In-Law Problems in Marriage: When He Takes His Mother's Side

It's 9:40 at night. Your mother-in-law has said, again, that the dal needed more salt and that "in our house" things were done differently. Your husband laughed it off. Now you're in your room, whispering so no one hears, and he's saying what he always says: "She's old, she doesn't mean it, why do you take everything to heart?"

Or you're the husband. You love your mother, and you love your wife. Every evening you get it wrong with one of them, and some evenings with both.

This post is for both of you. The roles can also run the other way, with a wife caught between her husband and her own parents, and most of what follows still applies. Further down there are sections for joint families, NRI couples hosting parents for months, and queer couples whose families won't accept the relationship.

Why "Just Talk to Your Mother" Doesn't Work

The advice sounds simple. In practice it asks a son to speak to his mother as an equal, in a relationship where he has been the child for thirty years.

Transactional Analysis (TA), the approach I use most with individuals, describes three ego states: Parent, Adult and Child. In his mother's kitchen, she may speak from her Parent ("Eat properly, you've become thin") and he may answer from his Child without noticing. The Adult who runs a team at work goes quiet.

TA also has a word for families where this never changed: symbiosis. Two people act as if together they make one whole person: one decides and worries, the other needs and complies. Symbiosis is normal between a parent and a small child, and it is meant to loosen as the child grows up. A mother who still decides what her grown son eats and how his salary is spent may still be in it with him. When he marries, his wife is outside that arrangement, and anything she asks for can feel to both of them like an attack on it.

This is why a conversation that looks easy from outside can feel to him like betraying her, without either of them being a villain.

The Triangle at the Dinner Table

Stephen Karpman's drama triangle (1968) names three roles people slip into during a repeated conflict: Persecutor, Rescuer and Victim. Most in-law fights move through all three in one evening.

Your mother-in-law criticises the dal (Persecutor). You feel hurt and small (Victim). Your husband jumps in to smooth it over (Rescuer): "Mummy, it's fine, she's still learning." Later, in your room, you tell him he never defends you, and now you're the Persecutor and he's the Victim. Next morning his mother tells him she's "only trying to help" and nobody in this house values her, which makes her the Victim and him the Rescuer again.

Everyone in the triangle feels wronged, so arguing about who started it keeps it going. It changes when someone steps out of their role, and the spouse in the middle usually has the most power to do that.

The Cycle Between the Two of You

Emotionally Focused Therapy (EFT), which I draw on most in couples work alongside Narrative Therapy, looks past the dal to the pattern between you. Usually one partner protests ("You always take her side") and the other withdraws ("Let it go, I can't deal with this tonight"). The protest gets louder, the withdrawal gets longer, and the in-law issue becomes a test of the marriage.

Underneath, the questions are about the two of you. The partner who feels second is often asking: Am I alone in this house? Do I matter to you as much as she does? The partner in the middle is often thinking: Whatever I do, I fail someone I love. Once each of you has heard the other's version, it gets easier to stop fighting about his mother and plan together. My piece on Emotionally Focused Therapy explains how this cycle is worked with.

If You're the One in the Middle

• Loyalty and agreement are different things. You can love your mother and still disagree with her about where you live or how you spend Sundays.
• Agree with your spouse first, then talk to your parent. Each of you then speaks to your own parents. A parent usually hears a limit more easily from their own child.
• Say "we", not "she". "We've decided Saturdays are our day" lands differently from "She doesn't want to come on Saturdays." The second puts your wife alone in the line of fire.
• Stop carrying messages. "Mummy said..." and "She said..." keep you as the go-between and the triangle intact.
• Have a few sentences ready. "Maa, I know you mean well. This is our decision, and I need you to respect it." Or: "Mummy, we'll do Sunday lunch with you. Saturdays we're keeping for ourselves."
• If you froze, repair. You won't always get it right at the table. Later, say it plainly: "I went quiet when Mummy said that. That wasn't fair to you."
• Expect guilt. Guilt after setting a limit is common, especially for the son his parents leaned on. Feeling guilty doesn't mean you were wrong. Boundary-setting therapy goes into why it's so loud.

If You're the One Who Feels Second

• Talk about one incident and one need. "When your mother said I don't know how to run a house and you laughed, I felt alone. Next time I need you to change the subject, or at least not join in." He can act on that. "Your mother hates me" gives him nothing to act on and makes him defend her.
• Don't ask him to choose. "Me or her" pushes him into his mother's corner, because that loyalty is older. Ask him to stand with you on a specific thing.
• Notice your own corner of the triangle. If you've started listing his mother's faults every night, he will defend her every night. Fair criticism still keeps the triangle going.
• Keep your own people. Friends, your own family, your work, your own therapy. A marriage can't be your only support inside a house where you feel outnumbered.
• Count what has changed. If he spoke up once this month, that counts, even if it isn't enough yet.

Living in a Joint Family: What to Negotiate

Joint families give a couple childcare, company and help when someone is ill. They can also leave a marriage with no private room. A study of mother-in-law and daughter-in-law relationships in an Indian village found that the ideal is for each to be "like her own" mother or daughter. In practice some pairs were close, while others had hurtful exchanges or weren't speaking at all. The author traced the tension to the joint family itself, where the two women are strangers and close family at once (Allendorf, 2017). An analysis of Indian Human Development Survey data found that having a senior family member in the household often reduces a woman's say in household decisions (Alakshendra & Li, 2020).

So say the rules out loud. Agree on these as a couple first:

• Space. Can you close your door without explanation? Is there a time of day, or a day of the week, that belongs only to the two of you?
• Money. Does a salary go to the household, to a parent, or to the couple? Who decides on large purchases? Agree on your contribution before it's assumed.
• Routines. Kitchen rules, waking times, fasts and rituals, guests. Which ones are non-negotiable for the elders, and which can flex?
• Decisions. Jobs, children, holidays, where you'll live in five years. Whose call is each one?

When moving out is the answer. It may be time when agreements keep collapsing, when one of you is unwell from the strain, when there's no privacy at all, or when there is any abuse. Moving out doesn't have to mean cutting off. A flat ten minutes away with Sunday lunch together can be closer than one roof and constant friction.

When In-Laws Visit for Months: NRI Couples

For couples abroad, the joint family arrives on a visitor visa. The UK, for example, usually lets visitors stay up to six months (GOV.UK), so a visit can run for a whole season, and a small apartment where both of you work becomes a home for four.

The visiting parent is often lonely too. Someone who can't drive, knows no one and feels unneeded may let that out as criticism of the kitchen. Before the visit, agree on how long it lasts, who sleeps where, who handles the cooking and childcare, and which evenings are just for the two of you. During the visit, help the parent build a life outside your flat: the local temple or gurdwara, an Indian community group, regular calls with their friends at home. And when you're the ones visiting India, decide beforehand how the weeks are split between both families, so it isn't settled at the airport. If you want help with this from abroad, my guide for Indians looking for a therapist abroad covers time zones and sessions.

Queer Couples and Disapproving Families

The triangle looks different when one family doesn't accept the relationship, or doesn't know about it. One partner is introduced as a "friend". Another sits through talk of marriage proposals at a family lunch. The same principle applies: each partner handles their own family, and the couple decides together what is said and to whom. I've written about this in more depth in queer-affirmative couples therapy in India.

The Mother-in-Law's Side

Many mothers-in-law were daughters-in-law in a joint family themselves, sometimes a harsher one. A son's marriage can feel like losing her place, her role and the future she planned around him. That doesn't excuse cruelty, but knowing what she fears gives a couple more to work with than "she's just a bad person". If you're a mother-in-law reading this, the most useful thing you can do is let your son's marriage be his and his wife's.

What Couples Counselling Does With This

Sessions are held jointly on Google Meet, with each of you joining from a private space. In a joint family that might be your room with headphones, the car, or an office meeting room.

A composite example, not a real couple: Kavya and Arjun, married three years, live with his parents in Pune. They came in arguing about his mother. In the first sessions we mapped their cycle: Kavya protests, Arjun goes quiet, Kavya protests louder. In the fourth session Arjun said, "I feel like I'm failing both of them every single day." Kavya had only ever seen him shrug. Hearing that changed what she asked for. They agreed on one thing, Sunday mornings out of the house, and Arjun, not Kavya, told his mother. She sulked for a week. After that it held, and the next conversation, about money, was easier.

Couples therapy works on how the two of you handle your in-laws together, which is often what was hurting most. If communication between you has broken down, or one of you tends to cling or go cold under stress (see attachment styles), that comes into the work too. More on the format is on my couples therapy and marriage counselling page.

When It's Not an In-Law Problem

Some of what gets called an in-law problem is abuse. Under India's Protection of Women from Domestic Violence Act, 2005, domestic violence includes harassment to force a woman or her family to meet a dowry demand. It also includes verbal and emotional abuse, such as insults or ridicule over not having a child or a son, and economic abuse, such as cutting off access to money, stridhan or the home (PWDVA, 2005). The Act also gives a woman the right to live in the shared household, including one that belongs to the joint family. Since July 2024, cruelty by a husband or his relatives has been an offence under Section 85 of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, which replaced Section 498A of the old Penal Code.

Get help outside the family if any of these are happening:

• Demands for money, gold or property, before or after the wedding
• Threats, hitting or pushing, or being locked in or out
• Your phone, money or documents being taken or controlled
• Being kept from your own family or friends
• Thoughts of ending your life, or of harming someone

In India:

• Emergency (police, fire, ambulance): 112
• Women Helpline: 181, toll-free and 24x7, which links callers to police, legal aid and One Stop Centres
• National Commission for Women helpline: 14490 (also 7827170170), 24x7
• Tele-MANAS, the government's free mental-health line: 14416 or 1-800-891-4416, 24x7

Each district has Protection Officers appointed under the Act, and they or a lawyer can tell you what applies to your situation; this post isn't legal advice. If you're abroad, call your local emergency number. Couples counselling isn't the right first step while someone is being abused. Individual support and safety come first.

Frequently Asked Questions

Should we stay with in-laws after marriage?

There's no single right answer. Living together can work well when the couple has private space, money arrangements are clear, decisions about your own life are yours, and both partners chose it freely. It tends to go badly when one partner was never asked, or when every disagreement gets settled by the elders. If you're deciding now, agree on space, money, routines and decisions before you move in. Terms are easier to set at the start than to change later.

My husband allows his mother to disrespect me. Is this normal?

It's common, and you don't have to accept it. A husband who goes quiet is often caught in the old parent-child pattern and may not agree with his mother at all. It's still worth raising, using one specific incident and one specific ask. If the disrespect includes insults about dowry, children or your family, threats, or control over your money or movements, read the section above on abuse.

Can couples therapy help with in-law problems?

It can help many couples, though no therapist can promise an outcome. Therapy works on the part you can change: how the two of you respond, what you agree on, and how you repair after a bad evening. It won't change your in-laws directly, though a couple acting together often gets a different response from them.

What if my spouse won't come to counselling?

You can start individual therapy on your own, and changing your side of the triangle often changes the triangle. I don't see one partner individually and then the same couple jointly, so if you later want couples work, we'd talk about who is best placed to do it. My post on what to do when your partner won't go to marriage counselling has ways to ask that don't start a fight.

If this sounds like your house, a free 15-minute intro call is a good place to start, on your own or together.