Sharing can be difficult – especially when it’s sharing the man you love with another woman. And perhaps no one knows this better than mothers and their daughters-in-law, who have historically butted heads to epic proportions. Big celebrations, like birthdays or Christmas, can often spark conflict over who gets to host the festivities. Meanwhile, landmark life events – weddings, babies – may trigger fallings out so severe that they take months, or even years, to recover from. In popular culture most recently: Victoria Beckham allegedly leaving her son Brooklyn Beckham’s wife Nicola Peltz “in tears” after hijacking the couple’s first dance. Rough, if true.
Last year, a YouGov survey found that almost a third of women have “quarrelled” with their mother-in-law at some point in their relationship. Meanwhile, separate research found that 60 per cent of women admitted the relationship with their female in-law caused them long-term unhappiness and stress. This familial power struggle is explored in the forthcoming adaptation of Michelle Frances’s psychological thriller The Girlfriend, which follows wealthy woman Laura (Robin Wright) as she grows suspicious of her son’s new partner Cherry (Olivia Cooke), who she fears has a manipulative, dishonest streak.
As Laura attempts to uncover Cherry’s corrupt intentions, tension bubbles between them in the kitchen, on holiday, in the workplace – and even in the bedroom. But a cursory glance at Reddit’s infamous “Am I the Asshole” forum – where users have long shared their domestic disputes to gauge whether they’re in the wrong in altercations with their loved ones – shows that real-life feuds between a girlfriend and their boyfriend’s mother have spawned under far less sinister circumstances. One woman wanted to hold her daughter-in-law’s baby before her son. Another continually asked her son’s girlfriend whether she was a lesbian. A third woman fled her holiday after her mother-in-law turned up at the airport.
Psychologist and author of What Do You Want from Me? Learning to Get Along with In-Laws Terri Apter says trouble commonly starts to emerge when a mother is worried about whether a partner is good enough for her son, or selfishly thinks that their own bond could be challenged by an outsider. Girlfriends, meanwhile, want their relationship and the rules that surround it to be taken seriously. If they start to feel that their boyfriend’s mother is interfering or intruding in their partnership, feathers are ruffled. “Your family has rules you don’t notice because they fade into the background,” Apter says of this adaptation period. “The new in-law steps into this family and sees all these strange dynamics and expectations. How do you express affection? How much anger is it OK to show? All these things you think should be accepted, you can suddenly see through your in-laws’ eyes – that they’re a bit weird and they’re questioned. That’s a threat.”
Margot*, 30, initially liked her boyfriend’s mum, whom she describes as “welcoming and extremely cool”. But a rift started to emerge due to the couple living in London, near to Margot’s family, rather than in northern England, closer to his. “Over time, it became very clear that, for them, there was a palpable sense I’d pulled their son away from them, even though he lived in the city when we met,” she says, adding that she senses “friction” over the fact that the couple spend more time with her relatives. “We’re from quite different backgrounds; she has no desire to learn about who I am or about my interests,” Margot adds. “One twist of the knife was her buying me a size 18 jumpsuit for Christmas when I am, quite obviously, a size 12.”
In research conducted by Apter, two-thirds of daughters-in-law believed that their husband’s mother frequently exhibited jealous maternal love towards their son. Sometimes, this can involve something called “emotional incest”, where a mother sources her emotional and partnership support from her child. Obviously, when the child gets a girlfriend, that relationship threatens to disrupt said intimacy, causing them to lash out or cling on tighter; think Jane Fonda slyly trying to ditch Jennifer Lopez from her son’s life in Monster-In-Law, or Charlotte York’s overzealous mother-in-law in Sex and the City, played by Bunny MacDougal, who crashes Charlotte and Trey’s shopping trip to buy a marital bed.
In The Girlfriend, Laura spills coffee in Cherry’s lap at dinner. Later, she turns the sprinklers on her while she’s sunbathing. When 29-year-old Rosie* met her boyfriend’s parents for the first time, his mother called her by his ex-girlfriend’s name at the dinner table. It could have been a harmless mistake, or it could have been a power play – it’s hard to ever truly know. “She handed me the paella and called me his ex’s name, and then believed I hated her for ever!” Rosie recalls. She and her boyfriend moved to southwest England – five hours away from his family – not long afterwards.
If jealousy or hostility rears its head sporadically, Apter says, the best line of attack is to simply ignore it. “Roll your eyes if you want to,” she advises. “Say, ‘Mmm, that’s nice.’” But if a mother is persistently sending out the message that “he loves me more” or “our love is stronger”, Apter suggests it’s time to enlist your boyfriend to make sure that the “special status of you as a partner is acknowledged”. This can involve holding hands in front of your boyfriend’s family, or sitting close together as something of a challenge, rather than acting platonic in order to appease any envy potentially radiating from the other side of the room.
It’s worth noting that, more often than not, the man who is the focus of the mother-in-law-girlfriend triangle is, even if subconsciously, “in some way compliant” in the conflict and “needs to be schooled out of it”, Apter says of her research into the issue. In Frances’s novel, Laura’s son Daniel spends much of his time in a coma as she and Cherry feud – a plot point Apter says is fitting, as the man involved in the dispute is often oblivious to what’s happening. “He keeps his head down, partly because he wants an easy life, but also because he’s just not attuned to the little niggles, jibes and suspicions that are often happening,” she says. “His partner feels betrayed… and the mother is getting no pushback on her assumption that she’s the important one with the most influence; that in some way, her son’s partner doesn’t really matter.”
For Margot, even though her boyfriend often backs her up around his mother – they’ve fallen out over everything from her not wanting to take his last name when they get married, to differing opinions on immigration – she still feels like she is landed with the majority of the blame for her boyfriend’s opinions having become more liberal than the right-wing ones he was raised with. “If I knew it would have no repercussions, I’d tell her she needs to adapt to the lifestyle and point of view of her son,” Margot says. “It’s really easy to scapegoat me as the reason for her son challenging her on politics, racism and world issues; actually, it’s a product of higher education, his job, and where he lives.”
Although Apter says you can soothe a difficult mother-in-law by making it clear that you do want her in your life, and involving her accordingly, neither party can ever truly “win” this fight – just as you can never emerge victorious in conflicts with your blood relatives. However, the absolute worst thing you can do as tensions boil over is deliver an “it’s me or her” ultimatum, as Laura chooses to do in The Girlfriend. “That’s destructive – and a type of abuse,” Apter says. “You’re saying, ‘Either comply with my needs, or I won’t have anything to do with you’. The message is, ‘It’s not safe for you to love someone else’ – and that’s a very destructive message for a parent to give a child of any age.”
Realistically, we’ll experience occasional friction with our partner’s family in the same way we have spats within our own. It’s all about how we bounce back. “No relationship is always in equilibrium,” says Apter of the disagreements that occur in any normal household. “There are going to be little glitches. The key to dealing with that is knowing that calling someone out on their behaviour doesn’t necessarily threaten the relationship. You can break apart and then repair. It’s resilient.” A little forgiveness, then, and a little flexibility, and everyone should (strained smile) get along just fine.
*Names have been changed
‘The Girlfriend’ is available now on Prime Video
