I have just gotten engaged and I’m so excited to spend the rest of my life with my fiancé. Since the engagement, however, my future mother-in-law has been absolutely unbearable. 

I constantly hear unsolicited advice on how I should watch my figure before the wedding, what the decorations should be, and how I can be a better wife for her perfect, do-no-wrong, son. I managed to set my frustrations aside, but it all came to a head when she suggested that she should wear a white dress to our wedding because “she was his first love.”

Infinite ick.

When I looked to my fiancé for help, he stayed quiet. I love my fiancé so much and we’ve never had any huge problems, but I’m scared that things might be like this for the rest of my life. 

What should I do?

Sincerely,

Concerned Wife-To-Be

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Dear Future Divorcee,

Your wariness is understandable. Her judgmental eyes burn you to the core. She’s determined to render you inadequate enough to make one scream. We’ve all been there. Some mothers have a hard time letting their sons go. No one is good enough for their “baby boy.” How dare you even try.

You’re in the crosshairs of a seemingly possessive woman hellbent on testing your nerves. She’ll make your life miserable up to the wedding day and possibly after if you let her. If you’ve seen the 1985 film, Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome the answer is obvious. Settle your scores in the Thunderdome.

I once courted a girl with an equally domineering father. He took me aside before our big date and told me that if I broke his little girl’s heart, he’d “harvest my organs for sale on the black market.” A little harsh, I thought, given that I was only seventeen at the time.

Strangely enough, she ditched me right before prom for the captain of the football team. When I confronted her father at the supermarket where he worked as night manager to ask him about retribution for my broken heart, he scoffed.

“All’s fair in love and war,” he bellowed with a slap to my back, cracking a smile. 

He was as big as Porky from the movie Porky’s, so I had little recourse. Instead, I found a pricing gun left on a stand of canned foods and went to town, marking everything 50% off—game, set, match.

Your future mother-in-law expects you to be perfect. Being perfect myself, I share her sentiments. You can’t, however, let mind games ruin what could be a healthy, long-lasting marriage. Attempt a lunch outing with her to clear the air or put something in her drink; something that gives her the runs for at least two weeks.

Oedipus Rex remains a classic Greek tragedy, where a mother kills her husband to marry her son. Or was it the other way around? I can’t keep up with these steamy paperbacks. Either way, there’s plenty to be learned from Ancient Greece. How did they cope with daily drudgeries, especially without a Samuel Beckett novel to pass the time?

There’s no pleasing everyone. Your best bet is to kill her with kindness until she finally acquiesces out of boredom or eventual acceptance. Whatever you do, don’t demand that your fiancé choose between you or her. That’s bad form. 

Take your future mother-in-law skydiving instead. It’s the perfect bonding experience that worked wonders on my third wife’s overprotective therapist.

I’ll await my invitation to the wedding.

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Dr. Perfect has slung advice across the globe for the last two decades due to his dedication to the uplift of the human condition.