My mother has always been my best friend.  Ever since I can remember, we’ve been two peas in a pod and I talk to her about pretty much everything. 

When I first started dating at 16, it was my mom who hipped me to “game” and taught me the ins-and-outs of dating, making sure I never settled for less.  It was also around this time that she became the official third wheel in pretty much all of my relationships. 

Seeing as how I’m the only girl in my family you would think it would be my father who scared away the boys and drove me nuts, but no, it's my mom.  On my first date, she said she had to chaperone — no problem, since I was just 16.  The real problem was her sitting next to me and whispering in my ear all night what she felt I should say to my date.  When I was a sophomore, she saw my boyfriend from across the street and because he only waved to her instead of coming over, she labeled him trash and forbid me to see him.  The night of my senior prom, she posed with my date and me in every picture and rode in the limo to the dance hall with us. When she saw him talking to another girl at the dance, she cornered them and grilled them about the status of their relationship.  I tried to give her the overprotective-parent pass and prayed that it would end once I got to college.  It didn’t.

I started hiding my college relationships from her, but somehow she found out I was dating a football player and randomly showed up on one of our dates. She ended up spending the entire weekend around campus and followed us everywhere. She even called him regularly to check on the status of our relationship and give him advice. He got so fed up with it that he dumped me after only six months.  My mother said it was because I was boring on our dates!

After that fiasco, I tried talking to her about giving me space and staying out of my personal business, her response was to threaten to stop paying my tuition since I felt I was "grown".  Even my father and brothers tried intervening on my behalf, but that just made the situation worse and got all of them kicked out of the house for three days.  I started to just accept the fact that this was how my mother operates, she loves me with no doubt and this was just her weird way of protecting me.  Then I met Chris. 

Chris was the first guy I met that I was instantly terrified to lose. I knew he was the one from the very beginning and the last thing I wanted was for my mom to scare him away.  I warned Chris in advance before introducing him to my mother for the first time, at his request, but my warnings didn’t prepare him at all.  My mother grilled him like a criminal, sat between us at the table, told him he wasn’t good enough to marry me (despite us being nowhere near marriage at the time) and demanded his number so she could talk to him later.  Despite the crazy, my love made it through and two years later we are now engaged to be married and living together.  However my mom still can’t stay away.

When Chris and I got an apartment on the other side of town, my mother decided to buy rental property in our complex and uses that as a reason to drop by randomly and unannounced.  She became friends with the property owner and one day used a key to enter our home and walked straight into the bathroom where Chris and I were taking a steamy shower.  She also feels the need to question us about how soon we’ll have kids and when Chris is going to finish school.  If she happens to hear us disagreeing on something, she tells us how we should handle it and heaven help us if we don’t take the advice.  There was even a point in time where she accused him of cheating on me, stalked him to gather “evidence,” only for it to turn out that the “woman” he was with at lunch once was his new 17-year-old intern, and his niece.  My mother’s defense?  She was just protecting her baby.

Chris and I have begun arguing about my mother’s presence in our relationship more and more each day and I can sense his growing frustration with the situation.  I’ve tried to tell my mom it is time for her to let go and let me deal with my soon to be husband on my own, but she insists that I need her to watch my back.  In less than 7 months I will be married and don’t want to start my new life with this old headache.  I’m just not sure how I can explain to my mother that while I still need her in my life, my relationship is 100% off limits to her. I have to figure out how can I tell her without hurting her and removing her from my life all together.