To Follow Him Home

We needed a place to live. But what would living with his parents do to our marriage?

Lindsay Hodder

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Three months after our wedding, a chain of unfortunate circumstances left my husband, Darren, and I packing our things. We'd been in the midst of raising financial support to join an east coast mission organization, but finances hadn't come in and the logistics weren't coming together. After a final meeting with the director, the opportunity fell through.

Darren had been working a few hours a week as a software developer to supplement our income, but it wasn't a permanent position. I didn't have a job since we'd moved to a new city. Worst of all, our basement apartment, its lease due to run out in one week, was suddenly overrun with flies.

"Pack a bag," Darren said. "Let's go to my parents."

Darren's parents lived 15 minutes away. I figured we'd need to stay only a few weeks at most. No problem.

As expected, we were welcomed with open arms and a lovely guestroom. What I didn't expect was how deeply I'd be affected by living so closely with another family.

I usually spent each day at the house, scouring the paper for apartment and job listings, and searching through our muddled boxes for possessions gone missing. Because Darren's father worked the night shift, and Darren worked on the computer from home, the three of us were in each other's way most of the day.

"Darren, what time can we go to Catherine's for dinner tonight?" I asked, walking into his makeshift workspace in the kitchen.

"I was making chicken cacciatore. Aren't you staying?" Darren's father called from the next room.

So much for privacy, I thought.

"Sorry, Dad, we have plans with another couple tonight." Darren glared at me. "Why do you always put me in the middle?" he added in a lower voice.

I steamed out of the room, feeling my independence had been stifled for the fourth time that day. We were adults; why should we ask permission to go out for the evening?

Darren's father came into the kitchen to see what the matter was.

"Well, if she didn't like chicken she could have said so," he told Darren. "Is everything all right between you two?"

I could hear Darren's response down the hall.

"Sorry, Dad. Could you save some for us to eat later?"

Frustrated at repeatedly hurting his father's feelings over similar incidents throughout the week, Darren would then commit our weekends to joining his parents in whatever they were doing. Meanwhile, I felt suffocated from the long week of togetherness and was eager to visit my own family and friends out of town.

The result: constant conflict.

"Lindsay, you're being selfish," Darren would tell me. "We've put off spending time with my parents all week, we should go to the cottage with them."

Darren didn't understand how deeply I struggled to coexist with his family. He was content with the arrangement. He'd never lived on his own before we were married, so he didn't understand how much we needed to live together on our own as a married couple.

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Originally published in: Marriage Partnership, 2009, Web-only

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