I will be turning 27 in May and my mother has tried to control my life (it seems) since I was about 13-14 years old (basically when I hit puberty). Because I lost my job recently my boyfriend and I decided to make the decision to move back to our family homes until he was able to enlist into the Navy (this is a project he had been working on for a couple of months, mostly he needed to lose a bit of weight which he has now done). We were budgeted to live in our other apartment and when I lost my job that no longer became possible. We have been dating for 8 years tomorrow and we are looking to tie the knot when he joins. We both want to travel, we both want marriage, family and children all that good stuff. We have the same interests and get along extremely well – he’s like my best friend. We have been through our share but then again everyone has I think. We have been putting off marriage until we were ready and now we believe we are truly ready to do this.
I was trying to keep this a secret from my mother and father (because its personal and well really no one’s business, and my boyfriend requested we keep it on the down low). My mother figured it out and I shared with her a little bit of our intentions etc. For some reason he and about every other guy I have brought home (I dated a couple other guys before this one) have not been good enough.
Basically she is now on a crusade saying that I can only be happy with a particular type of guy, a particular type of job, a particular type of this that and the other thing etc. She has now made it her personal crusade to decided my dreams, life goals, partner, etc. I have tried to tell her my dreams and goals – I am a trained graphic artist – and she says that this job is completely unrealistic and even in a good economy is unrealistic. She is angry that I got my Master of Fine Arts and recently a Grad Certificate in Internet Marketing. She is not happy with my boyfriend, she has repeatedly told me that he is not the one for me.
I am just having a hard time figuring out what I should do, I cannot move out as there is nowhere else I can go unfortunately and unemployment here is massively high. It is impossible to get a temp or part time job in retail where I live this time of year. I am honestly afraid of hurting her feelings if we eloped and I got my own place while he did his Navy training – yet there is a huge part of me that just doesn’t care about how she feels I am so sick of caring how she feels. She has come up with everything from he’s going to fail boot camp to he’s going to not get through MEPs. She has basically come up with every negative situation possible.
I need to deal with her while I am here and until I can figure out another option and I just have no idea what to do about her.