Reddit Stories - My child RETURNED to our RESIDENCE FOLLOWING a romantic split and resided without

Episode Date: November 15, 2025

#redditstories #askreddit #aita #relationships #family #parenting #breakup #homecomingSummary: My child returned to our residence following a romantic split and resided without permission, causing tension and conflict within the family dynamic. The situation raised questions about boundaries, communication, and respect in familial relationships.Tags: redditstories, askreddit, reddit, aita, tifu, relationships, family, parenting, breakup, homecoming, boundaries, communication, respect, conflict, tension, familydynamic, familial, romantic, split, residence, permissionBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/reddit-stories--6237355/support.

I hope you enjoy this story. My child returned to our residence following a romantic split and resided without contributing financially for more than 12 months. He then began transforming our living space into a baby's room without seeking approval, as his present partner wished for it. Was also his affair partner got pregnant. My 28-year-old son moved back in with my wife and me 14 months ago after a bad breakup ended his four-year relationship.

At the time, he told us it would just be a temporary arrangement for a few months so he could get back on his feet emotionally and financially. We understood he was heartbroken and wanted to support him through a rough patch. We agreed to let him stay in his old room, rent-free, on the assumption that he would use the time to recover and then move out once he was stable again. It's now been well over a year, and our son is still living with us with no end in sight. He has a decent full-time job, so much. shouldn't be the issue holding him back from moving out. However, instead of saving up for his

own place, he spends most of his income on expensive hobbies, take out food, and nights out with friends. As far as we can tell, none of his income is being saved toward an apartment or future despite living under our roof and using our utilities, he has an offer to contribute a dime to rent, groceries, or the electric and water bills. My wife, 49F, and I, 52M, have been quietly covering all the household expenses while he basically treats our home like a free hotel. He also doesn't help out with any household chores. He'll leave his dirty dishes in the sink for us to wash, drop his laundry in the hamper assuming my wife or I will handle it, and generally comes and goes as he pleases like a guest on vacation. We've tried

dropping hints and making polite requests for him to clean up after himself or lend the hand, but he acts like we're inconveniencing him. For example, I once asked if he could mow the lawn on a Saturday and he responded, I'm really not feeling up to that right now, I'm still feeling low. Yet he had no problem going out with his buddies that same evening. Whenever we bring up the subject of him finding his own place or at least contributing to household costs, he immediately gets defensive and upset. He'll say things like, I'm still healing from my breakup.

Why can't you just be supportive?" He insists that we're making him feel unwelcome during a difficult time in his life. The few times we've tried to have a direct conversation about setting a move-out timeline, he's accused us of turning our backs on him and being unsupportive parents. He often reminds us how devastated he was after his ex left and that he needs more time to get back on track. We do sympathize, truly, but it's been 14 months of more time. My wife and I are starting to feel taken advantage of.

We love our son and we're happy to help him when he was at rock bottom, but at this point it feels like he's using his breakup as an excuse to avoid responsibility. In fact, socially he seems to be doing fine now. He goes to work, hangs out with friends, and even spends money on concerts and pricey gadgets for his hobbies. It's not like he's hold up in his room crying every day anymore. From our perspective, he's just gotten comfortable and has little incentive to leave our nest since we're footing all the bills.

We haven't given him any ultimatums yet, because frankly we're worried about pushing him away or causing a rift. But we're also feeling frustrated living with a 28-year-old who behaves like a teenager on summer break. We expected a few months of support, not an indefinite period of subsidizing his lifestyle. So Reddit, are we being unreasonable or cruel for wanting our adult son to eat? either start contributing or move out. Comment one, Eda honestly, I can't believe you're complaining about supporting your own son for a while. He went through a devastating breakup and you're acting like he's a burden for needing help.

Who cares if it's been 14 months? He's family, not a tenant. You're being incredibly unsupportive and basically telling him to get over it on your timetable. Charging your own kid rent and harping on him for chores when he's depressed is cruel. You should be ashamed of how you're treating him. Op, I'm sorry you see it that way. We have been nothing but supportive for over a year. We didn't charge him anything initially and we've taken care of him this whole time.

We're not throwing him out on the street with no warning. We just expected that after well over a year, he would start to get back on his feet. Also, from our perspective, he's not actually acting depressed lately. He's active with friends and hobbies, just not taking any responsibility at home. I understand some parents would let their adult kids stay indefinitely, but we feel like we've gone above and beyond here. Comment two, is your son getting any kind of professional help or therapy for this healing process he talks about? If not, then it sounds like he's using it as an excuse. Op, he went to a therapist for a short while after the breakup, but he stopped after a couple of months.

saying he was feeling better. These days he generally seems fine mood-wise. He goes out with friends, works, enjoys hobbies. I don't think this is a depression issue now, maybe it was at first. It does come across more like he's milking the situation. We have tried encouraging him to maybe talk to someone or at least to think about his future plans, but he just keeps saying he needs more time. First, thank you to everyone who commented on my original post. The feedback was overwhelmingly on my side, and it gave my wife and me the push we needed to set some firm boundaries with our son. A few days after the original post, we sat our son down for a serious talk. We even put together a short written agreement outlining house rules and expectations

going forward, since the few months have long passed. Here's what we asked of him in the agreement. Contribute $400 per month toward rent and utilities, a token amount far below any real rent, just to have him put some skin in the game. Do his own laundry and clean up after himself, no more dumping chores on us. Buy his own groceries, or chip in if he's eating the food we buy, instead of just raiding our fridge without contributing. General respect for house rules, like keeping his space reasonably clean and not making a mess in common areas. Timeline for moving out, we wanted him to aim to move out within the next six months. We offered to help him create a budget or look for apartments when he's ready, but we we wanted a clear end goal so this situation doesn't drag on forever. We presented this to him as kindly but firmly as we could, emphasizing that we still love him and want to support him, but that he's an adult and this arrangement needs to be fair to everyone.

Well, it did not go over well. as soon as he realized we were essentially giving him rules and a potential deadline, he became very upset. He said we were treating him like a tenant instead of family. He actually said something along the lines of I never would have moved back home if I knew you were going to turn on me like this. We tried to explain that we weren't turning on him, and that these terms were much more lenient than any real landlord would give, and that we'd always be his parents, not actual landlords. But he was having none of it. The discussion got pretty heated on his side. He accused us of being ungrateful for everything he's had to go through, as if his breakup was

somehow helping us. And he argued that asking for rent from one's own child is cruel and greedy. I stayed calm and reiterated that we've supported him free of charge for over a year, which not all parents would do, and that $400 per month is extremely reasonable given his income and expenses. He stormed off after saying we were basically the worst parents ever for nickel and diming him when he's still healing. Since that blow up, he's been giving us the silent treatment. It's been three days now where he barely says a word to us. He stays shut in his room when he's home or slips out of the house without a word. We're feeling pretty disheartened.

We did get a text from our daughter, his sister, saying that he vented to her, calling us cruel and greedy for making him sign a contract. to live in his own parents' house. She knows the whole story and is trying to stay neutral, but hearing that he's telling others we turned on him is hard. My wife and I don't think we've done anything wrong by establishing these boundaries. If anything, maybe we should have done it sooner. But right now our son is incredibly angry at us.

We hope he cools down and realizes that paying a token rent and doing chores is not an outrageous thing to ask. That's where things stand. We have house rules in writing now, and a very unhappy son who thinks we're the villains. Not sure what the next step will be, but we'll see. Comment one, $400 per month is insanely low for what he's getting, basically full room and bored. If he thinks that's greedy, he's in for a rude awakening in the real world. Your right to set boundaries.

Has he actually signed or agreed to the written agreement yet, or is he just ignoring it? op he hasn't signed anything yet when we handed it to him he basically blew up and walked out we left a copy of the agreement in his room in case he cools down and reconsider so far he's just been avoiding us we're hoping once he realizes we're serious he'll talk to us and we can get him to actually agree in writing or at least verbally to the terms comment two how did your daughter react when he tried to badmouth you to her Op, according to our daughter, she mostly just listened to him vent, but didn't exactly

take his side. She told us she pointed out to him that $400 is nothing compared to real rent and that most parents would expect an adult to contribute something. She's trying not to be too involved, but she didn't think we were being cruel or anything. She kind of told him they have a point, you know. He apparently just got mad and ended the call. Update 2, it's been about three weeks since we laid down the house rules. Eventually, our son, grudgingly, agreed to the terms. After a week of sulking, he told us he'd sign the stupid agreement so we'd stop hounding him. In his word, he's paid the first $400 rent for this month and started doing his own laundry

and buying some of his own groceries. So in terms of the deal, he's technically complying. However, a new issue arose that we did not anticipate. Our son has started dating someone new, and she is very pregnant, visibly far along. From what we observe, the baby probably isn't his, but regardless, he's jumped into this relationship quickly. The bigger problem, she's at our house constantly. We're talking almost every day, often overnight.

They've basically taken over our living room for movie nights. She's even left clothes here, almost like she's living here part-time, even though we barely know her. We never laid out rules about guests when we set the agreement, because we didn't imagine we'd need a no-moving your girlfriend in claws. We were trying to treat him like an adult and not micromanage his social life. But now our home feels less like ours, it's like their personal apartment and we're just bystanders. After about a week of this, my wife and I gently approached our son, when his girlfriend wasn't around, to say we need to set some boundaries. We told him we're glad he's moving on socially, but having his girlfriend over every single day and night is more than we're comfortable with.

We suggested maybe they hang out elsewhere some days or limit overnights. He immediately got defensive. He accused us of being judgmental about his new relationship. According to him, We should be happy he's not lonely, and instead we're nitpicking and making her feel unwelcome. We tried to explain it's not about her as a person, it's about us needing some privacy in our own home. He wasn't hearing it. He basically said that if he had his own place, we wouldn't get any say in who he is over, and that we claim we want him to move on but then aren't actually happy when he does. After that talk, nothing changed.

She still comes over almost daily and stays over most nights. We're reluctant to push the issue further because technically he isn't violating the original written agreement, he is paying rent and doing chores, and we never explicitly set guest rules. But this situation is far beyond what we expected. My wife is especially uncomfortable with essentially having a stranger practically living in our home and a complicated situation at that, with her being pregnant. So that's where we stand now.

Our son is doing the bare minimum we required, but he's also turned our house into his new family hangout. And if we object, we're judging him. We're really unsure how to handle this, because it feels like a whole new boundary is being crossed. Comment one, wow, your son found a way to turn one freeloader into two. You're not wrong to want your house back. If he wants to play house with his girlfriend, he needs his own place. Does the girlfriend even know this is actually your home, not his? She seems awfully comfortable there. Op, we haven't explicitly discussed it with her, but she knows where his parents and that he lives with us, or at least we assume she knows. Now that you mention it, she does act very at home. It's possible he hasn't made it

clear that this is our house. We might need to subtly mention that we're the homeowners. Comment 2. NTA. Wanting reasonable boundaries on guests is completely fair. He basically moved her in without asking you. You may have to set a specific rule now, like no overnight guests more than X nights a week or something. If he can't respect that, he's breaking the spirit of your trust. Op, you're right. We're going to have another sit down. and spell out some limits on how often she can be here. We didn't think we'd have to, but lesson learned. We'll try to be diplomatic but firm.

We're not banning her outright, just making it clear there have to be limits, like maybe only weekends or a couple nights a week. Update 3, about a week after the last update, we discovered that our son has been telling his girlfriend that our house is actually his house, and that my wife and I are just his roommates helping him with expenses. We found this out by accident, I was chatting with his girlfriend in our kitchen while my son was out picking up food. She casually mentioned how cool it was that we, his roommates, were so helpful with the bills. We did a double take and said, uh, just to be clear, were his parents.

She seemed confused. She said she knew we were his parents, but that our son had kind of implied we all co-own the place or that we lived here to help him out. Basically, he'd given her the impression that he owns the house and were just here contributing to his mortgage. I didn't correct her in detail right then, because I was pretty stunned. Later, when the girlfriend wasn't around, we confronted our son. At first he tried to deny it or say she misunderstood, but when we pressed, he admitted he told her that.

His excuse. He didn't want to look like a loser who still lived. lives with his parents at 28. He tried to downplay it like it wasn't a big deal. Everyone exaggerates a bit when they're dating, I didn't think it mattered. We were extremely upset and told him this was absolutely not okay. We said it's disrespectful and absurd that he would basically demote us to roommates in our own home just to impress someone. We told him he needs to come clean to his girlfriend about whose house this really is, and soon, because we won't keep up that lie. He kind of shrugged and didn't give a firm answer, just kept saying it wasn't a huge deal and that

we were overreacting. At this point, my wife and I are furious and deeply hurt. It's one thing for him to rely on us, it's another to lie to make us look like background characters in his life. If he doesn't fix this, we're prepared to speed up our timeline on asking him to move out. We haven't spoken to his girlfriend about it further yet, we're hoping he'll tell her the truth himself, but if he doesn't, we will. The girlfriend absolutely deserves to know the real living situation, especially with a baby on the way. I'd give him an ultimatum, come clean to her and start showing you some respect, or he's out. Op, we're right on the edge of that breaking point. The only reason we haven't kicked him out already is that we're trying not to act purely

out of anger. But we 100% agree, this crossed a major line. We told him in no way. We told him in no uncertain terms that he must fix this lie. If he doesn't, an ultimatum, an eviction, is coming. We really never thought we'd be contemplating kicking out our own son, but his behavior is leaving us no choice. Update 4. About two weeks passed after the house lies. Before we could speak about our ultimatum, we got hit with the news, our son's pregnant girlfriend isn't a new fling at all, she was actually the other woman during his previous relationship, and the baby she's carrying is our sons. We found this out through our daughter. She stayed friendly with our son's ex, the one he dated for four years, and recently met up with her. The ex revealed that

she ultimately ended the relationship because she discovered our son had been cheating with his current girlfriend, and that the other woman, now girlfriend, contacted her around six to seven months after the breakup to rub it in that she was pregnant with our son's baby. So our son has known for a long while that he has a baby on the way, he just chose not to tell us when he moved back home. It explained a lot about his messy breakup and behavior after, he wasn't just heartbroken, he was caught in a huge mess of his own making. A few days ago, my wife and I confronted our son with this information. He tried to deny it at first, but once it was clear we had the timeline and facts, his girlfriend is about seven to eight months along, which matches

up, he admitted it. He said he didn't tell us because he knew we'd overreact and he wanted to wait until the time was right to break the news. Apparently that meant when the baby was almost due. We told him how upset and betrayed we felt, not only did he lie, but he apparently planned to raise a newborn under our roof without even asking us. At that point he dropped another bomb, he and his girlfriend had already decided that after the baby is born, they will both live here with the baby and essentially start their family in our home. He actually said we should be happy to have our grandchild around, and that having built-in babysitters, us, would be great since daycare is expensive. He delivered all this like it was a done deal. He never

once asked for permission, he just assumed we'd go along. In fact, we caught him already clearing out our home office, the only spare room we have, to make it a nursery. He was boxing up our things without even a conversation. My wife came upon our office furniture being moved and was in tears. We immediately told him to stop. He got Huffy and said we needed to start making sacrifices because the baby's going to need a lot of space and attention. He argued that since it's his child, our grandchild, and we have the room and resources and they don't, it just makes sense for them to live here and for us to help raise the baby. He also added that once the baby arrives his girlfriend will likely stop working,

so they'll be down to one income, implying they'll rely on us even more. My wife and I were absolutely horrified and said this was not going to happen. We never agreed to support an entire new family under our roof. We told him we might love our future grandchild, but this arrangement was not acceptable. He tried to guilt us by saying, Wow, so you're fine with kicking your own grandkid out onto the street. Great grandparents you'll be. He basically accused us of abandoning him and the baby.

At one point my wife had to walk away because she was on the verge of a breakdown. Our son kept insisting they had nowhere else to go, and that we were cruel for making them struggle when we could easily help. We ended up ending the conversation without any resolution, just to cool off. The bottom line, our son fully expects that his girlfriend and newborn will live here with him, with us providing housing, childcare, and financial support indefinitely, and he assumed this without ever asking. We are livid and feel massively taken advantage of. He is using our grandchild as emotional leverage to trap us, which is something we never

expected from our own child. The baby is due in about one or two months. After a lot of discussion, my wife and I are in complete agreement. As much as we love our son, we cannot allow this to happen. We refuse to be bullied into sacrificing our home and retirement to raise another baby. Update 5. Final Update. Here we are at the final update, not long after the last blow-up, my wife and I put our foot down completely. We gave our son a 30-day notice to move out. We put it in writing, making it clear that after 30 days,

he could no longer live here, and that under no circumstances would a baby be raised in our home. We also stated that his girlfriend was not allowed to move in. Basically, we drew a hard line, this arrangement was ending. He did not take it well. When we handed him the letter and explained it, he had a complete meltdown. There was yelling, crying, and a lot of other things. He said a lot of hurtful things, like that we were ruining his life, that we'd never see our grandkids, and that we were essentially disowning him. He accused us of valuing our precious peace and quiet over helping him. At one point he screamed, if you kick me out, consider me dead to you. Which was just devastating to hear. We stayed as calm as possible but it was very rough.

We didn't kick him out on the spot, we gave him 30 days to figure things out. During that period, two major things happened. First, his girlfriend broke. up with him. We don't know all the details, but apparently when she realized he had no real plan, and found out he'd lied about the house, she decided she didn't want to raise her baby in this chaos. From what we hear, she moved back in with her own parents, who will support her once the baby comes. Second, our son moved out. He didn't even use the full 30 days. Roughly two weeks into it, after his girlfriend left him, he packed some bags and left to crash on a friend's couch. We've heard he's bouncing between friends for now. He did not say

goodbye or anything, he just left in anger. Now it's just my wife and me in the house again. The silence is surreal. We feel a mix of sorrow and relief. Our son is extremely angry and has cut off contact except for a few nasty texts. As for our grandchild, she hasn't been born yet. We're not sure what will happen when she arrives. We let the ex-girlfriend, that we'd be willing to be involved as grandparents if she's open to it. She sent a polite message back that she's focusing on the baby for now, and maybe we can discuss visiting in the future. We'll see, we understand we might have limited involvement, at least initially. In the end, this whole thing has been very hard on us.

We're not happy that it came to essentially evicting our son and having him cut up. us off, but we truly felt we had no other choice. Our home is finally our own again, which is a relief, but it was the only way to get out of an impossible situation.