My Boyfriend’s Mom Has a Strangely Invasive Habit on the Family Vacation. I’ve Had Enough.

How to Do It This doesn’t feel right. Photo illustration by Slate. Photo by Alex Anna/Unsplash. Sign up for the Slatest to get the most insightful analysis, criticism, and advice out there, delivered to your inbox daily. How to Do It is Slate’s sex advice column. Have a question? Send it to Jessica and Rich here. It’s anonymous! Dear How to Do It, My boyfriend, a 30-year-old man, and I, a 29-year-old woman, have been together for three years. His family has an annual tradition where everyone—so his parents, my boyfriend, and his three brothers and their significant others (if they’re in a relationship)—goes to their family beach home for a month every summer. This will be our third summer at the house. For some context, we come from very different backgrounds: I grew up comfortably middle class, with very little extravagant vacations, and my parents have lived in the same house since they got married. My boyfriend’s family is obviously wealthier, with multiple family homes, etc. Being at his family’s house for the month is basically a free vacation. His parents float groceries and meals, etc., for everyone in the house for the whole month. My boyfriend loves this tradition and really looks forward to it all year, and constantly talks about it as it’s approaching. We’re meant to go in a month. The problem is his mom. She’s overbearing normally, and constantly butting into our business even from afar. But the worst thing she does is demand that he keep our bedroom door open at all times! She’ll barge in and open it if it’s closed and remind us by saying something like, “Oops, you let this close.” His family is weirdly traditional in that way, which means for the entire month, if we have sex, we’re relegated to sneaking around in the very late hours of the night to try to avoid being walked in by his mom. Honestly, this would be fine, it’s just a month! But it’s the lack of respect from his mom that feels off to me. I want to talk to my boyfriend about it and ask him to say something to her. But I also feel like maybe I don’t have a right, given how generous they’re being. Is this battle even worth fighting? It does bother me! —Opened Doors Please keep questions short (<150 words), and don‘t submit the same question to multiple columns. We are unable to edit or remove questions after publication. Use pseudonyms to maintain anonymity. Your submission may be used in other Slate advice columns and may be edited for publication. Jessica Stoya: So it seems like there’s a pretty significant understanding of the class differences here—economically, lifestyle, generosity. But basically nothing was said about differences between her family and his family with regards to sex before marriage; comfort with bodies; and boundaries between parent and child, especially when that child, though, yes, is a 30-year-old adult, is under the parent’s roof with their siblings. Understanding all of that is probably very helpful for this particular situation. And also, if she wants to build a life with this boyfriend, understanding that background and her boyfriend’s feelings and thoughts on how he was raised will be crucial as the relationship develops. Rich Juzwiak: For sure. It surprises me that they’ve done this twice already, and the closed-door policy has never come up. I can’t imagine being in that situation and not being like, “What the hell?” I can’t believe this conversation is still hanging in the air. Why? What is going on with this? To me, the most normal thing in the world is you go into somebody’s house, and you go to sleep, and you close the door. I’ve never done it a different way. What if somebody snores? You don’t want that resonating throughout the entire house. So I agree that an understanding of this is absolutely crucial. You can start very non-judgmentally. You can start by just probing, but you have to get to the why here because it’s weird. I think it’s weird. Jessica: You have to get to the why. And then, you have to choose your position, which could be anything from “That’s really weird for me. How are we going to make this more manageable?” through to, “I need to at least be able to sleep platonically with the bedroom door closed. Is there some way of probably successfully working toward that becoming something we can do on these vacations?” based on the boyfriend’s perspective. Also, if the boyfriend’s perspective is, “Yeah, no, every summer for a whole month for the rest of my parents’ lives we’ll be going to this vacation house and having to have the door wide open 24/7 and absolutely not having sex at all during that time period,” then there’s also option C, which is to leave. Rich: Yeah, to leave, to find a different place to have sex when you want to do it. The entire month is paid for, including your food. So if you needed to get to a hotel at some point together, that might be feasible for you, given the money you’re saving on living expenses for that month. It seems fair to assume that the closed door is a proxy for abstinence encouragement, but I wonder if there’s more to it. I would love to know the actual explanation. Is it just really part of her personality, like it’s implied in the letter, to just be able to walk in and out of everybody’s business at will? Because if so, that might not be tenable. You want to get at the bigger reason here to understand what you’re really working with, because that level of comfort with infiltration is not going to be something everybody can live with for an extended period of time. Jessica: It’s been three years. She’s approaching 30. If she doesn’t want to build a really long-term, committed relationship, then, yeah, she can probably just keep letting this go. But if she wants to hopefully have a forever partner, then at this point, the sooner, the better. The first time it happened would’ve ideally been when she would’ve asked some sort of question like, “What was up with that?” But now it’s, “OK, how much more time are you going to burn? How many more emotions are you going to invest? How much further entwined are we going to become in each other’s lives and routines? Is this thing that is increasingly causing me resentment and anticipatory anxiety, is that a thing that you say you’re going to change, boyfriend, and then I can watch and see if that actually begins to happen? Is that a thing that you’ve been working on changing, and I just don’t know about, but the wheel’s already in motion? What’s happening here?” Rich: Right. I think it’s ultimately a test for the boyfriend because the mother is going to be who she is, but just because she says something doesn’t make it law. Certainly, it’s her house, and she’s the potential mother-in-law, but she’s also a person who has to exist in the world. So if you are headed toward tyranny from your potential mother-in-law, whether you got married or not, just this potential person in your life, you should really understand that as well, because it could be ultimately the thing that makes you leave the relationship. You signed up for a boyfriend, you didn’t sign up for a third party to have at-will access to your life. And if it turns out that you did sign up for that, you want to be able to make that decision as to whether or not you want to continue living like that. I sure wouldn’t. Jessica: So, to address the first question, the concept of having any particular right given how generous a person is being, you might not have the right to say, “I’m going to come to your house where you are footing the bill and demand now that we’re all here, that the door be closed.” But in the same way that a man you go on a date with is not owed a blowjob because he bought you a drink, the fact that they are continuing to offer this month-long, all expenses paid vacation, doesn’t mean you don’t have a right to refuse it. You have a right to say, “I’m not going to go.” You have a right to say, “Hey, boyfriend, I really need this and this as far as privacy in order to go. Is that possible?” You have a right to your boundaries, no matter how generous a person is or how big the price tag is. Rich: Yeah, if not, then you’re believing that people can essentially buy their way into exploiting you, which is absolutely not true. Jessica: Especially if this relationship is on a track towards marriage and, oh, dear God, procreation. You cannot allow that dynamic to get further entrenched. You can just breeze through Care and Feeding to get a sense of how that plays out. Also, I believe all of those particular types of letters in that column because I’ve witnessed similar scenarios in real life from unfortunate friends and acquaintances. And then there’s the question of whether the battle is worth fighting. The battle of the door, specifically, might not be. There might be information you’re missing that puts the whole thing in a different light once you talk to your boyfriend, and helps you understand the full picture and decide the battle of the door is not worth it. Rich, you listed several coping skills. Rich: Yes. Jessica: Use as applicable for the reasons that the door thing is happening. But getting to the bottom of whether your boyfriend of three years is going to communicate openly with you about this is worth it. Is he going to let his mom continue to be overbearing and extremely overbearing, depending on how much bearing she can do at a given point in time? Or is this a thing that he’s tackling and will tackle a bit more once you’ve communicated the effect it’s having on you? More Advice From Slate I’ve been in a monogamous relationship for three years and my partner would like to explore my turn-on with me. Roleplaying hasn’t historically been our thing, and I also find myself somewhat embarrassed about discussing this kink at times. I’m into impact play. But I only like it when the person doing it actually wants to hurt or punish me. In the past, it even worked better if I barely knew the person. But I don’t want to give instructions as the submissive, it takes me completely out of the moment. However, I’m struggling because he is so sweet… Never miss new Slate Advice columns Get the latest from Prudie and our columnists in your inbox each weekday, plus special bonus letters on Saturdays. Advice Sex