This is one of those stories about she and you. She is the mother-in-law. You are the man who duped her daughter, or the woman who ensnared her son. Or stole or deceived or sidetracked, or diminished or corrupted or hardened, depending on how stereotyped either you or she find the relationship to be.

Two women appeared before King Solomon, dragging between them a reluctant young man. ‘This good-for-nothing promised to marry my daughter,’ said one.
‘No! He promised to marry my daughter,’ said the other.
‘Bring me an axe,’ the king said. ‘I shall chop the youngster into two pieces, and you shall each receive a half.’
‘Sounds good to me,’ said the first lady.
‘Oh, your Highness,’ protested the second. ‘Don’t spill innocent blood. Let the other woman’s daughter marry him.’
The wise king had heard enough. ‘This man must marry the first lady’s daughter,’ he proclaimed.
‘But she was willing to have him hewn in two!’
‘Indeed,’ said wise King Solomon. ‘She is therefore the true mother-in-law.’

The she is a woman, and always more than a woman: a mother. In this case, the you is a son-in-law, but you can also be a woman, a daughter-in-law. It’s no easier either way, because the problem of the mother-in-law is universal, and universally thought to be funny.

Abu El Abed’s mother-in-law died. Abu Staeif went to offer his condolences and ask him how it had happened.
Abu El Abed: She was leaning on the balcony when she flipped over and—
Abu Staeif: She hit the ground and died?
Abu El Abed: No, she hit the electricity cable and—
Abu Staeif: She got electrocuted?
Abu El Abed: No, she got deflected to our neighbour’s swimming pool and—
Abu Staeif: She drowned?
Abu El Abed: No, she hit the diving board and bounced all the way back to the balcony intact—
Abu Staief (confused): How did your mother-in-law die then?
Abu El Abed: I grabbed my rifle and shot her.

Why was El Abed so determined to see her off? What made her so intolerable? For me, it was her intrusive anxiety. My mother-in-law had no doubt that anxiety was the correct response to life. Her timidity was therefore very assured, almost aggressive. She seldom liked the gist of the weather, or an undated yoghurt, or the Albanian look of a waiter (they spit in the soup, you know). She insisted on locked top-floor windows and boiled meat and toilets buffed with Windowlene.

Doctor: I’m sorry to say that your mother-in-law has had a heart attack.
You: That’s impossible!
Doctor: What do you mean that’s impossible?
You: She doesn’t have a heart!

She was often fluttering with terror because the world in which her only daughter was making her way was full of haste and recklessness and danger. At first, this militant vulnerability could seem amusing, an ongoing joke. I used to tease her by arriving in T-shirt and shorts on my motorcycle, or by preparing conspicuously for a swim in the local fast-flowing river. She’d plead with me not to risk my life, and I’d laugh and go anyway. Back safe and sound, I’d apologize. Then spend the rest of the day intercepting her unquestioning motherly love as it flooded across rooms at her child. Her only child. I’d attach to that certain love my own less conclusive emotions, and feel them nourished.

Even so, we never managed a lasting compromise. Taking her daughter on the bike became the most solemn secret of the engagement. The roads were lethal. People get killed. Of course, I nodded, I’d never dream of riding us over the Alps to Lake Como where the water is cold and blue.

‘You hear terrible stories.’

‘You do.’

‘Quite dreadful.’

She simply couldn’t help her anxiety on our behalf, while I preferred to believe that nothing could touch us because we were young and special. And I was doing the driving.

Later, and I can’t say exactly when (perhaps when I sold the bike), it stopped being funny.

Mother-in-law: If you don’t like me, why do you take me on holidays?
Son-in-law: So I don’t have to kiss you goodbye.

After several years of marriage, you go on holiday with your husband or wife’s parents. In this case, counting the children, that makes four against two. Or four against one, because my father-in-law remained a figure in shadow. In his favour, I hoped it was reassuring and even inspiriting nearly always to be in the right. To live for years and travel for miles with someone whose next idea or instinct was always more ridiculous than his own. Must make a man feel needed, I’d reasoned, and useful. So then, four against one, though my wife couldn’t be expected to take sides against her own mother (three against one), and the children loved their grandparents. Which made it one against one, single combat, in July 2003 on the Atlantic coast of France.

We were arriving from different directions by road, because she distrusted air travel. She also avoided motorways, for reasons of speed, and it once took us two days to drive safely from Paris to Strasbourg. She was a very attentive driver. Leaning forward over the wheel, she rarely even blinked.

Three friends were discussing the possibility of sudden death.
‘Everyone dies someday, but if only we knew when, we could make a better job of preparing ourselves.’
The friends nodded in agreement, and considered what they’d do with two weeks left to live.
‘Go out and have as much sex as possible,’ said one, and the others murmured in agreement.
‘Give all my possessions to worthy causes,’ said another.
The last of the friends then spoke up. ‘For those two weeks, I’d stay on the Atlantic coast of France with my mother-in-law.’
The others were puzzled by this answer. ‘Why would you do that?’
‘Because,’ you say, ‘It would be the longest two weeks of my life.’

More than once, as we moved fast down the bright straight roads of northern France, I flirted with disaster by driving on the wrong side of the road. I was remembering childhood holidays with my own parents, strictly no in-laws, when these routes nationales were shaded by glorious avenues of plane trees, providing shade and a dappled vanishing point. Most of the trees are gone now, in the interests of safety. ‘Make an effort,’ the daughter of my mother-in-law said. ‘The two of you may even get on.’

We’d never physically fought, though I feel she sometimes wanted to hit me. Mostly, we avoided looking at each other, and failed to communicate directly for days on end, especially around Christmas. I’d occasionally flounced out of a room, apparently to stop myself doing something I’d regret. Of course we didn’t get on well. If we had, it wouldn’t have been funny.

Murphy’s mother-in-law was walking round the farm, when a mule attacked her and she died. Five hundred married men turned up at the funeral, and Father O’Toole said to Murphy, ‘I never realized your mother-in-law was so popular.’ Murphy said, ‘Father, they’re not here for the funeral. They’ve come to buy the mule.’

We were involved in a universal conflict. The earliest recorded mother-in-law jibe is Juvenal’s from the first century AD, showing that along with hairdressing and a liking for fresh flowers, the tension between you and her is a feature of every culture at all times. It’s inevitable, biological. It’s human nature.

Abu El Abed and Murphy (and Aaron and Piotr and Li Po Chu) fantasize the early death of their mother-in-law to put an end to the otherwise endless contention over who’s right, what’s best, and, ultimately, the correct way to live. The universal complaint is that she thinks you’re not good enough for her child. If you have any self-knowledge, and you adore the person you married, you’ll know she’s right. This makes the situation worse. On this one vital point you can agree, but that doesn’t mean you need to be reminded. You therefore disagree about how to roast a chicken, the definition of smart-casual, and the itinerary for a visit to historic La Rochelle (which you didn’t want to make in the first place and, lest anyone forget, you’re actually paying for).

She and you squabble, fall out, and we were no different. Before long, disagreeing in itself became a habit: the date of the wedding, where to live, the children’s names. She didn’t like the covers of the books I read, or the boots I wore around the house. I didn’t like the way she ate with her mouth open, usually while speaking, as if there was never time for considerate chewing. She might choke before she’d get the words out, when what she had to say, invariably, was death and disaster. In reply, I could indulge my instinct that nothing I said or did would matter very much. I could therefore say what I thought. She would always be my mother-in-law and she would always visit. Later, I’d gripe in private to my wife, I’d whine and roll my eyes, but not too much, because that’s not a good idea in any relationship.

You’re trying to be adult, having babies, working hard, moving into the attempted universe of marriage. It’s important not to be childish, and instead to behave as if you know and are more than you once were. Back in the days when you were still a child, say, and visibly needed a mother. Then this woman arrives, she eats with her mouth open, she is present, and she is all mother, even more so than a natural mother, your own mother. She is related to you entirely by her motherness, because how else would you have met? What other reason do you have for keeping in touch? You’ve shared no experiences, nor seen her in any other context save as the mother of the mother of your children. In a charmed future, she may one day become the mother of the mother of the mother of your grandchildren. My own mum can’t do that, however hard she tries, however many cakes she bakes.

‘I don’t dislike all mothers-in-law,’ you say. ‘I like yours much better than I like mine.’

You have loads of excuses, and some of them may even be reasonable. You love her daughter or her son, who is good and strong. They must be, because you love them. So how can the mother be so difficult? And if she is impossible (and tremulous too), maybe your wife or husband isn’t good and strong, except by some miracle which defies genetic inheritance. In the absence of miracles, you’re therefore living with an impostor who is in fact aggressively timid, and who will one day speak while eating.

Try another possibility: no one is lovable all the time, especially not the person you married. You may not want this to be true, but bring her into it, bring in your mother-in-law, and it’s a safe way of deflecting the temporary dislike you feel for your wife, your husband. Transfer the annoying characteristics to your mother-in-law, and if this positive displacement works for you, then thank God she’s still there. This could be what mothers-in-law are for.