Am I wrong for not wanting to live with (or constantly visit) my boyfriend’s family?

My bf(25m) and I( 25 f ) have been together almost two years. We live about 5 hours apart.

Before I met him, his mom and sister(20f) moved in with him. Then his brother(22m) moved in. Now his cousin(23m) lives there too. It’s a small home — his brother and cousin sleep in the living room. He feels responsible for them because his dad was never around. He works out of town Monday–Friday with his brother and cousin and comes home on weekends.

He usually comes to visit me on weekends. I live alone with my two dogs and 2 cats and I love my independence. I’m the oldest daughter, not very emotionally close with my family, and I really value having my own space. I work with my parents, so I see them almost daily, but outside of work I normally keep my distance. I like that balance.

His family is the opposite. They do everything together. Wake up together, spend all day together, always around each other.

In the beginning, when he worked closer to my town, I would go to him Fridays and he’d drive us to his home and back to my town on Mondays. Few months in, he found work closer to his hometown, so since then it’s truly long distance and harder for me to travel. He wants us to alternate weekends — one at his place, one at mine — but I don’t like staying there often. I get socially drained. I feel like I’m “on” all the time. There’s no real privacy. I work Monday-sat and love to spend my day off at home. but when i visit him, i have to take off work Saturdays and Mondays. I went more often at first because it felt like I needed to. Since his mom and sister don’t drive, and he had lost his car, their only way around was to use mine. He didn’t respect the one week at mine and one at his routine because he would always say he couldn’t stay the weekend with me because he had to take them out the house or take them for groceries.

After a few months, his brother got a car so he didn’t use those excuses anymore. He would be straight up and say he just wants to spend time at his house.

Around that time, I also found out he had lied to me about something. He had a messed up relationship with an aunt that I suspected since day 1 but he always denied till she threatened him and I saw the messages. That hurt me deeply and I stopped putting in as much effort to go over there. He started coming to see me more after that.

Anyway, he started to put in effort to come see me more frequently, which I really appreciated and well there weren’t anymore arguments about me not going to his home. he once tried to make me choose between going every other week to see him or we were done (before I found out what he lied to me about)

When I visit, we’ll say hello to everyone, then go to his room and stay there most of the time. To me, that feels disrespectful because his family spends all their time together in the living room. It feels awkward to just lock ourselves in his room while everyone else is out there and only come out for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. He says it’s not disrespectful and it’s “all in my head.”

Another thing that makes me uncomfortable: his mom still takes care of him a lot. She does his laundry, packs his work bag, makes his food. One time she cleaned his entire room while we were gone for a couple days, including my personal things we had left out. That made me uncomfortable. To him, it’s normal.

Another thing is that when he comes to see me, his mom checks in a lot. She’ll text asking what time he’s coming home, even if it’s just a weekend trip. During a recent snow break he had two weeks off — he spent one full week at home, then came to stay with me the second week (which included my birthday). About seven days into him being here, she messaged asking when he was coming back because “it’s been seven days already.” Even on normal weekends she’ll text Sunday asking what time he’ll be home and comment if it’ll be late.

I try to be understanding — she’s his mom and she misses him. But sometimes it makes me feel like our time together is being monitored or counted. I start feeling guilty for having him with me or when he chooses to spend his time with me.

Recently we talked seriously about the future. His plan is to buy a bigger house near his mom’s extended family and move everyone there. He wants me to live there too. I told him honestly I don’t see myself ever moving into a house with his whole family. I would want us to build our own separate home and life together.

He says he doesn’t see himself moving away from his family. Maybe we’d live near them, but not far. I told him I don’t see myself leaving my town either.

I’ve tried to explain to him that this isn’t about not liking his family — I genuinely love them. They’ve been good to me, and this has nothing to do with them doing anything wrong. It’s about my comfort and the kind of life I see for myself. When he says he can’t leave his family or won’t leave them for me, that’s not what I’m asking. I’m not asking him to abandon anyone. I’m asking if he ever sees himself building a separate life with me — just us. When I asked if he’d ever be open to moving closer to my family or even meeting halfway, he said he wants to stay with or near his. And when I pointed out that it feels like we’re on two completely different paths, he said “everything with time,” because he hopes I’ll change my mind. But the truth is, the same hope he has for me is the hope I have for him. And that’s what scares me — that we’re both waiting for the other person to become someone they may never be.

I love him. He’s a good man. He loves hard. He provides. He cares deeply about his family. But I need privacy. I need independence. I need to feel like my partner and I are building something that’s ours — not just me fitting into something that already exists.

I don’t know if this is something couples grow through, or if this is one of those painful realizations that love isn’t always enough when your visions for life look so different.

Has anyone made this kind of dynamic work?

Do I need to suck it up and visit them more.

How do you navigate a relationship where one partner feels deeply responsible for their family and the other values independence and space?