You guys should just elope and move away from his parents, and let the chips fall where they may. That is, if he’s willing.
If you think it’s going to get better you are more likely than not mistaken, especially if the mother hates you. You need to take a a long term view and make a rational, arm’s length determination whether or not he is a mama’s boy. If he is pack it in now and save yourself the heartache before kids and other complications enter the picture.
Why do they think you are “needy”?
Dammit, lost my post. Real quick: are you guys still living with your parents? It kinda sounds like you are, but I can’t tell for sure.
That was my question too, Daniel. He’s still living with his parents, I’d guess, if they see the phone bill. He’s probably never had to do without. I’d say befor eit goes into talk of marriage, having him move out would be a good thing. Some space between him and his parents might give him perspective and allow him to make a grown-up decision.
StG
My lost post was about a similar situation I had when I was 17 and dating the 15-year-old daughter of a paranoid schizophrenic fundamentalist (example: Mom became convinced at one point that her daughter was the Whore of Babylon; Dad was threatening to shoot me).
If y’all are both living at home, I’d suggest playing it cool until you can move out of the house. Maybe even go for a nice bit of Victorian-style hypocrisy: if his parents can plausibly deny your relationship, then they might stop making a stink over it.
Good luck!
Daniel
ClairificC, maybe you should ask your guy if he’s willing to disown his parents and move 2,000 miles away just to be with you, to see how committed he really is. Because if you do get married and his parents won’t ease up, that may be the only way for you to keep your sanity intact.
Well, and also ask yourself this: do you want to be tied to a guy that’s willing to sever all ties to his family for his romantic life? That may bode ill if, at some point in the future, he becomes attracted to someone else.
Furthermore, if you ask him a question like rjung suggests, you’re putting him in as bad a situation as his family is putting him in. Personally, if anyone asked me to choose between my family and my lover, I’d choose against whoever asked me to make the choice. It’s a totally unfair thing to demand of someone you love.
Family is difficult sometime. And if he decides he’s gotta choose you over his family, that’s an agonizing choice he’ll have to make.
If you pressure him into that choice, he’s likely to resent you for it for a long time. Better to take the upper road: be politely firm to his family no matter how nasty they are to you.
Daniel
Wow, thankx everybody for your imput. I’m seeing things in different light, and it’s been really helpful. To clear up issue’s. We both live with our parents during vacations and the summer. We both went to the same highschool and are going to different schools but are very close to eachother. His parents are paying his tuition ect. And to throw another rock at the window, have threatened several times to withdraw that support.
I’d be on his back more, except his family isn’t stable, and when anything goes wrong they tend to blame it on him. His uncle recently died and his grandmother was just diagnosed with cancer, and his dad is having his ear removed. Of course this all leads to his mother shutting down and leaning heavily on him. I think this is somthing that can wait untill the air clears, and will make my move when it does.
Just wondering, What do you mean by victorian style hypocrisy?
I was in the reverse situation, where my family disliked my SO, a while back, though not to the extremes of your situation. A couple months out of college, I got involved with a guy from work. Things went really well, really quickly. We were living together basically from Day 2, but things didn’t get nasty until I announced that I was moving in with him. Suddenly, the guy who was a vast improvement over my previous SO became Evil Incarnate and the man who would axe-murder me in my sleep. My older brother and his then-fiancee started it and spread their sordid lies to every family member who would listen. Once they got my mother convinced, the emotional blackmail really took off. It was all aimed at me, telling me what horrible things were going to happen if I stayed with him, how he’s a pathological liar, etc. It lasted for 4 months before I finally told them to leave me alone and not speak to me. It was not a fun 4 months, I was stressed out, constantly sick, and generally miserable. During this time, he stuck by me, and put no pressure on me to take any action against them. I was the one that made the call to muzzle my family.
Fast forward 5 years. Mr. Ben and I are still together and have been married for 2 1/2 years. My family came around within a few months of me cutting off contact. It took some time to repair things and my/our relationship with my brother and his now-wife has never gone back to the level of friendliness that it was before, but we can co-exist now at family gatherings, etc. It wasn’t fun and I hope I never have to experience anything like that again, but we got through it. We were however, a couple years older and responsible for ourselves, financially.
ClairificC I’m sure your SO has a lot on his mind. One of the things that I’ll be forever grateful to Mr. Ben for is the fact that he did not (and has not) pressured me or guilt-tripped me about the situation. He took the abuse, was there for me, nursed me through who knows how many illnesses, and let everything go as water under the bridge when the time for it came. As Daniel said, it’s an agonizing choice between your love and your family. Best of luck to you.
minor hijack… I was in a slightly different situation, but I think it’s kinda appropriate to post about it.
My ex, who I was with for 6 years, hated my father. The reason it all kicked off was quite valid at the time, but of course got blown out of all proportion. My father tends to be very volatile and extremely chauvanistic and self-centered. I’ve lived with this all my life, it’s no big deal to me, I know how to handle him. My ex did not, and it lead to huge arguements with threats of physical violence from both partys. My father being who he is was over this in a couple of days, my ex was another story.
He refused to come round, to attend any family gatherings, to drink in a pub that there was the slighest chance my dad might turn up in, my ex even refused to phone the house in case my dad answered (which never happens, he’s far too important to answer the phone himself, that’s why he married and had kids. :rolleyes: )
It became a real problem to the extent that only time I got to see my ex was meeting him afterwork in my local for a couple of hours every few days. (His house was not a possibilty, and we couldn’t afford to move out).
I put up with this situation for almost 3 years, because I loved him. But I was desperately unhappy the whole time.
I mention this because it sounds to me that you’re in a similar situation with your guys parents, albeit, the animosity is on their side, not yours. But it still creates a lot of tension… and put’s a huge strain on the “piggy in the middle” especially when they can see the situation from both sides, and can understand the reasons behind the feelings (even if they don’t agree with them).
And it sounds like you either are, or will be doing the whole “avoidance to the n[sup]th[/sup] degree” thing.
IMHO, you need to move out with this guy, and like other people have mentioned, put some distance between the two of you and his parents. Hopefully, he’ll be up for this, if not, it’s better that you find out now and can end it. Sorry to be blunt, but it’ll save you more hurt in the long run.
Also, don’t expect the situation to get any better, it might do, but his parents are going to have to swallow serious amounts of pride and ego, to be able to even start admitting the possibility that you might be ok-ish… And from your comments on their attitude, it doesn’t sound to likely to me, I hope I’m wrong.
My own situation went tits-up, but thats because we both got to the stage when we couldn’t be bothered to work at the relationship anymore, it had gone on too long.
You guys sound like you got something good going on. Don’t allow this situation to stagnate it.
Oh, and a final point… a couple of people have suggested that he’s not sticking up for you by choosing not to mention it. I don’t buy that, if it’s easier to let it be, then let it be. You don’t need to add extra stress to what is already difficult. The issue will need to be addressed one day, but for now, let him handle his parents the best way he sees fit.
Ok, that’s me done… I’m going to smoke now… 
Personally, I feel that the SO should put the parents in their place. If he won’t, will you respect him or resent him? Will you be able to deal with his parents for the rest of your life? Willing to feel like you’re fighting them alone? These are the kinds of questions you need to answer to yourself to decide whether you can stay with this person.
I can tell you from personal experience that if your man doesn’t have the balls to stand up for you, then there will eventually be a lot of resentment between the two of you. Which of course, builds up over time and eventually destroys your relationship. Your man needs to grow up and be on his own for a while and realize that his parents APPROVAL isn’t everything. He is still very dependent on them and comment about balls aside, probably doesn’t even understand what this does to you yet. It’s a natural reaction on your part to feel disappointed/angry at his inability to protect you from the outlaws. The short and simple answer is…Don’t rush in to anything. You have only been together for a year and if you are just out of highschool or in college, you don’t need to be in a hurry. Trust me, everything you don’t like about this relationship will only be 10 times worse in another 5 years!
If he gives up his family to be with you he will feel guilty and end up blaming you.
You won’t change him or his parents–you can try to set limits, but don’t count on marriage changing things. Even in the best of relationships, spouses are ALWAYS, ALWAYS to a degree, OUTSIDERS! Let it play itself out–don’t force anything–it’ll happen or it won’t. You’ll know.