Newlyweds living with parents..starting to go mad

Merrywidow

Nerris I feel for you - I think most of the older ones among us on this thread realise that those first few years of a marriage are precious. You need your own space and privacy to cement your marriage. I think the majority of us started out on a shoe string. My husband and I rented two rooms over a shop on a busy road, but oh how we loved it. How else can you argue and make up and carry on without half the world knowing. Once I thought I would have to have my MIL surgically removed from my husband. NO - parents and newly weds are a recipe for disaster. Forget about material things for a short while and enjoy each other. Anyway, Baked Beans are good for you. That house will come in due course and you will love it even more. Good luck MW

ailuro2

Sit down with your OH and make a budget up , listing what you can afford to pay for rent,electricity etc, and a list of where, what size, how long term you want to rent etc. If you find a house that fits the bill now, then go for it, providing you have a deposit in place. Consider renting a bedsit, it's cheap like living with parents, but you have privacy to do what you like on the sofa;)

If you can forward plan a budget over,say, a year, and work out how much you hope to save for a deposit in that year, it can give you clearly defined goals to work towards, much the same as having your debt paid off by a certain date was.House prices will likely be cheaper by enough to cover your rent for a year. (will that help over-rule OH's Dad? - only a fool would buy in a dropping market, like throwing money down a drain in the same way as he sees renting)

Ask your parents to drop big hints about having their place back in time for Christmas - maybe so other grandkids/family could come and stay?? It must be incredibly difficult for them too.

Best of luck to you - I know I'd be divorced by now if I had to stay with an inlaw - I don't share territory well!!:o

Paparika

Suggest moving in with his parents and see how quickly FIL changes his mind.

You could talk to FIL and thank him for all his advice but, tell him that it could be years yet before you are able to get a mortgage because of the way things are at the moment.

I lived with my FIL when i got married, never ever again. he was of a different culture and I repected his views / house etc, but i didn't feel welcome.

whitewing

We had MIL living with us from Feb this year, temporarily. It wasn't that easy but her rent did help out. But we got married in August and afterwards I really couldn't deal with being a newlywed and having MIL around. We got here sorted and even though we're £65 a week worse off, it is soooooo much better.

Move out for your first Xmas. As MargaretClare says, you can have very basic facilities and it won't seem so bad in your romatic haze.

margaretclare

Merrywidow wrote: »

Nerris I feel for you - I think most of the older ones among us on this thread realise that those first few years of a marriage are precious. You need your own space and privacy to cement your marriage. I think the majority of us started out on a shoe string. My husband and I rented two rooms over a shop on a busy road, but oh how we loved it. How else can you argue and make up and carry on without half the world knowing. Once I thought I would have to have my MIL surgically removed from my husband. NO - parents and newly weds are a recipe for disaster. Forget about material things for a short while and enjoy each other. Anyway, Baked Beans are good for you. That house will come in due course and you will love it even more. Good luck MW

I had to smile about 'once I thought I should have to have my MIL surgically removed from my husband'.

When he came back from the Army in the Far East, in early 1957 MIL really thought she had 'got her boy back'. He hadn't been at home much for some years, been away at school, then in the Merchant Navy then the Army, and when he came home he immediately announced he was getting married. I got a job within days of getting married and by the end of the week I realised I'd made a disastrous mistake - a week after my wedding!!! Anyway, people at work told me of possible rented flats and one was on Thamesmead. Oh the horror that suggestion was greeted with. 'He's a poorly boy, he was in hospital with his chest when he was little, you want to take him to live down on the marshes, you want to kill him!' The fact that he'd lived in the Malaysian rain-forest with Royal Engineers and Gurkhas was ignored.

All I really wanted was for us to be able to establish a life together without interference, to experiment with cooking, to have failures and successes, to budget together, to learn about living together as a couple. Oh, the stuff I heard about family history which had no relevance to us, but was dragged up at every opportunity. Mum it seemed had been unfairly treated under a family will (because she was female) and my suggestions of budgeting aroused cries of 'you married him for his money'. As he was a factory worker at the time and I was a typist, always expected to pay my own way, that grated more than a little.

It was like 'Big Brother' - everything was done under the glare of MIL and FIL and their constant criticism of every last tiny thing. You can't develop a new and fragile relationship under those conditions. You have to be able to laugh, cry, argue, love, fall out, kiss and make up. Even my going to kiss him when he came in from work was greeted with 'you should keep that for the bedroom with the door closed, we don't want sex in front of us'.

Nerris

Thank you all so much for your kind replies, I'm glad it's normal to feel the way I do.
I was starting to feel unreasonable and ungrateful, but I do believe it is quite natural for me to feel this way.

Just to keep you updated..I phoned the letting agent about the cottage at close of business yesterday but the cottage had gone unfortunately, I was surprisingly quite upset, but it prompted me to have a serious chat with G this morning.

I probably didn't handle it in the best way and a fair bit of pent up frustration came out:o ...which I do feel bad about as he is a wonderful man and I think my full-on attack threw him a little.

He told me he is not against renting and he knows it is a lot to ask of me to stay on at home longer than reasonably acceptable.

He said he feels as strongly as I do (we helped my sister and her boyfriend move at the weekend into their lovely new rented home which made us both green with envy) but he has a lot of expenses coming up because of his business. They're part of the setting up costs he had planned in and because we had sort of agreed to look for somewhere to live after Christmas he felt a bit panicked about cash flow in the near future.

Any savings he has got left are for his business plan, which is only fair as he helped me out with my debts without even a grumble.

As much as I'd love our own place by Christmas, I can't force him to do something that would really stress him out and make him unhappy. I've worked out I could save £3000 by January which is more than respectable really and would give a good little fund if we need to fork out for deposits, washings machines etc in the new year.

I still feel guilty for upsetting him a bit this morning, but I feel happier that we've come to a decision too.

Merrywidow

Poor you Nerris, caught between a rock and a hardplace. At least you have something to look forward too.

Merrywidow

Oh Margaret, your tale is so familiar - my MIL was sweetness and light to all friends but to her own family she was a scheming, manipulative, jealous witch. When I came along she went into overdrive...much the same reasons as your FIL. Most people talk about apron strings, with my MIL it reached new dimensions.

richardw

Keep on talking about it and stay in touch with letting agents, there may be some sort of first month free or similar deal that may be possible.

galvanizersbaby

Bit confused as I thought the OP was living with her parents not her in-laws?

I'm going to be a bit unpopular in my view in that I think that though it can't be much fun living like that when your newly wed - (if it were me I think I would have waited to get married till we could afford a place of our own as I wouldn't want to impose on my folks) - surely the fact that you have decided to take the opportunity to save you kind of have to put up with the lack of privacy etc...

If it's that bad that it's making you both miserable you should forget the saving and move out surely

Sorry if my view is a bit black and white but if it were my parents I would be really grateful.

BTW - just realised that I will most likely be one of those MIL's from hell when my boy gets older! (he's only 6 so not too much to worry about yet!)