He lived with his mom when we met. It was a problem for me, but he told me not to worry because his mom was the coolest mom in the world. He introduced me to her as a friend, and the reception was normal. She wasn’t excited, and she wasn’t angry or anything. She was simply indifferent.

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From the day I was introduced to her, I told him I wouldn’t want to meet his mom again because I didn’t like the way she received me. Again, he stood up for his mom, telling me that with time, she would get used to me. I loved him and wanted to build a life with him, but every step of the way, his mom’s influence came up, and it made me scared.

If we had to decide on something, he would tell me he had to consult his mom first. I didn’t have a problem with that, but anytime his mom said no, he would take her side without even questioning it. There was a wedding we had to attend. We planned for it the whole month, and he even gave me money to buy clothes for the occasion.

A few days before the wedding, he told me his mom had asked him to escort her to a funeral in their hometown on the same day. I asked him, “So you’re not going, right?”

He answered, “Just go and represent us. When I return from the funeral, I’ll visit them and present my gift.”

When he returned from the funeral, I told him I didn’t like the fact that his mom came before everything else, even something we had planned for a very long time. I thought he was going to say sorry, but again, he became defensive. He said, “She’s my mom. What do you expect me to do? Leave her to go alone?”

We fought over this for days, and it eventually led to our breakup. I was fed up. I didn’t like how his mother’s influence permeated everything, and when he suggested it was always going to be like that, I told him to go and marry his mom.

The breakup lasted for only a few days until one day I received a call. I picked up, and it was his mom.

She said, “My son can’t function anymore because of you. Can we talk about it and see how we can resolve this?”

My temper shot through the roof. The fact that his mom was now going to resolve a problem she herself had caused annoyed me. But I didn’t want to disrespect her, so I agreed to meet her at the house so we could resolve the issue.

My boyfriend hadn’t told her the full story behind our fight. He only told her we had broken up because he didn’t attend a wedding with me. That was my mistake. I should have told her everything that had led to the breakup, but again, out of respect, I accepted her apology on behalf of her son, and we reconciled.

From that day, his mom became interested in our relationship and started being nice to me. She smiled more often. She called and personally invited me to visit the house because she hadn’t seen me in a while. She also became the mother figure who resolved our disagreements whenever we had issues. This went on for about a year, and it made me believe she wasn’t the problem after all.

So when he suggested we should get married, I agreed. Again, his mother supported us throughout the process until the wedding day, when she clashed with my mom. I wasn’t there, but after the wedding, my mom called her a witch and said she didn’t believe I would have a peaceful marriage because of my mother-in-law.

My mother-in-law had a different version of the story. She called my mom a difficult woman.

Finally, when my husband was leaving home for us to start our own home, my mother-in-law called me and said, “I’m leaving him in your hands now. Take care of him better than I did, or else I’ll come for him.”

Looking back, I should have taken that message as a warning about the problems ahead, but I took it as a lovely remark and even thanked her for leaving him in my hands.

We had lived together for only a week when this woman came to visit us. She said she was going to stay for the weekend, but three months later, she was still living with us.

She took over the kitchen, telling me how to cook and even the temperature at which I should heat water. “My son doesn’t like his light soup this way,” she would tell me. “You have to add more tomatoes and also grind a little carrot into it.”

If I didn’t cook her way, then the food was bad.

One day I told my husband, “I miss the way my mom prepares my food. I want to go home and eat from her too.”

He called me petty, but I left.

His mom called angrily, talking to me as if I were her little daughter. “How can you leave your husband and son and go to live with your parents? What kind of wife are you?”

I responded, “If he’s my husband, then leave him for me to marry him. Don’t marry him through me. That won’t work.”

She called it an insult and had the audacity to call my mom to insult me. My mom took over the fight and started from the disagreement they had at the wedding. She screamed, “Allow your son to be a man. He’s not a boy. Leave him to be his own person.”

My dad didn’t fight. He told me the marriage had failed the very day we got married, so if I wasn’t willing to stay, then I should leave the marriage instead of fighting battles because of it.

I called my husband. He was so angry, telling me I had attacked his mother through my mom and that because of that, he didn’t see any reason for us to talk.

Our marriage is less than a year old, but the battles within it are bigger than the First World War. My mother-in-law is still living with my husband in the house the two of us rented. She won’t cede ground for me to take over my own marriage. My husband is also on her side, blaming me for everything that has gone wrong. He insists I’m the reason our marriage is collapsing, while I tell him his mother is the reason.

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We are living apart now. As long as his mother stays in that house, I’m not going back there. And since he doesn’t see his mother as the source of our troubles, there’s no point trying to resolve anything. I’ll stay here and enjoy the way my mom cooks. It was marriage I entered into. I didn’t walk into a slaughterhouse for them to slaughter me.

Or am I the one at fault here?

—Florence

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