How Do I Stop This War Between My Mother And My Fiancé?

I met him at an age when the elders warned me to stay away from boys. “At nineteen, you see yourself as an adult but you are still a child,” they would say. “Don’t pay attention to any boy. They will fill your head with nonsense and distract you from your dreams. Pay attention to your education right now. When you finish school, you can have any man you want.” That was my mother’s advice.

I like to think of myself as a good girl. I don’t usually disobey my elders. I do everything my mother tells me. This is why I was so sure that I would stay away from boys until I have gotten a degree. As though love was a patient man who would only sweep me off my feet when I am ready. There is a saying that love finds you when you least expect it. That is what I experienced when I met Achilles.

All the walls I built to keep myself safe from boys did nothing to keep him out of my heart. He has the kind of smile that caused all my defenses to quake and crumble. He is also very kind. He always goes out of his way to help people. And he does things for me that I don’t expect him to. This is how he slowly conquered my heart, with little acts of kindness. Lest I forget, he is funny. I have never not laughed in his presence. At nineteen, you can easily fall at the feet of a man who commands laughter out of you. So I fell. Hard. In love with him.

I tried to keep our relationship under wraps in order not to upset my mother. Being with Achilles did not feel wrong, but I did not see the need to rub my happiness in my family’s faces either. So we kept things quiet for a while. Contrary to what the elders said, he did not do anything to distract me from my education. He was rather supportive. He encouraged me to achieve my goals so we can both have a beautiful future together. Every time I felt tired he would tell me, “This is just a little sacrifice you have to make for us to live our dreams.” I also pushed him to achieve his dreams.

When my mother eventually found out about the relationship she was not happy about it. She feared for my future but I assured her that it will all be okay. She didn’t wholly accept the idea but she tried to be friendly toward him for my sake. Achilles on the other hand, loved my mum and tried his best to be good enough in her eyes. Despite his efforts, my mum is a perfectionist, so she found fault with him from time to time and it eventually caused friction between them. Sometimes they would bear grudges against each other until I step into the situation and call for a truce.

Years have passed but their little rivalry still continues. It doesn’t matter that Achilles and I have been together for six years now, and I am currently a twenty-five-year-old woman who has graduated from the university. Nothing changed even after his family met my family. We are now engaged to be married yet my mother and my husband-to-be still continue to have their squabbles.

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Their most recent fight is what is giving me a headache right now. My mother was the first person who complained to me, “Do you know that your “husband” disrespected me? I was talking to him about something and he got angry and hung up on me. Is this how he will treat me after he officially marries you?” I couldn’t believe Achilles treated my mother that way.

I confronted him and he said, “Your mother is always hard on me. She complains about every little thing I do. It looks like she doesn’t like me.” “That’s not true,” I told him, “If my mother didn’t like you we wouldn’t even be together. It is because she has given us her blessings that we have made it this far, You should apologize for hanging up on her.” He felt I had taken sides so he wasn’t pleased. He didn’t apologize to my mother so now they are not on good terms.

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It didn’t end with my mum. He has extended the fight to me. In anger he told me, “We are getting ready for marriage but your family keeps a distance from mine. Both families should get close and become one.” I told him, “I like the way our families relate. If they get too close to each other, they may start interfering in our business when we get married.”

Because of this little disagreement, he stopped talking to me. After a month of not talking to me, he finally reached out and said, “If things don’t change between our families, I will change toward you and you won’t like it. Or better still, I will walk out of this relationship and find someone who wouldn’t have a problem accepting my family as theirs.”

I love him and I don’t want to lose him, but I feel he is overreacting. This is not an issue that should cause him to stop talking to me for one whole month. And how can I marry a man who is always having problems with my mother? I am so confused. What do I do?

–Kiki