Lose-lose

[Cenerentola]

My mom (who has a house key to our house) arrived early to a family event we were hosting and used our kitchen and dishes to prep the item she was bringing -- without asking my permission.  She asked when we arrived, wasn't it nice to come home and find things ready? Foggily I said yes, but I'm not comfortable letting this ride.

If I do or say nothing more about it, I fear I'll invite more of the same.  If I send a kindly-worded email (all I trust myself to do) asking her to ask permission next time, I'm pretty sure she'll get huffy.

Any thoughts on handling this lose - lose?

[NarcKiddo]

Maybe say nothing at this point, unless another visit is imminent? And then shortly before the next visit contact her to expressly request that she not use your kitchen. She may push for a reason though of course you don't have to give it. Given she has a house key, it seems like she would have a ready excuse to get huffy since it is not an unreasonable stretch to suppose that if you are trusted with a house key you can also be trusted to use someone's kitchen. Unless of course she made a mess or put things back in the wrong place, or similar. An email now might give her ample time to "forget" the request, whereas one shortly in advance of the next visit would not. Although any resultant huffing would be more likely to spill into the visit.

Unless there is a reason she must have a house key my personal plan of attack in this sort of situation would be to remove the key from her. Probably not by asking for it back, which would create friction, but by finding an excuse to have the lock changed and then never getting round to giving her a new key.

[Call Me Cordelia]

Wow can this be the time to take away that access? And so what if she gets huffy? I mean I get it it is majorly unpleasant to witness a grown adult trying to punish us for causing her to feel unpleasant emotions and be responsible for herself. We were so trained that we didn't get to have boundaries and changing the steps to that dance is so uncomfortable but necessary. TBH there came a time for us when we just went ahead and changed the locks. It cost money but it was worth it in peace of mind, because even if that key came back no guarantee they hadn't made a copy. I don't know if your mom is at that level of entitlement, but mine were. You could possibly send your kindly worded email, but if there's some kind of passive aggressive crap in retaliation, well maybe it's just not good for our relationship to have to manage your access to the house, mom. Better to remove the source of conflict.

Access to a house is really intimate level of trust. We have neighbors who have keys and it's really something that's for emergency only or with express permission to take care of pets or something. I think that's just a generally accepted social norm. The only people entitled to access at will are the people who live there. Saying this to validate that NO you are not making too much of this incident.

[bloomie]

Cenerentola - one of the things I think about when this kind of boundary busting behavior is... did I make an agreement with my mother that she was welcome to enter my home at will without any notice or common courtesy of asking first?

A parent having a key to our home is not an agreement for them to enter at will and do as they please, but there are those that act as if that is the case. You don't have to accommodate that.

I had a family member make a copy of our house key - that another family member had been given for a limited time to care for animals - and inform us she had done this after she entered our home with 'friends' to 'show them' our home while we were not home. 

We quickly 'found' we needed to change all of the locks on our home to only use one key. The. End. Peace of mind restored.

Whatever you decide to do about this...

What is yours:
Your home
Your door
Your kitchen
Your lock
Your sacred space

What is your mother's:
her emotions
her assumptions
consequences for intrusive behaviors


 

[Rebel13]

Once upon a time my mother came to the place I was living, came into the apartment without knocking, walked through the entire place to the farthest room where my partner was getting dressed, and grabbed my partner up in a big, inappropriate, half-naked hug.

We were pretty dumbfounded. When I asked my mom to please knock and wait until we answered the door when she came over, she acted like this was the weirdest, most incomprehensible thing she had ever heard. "You want me to what now? Knock? How many times? And then what? Wait? For how long?"

Their lack of boundaries never ceases to amaze me.

We decided we would keep the door locked all the time, since fortunately we hadn't given her a key. So weird, looking back, that we weren't worried about strangers invading our home, just my mother.

I agree with others that changing the locks might be the easiest and lowest cost way to solve this problem. Your privacy and peace of mind are worth it, if it's in your budget at all.

[Cenerentola]

NarcKiddo, Bloomie, Rebel, and Cordelia, thank you.  I would feel better, honestly, if she didn't have a key.  Trouble is, it's not so much "she" as "they"; we shared a house key with my in-laws (at their request) and with my family as well (which includes M, D, and two adult siblings who still live at home).  So changing the locks would be very political.  And a hard sell for my husband in particular. 

The explicit reason for the keys is so that people can be able to help each other in emergencies. We have them to both my parents and im laws houses as well. One of my brothers also house sat for us when we were away, fwiw.

But I like what Bloomie says about the implicit meaning of giving someone a key.  I would never show up unannounced at my in laws or parents house and start using their kitchen (or laundry, or garden, or exercise equipment, or anything else).  I don't think that's normal adult behavior, and I think normal adults know that.

More developments today.  I asked one brother (who's the less enmeshed of the live-at-homes) how they'd all ended up early at our house.  Apparently my parents had asked him and my other brother to come there at that time.  He had hoped that permission had been granted, but that wasn't specified (and he didn't ask).    The way I see it, M deliberately collected accomplices to help cover her *ahem*.

Did I mention that the dish she made also included Food X that I asked not to have last time?  To be fair, I didn't ask people to skip that food *this* time.  But still: that boundary got blown last time, so this time we're going to echo blowing that previous boundary AND blow a bigger (obvious but unstated) one.

I think that's maybe why I feel the need to email something now rather than ahead of next time: to say that this is the sort of nonsense up with which I will not put.

[Happypants]

Hi Cenerentola.  Could you say that you've lost your own key and need their copy back?  Or that you've lost your key and need to change the locks, and give your in-laws a copy to keep (for emergencies), only loaning YOUR key (which you need to have back) to your family when necessary?  It could be that you simply never get around to making a copy for them  I realise there's no easy solution to this - my mother would react in a similar fashion to yours ie pushback for putting boundaries in place.  But, I can honestly say that I'd risk causing issues to protect myself from intrusion into my only "safe" place. 

[Liketheducks]

Definitely lose-lose here.   We fixed that with a programmable door lock, a keypad.   We periodically change the code for security purposes.   In the states, you can get one for about $50.00...less if it is a lockbox version that stores a physical key.   

I don't even have a key. 

No one comes to my house without calling first to make sure I'm there.   Saves us from so much angst.   

 

[Call Me Cordelia]

Oh my gosh, the food wars. WHY is what we choose to eat or not such a minefield with PD people? I don't like the pattern, Cenerentola. If I recall correctly, this is par for the course for you with various fields of battle. Correct me if I'm wrong here. Upping the ante like this seems designed to either force you to constantly fight the boundary encroachment or else give up and surrender yourself entirely. 

[Cenerentola]

you've lost your own key and need their copy back

I don't know if they'd believe me (and I'd be reluctant to lie directly, though I will equivocate to high heaven with my FOO) but I suspect I can get their key back.  I might be able to pick it up myself next time we're there.

[Cenerentola]

And, sorry if that came off as dismissive of your suggestion--I really appreciate the help scoping solutions! 

[Cenerentola]

We fixed that with a programmable door lock, a keypad

That sounds ... awesome.  I still have to sell my husband on this, though.  He is supportive and sees the crazy but of course he doesn't get the internal lack-of-felt-safety because he didn't grow up with them.

I'm also just ... not wanting to stir this hornets nest.  A keypad would be like a declaration of war.  Which makes me realize that I'm still scared of updm's next big blow.     Where's the spouting whale emoji when I need one?

[Cenerentola]

Oh my gosh, the food wars

Them be real.

I don't like the pattern, Cenerentola. If I recall correctly, this is par for the course for you with various fields of battle. Correct me if I'm wrong here. Upping the ante like this seems designed to either force you to constantly fight the boundary encroachment or else give up and surrender yourself entirely.

This is 100% correct.  She is ex.haus.ting.  And yet every little nip is done in the name of family, being close, etc.  Even her discards (she's discarded me a few times during my marriage of ten+ years) are always because we're not close enough for her taste.  But it is always closeness on her terms.

The prize discard so far has been the one where I was pregnant, during COVID, living over a thousand miles away, but we were still visiting my FOO twice a year and I talked to M on the phone every week.  There's a long and complicated lead up to that discard, but basically she dumped me by email because we had "chosen" not to move to their city.  (There were job related reasons not to, for one thing.)  Well, loe and behold, we did end up moving to the same area as my parents (new job + in laws; my parents were a reason NOT to make the move, but we weighed everything and took the plunge).  UPDM's first action once we were moving nearer to them was (1) to make sure I wasn't mad at her, then (2) to convince me everything was my fault, and then (3) to try to convince me that my husband and in laws were bad.  See that escalation?  I ignored (1) and (2), perhaps unwisely in retrospect, and came down like a load of bricks on (3).  Then things got better ... superficially ... for a little bit.

And that, ladies and gents, is her pattern.

[walking on broken glass]

Hello Cenerentola!
I agree with the suggestions to take back the key from your FOO. You don't even have to change the locks. You can make up an excuse, like a friend who will be visiting and needs an extra key, or you have misplaced yours and you need to borrow theirs. Then once you take the key, never give it back and pretend you have forgotten about it. Or that you never got round to making a copy. Protect yourself, your sanity and your privacy as much as you can!

[Call Me Cordelia]

A keypad would be like a declaration of war.

A keypad wouldn't HAVE TO be about them, but I don't doubt that interpretation would be the automatic conclusion. So be it, in my opinion. Your mother is going to create a reason for conflict so you really have nothing to gain by walking on eggshells and avoiding stirring the hornets' nest. Sometimes just giving it a good kick and lighting it on fire with your protective gear on, or in less colorful language taking a calculated risk on your own terms, is what's called for. I also understand about your husband not understanding that lack of felt safety. We did get a doorbell camera at last this past year... when it was HIS mother who was threatening to show up at our home from thousands of miles away after several years NC! I hope it doesn't come to that for you, but seriously, if your in-laws are pretty normal, and you need them to access your home, it would be a slight inconvenience to get them the regularly changing code for a time. I'm envisioning a setup like someone would use to manage an AirBNB or similar, where you can control how long the code is good for. Your husband doesn't have to completely understand in order to accept that this truly would be beneficial for your mental health. A lot of people have setups like this for lots of reasons.

And golly your mom sounds a lot like mine. We lived far away and had a fairly manageable relationship where we saw them about two weeks out of the year and phoned about once a week. It was stressful but overall okayish, until we had a job opportunity where we plausibly could have moved back to my hometown. We took the job but lived somewhere that made more sense to us because it would not have been worth the extra long commute and I would have died. I wasn't overtly discarded, but suddenly we realized: We saw much much more of them when we lived much farther away!

[Liketheducks]

What about approaching this from a place of where you really are with your husband.  I.E...I'm not feeling really safe (and it sounds like you;re really not feeling ok with mom and FOO just letting themselves in) and I want more "robust" security. Being able to ask for or make happen what we actually need....shoot for me, just acknowledging what I need...is a super power.  I'm certain your husband also has his version of family issues.  We all do.


   My mom seriously has done SO much of this.  Honestly, when we interact now, I feel her sense of loss as we're no longer enmeshed...and I know she misses that sense of closeness.  I just can't do that anymore.  And she's of an age, where I'm certain that I can't expect a new revelation from her.   

[Cenerentola]

Hello Cenerentola!
I agree with the suggestions to take back the key from your FOO. You don't even have to change the locks. You can make up an excuse, like a friend who will be visiting and needs an extra key, or you have misplaced yours and you need to borrow theirs. Then once you take the key, never give it back and pretend you have forgotten about it. Or that you never got round to making a copy. Protect yourself, your sanity and your privacy as much as you can!

Ah, tactical amnesia.  I like it.

[Cenerentola]

A keypad would be like a declaration of war.

Your mother is going to create a reason for conflict so you really have nothing to gain by walking on eggshells and avoiding stirring the hornets' nest. ...
And golly your mom sounds a lot like mine. We lived far away and had a fairly manageable relationship where we saw them about two weeks out of the year and phoned about once a week. It was stressful but overall okayish, until we had a job opportunity where we plausibly could have moved back to my hometown. We took the job but lived somewhere that made more sense to us because it would not have been worth the extra long commute and I would have died. I wasn't overtly discarded, but suddenly we realized: We saw much much more of them when we lived much farther away!

The part about there being an inevitable conflict really is true.  So why not now? 

I'm sorry that happened with your mom.  It's so frustrating to try to meet their demands and discover no real reciprocity.

[Cenerentola]

Thanks again to all.  I really appreciate both the support and advice.  Mission retrieve key initiated. 

[Cenerentola]

Update: After chewing on this, I ended up deciding to let the key be (for now).  I simply didn't want the conflict that I was pretty sure would erupt out of me getting it back, even with a (to a reasonable person) good excuse.

I settled for writing an email in the classic happy sandwich style: nice things about visit, request, nice things about next event.  Basically, my request was, if you feel the need to use the kitchen again, please ask first.  My mom sent a one liner email soon after, with typos (both the brevity and the typos are usually signs that she's in a bad place emotionally) saying that "it" won't happen again.  I've carried on as normal in terms of having the usual amount/format/tone (pleasant) of contact since then.

Aaaand since then there've been some hoovering attempts (e.g., asking me if I'm ok, offering blanket unsolicited apologies for "whatever" she may have done wrong in the past, invites to extra "fun" stuff with the family).  I've just kind of held my space (of course!  I'm fine!  I love you mom!  Thanks for asking, I'll think about it -- but I don't follow up).  And now we've got a mini-silent treat: she went off on a trip with my dad without telling me, and the word is they may be "busy" enough that they can't get together for the next family gathering.

On the one hand, I'm laughing up my sleeve at the predictability of it all.  On the other, I'm still grieving.  I had an ER trip recently and afterwards, processing it, I realized that I didn't get held as much as I needed--and that being held didn't feel safe for me--the comfort I can give my kids is not what I got.  And the space I give them when they want it is also not what I was granted.