My Suitor, 37, Invited Me to Meet His Parents. His Mother Spent the Whole Evening Teaching Me How to Live — I Refused to Put Up With It
I had always known what I wanted from life, but it had taken me a long time to reach that understanding — through mistakes, other people’s imposed stereotypes, and attempts to be “convenient.” By the age of thirty-seven, I had finally built my ideal little world, and I guarded its borders more strictly than border guards protect state frontiers.
My life was all about order and quiet. For several years now, I had been earning my living by writing. I ran my own blog, where I published life stories. It was my bread and butter, my outlet, and my main tool for reaching my goal. And I had one goal, but it was a major one: I was methodically saving, ruble by ruble, for my own spacious apartment. For now, I rented a cozy one-room place in a green neighborhood, but I dreamed of having my own walls, where everything would be arranged exclusively for me.
My home was my fortress. My sacred ritual was a full, uninterrupted eight hours of sleep. If I didn’t get enough sleep, I couldn’t work, which meant my dream of buying an apartment would be pushed further away. There was no room in my home for fuss, loud noises, uninvited guests, or relationship drama. The only living creature I shared those square meters with was a huge, fluffy, melancholic cat named Baloo.
That was precisely why finding a partner had always been a difficult task for me. I didn’t need a “provider” — I earned quite well myself. I didn’t need the “father of my children.” I simply needed a calm, reasonable person for walks together, trips to the theater, and quiet evenings.
When Oleg appeared in my life, it seemed to me that I had drawn a lucky ticket.
We met at a construction hypermarket. I was choosing a desk lamp for my workspace, and he was standing nearby, thoughtfully examining electrical outlets. One word led to another; he helped me test the lamp at the display stand and offered to carry the box to the checkout. Then we had coffee in the food court.
Oleg was thirty-seven too. He worked as a design engineer at some large construction company. Short, slightly stooped, always wearing a beige sweater and neat glasses, he gave the impression of a solid and reliable man.
Our dates were as calm as he was. We walked along park alleys, fed ducks, and occasionally went to the cinema to watch quiet European films. Oleg didn’t drink anything stronger than dry wine on holidays, never raised his voice, and never forced unsolicited advice on me. He seemed like that quiet harbor, a cozy old blanket one longs to wrap oneself in after a long working day at the computer.
After three months of dating — we hadn’t even moved in together yet, we simply spent weekends together — Oleg once dabbed his lips with a napkin during dinner at a café, cleared his throat, and said:
“Inna, you and I are adults. We’ve been seeing each other for quite some time now. My mother, Tamara Ilyinichna, really wants to meet you. This Saturday she’s expecting us for dinner. My father will be there too.”
Something unpleasant scratched inside me. I don’t like these staged performances, “bride inspections,” and invasions of personal space. But on the other hand, we really were adults. Refusing would simply have been impolite.
“All right,” I nodded. “What time should we be there?”
By Saturday, I prepared thoroughly. I had no intention of bending over backward to be liked, but good manners required effort. I put on a restrained dark-blue midi dress and did neat daytime makeup. On the way, we stopped at a good pastry shop, where I bought a fresh Esterházy cake for fifteen hundred rubles — not some cheap sponge cake from a supermarket, but a real work of art made of almond layers and custard cream.
Oleg’s parents lived in an old residential district, in a classic nine-story panel building from the 1980s. The entrance hall stubbornly smelled of cat litter, boiled cabbage, and dampness from the basement. The elevator was covered in marker scribbles, and on our landing, a bare bulb without a shade flickered dimly.
Oleg pressed the button of a doorbell set into cracked faux leather. Behind the door came shuffling footsteps, a heavy lock clanked, and then she appeared on the threshold.
Tamara Ilyinichna.
She was a heavy, monumental woman with short permed hair the color of eggplant. She wore a stale flannel housecoat, over which, for some reason, there was a floral kitchen apron.
She did not respond to my friendly “Good evening.” She stood in the doorway, hands on hips, and began scanning me from head to toe. Her eyes, sharp and cold, lingered on every detail: my coat, my handbag, my shoes. Her gaze was so appraising that it felt as though I had come to apply for a job as her maid and was asking for too high a salary.
“Ah, well, come in then, since you’re here,” she finally drawled, pursing her lips in dissatisfaction. “No need to stand around on the threshold.”
We entered the cramped hallway. The apartment greeted me with a heavy, stale odor. It was that specific smell of apartments where elderly people live, afraid of drafts and refusing to open windows for years. It smelled of mothballs, old carpet, onions fried in lard, and some kind of heart medication. My nose, accustomed to fresh air and the light scent of lavender in my own home, immediately rebelled.
“I brought a cake,” I said, holding out the pretty box tied with a ribbon.
Tamara Ilyinichna took it with two fingers and squinted disdainfully at the pastry shop’s name.
“Esterházy… What won’t they invent. I bake myself, actually. Normal apple pies, not this store-bought chemical stuff. Fine, I’ll put it in the fridge. Take off your shoes. The slippers are over there in the corner. The blue ones.”
I looked into the corner. There lay a pile of trampled, matted guest slippers, the mere sight of which made me uneasy.
“Thank you, Tamara Ilyinichna, I’ll keep my shoes on. They’re clean; I came from the car.”
“What nonsense!” the hostess snapped indignantly. “I washed the floors today! Put on the slippers. We have our own rules here. Don’t come with your own charter into someone else’s monastery.”
I clenched my teeth. I didn’t want to argue in the doorway. I took off my shoes and remained in my tights, ignoring the slippers. Tamara Ilyinichna snorted but said nothing, turned around, and floated toward the kitchen.
In the large room where Oleg led us, it was stuffy and dark. An enormous Soviet polished wall unit took up an entire wall, filled with crystal glassware that no one ever used. A thick reddish-brown carpet covered the floor. In an armchair in front of a television blaring at full volume sat a skinny man in stretched-out sweatpants — Oleg’s father.
“Dad, we’re here,” Oleg said loudly.
The man glanced at me briefly, nodded, muttered something unintelligible, and returned his stare to the screen, where some political program was playing. He did not say another word for the rest of the evening.
Ten minutes later, we were called to the table. It was set in the finest traditions of Soviet feasts from the 1990s, when the amount of mayonnaise was considered an indicator of prosperity.
In the center stood a huge crystal boat filled with herring under a fur coat, generously drowned in Provencal mayonnaise. Beside it were plates of thickly sliced boiled pork oozing fat, a bowl of boiled potatoes heavily sprinkled with dill, and a salad bowl of Olivier, in which there was more bologna than all the other ingredients combined.
I eat lightly. There is no place in my kitchen for liters of oil and heavy food. Seeing this gastronomic hell, my stomach tightened in advance. I took a plate and, out of politeness, put on it a tiny spoonful of herring under a fur coat and one piece of potato.
Tamara Ilyinichna, who had seated herself at the head of the table, noticed immediately.
“Why are you pecking like a little bird?” she asked loudly, leaning over the table. “Are you on one of those diets of yours? Is that why you’re so pale? Eat! I stood by the stove half the day! Look at Olezhek, he’s gobbling it down with both cheeks.”
Oleg really was greedily stuffing salad into himself without lifting his eyes from his plate.
“Thank you, it’s very tasty, I’m just not hungry,” I tried to joke.
“Well, well,” she snorted, propping her cheek on her hand. She didn’t even pick up her fork. The interrogation began.
“So, tell me, Inna. Who are you, where did you come from? Oleg said you sit at home and don’t work?”
I took a deep breath. Calm. Just stay calm.
“I do work, Tamara Ilyinichna. I’m self-employed. I run my blog, write stories, and do commissioned text work.”
My prospective mother-in-law twisted her lips contemptuously, as if I had confessed to stealing loose change from people’s pockets.
“Little scribbles on the internet, then. A blogger. I see. Basically unemployed. A parasite. And what about work experience? What about your pension? If something happens and you get sick, who will feed you? Are you planning to sit on my Olezhek’s neck?”
She sharply turned to her son.
“I told you, Oleg! Find yourself a normal woman! Someone with a real profession! An accountant, or a nurse, or a schoolteacher. What is this? Today your internets exist, tomorrow someone cuts the cable, and what will she do then?”
I looked at Oleg. I was waiting for him to intervene. For him to say, “Mom, stop it, Inna earns well, it’s a respected job.” For him to at least try to defend my choice and my boundaries.
But the “quiet harbor” named Oleg continued actively chewing boiled pork. He hunched his head into his shoulders, took a sip of compote, and mumbled indistinctly:
“Mom, well, times are different now… Lots of people work online…”
“Times are different!” Tamara Ilyinichna mimicked him. “A man needs a reliable wife! He’s well regarded at the factory; they recently gave him a bonus. And here we have some nobody.”
I felt cold fury beginning to boil inside me. But I forced myself to smile.
“Don’t worry, Tamara Ilyinichna. I am perfectly capable of supporting myself. My income is higher than the average factory salary. I don’t sit on anyone’s neck and have no intention of doing so. Moreover, I’m currently actively saving to buy my own apartment so I won’t depend on anyone.”
The mention of an apartment had an unexpected effect on her. She froze for a second, digesting the information, and then her eyes narrowed unpleasantly.
“She’s saving for an apartment,” she drawled with such mockery that I wanted to wash my ears with soap. “Well, look at you, businesswoman. At thirty-seven, dear, you ought to be thinking about something else.”
She leaned forward, resting her chest against the edge of the table.
“Your clock isn’t just ticking, it’s already cuckooing through the whole forest! You and Oleg are the same age. But for a man, thirty-seven is his prime. He’s only just found his footing, grown stronger. And you? You’re already finished, practically an old woman. An elderly first-time mother. You need to jump onto the last carriage, not save up for apartments!”
A piece of boiled potato lodged in my throat. I carefully placed my fork on the edge of the plate. Wiped my lips with a napkin. Looked at my watch — we had been in that house exactly forty minutes.
“Tamara Ilyinichna,” my voice sounded even, although everything inside me was trembling with indignation. “Oleg and I discussed this topic at the very beginning of our acquaintance. I do not plan to have children. Not now, and not while jumping onto any ‘last carriage.’ I am comfortable living the way I live. I have different priorities.”
A dead, ringing silence hung over the table. It seemed even the father in the armchair by the television had stopped breathing.
Tamara Ilyinichna’s face slowly began to blotch crimson. She stared at me as though I had just dismembered a kitten in front of her right on her favorite carpet.
“You don’t plan to?!” Her voice broke into a shrill falsetto that made the crystal in the polished wall unit ring. “Then why are you messing with my son’s head?! Why are you hanging around him, you barren freeloader?!”
Tamara Ilyinichna breathed heavily. She planted both plump hands on the table, looming over the herring under a fur coat, her perm trembling slightly from the emotions overflowing inside her. The mask of hospitality, which had barely been holding on anyway, finally fell away.
“So what, you nasty piece of work, you think I’ll allow my only son to spend his life with a barren woman?” she enunciated every word, no longer holding back at all and spitting as she spoke. “Family means children! Continuing the bloodline! Oleg is our only heir; he needs a son! Who will he leave his one-room apartment to when we die? And who are you? An egoist! She wants to live for herself! Buying little apartments! Planning to kiss her stinking cats until old age!”
She slammed her fist on the table so hard the cutlery clattered.
“A woman’s purpose is to give birth! And if you don’t give birth, then don’t go hanging around normal men. Go to a convent or a cat shelter!”
I sat perfectly straight. My hands rested on my knees. I felt no fear, only disgust. Sticky, suffocating disgust toward this woman, this stuffy apartment, and the situation I had ended up in.
I slowly shifted my gaze to Oleg. To the man with whom I had shared a bed. With whom I had walked through parks and discussed books. To the man to whom, in the very first month of our acquaintance, I had honestly and openly said, “Oleg, I am childfree. I don’t want children. If that matters to you, let’s end this now so we don’t waste time.” And back then he had replied, “Inna, I understand you. Peace and partnership matter more to me too.”
Now this “partner” sat with his head tucked into his shoulders. He was hunched over so much that he seemed half his actual size. He nervously picked at the salad smeared across his plate with his fork, afraid to raise his eyes.
“Oleg,” I called quietly, but sharply enough that he flinched. “Why are you silent? You knew my position. We talked about this. Explain to your mother that we are adults and will sort out our lives ourselves.”
Oleg finally raised his eyes to me. It was the look of a beaten dog — cowardly and evasive.
“Well, Inn…” he bleated, scratching the beginning of a bald spot. “Mom is right about some things, you know… Words on dates, when we were just getting to know each other, are one thing, but real life is different. You know, age, Inna. It’s time to settle down. We’ll get married, you’ll stop writing those little articles of yours, find a normal job before maternity leave so you get good maternity payments. Mom will help with the child if needed; she’s retired.”
He said it very quickly, as if reciting a memorized text he had been turning over in his head for a long time.
“And you’ll have to get rid of your cat, Inn,” he added, looking away. “I actually start getting allergic to fur. I just took pills before our meetings and endured it. But I won’t live in one apartment with that beast. You’re a woman, Inna. You should understand that family requires sacrifices and compromises.”
At that moment, in the stuffy room smelling of fried onions and mothballs, under the mumbling of the television, everything became crystal, blindingly clear to me. As though someone had switched on a floodlight in a dark basement, and I saw all the cockroaches.
I saw my potential future with this man.
I saw my silence collapsing. I saw myself waking up at six in the morning with eyes red from lack of sleep because “Olezhek is used to hot syrniki before his shift.” I saw myself giving away Baloo, my affectionate, devoted cat, with whom I had lived soul to soul for five years, into strangers’ hands because a thirty-seven-year-old little basket case didn’t want to take pills.
I saw this crimson-faced woman with a perm opening the door to my apartment with her own key, poking through my closets, checking the dust on the windowsills, and teaching me how to cook proper borscht.
I saw myself breaking myself, my psyche, and my body by giving birth to an unwanted child simply because “that’s how it’s supposed to be” and “the clock is cuckooing.” And I saw myself saying goodbye forever to my dream of my own ideal apartment, handing over my savings for diapers, Oleg’s loans, and the needs of “the family.”
And for what? So I wouldn’t be alone? For the status of “married” to this stooped, potato-chewing slug, who at thirty-seven had no voice in front of his mother and was afraid to squeak in defense of the woman he had brought into the house?
I stood up from the table. Very slowly, carefully pushing back the heavy chair so it wouldn’t scrape against the parquet.
“You are right, Tamara Ilyinichna,” I said coldly.
The hostess triumphantly lifted her chin, convinced she had pressed me down, broken the wayward, stubborn future daughter-in-law. That now I would start apologizing and swearing love for future grandchildren.
“I really am an egoist,” I continued, looking her straight in the eyes from above. “I love my life to madness. I love my silence. I adore my eight hours of sleep. I love my work, which brings me excellent money. And I love my cat.”
I paused.
“And you know what? My neutered cat Baloo has more masculine dignity and character than your thirty-seven-year-old ‘boy.’”
Tamara Ilyinichna’s face stretched. Her mouth fell open, revealing gold crowns, but she could not make a sound. She merely gasped like a fish thrown onto shore. Oleg choked on his compote and started coughing, red as a lobster. For the first time that evening, his father by the television turned his head toward us.
“You were looking for a free incubator-housemaid with official employment and a compliant character? Sorry, you have the wrong address. My peace and my freedom are too expensive for me to pay with them for the dubious pleasure of washing your son’s socks. I wish you luck in your search for a more agreeable victim.”
I turned and walked into the hallway. My back was straight as a string. I put on my shoes, stepping disdainfully over the blue slippers. Took my coat from the hanger.
Oleg ran into the hallway after me, fussily wiping his mouth with a checked cloth napkin.
“Inna! Inna, what are you doing?!” he hissed, trying to grab me by the elbow. “Why are you getting offended over nothing? Mom is just from the old school, she wants what’s best for us! Why did you have to be rude? You could have kept quiet, agreed, and then you and I would have figured everything out ourselves, quietly… Why so harsh?”
I disgustedly shook his sweaty hand off my sleeve.
“We have already figured everything out, Oleg. Or rather, you figured it out when you stayed silent. Go finish your mayonnaise-covered herring. And don’t forget to take your pill. For your allergy to real life.”
I opened the heavy faux-leather door and stepped out onto the landing.
“And eat the cake,” I threw over my shoulder. “At least then you’ll know what normal food tastes like.”
I walked down the stairs, and with every step, it became easier to breathe. I came out of the cat-smelling entrance into the cool, fresh November evening. I inhaled deeply, filling my lungs with frosty air unpoisoned by the smell of old grease, mothballs, and other people’s expectations.
While walking to the bus stop, I took out my phone. Found Oleg’s contact. Blocked his number. Then I opened my messengers and deleted all our correspondence, erasing that man from my life as easily as one wipes dust from a windowsill.
I got home an hour later.
I opened the door to my apartment and was greeted by perfect, velvety silence. No television. No strange voices. The air smelled fresh, with the faint scent of a lavender diffuser. Baloo came out to meet me, purring loudly and deeply, rubbing his fluffy side against my legs and demanding his rightful portion of evening affection.
I washed my hands. Brewed myself herbal tea with lemon balm in a beautiful glass cup. Removed my makeup and changed into my favorite soft flannel pajamas.
I sat down in the armchair, placed the cat on my lap, and took a sip of hot tea. Warmth and an absolute, indescribable feeling of safety spread through me.
I lay down in my spacious, cool bed. Wrapped myself in a light down blanket, turned off the bedside lamp, and closed my eyes. And as I sank into my sacred eight hours of sleep, I thought only one thing.
How wonderful it is to be a thirty-seven-year-old, self-sufficient, confident “elderly first-time-mother egoist.” No status of wife, no stamp in a passport, and no expectations of society are worth paying for with one’s dignity, health, and dreams. My home means my rules. And infantile mama’s boys are permanently barred from entering this fortress.
I’m waiting for your opinions in the comments. Thank you all for reading the article.