<http://schema.org/articleBody>
" Writes Save the Date reader Yasmine: I&amp;#x27;m a single mom who has been in a great relationship for more than two years. (I&amp;#x27;m 31; he&amp;#x27;s almost 30.) We&amp;#x27;ve talked about marriage, more kids&amp;amp;#8212;all of it&amp;amp;#8212;and we&amp;#x27;re excited for our future, but I&amp;#x27;m truly uncomfortable with his relationship with his mother. I met her several months into our relationship (she lives more than four hours away), and right off the bat she struck me as, well, weird. Our plan, the day we met, was to take a ferry to an island for a picnic. So we get out of the car, and she started telling him to &amp;quot;spread some love to the parking meter attendants.&amp;quot; Huh? The next thing I know, they&amp;#x27;re walking several yards in front of me, and she&amp;#x27;s clinging to his arm and holding his hand like she&amp;#x27;s his girlfriend. Then we got on the ferry, and she was practically sitting on his lap. I know different families are close in different ways, but I was surprised by how intensely physical she was with him. (For the record, I have a son of my own who I love more than life itself, so I get a close mother-son dynamic, but this just seemed beyond. My brother would freak if my mom got so hands-y with him.) And then she spent most of the day ignoring me, so the outing was pretty unpleasant. I asked him after the fact if she always acted like this, and he said, &amp;quot;Yeah, she was always weird.&amp;quot; I mentioned how awkward the hand-holding seemed to me and left it at that. More than a year later, we agreed to spend the holidays with his family at a rented cabin. Right away his mom started rubbing his back and thighs&amp;amp;#8212;like, for a 40-minute stretch&amp;amp;#8212;and at one point his sister yelled, &amp;quot;Craig! Come snuggle with me!&amp;quot; I was just TOO weirded out, so I went outside and called a friend to come pick me up. His mother responded by calling the cops. I&amp;#x27;m not sure what she told them I was doing, but when they came and I was quietly standing on the beach a quarter mile away, they were extremely confused. A week later he got a six-page (both sides of the paper) letter from his mom explaining how dangerous I am and begging him to find a safe place for himself and my children. She said I was just like her father and that I was &amp;quot;the kind of girl who would fake a beating just to send him to jail.&amp;quot; She also sent some quotes from her dead sister, who she had channelled, including this gem, &amp;quot;She doesn&amp;#x27;t love you. She will only get pregnant on purpose and make you work 80 hours a week while she sits at home cheating on you.&amp;quot; After getting the letter, we both decided to take &amp;quot;a break&amp;quot; from his mother. We&amp;#x27;re two healthy adults with a lot to look forward to in our life together, but I&amp;#x27;m worried about what kind of life we&amp;#x27;ll have if she&amp;#x27;s a part of it. So what do I do? Here are my thoughts: As I&amp;#x27;ve said several times on Save the Date, you can&amp;#x27;t control people&amp;#x27;s actions; you can only control your reactions. With that in mind, you and your boyfriend need to have a long talk. First of all, I think you need to talk about what you&amp;#x27;re OK with physically as far as his mom his concerned. Maybe he tolerates her, um, hands-on mothering because that&amp;#x27;s how she&amp;#x27;s always behaved, but he can always step away from an aggressive back rub and say, &amp;quot;Mom, please stop.&amp;quot; (If he doesn&amp;#x27;t want the hands-on mothering to stop, I think we can end the conversation here with: Pack your bags and move on.) You also need to ask him to stand up for you. I hope when he got that six-pager he called her to say, &amp;quot;I read your letter and then threw it away. You cannot speak that way about my girlfriend.&amp;quot; If he&amp;#x27;s not standing up for you, then there&amp;#x27;s nothing to stop the continued onslaught of nonsense. (Channeling the dead sister? That is some next-level sh*t.) From there, you both need to decide how often the two of you will see her, going forward. Your instinct might be to bail on all future interactions, but since you&amp;#x27;re planning on having kids with this guy, I think you need to accept that his mother occasionally is going to be a part of your life. I think you need a plan for going into each visit and possibly a signal for when it&amp;#x27;s time to cut a visit short. I don&amp;#x27;t blame you for running out of the cabin, but if you just run away every time, you&amp;#x27;re going to be the problem. And finally, if you both feel like she&amp;#x27;s moved past &amp;quot;plain weird&amp;quot; territory and into a place where she&amp;#x27;s mentally unwell, I think you need to talk about whether you should help her find treatment. Of course a lot of this would depend on her wanting help, but if there were some sort of mental illness (which obviously I&amp;#x27;m in no position to diagnose) getting her some medical attention might improve things for everyone. (Including you, your boyfriend, your kids, and your future kids.) I feel like a lot of readers are going to say, &amp;quot;Just RUN from this guy and his wacky mom!&amp;quot; but since I have only one married friend with a great relationship with her mother-in-law, I&amp;#x27;m inclined to say you shouldn&amp;#x27;t wait around for the perfect guy and his perfect mom. Ladies, what do you think? Should Yasmine bail on her long-term boyfriend to get away from his mom? Or is there hope for this relationship? Have a wedding-y dilemma of your own? Email me!"^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.glamour.com/weddings/blogs/save-the-date/2014/06/i-want-to-marry-my-guy-but-i-d>