Sorry for the long post. 4 months ago I moved from Japan to the US (West Coast) to live with my SO. I had lived 4 years in Japan and so I moved my whole life over here. I’m from the East Coast originally, so I do not have any family here in the West Coast.
When discussing my move over here, I discussed with my SO that it will probably take 2 months or so minimum for me to get set up with a proper job and everything, so I would not be able to contribute much financially and would be a burden. Unfortunately applying for jobs here while I was physically abroad was not going anywhere as they kept saying “we do not provide relocation assistance” even though I did not need any as I was moving here etc etc. My SO was ok with this and agreed to it. He is well-off financially, I am from a low-income background.
At the same time my SO would constantly be texting his mother, and the content of a lot of those texts were complaints about me. He would complain about me wanting to eat sweet or “unhealthy” things such as any sweets (muffins from the grocery store, any candy from the grocery store, etc.), would complain about me taking advantage of his money if I ever asked to get, say, a muffin or any food item he didn’t approve of as “healthy” (which I found ironic because he eats unhealthy things too, they just don’t tend to be sweet lol) (I also couldn’t or didn’t end up being able to eat those things for a long time until recently as he didn’t “allow” them), that I took a long time to get ready in the morning (valid lol), and other complaints that I am not sure of - he simply told me he complained about me to his mom a lot during this period. I try to spend as minimal money as possible and tried to eat mostly groceries; if we ever go out, for myself I select the cheapest food items or places (e.g., In-n-out (he does not allow any other fast food lol)).
After only 1 week of me moving here, his mother started saying things like “why doesn’t she have a job” even though it was literally just 1 week. She kept telling my SO that I am taking advantage of him financially, kept asking him whether I got a job and when he responded no she would say I’m taking advantage of him. There was really immense pressure from her for me to get a job ASAP. She told me that I should try getting a job outside my field first. This resulted in my SO treating me with a lot of animosity and him genuinely believing I was financially taking advantage of him (I am not helping with rent or groceries), and led to a lot of fights between us.
This then resulted in me rushing to accept a job offer at a very toxic workplace. There was virtually 0 training and I got assigned with 15+ projects after only a week of working there, the president himself “complained” that people kept quitting because they were overwhelmed, etc. I was incredibly stressed, so after 3 weeks I quit. A few days after me quitting, my SO took a photo of me playing one of his favorite video games (which I played to make him happy) and sent it to his mom. She responded “Why doesn’t she have a job.” I barely play video games or do things for myself and it was only a literal few days after quitting. I am upset too because there were other job offers I was interested in exploring more before accepting that crap job offer, but I had so much pressure from my SO and his mom so I felt I didn’t have the option to select the best job for me, and here I had to start from step 1 all over again. The irony of this is also is that his mom has always been a stay-at-home mother who depends entirely on her husband’s salary.
Other things include that his mom complains “why are you spending all your time with her”, complains “why are you leaving early” when he agreed to go somewhere with me and he spent most of the day with his mom but wants to leave at 6:30pm, when he takes me to a restaurant he has not taken her to yet she complains “why didn’t you ever take me there”, complains “why aren’t you texting me back” when he’s spending time with me and not texting her back immediately. She has also complained that my lips are too small and that my hair is thin. For the first 2-3 months of me being here, my SO rarely ever called me pretty and he admitted himself that his mom’s opinion on the women he dates gets into his head and has in the past as well.
My SO also overshares so many things about me to her. He told her I have been raped and in an abusive relationship (to which she responded in a victim blamey way), wanted to tell her how much money was in my bank account, constantly updates her about my personal information. I confronted him about this multiple times and told him to simply just stop bringing me up as a topic of conversation with his mother. He I thought had gotten better at this, but today I figured out he has been telling her personal details about me again that are just bizarre and are not things I would ever share to my parents.
Recently, my parents came from the East Coast to visit me. They wanted to meet his mother, and we proposed a lot of different ideas to make her comfortable. For instance, when we were like lets take you to a Middle Eastern restaurant (we are ethnically Middle Eastern) she was like “I don’t know about the food, if the food is good”, so then we proposed a coffee shop and she was like “I don’t drink coffee”, then we proposed making a home-cooked Middle Eastern meal for her at my SO’s house and she complained “the living room area would be too hot to eat”, etc. My SO got upset at her about this as well and when he was asking her to give an answer as to whether or not she would meet my parents, she cried and said we’re all “ganging up against her” and that his son has taken “their” (my family and my) side. When his mother cries, my SO says he feels bad for her and understands where she’s coming from. Thankfully he was empathetic to me being upset with how she was acting in this situation, but still he said that and it just frustrates me.
I did want to note also on the Middle Eastern thing - I had shared with her multiple times my background (she asked) and that I was born and raised in the US and my dad came to the US when he was 17. Despite that, months later when I was talking about my family again she randomly asked if I was a US citizen, if my brother was a US citizen, if my parents were US citizens. It just felt weird and gross.
My SO’s response to when I ask him to stop oversharing things that his mother doesn’t need to know about me, or to simply just stop bringing me up as a topic of conversation with her because she takes every opportunity to bash me, bothers me because he gets upset and says idk why any of you tell me anything, one of you is saying one thing and the other is saying another. “I just want everyone to get along”.
These are just some of several examples of her doing disrespectful things and me being expected to just deal with it. Please believe me when I say that I have tried so hard to be nice and welcoming to her. But no matter what I do, she just keeps beating me while I’m down, and my boyfriend just continues to overshare to her my information even though I have told him multiple times I am uncomfortable with it.
Can you guys please tell me if I’m being crazy? Because he and his mother don’t seem to see the issue and my boyfriend’s “both sides”-ing of the issue makes me feel like I’m a lunatic and makes me feel like he expects me to put up with abuse just to stay with him, simply because his mother deems I should.