My spouse comes from a family where there were many children. My husband is the firstborn. There are four of them in the family: he has a little sister and two brothers. My husband’s mother dreamed so much of having a daughter that she decided to give birth until she gave birth to her beloved Helena.
When we got married, I was sure that the older brother from a family with many children was very serious, well aware of the responsibility for his family. And I was almost never wrong, except for one nuance. Everyone in their family is just obsessed with loving his little sister. My husband’s mother instilled in all of her sons from childhood that Helena’s happy future was their number one goal in life.
When we married, Helena was nine years old, and this love they had seemed quite sweet and touching. But after six years bigger problems started happening and they affected my family too.
The girl had absolutely no desire to learn, always found herself in bad company, constantly had bad situations with her, from which she had to be urgently pulled. And she, without much remorse, would call any of her older brothers and brazenly demanded that they help her out right away. Naturally, number one on that list was the oldest brother – and also my husband. She could call at any time of the day or night, and she didn’t care if my husband was at work or asleep. He would rush out at the first call she got and rush to help her out. At that time I thought that it was only temporary, that I would just have to endure it, and then she would grow up, get wiser, and everything would work out. But it didn’t!
Soon Helena decided to get married, and all the wedding costs, of course, fell on her brothers’ shoulders, because my mother-in-law had never had that kind of money. And my husband, as the oldest brother, of course, turned out to be the leftmost. Well, we got over that. They got married, they celebrated the wedding. Her fiancé turned out to be some sort of bum. My mother-in-law had a two-bedroom apartment, and the newlyweds lived with her at first. But Helena couldn’t get along with her mother, so they rented a separate apartment.
Then they had their first child, followed soon after by a second child, then Helena got a new husband and had two more children with him. She was raised in the full belief that everyone owes her, and she logically decided that this also applied to her children. When we go to my mother-in-law’s house on some solemn occasion, I am obliged to buy them presents and sweets, and she has never deigned to buy at least something for my child. However, I have long since stopped paying attention to this.
And recently she and her mother-in-law came up with the idea that the mother in her old age should live with her eldest son, they say from ancient times, and the apartment should be left to the youngest in the family, that is in our case – Helena. And what made me madder than I was – my husband agrees with this “castling”.
We live in a two-bedroom apartment, and we have a child. This apartment was given to us by my dad and mom, but my husband’s mom decided that we had been married long enough that her son was entitled to half of our apartment. We occupy one room and our son lives in the other. Yes, our son is going to university soon and goes to study in another city, but he will come to us on weekends! And how he will live with his grandmother in one room? She has already driven me to the brink with her ill-fated Helena.
My husband I love and respect, and a divorce with him, I’m not going to file, but my mother-in-law to live in one apartment is not going to. What I should do, I do not know…
