 children when he had an affair with my mother and she got pregnant. She never married and is still obsessed with him. She keeps saying she wants to pay for me to do a search on the internet and find him, even though we haven't heard from him in over twenty years. She still very much sees herself as the victim in this situation and my father's wife as the villain.

It's very difficult living with someone who is so enmeshed in these types of delusions. But I can't say anything to her about it. If I try to talk to her about things she does that are wrong/inappropriate, she gets upset and starts crying. She seems very emotionally fragile. I feel like I'm always walking on eggshells.

No, my husband doesn't read here. He's familiar with the concepts though. We did sit down and talk about POJA yesterday. He did express a willingness to give it a try, but he has done that before and it didn't happen.

I think the main problem is that other people like to throw us into crisis mode, where we feel an urgent need to make a decision "right now" and we don't step back and say, no, we need to discuss this first, after we have time to talk about it and make a decision, we will let you know what it is we decided. We talked about this yesterday too and my husband does see the problem.

We need to figure out what to do about my mom though. There are exit plans I can see for our sons, but for my mother, I don't see one. She does expect to live with us for the rest of her life and she likely isn't physically capable of taking care of herself at this point. But she isn't so incapacitated that we could put her in a nursing home against her will and she won't agree to go into one on her own. I know it will be necessary eventually. She will likely get to a point where I just won't be able to take care of her by myself. But what to do in the years until she reaches that point?

Does your mom get enough money to pay someone to take care of her or go to a healthcare facility?

She gets about $700 a month in Social Security. She also has Medicare (Scan, I believe). I don't know what they would pay for.

She does have about $130K in the bank from the sale of my grandmother's house, but she's very frugal about spending it. She's only willing to spend money when it's her idea, on what she wants to spend it on. As far as monthly expenses go, she will only contribute $400 a month. We pay the other $1450 in rent, all utilities, the cable TV that pretty much only she watches, gas and insurance for the cars, and most of the food. She will pay for groceries occasionally.

She doesn't really need help for her personal care. She bathes herself, dresses herself, fixes her own breakfast and lunch. I cook all dinners, do all of the dishes, all of the housework (including cleaning her disgusting bathroom when it gets to the point where I can't stand it anymore). She does her own laundry. Her bedroom is a complete disaster, but I don't clean that (neither does she). Since she can't/won't drive, I have to take her everywhere she needs to go.

It sounds like you need to sit down and have the "this isn't working out" talk. You need to stand up to her or it's only going to get worse.

Why haven't you ever Plan B'd your wayward mother?