My (25M) girlfriend (22F) and I want to take the next step in our relationship, but we’re expecting serious backlash from her family—mainly her mom—and I want outside perspective on how to handle it.
We’ve been together for about 2.5 years and are serious about our future. We’re not rushing into this—we’ve talked a lot about our goals and what we want long-term. We’ve also been kinda long distance from each other about 100 miles apart. But not a terribly long drive.
The issue is her current situation. Her mom has a lot of control over her life, especially financially. She monitors her bank account closely, questions what she spends money on, takes money without saying anything and never specifies what it’s for and often pressures her to come help with things while saying she’ll reduce her rent (as she rents her house from her parents)—but that doesn’t really happen.
My girlfriend also has a roommate situation that isn’t fair (she ends up paying more than she should, including all utilities), so financially she’s been stuck and unable to really get ahead. We also found out that her roommate has been “reporting” back to my girlfriend’s mom about her as well.
She wants to become independent, get her own job in my area, have her own bank account, and actually be able to save money and make her own decisions. I fully support that. She’s already been looking for other jobs in my area just waiting to hear back from them.
We’re expecting that when she takes that step (moving out and separating financially), her mom is going to react very negatively—guilt, pressure, possibly trying to control the situation or make her stay. Her dad tends to side with her mom or stay out of it. I hate to see her so miserable all the time and she has planned on not staying in her home town well before I met her as she has other trauma and other issues with out going into too much detail. My girlfriend has know I didn’t want to move from my current location pretty early on and her mom knows that as well as her mom has said several times through out our relationship I want all my kids within 10 minutes of me but my girlfriend has been pretty serious about moving as I’ve stated before.
My concern isn’t about our relationship or her depending on me or anything financially—it’s more about:
How to handle the expected backlash from her mom/ immediate family.
How she can set boundaries without things blowing up worse than they need to
Whether there’s anything we should be thinking about or preparing for that we might be overlooking
TLDR: She genuinely wants independence—this isn’t me pushing her into anything.
Has anyone dealt with a situation like this? What worked (or didn’t) when it came to setting boundaries with controlling parents?
Any advice is appreciated.