We came home from our anniversary trip to find my mother in law had redecorated our living room.
Not redecorated as in moved a pillow. I mean new curtains, new throw rugs, my grandmother artwork taken down and replaced with her own pictures. She had moved in while we were gone.
My husband knew. He had given her a key six months earlier without telling me and had apparently agreed she could stay indefinitely because she was lonely after his father passed.
I understand grief. I understand family. But I also understand that this was my home and I had been completely removed from a decision that affected my life every single day.
The conversation that followed was the hardest of our marriage. I told my husband that I loved him but that I could not live in a house where I had no voice. He had to choose how our marriage worked going forward.
It took two weeks of tension and three sessions with a couples counselor. In the end, his mother moved to an apartment two miles away. We see her every Sunday for dinner.
I do not think my husband fully understood what he had done until he saw how serious I was. Sometimes love means being willing to have the uncomfortable conversation.