[UK-girl]

I'm really sorry this is so long. I started typing and couldn't stop. There's so much more I could say, but any thoughts anyone has or any help or advice would be really appreciated.

I am in my early 30s. I live in the UK. When I was a small child, my mother and father and I moved out to the countryside. When I was five, with my father away on business, my mother moved us out of the family home. This was for good reason, she'd been trying to leave him, and realised he was having affairs. For the next nine years we lived in a home paid for by state benefit (in the UK single parents can get welfare whilst they raise their child). I was home-educated (which worked out great, I have lots of good solid academic qualifications, including a Masters degree taken by distance learning).

We moved back to the suburbs of London when I was 14, she started working and I self-studied for said school leaver qualifications. I was never allowed to leave the house alone as a child, nor when she started working - anywhere I went, she had to come with me on account of how 'they say you can't wrap up your child in cotton wool, but look at...' and reference to whatever recent child abduction had taken place in the news. Eventually when I was 19, she would take me into London, and I could go to work - which had to be within a very small area that was close to her work. So this went on. I did my Bachelors and Masters by distance learning. When I was 26, my new boss wanted me to travel to places outside London. This wasn't allowed, so I made up reasons why I couldn't go. Eventually I couldn't get out of it anymore, major row, and I went a couple of times with her having met him and the other senior lady you worked there, as long as they went with me. They both said I needed to sort it out. She needed regular updates on what I was doing.

Finally by my late 20s, I was able to start doing stuff in the evenings and weekends - but only occasionally because it was inconvenient for her to have me out on my own, and she refuses to eat on her own unless it's truly and absolutely unavoidable, and she pretty much won't do ready meals, so when I come in, then she starts cooking. If that's 10pm, so be it. I had a pretty limited friendship circle due to this - and the 10pm curfew - but still, there were some people. She still to this day needs regular updates such as when I'm on the bus, when I'm on the train, when I've changed train, when I'm on the next bus, when I'm where I'm going, where exactly that is. Not answering my phone is a capital offense.

Somewhere along the line though, things slipped round. So where it had been her chaperoning me to work, then it became that she couldn't manage on her own, because she felt dizzy/her back hurt/her eyesight was bad (multiple opticians later, her eyesight is still bad with whatever glasses she has).

Then I get to 29, and I get a boyfriend, for the first time. This is an uphill struggle all the way with her, because first she doesn't approve, then she meets him and seems to like him. Then we're all going away for one night, and the week before she suddenly blurts out how she resents that he is coming - even though it was very much her idea in the first place. The weekend was a disaster, and for months his name could not be spoken at home. Gradually things thawed, and after much debate and angst I even had a couple of nights away from home with him, and he came over on New Year's Eve and it was fine (she was there).

Then she saw him again and now, as she says 'hates him' again. I feel that for the past three years he has supported me, been patient - mutual friends have met and got married in the space of time we've been going out, my friends keep asking 'what's happening, are you moving in together', which I desperately want to.

However, any time I try to do something different or off schedule or be out - rarely - overnight (Wednesday and Friday are my nights out with him, but we are back to not being able to speak his name at home without sparking a whole argument - and, of course, any night I'm out I have to take my mother back home first - every night I have to wait for her to be ready, and every night I have to drop what I'm doing when she is ready), there's an argument. If I'm out overnight, she can't sleep, she doesn't eat, she doesn't go to bed until the middle of the night. If she's alone, she can't leave the house. If it wasn't me taking her to work, she wouldn't be able to work. Even if I'm at home, she won't go to the foot of our (quite big) garden unless I come with her. Overnight stays I can count on my fingers, and each one is an argument and a face of misery from her.

We are now at a crunch point where a month today, I'm meant to be going away with him and his family for a week. We agreed this last year, with me thinking surely stuff would move on by now. She doesn't know this. I'm terrified at the thought of telling her. I have asked endlessly, when does it hit the part where I don't need permission, and she answers that I've already taken the decision before being both annoyed and upset, that I have 'put my priorities elsewhere' and 'shifted my loyalty'. I know that for the week away she will say that she cannot manage that long, because she can't sleep/leave the house/go to work/look after our pets.

Not only that, I want to move out. We want to start our life together, because it's serious. And actually anyone who can make me as happy as my boyfriend does, whilst putting up with the delays and angst and conditions around me being out, and still wants to make a go of it, and be supportive when I'm desperately upset and crying, must actually be worth taking a chance on. Of course my mother says all the benefit is on his side, and that I could do better, and that my focus should be on the house improvements, and that I can have a life after she's gone...lately she even said I should find someone else and then it would be fine, but I don't think it would make any difference. (He does own a flat, a car and have a decent job, and everything we pay for, we split.) She and I co-own the house, and he even knows that I will probably have to go on paying the mortgage if I move out, so she can live there (which I do - but last time I pointed it out to her she said she'd had to pay the mortgage for many years). I haven't discussed with my mother moving out, but she has made a thinly veiled bitter remark about getting a lodger, or that if she retires (she's well past retirement age) she will have to sit at home alone and her mind with atrophy.

I literally don't know what to do. As far as she is concerned, she is capable and confident. She has a really good job. But at home, she won't even send an email without me checking over it - if I walk away she wants to know where I'm going (i.e. inside the house). To make a phone call, I either pretend I'm doing something else, or she has to know who it's to, and how long it will be. She thinks that people who need therapy are wasting money, so I don't even feel like I can seek that out. She'd be furious if she know that my boyfriend knows what goes on, or that I was posting this.

I have no siblings to share the burden with. Her only living relations are properly elderly, one lives hundreds of miles away and the other is fairly seriously ill. She has no friendship circle of her own (she says she doesn't need friends), we don't really know the neighbours other than to say hello to, and her co-workers are firmly colleagues and not people she would socialise with. And if I do move out, yes, she will be totally alone. And no, I don't have anyone who can be an intermediary.

Every time I try and live a tiny bit of off-schedule life, I feel guilty to her. Every time I don't try, I feel resentful, and guilty to my boyfriend.

I did wonder if it was dependent personality disorder, but she doesn't belittle her opinions or look to satisfy other's wishes.

Thank you for reading this, and as I say, any ideas or suggestions would be gratefully received.

[Sunflower123]

Your mother is manipulating you to stay glued to her side. You have a wonderful life and you deserve to live it. Move in with your boyfriend after you've talked with her about how much she means to you but that you're going to be putting up new boundaries. You may feel guilty at first but this will lesson and she'll come around and start finding new interests. She is relying on you to fill all of her emotional needs and that's not fair to you. You have a life apart from your mom. Good luck and best wishes.

[satsuma]

I think that your mother is co-dependent, or maybe enmeshed with you, from what you have written here. In any case it seems it's not a healthy relationship between you and her, and it doesn't sound like it works very well for you. I think she's ok with things as they are, because she gets companionship, by always having you around, similarly she gets her feeling ha of emotional support from you, and she can tell herself that her life has a lot of purpose and meaning because she is really needed to take care of you all the time (even though in reality it's more the other way around).
I recognise this in some ways because my mother has some similarities, tending to be very overly involved in her children. On the other hand though my mother was very abusive and I've lived away from her since I was a teenager, which in some ways has made things a lot easier for me I think.
In my opinion, I think it's really important to understand that your mother will not change of her own free will. After all, she's been like this for 30 years! So trying to pursuade her that change is needed, that your expectations are reasonable, etc., or waiting for her to come around, is likely to be a fruitless and frustrating task.
On the other hand, you can be the one to change. If you put some new boundaries down, e.g. that you will be spending time with your boyfriend whenever you decide, and for however long you like, you just need to communicate this to her in a firm way, not asking her but telling her "I'll be away from this date to this date"or whatever it is. She will probably try every trick in the book to begin with - anger, guilt-tripping, suddenly developing a mystery illness, etc. But if you stick to your guns she will have no choice but to accept it in the end.
Ultimately it would probably be very healthy and good for you to move out, and be able to live your own life without constantly accounting to or appeasing your mother. And it would be good for her too - maybe she would go out and make new friends, develop new interests, once she wasn't so interested in your life 24/7.
I wish you all the best!

[Crazy Hitch]

I think you're 29 and can make choices that allow you the independence from your mother. And you shouldn't have to feel guilty about the choices.

[Trippin2.0]

Live your life, not your mother's.

She'll be surprisingly capable once you're no longer at her beck and call. She's only helpless because you enable her helplessness and thus encourage it.

If she can successfully hold down a job, she can walk to the garden.

This relationship seriously lacks boundaries. I'd personally suggest starting with your phone. Its yours. You don't have to answer or reply just because she blows up your phone.

I'm a single mom too, my daughter is 13, I expect the same from her that i give my mom / bf : I have arrived safely / I'm on my way should be 30min. Anything extra is excessive and obsessive.

If she wants to stay up all night and starve herself, that's her choice, one she is consciously making, she's an adult. Eventually she'll have to eat and sleep.

How to leave? 1: Don't ask permission, you don't need it 2: Swiftly, to lesson the amount of friction. Basically get all your ducks in a row and say, "love u mum, buh bye, see you soon"

Prepping her will only make way for guilt trips, arguments and self doubt.

Stop allowing her to dictate your every move, its not your job to allow her to live vicariously through you.

[winter4me]

Trippin is right, she will do surprisingly well though it may start with kicking all the way. In this kind of situation, you just have to tell her you love her and that you know how strong she is and that she will survive you being an adult on your own.
Get out into the world. Don't be surprised if it is harder on you at times than her....