When you live with your romantic partner and their relatives, and your partner doesn’t seem to want that to change, what do you do?
I received a message from someone struggling with a challenging living situation. He lives with his wife, his mother-in-law, and another family member – and they’re having issues. I know what you’re thinking: “Living with multiple family members under one roof? How could that possibly create problems?”
Living with family can work sometimes, like when everyone gets along. When that happens, life can flow smoothly, and the arrangement may benefit everyone involved. But for this arrangement to work, I believe there needs to be some contribution from each family member (unless someone is unable to contribute due to health issues or other circumstances).
Here’s where it gets complicated, though. What if your partner is perfectly content living in a situation like this? The person who wrote to me has a partner who doesn’t want to work full-time or make other changes to live independently. They are perfectly happy with the status quo, which brings me to something I’ve learned to do over the years:
Accept people exactly as they are and assume they’ll never change.
What that means is that if someone is happy with circumstances as they are, assume they will never want things to change. And while that assumption might not be true, it saves you a lot of time and energy worrying and waiting for something that may never happen. It also redirects your attention back to yourself so that you can make the next right decision for you.
For example, if you are in a relationship and you want your partner to think differently about something, ask yourself, “If I accepted that they would never, ever change, what decision would I make for myself then?”
If you were living with them and their family, and you didn’t like that arrangement, would you choose to stay because you love them, knowing you’d work things out together eventually? Or would you feel stifled and unhappy, always thinking about how terrible the circumstances are and even complaining and arguing with your partner all the time?
If your answer is, “I’ll try to accept it, but I’ll never be as happy as I could be,” then you need to understand something important – and this might sound harsh:
Once you accept someone and their circumstances, even if you disagree with them, you lose the right to complain about it to that person.
Why? Because you’ve chosen to be with someone, knowing full well the decisions they’re making. And they expect you to either accept their decisions or not. You may not, but if you don’t, you should probably consider what you need to do for yourself instead of trying to get them to agree with your solution. In other words, if they aren’t interested in your ideas to make things better, your next step is to return to what you need to do for yourself.
The Hard Conversations We Sometimes Need To Have
You might be wondering if I am recommending divorce or separation. Not at all. What I do suggest, however, is having an honest, deep conversation with your partner about your unhappiness. Tell them how the situation affects you, how it impacts your relationship and intimacy, and put everything on the table.
The thing about equal, supportive, loving partnerships is that when one person expresses unhappiness, the other should want to work with them to find a solution. That’s exactly how it should be – two people supporting each other’s happiness.
Let’s say you’re unhappy in your relationship, if you’re in one, and you know this feeling isn’t going away on its own. You also know your unhappiness affects more than just you. It’s like a weight that gets heavier over time, pulling both you and your partner down. Not because you’re trying to make them unhappy, but because it’s almost impossible for one person to stay happy when their partner is suffering.
Think about it: When one person in a relationship is consistently unhappy, it creates a ripple effect. Your partner feels it, even if you try to hide it. They sense something is wrong, and over time, your emotional state becomes their emotional state too.
This isn’t about blaming one person or the other. It’s just the natural consequence of two people being emotionally connected. When you let unhappiness fester, you’re not just hurting yourself, you’re affecting the entire dynamic of your relationship.
I believe an equal partnership should be perceived that way: When your partner is unhappy, you aren’t happy because they aren’t happy, and vice versa.
And when your partner is unhappy, you should want them to be happy. That should be “Relationships 101,” where we support each other’s happiness. I never want to see my wife unhappy. It makes me sad to see her sad!
To the person who wrote to me telling me of their living arrangement, can you have a conversation with her, sharing how the current situation is affecting you? Can you express yourself in a way that isn’t pointing the finger at her but just sharing where you are inside?
In your message to me, you said she doesn’t want to work full-time (who does!?). And you also said that if she did work full-time, it would help fund your exit from this situation. And having the funds, you’d both be able to move out of the place you’re currently in with her relatives.
But maybe she loves living with them, which tells you family is something she values deeply. And if that is the case, it doesn’t sound like she’s itching to get out of there. So I would suggest a serious conversation with her to let her know how you think and feel.
What would that conversation look like? It could go something like this:
“I know you want to live with your family, but I want to let you know that I don’t. I want to live with you. I want to spend my time with you. I want to be able to walk around in my underwear in my own house without having to worry that somebody’s going to open their bedroom door or whatever and see me. I don’t want to have to think about that stuff. I want to be comfortable in our own house.”
She may or may not be receptive to that. But it’s important she knows how you feel and where you are inside so that she understands that you are not happy. After all, our partners should want our happiness!
The problem might be that she doesn’t want to move, and being without family makes her unhappy. If that’s the case, you’ve got some serious considerations to make. And again, I’m not saying to separate or get divorced or anything like that. That step is way down the road, if at all.
I think the first step is to have a serious conversation like I suggested above, and come to a place where ‘This is what would make me happy. This is what I want for us. This is where I hope we can be in X number of months or a year or whatever. Are you with me? Are you willing to do this with me?’
And if she says no to what you want, then, as I said earlier, the next decision you make is for you and about you.
If she’s truly happy with the way things are and doesn’t seem very interested in your thoughts and feelings about the current living situation, it comes right back to acceptance: Accepting that she will never, ever change, and this is how it will be going forward.
I’m not saying she won’t ever change her mind. She may just be valuing her time with family at the moment, but may eventually want to move. But in this moment, right now, if you’ve shared how you feel and what you’re going through, and she doesn’t want things to change, accepting things will be this way indefinitely causes you to focus on what you need to do for yourself from this point on.
When you’re unhappy in a relationship, it affects everything. Your unhappiness seeps into every aspect of your life, and, eventually, your partner will feel it too. Not because you’re deliberately bringing them down, but because your emotional state impacts the relationship as a whole. This is how an equal partnership works – when one person isn’t happy, it should matter to both people.
If you find yourself in this situation, you have some serious thinking to do. This means considering all your options, then having an honest conversation about what would make you happy, what you want for your future together, and where you hope to be in the coming months or years.
When you’ve had a conversation like the one I suggested above, you’ll want to know if they are with you on this and if they’re willing to work on this together.
If they say no, here’s the tough part to swallow: the ball comes back into your court. Your partner might be perfectly content where they are, seemingly uninterested in your emotional needs. That might sound unfair. And I’m not suggesting that’s definitely what they’re thinking. As I said before, they may just value family connections and living with relatives more than having their own space with you (as much as that may sting to think about). But if that’s where they are, that’s their choice. But when they are steadfast in what they want, you have a decision to make.
If you’ve had a deep, honest conversation about your unhappiness, and if your partner seems more invested in their happiness regardless of how you feel, you’re facing a difficult situation.
To the person who wrote to me, I want to be careful here because I don’t know the full story, but if your partner seems more committed to keeping things exactly as they are, knowing you’re unhappy, then staying in that environment will be challenging.
Sure, you might find ways to cope and be happy, but will you be okay if things never change?
Maybe the financial benefits of living with family are significant – saving money can be a powerful motivator. But if deep down you know you’ll never be truly happy there, that unhappiness will eventually surface in different ways.
Regarding this person’s work situation. I’m sure many people really don’t want to work full-time! Who wouldn’t want more time to do whatever they want? But sometimes it’s necessary to live the life we want. And if your partner refuses to work full-time or find other ways to make more money, you have to ask yourself: Is this arrangement conducive to a happy marriage? Can you achieve your goals of independent living this way?
I can totally relate to the person who wrote to me. Living with family members means I can’t just wake up at 3 AM and watch TV, or make noise when I want to. There’s always someone else to consider. And when you don’t have your own space, you feel restricted in many ways.
To the person in this situation, there’s no magic solution. I wish I could give you a magic pill answer. What it really comes down to is being clear about what you want. i.e., “I want us to have our own space. I want privacy. I feel stifled here. I want better for us.”
If I were in this situation (and I’m not saying this is what you should do, I’m just putting myself in your shoes), I would say something like, “I don’t know if I can handle living like this long-term. I want us to have our own place. I want our privacy. I want to be able to live freely in my own home.”
But a conversation like this can only happen after you’ve already expressed your desires clearly and laid out what you need for a happier life together.
Remember, this isn’t about ultimatums – it’s about being honest about what you need to be happy in your relationship and your life. Sometimes that means making tough decisions or having uncomfortable conversations.
If this person has been in this living arrangement for years and these feelings are just now surfacing strongly, it could mean they’ve reached their breaking point.
Sometimes we try to make things work for so long that resentment builds up until we can’t take it anymore. That’s not wrong – it’s just what happens when we suppress our true feelings about a situation.
Here’s the hard truth:
You can’t make someone want what you want.
I learned that the hard way in my previous relationships. I always thought if I just explained things differently or tried harder, they would finally understand and change. But that’s not how it works. When you try to convince someone to change who doesn’t want to, you’re just setting yourself up for more disappointment.
Let me give you an example from my own life. If my wife, Asha, had her family move in with us, and she was completely content with that arrangement, but I was miserable, I would have to be honest with her. I’d have to say something like, “I can’t do this anymore. I want us to have our own place. I love you and want to share my life with you – just you, not your whole family.”
If her response was “I don’t care about what you want,” that would tell me everything I need to know about how much she values my happiness.
When someone shows such little interest in your emotional well-being, it might be time to question whether you made a mistake about the relationship. That would be a difficult thought to have. It’s not easy to admit you made a mistake in your choice of partner, especially after you’ve invested a lot of time and energy into the relationship.
But staying in a situation where your partner doesn’t care about your happiness isn’t going to get better on its own.
The only person you can change is yourself. That doesn’t mean becoming a different person to please others – it means making choices that align with what you need, even when those choices are difficult. Sometimes when you make those changes, your partner comes along for the ride. But if they don’t, at least you’re being true to yourself.
And again, that’s unfair for me to say, because it implies that your partner doesn’t want to see you happy. And that may not be true at all. But my mind would go there if I were in the situation described above, where my partner didn’t seem to care about my thoughts and feelings about our living situation.
I would think, wouldn’t she want me to be happy in this relationship? If I asked her that, she might reply, “What about me? Don’t you want me to be happy? Why don’t you support me and what I want?”
That’s why it always comes back to my philosophy about persistent challenges in relationships:
The person who wants to see change may have to make the change.
With that perspective in mind, if my partner asked the following about our living arrangement, “What about my happiness? Why can’t you support my desire to live with family?” I’d probably think, ‘She’s right! Why don’t I support her happiness? After all, that’s how I define love: When you support somebody else’s happiness. So why don’t I support her choice to live with me and her family?
Can I support that? Should I? And if it all comes back to me and the decision I need to make, I might agree, yes, I can support her decision because it makes her happy.
But here’s where I would diverge: ‘I support the choices that make you happy, but I don’t want to be in this situation. I support you wanting to be in this relationship with your family, absolutely. I support you wanting to live here with everyone you love, but I don’t want to live like this.’
I know it’s so easy for me to say these words, but I also know it would be very difficult to follow through with my true thoughts and feelings. Maybe it would be impossible to follow through. But I would need to get serious about how I would feel if nothing changed.
In this situation, the key for me in making the next decision for our relationship and my life would be to answer the following question:
If nothing changes, will I be okay with the way things are now?
I would have to look at my marriage and ask myself, ‘Is this what I want in a marriage? Is this what I want for a wife? What if she checks all the boxes? Would I leave someone who fits almost all of my criteria?
I would have a lot of inner dialogue: ‘Yes, but she does this right, and this part of our relationship is great, and so on.’ But I might end up where I started, ‘I just can’t live in this place with all these people.’
Would that override all my other thoughts? I would probably have to assess that. I would have to figure out if everything else about the relationship is good enough. And if it is, I would have to come to that place of acceptance I keep bringing up.
I would also need to answer the following question honestly: Can I accept her the way she is, accept the decisions she makes, and never, ever give her crap about it again?
To the person who wrote to me, I recommend you listen to my episode The judgments you have about others that keep you unhappy (you can search for it on my Podcast page). That episode talks about decisions like this. You might find it very helpful.
Communication is key. You hear people say that about relationships all the time. Without honest, sometimes difficult communication, you may never get to the heart of what bothers you. And if you’re not getting to the heart of things, you may be prolonging something that continues to build resentment, sometimes from both sides.
Do you share with your partner what makes you unhappy?
Do you ask how you can work together to make each other happy?
Do you talk about compromise on each side?
That last one may be the place you need to go: The balance that is created by each person compromising something.
Thinking about the person who wrote to me, maybe his partner doesn’t want to compromise at all. Maybe she is perfectly happy with the way things are. If that’s the case, she probably feels like she has everything she wants. And the author of that message might need to make the choice to stay or leave, at least if he knows he is going to be unhappy if he stays. But if he knows he’ll be unhappy, hopefully, he conveys that to her.
A lot of people wouldn’t want to say, “I’m going to leave for a while. We need to separate.” A lot of people won’t go there. They just think once you’re married, you have to accept everything as-is.
The good news is that you don’t have to choose between complete sacrifice and walking away. Real compromise means both people give a little to get a little, and both people feel heard and respected in the process. When I finally learned this lesson, it transformed how I approached difficult conversations with Asha.
Sometimes the hardest part is just starting that conversation. But I’ve found that most relationship problems get worse in silence and better with honest communication. Even if the discussion is uncomfortable, even if it leads to some conflict, it’s always better than letting resentment build up inside you until it explodes.
Yes, there’s risk involved in speaking your truth. But there’s an even bigger risk in staying quiet and hoping things will magically get better.
Whether the outcome is finding middle ground or realizing you need to go your separate ways, at least you’ll know you honored yourself and gave the relationship your best shot.
Remember, a healthy relationship should lift both people up, not require one person to shrink themselves down. When you find that balance – that sweet spot where both people feel seen, heard, and respected – that’s when compromise stops feeling like sacrifice and starts feeling like love.
