Help! My Son’s Fiancée Has Become Frighteningly Obsessed With Me. (2024)

Dear Prudence is Slate’s advice column. Submit questions here. (It’s anonymous!)

Dear Prudence,

I love the fact my son is in love and engaged to be married. However, I am not the biggest fan of the girl. “Dee” has severe boundary issues. She is estranged from both of her own parents and siblings and is determined to force my daughters and me into the roles. It started off innocently enough with Dee wanting to go shopping or out to lunch with us. Then we couldn’t do anything separately without Dee getting upset.

And Dee would get upset…

As in crying buckets and a constant barrage of texts and social media posts asking what she did wrong and kicking up a fuss. My daughter made her Instagram private because Dee would obsessively comment on any food pictures she uploaded. My other daughter had to have surgery, so I picked her up and stayed at her apartment to take care of her, and somehow Dee made it about her hurt feelings.

That caused a fight. My son is very protective of Dee and blames us for not being understanding enough about her problems. Dee is in therapy. And not enough therapy in my opinion. They haven’t even started planning the wedding, and I am already dreading all the drama that it is going to bring.

This Mother’s Day, I was feeling under the weather, so I canceled plans with my kids, and took a nap. Dee called me 10 separate times to wish me a Happy Mother’s Day. This is not normal or healthy. What do I do here? Talking to my son or Dee gets me nowhere.

—Dreading Dee

Dear Dreading Dee,

“Not enough therapy” sounds right. So what do you do until Dee hopefully, one day, has some kind of breakthrough and changes her behavior? If I were you, I would start by thinking about the amount of contact, time, and accommodation you would offer to an emotionally balanced, reasonable future daughter-in-law. How often would you invite her to lunch? Maybe one out of every four times you go with your daughters? How many times would you speak to her on Mother’s Day if she called you? Once would be nice. How would you include her if you were taking care of a loved one after surgery? Probably not at all!

Then maybe, for the sake of being generous to someone who is obviously very needy and supporting your son, increase everything you would offer to a reasonable person by about 10 or 15 percent. And that’s it! That’s all you have to do. Well, one other thing: You have to know that sometimes (possibly often) Dee will be upset and hurt and that will be uncomfortable to deal with. But remember that she has a bottomless need for attention and affirmation, and no matter what you do, it would probably not be enough to make her feel secure and loved. You are not going to convince Dee, who isn’t in control of her own emotions, or your son, who is in love, that your position is the right one. So no more talking to them and making your case. Just be the mother, future mother-in-law, and person you want to be (in daily life and also when it comes to wedding planning), and politely but firmly detach when she’s tantruming at you, and encourage your daughters to do the same.

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Dear Prudence,

I basically raised my brothers and myself. Our mother was 15 when she had me and twenty when she had my brothers. She basically dumped us on our great grandma and skipped off into the sunset. The only times we saw her was when she was in between boyfriends and wanted to play mommy. By the time I was 12, I was thoroughly disillusioned with her lies and broken promises. My brothers weren’t. It was like watching them repeatedly get punched in the gut every time our mom would stop by with a bunch of gifts and lie about how we were getting to go live in a big house with a pool and be a real family. We lived off food stamps and free school lunches. I started collecting cans and hustling for part time jobs when I was 13 so I could save up and get my brothers a real birthday gift.

I dropped out of college when our great grandma died so my brothers could finish high school here. I work two jobs and pay all the bills. My brothers graduate next year. Our mother popped back into our lives and announced she was pregnant and living in a homeless shelter. My brothers immediately wanted to invite our mother to come live with us. I said “over my dead body,” and we have been fighting about it ever since. My brothers say I am a monster for feeling this way and our grandma would be ashamed of me. We keep going around and around in circles. I am sick of it and having all my efforts thrown back in my face for a woman who couldn’t even remember to call us on Christmas. My brothers turn 18 this summer. A friend has offered to help me get a job in another state and some part of me just wants to pack my bags and go. What should I do?

—Leave or Stay

Dear Leave or Stay,

You’ve already had to endure so much more than you should have, and have done so much for others, so I hesitate to ask you to extend yourself any more. So this suggestion is not to suggest you have an obligation, but to try to ensure that in the next stage of your life, you are closer to having the love and happiness and support you deserve: I wonder if you can give your brothers some understanding, even as they lash out at you. That doesn’t mean doing what they want! It just means remembering that they are essentially still kids—kids who were abandoned, had a tough life, are desperate for their mother’s love, and are perhaps a little delusional about what it might feel like to live under the same roof as her.

I think you’re absolutely right to feel that housing your mom and her new baby would be miserable (for everyone, but most of all for you! I think we all know who would be providing backup childcare!). You should stand firm on that. But I’m just not sure if you want to move to another state without them the minute they’re technically adults. Many teens need support and lean on their parents for much longer than that. Most of all, I hate to think of your relationship with the two family members you’re closest to (even if they are being jerks right now) being shattered. I think the three of you are going to need each other as you move through adulthood. I would love for you to hold onto a relationship with them until they’re a little more mature, have more clarity about who your mother is (or at least empathy for your experience with her), and enough life experience to have a revelation about how extraordinarily grateful they should be that you stepped up for and sacrificed for them.

That said, if the job in another state is what you want, take it! But consider including your brothers. Tell them that while you aren’t going to change your mind about moving your mom in—you can mention that you understand their feelings toward her, but you had a different experience and don’t see her the same way—but you’ll work on a plan with them to save money and move into their own place, where they can invite her and the baby to live if they choose.

I realize I’m asking you to extend to them the kind of unconditional acceptance the most loving parents have for their children, and you’re not actually their parent! So it’s a big ask. What’s in it for you is the possibility of a future where you’re three fully grown and mostly healed adults who understand each other like no one else and can make each other’s lives richer. Maybe, maybe, one day down the line, way on the other side of this, there can even be some shared laughter about your family’s trials and tribulations, including “the time we were self-righteous teens who tried to get you to move a messy grown woman and a baby into our house.”

Dear Prudence,

I am getting married to a wonderful man next year. I have struggled with an eating disorder for most of my life (requiring past medical treatment and ongoing therapy) but have had things under control for about four years now and am grateful for the respite from the constant mental anguish and obsessive thoughts. Paul has a sister, Peg, who has had an active eating disorder for three decades. They are not close and do not talk often, and I’ve never met her. Still, this created a hurdle in our relationship. Paul first described her as “looking great” and taking good care of herself, due to her extremely restrictive diet and obsessive exercise regimen (which was super triggering as I was trying to accept that I couldn’t look like that anymore and still be free from the disorder). Peg recently fell and broke a vertebrae while on a run, and continued to run for miles with a broken back, so as not to miss the training/exercise/calorie burn. Paul first said this was “bad-ass.”

But to me, it represents the worst of the illness, ignoring your bodily needs while on an obsessive quest. I try my best not to vilify Peg and I feel a great deal of empathy for her, but I have needed to vilify the illness to reinforce that it’s not a viable life path for me. Despite so much progress, somehow, the wedding triggers an urge to transform my body all over again. I’m a healthy weight, normal BMI mom who is grateful for health and freedom. But Peg represents a tangible example that one can control their body, which is hard for me to face. How do I find peace without hurting Paul, vilifying Peg, or losing hard won progress and mental health?’

—Thought I Was Past This

Dear Past This,

I’m sure you’re already increasing your therapy around the wedding. That should be helpful in this situation and in the many other similar ones that will follow. And they will definitely follow because there are Pegs everywhere in this life. The next one could be a coworker, or one of your friends who becomes diet-obsessed, or a celebrity who seems to be wasting away while everyone cheers her on. Even body commentary about Olympic athletes and their grueling regimens has the potential to set you off.

So I want to gently suggest that maybe your problem is not so much Peg, but the fact that you’re marrying someone who doesn’t seem to fully understand or respect what being an eating disorder survivor means, and hasn’t been particularly thoughtful about being sensitive about comments that could trigger you. Worse, maybe he sincerely does believe that being extremely fit regardless of the cost to your health is a good thing. How will that look when you’re married? While it’s inevitable that the world will send you all kinds of messed up messages about bodies and weight that challenge your recovery, your home and your marriage should ideally be places where you can have a break from all of that.

Now, in your fiancé’s defense, his remarks seemed casually positive and supportive of his sister, and don’t necessarily reflect an obsession with fitness or strongly held views about how bodies should look. I’m not suggesting that he will intentionally make you feel bad about maintaining your non-emaciated healthy weight. But he needs to be a little more thoughtful if he’s going to be the partner of someone in a lifelong struggle with an eating disorder, not just leading up to the wedding, but in all the years after.

Catch up on this week’s Prudie.

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