Renovate or Move? Quite complicated!

Mojisola · 19 September 2017 at 6:20PM

MrBrindle wrote: »

Unfortunately, she is very, very controlling.

But despite all that, my partner still relies heavily on her advice, help and input. So it's a bit complicated really!

That's the problem that your wife should be addressing during her counselling sessions.

Any improvement in her self-esteem may well lead to you both deciding to move somewhere that you choose but your wife will need to be strong enough to cope with the flak from her mother - it really riles a controlling person when they see a victim slipping the ties.

Mojisola · 19 September 2017 at 6:21PM

MrBrindle wrote: »

Another important factor is that my mother law, who helped us financially (quite a lot) to buy the house, wanted a say in buying the house as it was 'her money'.

Whose names are on the deeds? Can you sell without your MIL's legal agreement?

kerri_gt · 19 September 2017 at 6:32PM

If your wife is dealing with anxiety / depression at the moment, the stress of trying to move surely won't help this. In fact, with all that she may feel a similar kind of resentment to the next house.

Ok so the house isn't perfect, but it is a home for you all at the moment. Perhaps it isn't your forever home and doesn't tick all the boxes of what's really important, but to me it sounds like you guys need to focus on enjoying being a family together, helping your wife find a better place in her head and perhaps amongst that working on what might be your ideal home in the future to look towards.

lessonlearned · 19 September 2017 at 7:58PM

I agree with everyone else..... now is not the time to be selling your house. Your wife is ill and needs help to get better. Buying and selling will just make matters worse.

Wait until your children are a little older and your wife feels stronger. Same with renovating, wait a little longer. Having the builders is in is a nightmare with young children and your wife would find it unbelievably stressful.

The job will be rushed purely to get it done with and you will make expensive mistakes. So,leave the kitchen for now.

But.....you can tackle that garden. You say it's overlooked. How high are the fences, can you put some privacy panels on top. Then plant some trees and shrubs for both privacy and aesthetic reasons. Make it pretty and somewhere nice to,sit and relax in and somewhere for the children to play. If you can afford it then maybe a nice little summerhouse.

Saplings don't cost a great deal but they will make a huge difference to how you can use the garden. Try Aldi, Morrisons if you have them, Asda. I have bought 5ft saplings for as little as £2.

Re that chimney breast wall. Is there anyway you can incorporate it into your new design. You might not have to remove the whole wall, only a section of it. You could for example use it for your ovens, or you could leave the hearth open to the dining end. You could block the chimney and use the redundant fireplace as storage.......

Have a good google at kitchen layouts. Buy some magazines or borrow some design books from the library. Really take your time to plan your kitchen don't rush into it. It's all in the planning and if you can make that chimney breast into a feature rather than demolishing the entire wall you could save thousands.

But first things first......your wife needs to get better.

I speak from personal experience......I suffered PND after each of my children. After the first baby we decided to revamp the kitchen. When my baby was just 2 weeks old.:eek: and when my second baby was just 18 months oldl and my eldest was 3 we had to move house because of my husbands job. Double :eek::eek:

Stay put for a while, be happy with what you have, make it homely, sort out the garden to give you some privacy. It will make it more attractive to buyers when you come to sell.

Create a HOME and stop worrying about your dream house. That can come later when you wife is well and your children are a little bit older.

Cakeguts · 19 September 2017 at 9:26PM

When you are at work and your wife is at home with the children does your mother in law "help" your wife with the children at all? I only ask because if your partner had an upbringing by mother in law that involved a lot of control she might try to do the same to your children by making your partner feel as if she is an inadequate mother. It is another form of control. She can then get control of your children.

If this happens your partner will get worse anxiety and depression because she thinks that she is doing it all wrong which will make her more dependent on the person who is doing all the controlling. When your partner is having the counselling who looks after the children? If it is your mother in law you might want to think about changing that arrangement because your partner could be having counselling and then being told straight afterwards that she is not looking after her children properly?

You may want to limt the time that your partner has contact with her mother and you may want to send the children to nursery for a couple of days a week so that your partner can get better without the worry of looking after small children?

MrBrindle · 20 September 2017 at 11:04AM

Thanks for all the replies, they are very much appreciated.

Just to answer a few questions;

The house is completely in our names, so we are free to do as we wish with the money moving forward.

Regarding giving back the money and buying another house. That would be possible, although it would mean downsizing considerably.

We don't get much help at all from the MIL in terms of child care, she's basically said she can't look after them for long periods as it's too stressful. My partner is pretty much with the children 24/7. She was mainly looked after by her manic depressive, emotionally abusive father while the MIL went back to work. Obviously this has affected her a lot, and probably wants to be with the children as much as poss because her own mother wasn't there for her when a small child.

@Cakeguts. She's not as controlling as you suggest in that post. To be honest she's never shown an interested in controlling the children or our actual lives. She very rarely visits us, even though she lives 2 minutes away. My partner just has this insecurity that she needs her mothers input and approval on a wide variety of things. She's mainly been controlling in other aspects such as monet

I agree that the situation revolves around their relationship. My partner has always listened to my MIL's opinions as if it's gospel. She is a very intelligent person, and has helped me a lot in the past with personal issues, and I've always had a reasonably good relationship with her. She was there a lot for my partner following the births of our children. But I do struggle with how emotionally reliant she is on her, and maybe that's actually a fault of our own relationship not being strong enough.

Cakeguts · 20 September 2017 at 7:01PM

MrBrindle wrote: »

Thanks for all the replies, they are very much appreciated.

Just to answer a few questions;

The house is completely in our names, so we are free to do as we wish with the money moving forward.

Regarding giving back the money and buying another house. That would be possible, although it would mean downsizing considerably.

We don't get much help at all from the MIL in terms of child care, she's basically said she can't look after them for long periods as it's too stressful. My partner is pretty much with the children 24/7. She was mainly looked after by her manic depressive, emotionally abusive father while the MIL went back to work. Obviously this has affected her a lot, and probably wants to be with the children as much as poss because her own mother wasn't there for her when a small child.

@Cakeguts. She's not as controlling as you suggest in that post. To be honest she's never shown an interested in controlling the children or our actual lives. She very rarely visits us, even though she lives 2 minutes away. My partner just has this insecurity that she needs her mothers input and approval on a wide variety of things. She's mainly been controlling in other aspects such as monet

I agree that the situation revolves around their relationship. My partner has always listened to my MIL's opinions as if it's gospel. She is a very intelligent person, and has helped me a lot in the past with personal issues, and I've always had a reasonably good relationship with her. She was there a lot for my partner following the births of our children. But I do struggle with how emotionally reliant she is on her, and maybe that's actually a fault of our own relationship not being strong enough.

This has nothing to do with you and your partner's relationship. The problems stem from your partner's relationship with her parents. It is also possible that it is nothing to do with having your children.

What I would suggest is that you research toxic parents in particular how an emotionally abusive parent can affect a child and how the other parent in your case your mother in law enables the abuse by not being around. In every situation like this one there are two problem parents. There is the one who carries out the actual abuse and there is the one who does nothing about it. Your partner has to come to terms with the fact that her mother didn't do enough to protect your partner from her father. Bipolar disorder (manic depression) is a separate issue from emotional abuse. They are not linked.

Here is a question for you. Why did your mother in law stay in a relationship with a husband whose mental illness was not well controlled and who was abusing their child? Emotional abuse is abuse. Your partner suffered child abuse. Start from there and then ask yourself why your partner may be feeling stressed about a house that has been bought with money that an enabling parent earned? Also the enabling parent is exerting pressure on how that money should be spent and on what sort of house. Why was that control not used when it was needed to protect your partner when she was a child?

The moving to a smaller house is not really that important in terms of it being smaller it is important in terms of it not having any of the guilt money in it? Added to that because of the control of money you are now living close to mother in law in a house that mother in law approves of but that your partner doesn't like.

What does your partner want to do? She doesn't like the house and she wants to move? So why can't she have that?

Doozergirl · 20 September 2017 at 7:53PM

Depression boils down to a person's relationship with one's self.

Of course, your impression of yourself and your sense of identity is heavily influenced by the people close to you. Over reliance on other's opinion is essentially not valuing your own.

MrBrindle · 20 September 2017 at 9:22PM

Cakeguts wrote: »

This has nothing to do with you and your partner's relationship. The problems stem from your partner's relationship with her parents. It is also possible that it is nothing to do with having your children.

What I would suggest is that you research toxic parents in particular how an emotionally abusive parent can affect a child and how the other parent in your case your mother in law enables the abuse by not being around. In every situation like this one there are two problem parents. There is the one who carries out the actual abuse and there is the one who does nothing about it. Your partner has to come to terms with the fact that her mother didn't do enough to protect your partner from her father. Bipolar disorder (manic depression) is a separate issue from emotional abuse. They are not linked.

Here is a question for you. Why did your mother in law stay in a relationship with a husband whose mental illness was not well controlled and who was abusing their child? Emotional abuse is abuse. Your partner suffered child abuse. Start from there and then ask yourself why your partner may be feeling stressed about a house that has been bought with money that an enabling parent earned? Also the enabling parent is exerting pressure on how that money should be spent and on what sort of house. Why was that control not used when it was needed to protect your partner when she was a child?

The moving to a smaller house is not really that important in terms of it being smaller it is important in terms of it not having any of the guilt money in it? Added to that because of the control of money you are now living close to mother in law in a house that mother in law approves of but that your partner doesn't like.

What does your partner want to do? She doesn't like the house and she wants to move? So why can't she have that?

Ok thanks for the advice, I will research that. To be honest it is only recently that we have discussed (between myself and my partner) that her mother wasn't there for her when young, it's probably a memory and feeling that's been blanked over the years. We haven't really got as far as discussing in depth about how my partner feels about all that.

I can't really answer your question, but I can say they divorced when my partner was 16 and the mother has always regretted not doing it sooner. Why she didn't is something I don't know. He was quite a messed up man regardless of the bipolar, and that made him worse at times.

Another issue to the mix there is my partner's brother who has aspergers, and my MIL is incredibly over protective of him and has quite blatantly favored him in many situations. But that's another issue altogether! (But clearly doesn't help their relationship)

My partner wants to move, and has done so after 3 months of moving in, which is now around 15 months ago. Right now, I think the best option for us is to put the house on the market to see how things go and if something we like comes on. My partner will be having counseling as well over the next few months, so we can re asses after that. The estate agents have said we can pull out if we decide to stay put.

Thanks for listening and taking the time to reply. This thread has gone way deeper than I was expecting!

Cakeguts · 20 September 2017 at 9:54PM

MrBrindle wrote: »

Ok thanks for the advice, I will research that. To be honest it is only recently that we have discussed (between myself and my partner) that her mother wasn't there for her when young, it's probably a memory and feeling that's been blanked over the years. We haven't really got as far as discussing in depth about how my partner feels about all that.

I can't really answer your question, but I can say they divorced when my partner was 16 and the mother has always regretted not doing it sooner. Why she didn't is something I don't know. He was quite a messed up man regardless of the bipolar, and that made him worse at times.

Another issue to the mix there is my partner's brother who has aspergers, and my MIL is incredibly over protective of him and has quite blatantly favored him in many situations. But that's another issue altogether! (But clearly doesn't help their relationship)

My partner wants to move, and has done so after 3 months of moving in, which is now around 15 months ago. Right now, I think the best option for us is to put the house on the market to see how things go and if something we like comes on. My partner will be having counseling as well over the next few months, so we can re asses after that. The estate agents have said we can pull out if we decide to stay put.

Thanks for listening and taking the time to reply. This thread has gone way deeper than I was expecting!

Sorry about the deeper bit but I didn't want you to think that this was caused by your relationship with your partner.

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Renovate or Move? Quite complicated!

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