Living with Mom-in-Law

Dear Rabbi Lazer,

I need your urgent advice. I’m engaged, and my wedding date is in 6 weeks (Lag B’Omer). My fiancé, a fresh honors graduate from med school, had been accepted for internship in a reputable Colorado hospital, and promised me (before our engagement) that right after the wedding, we’d be moving out West. Now, he’s been accepted to intern in a very prestigious hospital in his home town of NYC, which I utterly can’t stand. To make matters worse, he wants to save money by us living with his parents, since they have a tremendous house, and all their other kids have moved out already. I feel like I’m getting a raw deal, my stomach somersaults with nerves, and I’m having second doubts about the marriage, with a guilty conscience to boot. Rabbi Lazer, am I being selfish? My fiancé promised me that we’d be living in Denver; NYC is bad enough, but am I expected to live with his parents? I feel like a lamb being set up for slaughter, and I don’t like it. As a rabbi, would you allow me to break off the engagement? Please answer me as fast as possible. Thank you so much. Betsy from Pennsylvania 

When a young bride is forced to live with her mother-in-law, the marriage is starting off on the left foot. No bride in the world can withstand a 24-hr. a day microscopic surveillance. Mothers-in-law are happy to find fault, and they almost always think that their daughters-in-law aren’t doing enough for their poochy-moochy little boy. If your fiancé told you before the engagement that you’d be living in NYC with his parents, you certainly wouldn’t have agreed. It’s therefore not fair to pop the new conditions on you six weeks before the wedding. According to religious law, you don’t have to agree to the new conditions.