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The original was posted on /r/AmItheAsshole by /u/ADHDorTrauma on 2023-09-07 05:47:25.

I 41f and my husband 42m live with our 5 year old son in a 2 bedroom apartment. I also have 2 adult children and a granddaughter, who live on their own. I had a traumatic childhood. My mother and I have a strained relationship because of it. I’ve been to therapy and she has not. I’ve learned to forgive and due to my culture (Indigenous American) I personally cannot just go no contact without severe repercussion from the rest of my family who were supporting and did indeed try to help me. My mother now 62 loves back in our home state. She still has a drinking problem.She recently divorced her husband, moved out of her apartment and became roommates with this young couple (early 20’s). She needs a new place to stay as they want to start a family and have asked her to move out. We recently had a fight because I discovered she has been drunk driving. Drunk driving is a hard boundary for me as I’ve lost several family members from it. I’ve had to help those family members through it. You don’t want to know the pain of picking coffins for toddlers. I won’t drink and drive. Period. Learning my mother had been doing it made me furious. I stopped talking to her for several weeks because she admitted she’s “had” to do it several times to get home. I’ve taught her to use Uber and Lyft. As a child (10ish) I had to drive to the bar to pick her up some nights, if I knew she’d have to get up in the morning. I did this frequently enough the bouncer and bartender knew who I was and who I was there for. When I learned she’d been doing it again I was livid. Then she asked if she could come live me me and my husband. I told here there are rules and she’d have to abide by them. I don’t think they are unreasonable.

The rules:

1. Absolutely no drunk driving. If I find out she was drinking and driving she’d be asked to leave regardless of the time or day.
2. Do not get drunk in front of my son or my g-daughter. If my husband and I drink, it’s after he goes to bed. Our g-daughter sometimes comes and spends the night and the same rule would apply.
3. She may not share a room with the baby. We’d make a space for her in the living room until we found a larger place to accommodate her.
4. More warning than a rule, I did say I was finished picking her up from bars.

Those are the rules. After hearing them, she stated “I can’t promise I won’t do that.” So I said simply, “then the answer is no”. She said “FINE.” And has been distant since. She called me several days later saying she’s a grown woman and I can’t force her not to drink. I never said she’s not allowed to drink, I said “don’t drink and drive and don’t be drunk around my son and granddaughter”. Of course she called my Aunties and my uncles and told them I won’t let her live with me. I did explain it to them, and I’m being told from them she’s my mother and I should care for her the way she did for my Gran. So am I the asshole?