Tinks, are you sure you're not my daughter? You come across exactly like my daughter (you've spoken to her on here - queenofmean) a lot of her friends are all with partners/married/having children the whole nine yards and she's struggling to find herself a nice bf who'll treat her well - she seems to attract the kind who mess her around - You must be around the same age (24 maybe?) which in my opinion is too young to settle down anyway, you're both young get out there and make a good life/career for yourselves and to hell with anyone who tells you otherwise. I've never put any pressure on my daughter to conform to anything, as she was growing up, I still don't. She's still living at home because she can't afford to move out, and to be honest I enjoy having her around - we still have our arguments and so on but they're nothing major. I can't understand how your mum can undermine your confidence and treat you so badly, however my own mother always favoured my brother over me and I was there merely as a skivvy, who was only needed to deal with her "stuff" this carried on long after I married as well (I won't go into details about how things changed when my brother married either suffice to say I was treated like the daughter in law and mum was the mil from hell) After one final argument with her I stormed out and I didn't make any moves to get back in touch - quite the opposite, I'd realised I didn't need nor want her approval, I had a lovely husband and a wonderful daughter I needed nothing else! That realisation freed me from so much cr*p in my life and now I'm quite a happy little camper - my mum figured out that her blue eyed boy was in fact quite useless and she really needed me, more so in recent years as she now has dementia. So there Tinks, things will get better for you, just you work hard in your new job, you've achieved so much already don't let anyone put you down, when she goes off on a rant plug in your headphones and tune out to music or something and let it all wash over you. BTW I was almost 30 before I married, if I done it earlier I doubt we'd have reached a 5th anniversary.