Meaning of «сесть кому-н на шею»

Question

Но она тут же села ему на шею - как и всем своим бывшим парням.

This is part of an IM I received from my girlfriend, in which she was talking jokingly about her female friend bordering on control freak vis-à-vis her henpecked boyfriend seemingly at her beck and call.

In Japanese, there is an expression 尻に敷かれる, literally "a man is beneath the hips of his wife/girlfriend", albeit without specifying which part of his body she sits on. I wonder if this Russian expression is more or less the neck version of it?

Is the phrase "тут же / immediately" part of this idiom?

Answer 1

I must add that "сидеть на шее" isn't just to be a burden on somebody, it's taking advantage of someone, having someone to look after you when you're fully capable of looking after yourself.

Answer 2

The idiom is. сидеть у кого-либо на шее — be a burden to smb, live at smb's expense. «Тут же» isn't included, meaning "immediately"

Your version corresponds to another idiom «быть под каблуком», which is a different kind of dependence.

Он всю жизнь сидит на шее у родителей, палец о палец не ударил.