I (23F) am back living with my parents to save money but they are controlling my relationship and despise my boyfriend (26m). What do I do?

TL;DR:

I’ve been with my boyfriend for 1.5 years, but my parents never liked him. They found reasons to criticize him early on, like our meeting frequency and me spending more time at his place. Their dislike intensified after a bad vacation where he treated me poorly, which I told them about in the moment. I worked through the issues with him, but my parents refuse to accept it and now forbid me from seeing him while I live with them. My original plan to move into a cheaper place fell through, and I can’t find dog-friendly roommates, so I’m staying with my parents for now. Rent is insanely expensive, and I want to focus on paying off my debt. I love living with my family, but they are controlling and refuse to respect my autonomy in this relationship. What should I do?

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I’ve been with my boyfriend for 1.5 years, but my parents have never liked him. When we first started dating, I lived at home, and they didn’t like how often we saw each other at first, then didn’t like when we saw each other slightly less due to our work schedules. They also expected him to come to family dinners last minute, which wasn’t realistic since we lived over an hour apart and he had a young puppy.

Over time, they found more reasons to dislike him, including the fact that I spent more time at his house than he did at mine. This made sense to me—he owns a house, I was living in my childhood bedroom—but they saw it as him not putting in enough effort. Their criticisms never stopped, and when I moved into my own apartment, they backed off a little, but still made their disapproval clear.

Then came the trip that made everything worse. A few months ago, I went on vacation with his family, and he sucked during it. He was rude, dismissive, and honestly, just an asshole to me. I felt completely isolated being stuck overseas with his entire family, and it got worse when one of his cousins started treating me like crap too. I broke down on the trip, called my parents, and vented about everything. My dad was way too happy about this, and when I got back, they wanted me to dump him immediately.

I didn’t. Instead, I took space and eventually talked things through with my boyfriend. He acknowledged he had been in the wrong, apologized, and made actual efforts to improve. This was the first time I ever dealt with these issues with him. Everything else that had happened in the past had been small and very much a non issue. Very normal and workable small issues, nothing major like what had happened. We worked through it, but I wasn’t fully honest with my parents about how much we were still together. When they found out, they were furious and refused to accept that I wanted to figure things out for myself. I told them that if the relationship wasn’t right, I needed to come to that conclusion on my own—not because they forced it. I’m also in therapy, doing the work to make sure I’m making the best choices for myself.

Now, here’s where it gets messy. My lease ended, and the new living situation I had lined up fell through. Rent is insanely expensive where I live (cheapest I can find is $1,700), and I have about $20k in debt. My parents told me I could stay with them rent-free for as long as I needed, which was great… except they put a condition on it: I’m not allowed to see my boyfriend while I live here.

For the past few weeks, I’ve been lying about it, but I hate lying and I can’t keep it up. I tried talking to them about how this isn’t a fair condition, and while I might be making progress, my mom is extremely passionate (to the point of seeming crazy about this) and hates him. She’s made wild accusations about him with zero basis—saying he’s abusive, racist, misogynistic, etc.—none of which are remotely true.

Here’s my dilemma: Staying here saves me at least $2,000/month, which would let me pay off debt faster. Plus, I actually like living with my family. As much as they’re controlling, it’s a loving, lively home, and it’s been good for my mental health. They have a huge house with a lot of land, which is amazing for my dog, and I just feel better being here.

But their controlling behavior is exhausting. I don’t want to be forced into a decision just because they say so, and I don’t want to set the precedent that they get to make these decisions for me. On the other hand, I don’t know if moving out and taking on a full rent payment is worth it just to have the freedom to see him. Obviously to me, it is worth it. I adore him more than anything and love him so much. But I just feel lost here.

On top of it all, he does not know any of this is going on with my parents. He knows they aren’t his biggest fans by the way they act around him, but he is not aware of all of this. Or any of it really. It’d break his heart and would hurt him and I don’t know how I am handling it yet