The Perfect Son for His Mother, a Stranger of a Husband for His Wife

"We got married six months ago and moved into a cozy apartment in Houston. My husband is a wonderful person, but there's a third resident in our home whom I never invited. It's his mother.

She can show up at our place unannounced any day, open the refrigerator and start commenting that I cooked the meat wrong or bought the wrong brand of laundry detergent. When we were planning how to spend our first holidays together, she simply confronted us with a done deal: "You're celebrating at my place, I've already decided everything." The bitterest part is my husband's reaction. Every time I try to talk to him about it and ask him to protect our boundaries, he shuts down or starts getting angry with me: "Aharon, she's my mother! She wants the best for us, how can you be so ungrateful? Tzniut and honoring your parents come first." He doesn't understand that we now have our own family, and if he doesn't cut this umbilical cord, our relationship will simply burn up under his mother's control."