Can the mother-in-law doom your relationship?

"Take my mother-in-law... no, please, take her" – a joke we’ve heard so many times before.

But the truth is, competing with ‘that other woman’ in a relationship can be both heartbreaking and destructive for all those involved.

Rather than worrying about the mistress, the mother-in-law is more often the ‘problem’ in a relationship, according to recent research.

After 20 years of research into hundreds of different families, it has been revealed that 60 per cent of women say they have suffered stress, grief and long-term unhappiness due to head-to-head friction from their husband’s mother.

Conversely, the same research also revealed that mothers-in-law frequently feel excluded from their son’s or daughter’s lives by their wives or husbands – and in some cases from their grandchildren’s.

A survey of 1,000 mothers revealed 80 per cent believed that cleanliness in a home was an important issue in whether or not they could warm to a daughter or son-in-law.

Francesca Johns, 21, an administration officer for Lincoln’s county court, explained how she once felt so nervous around a potential mother-in-law that she made a terrible faux pas at the dinner table.

"It was the first time I was meeting my boyfriend’s mum,and I’d never been so nervous," she said.

"You know all that nonsense about the overprotective mum and the anxious girlfriend? It was cliché, just like that.

"We were all sitting round the dinner table having cheese and crackers and I was forcing myself to keep quiet so I didn’t trip up and say something stupid.

"I don’t really know how it happened but next thing I knew, everyone went silent and was staring at me.

"I’d been so nervous that I’d accidently eaten a whole wheel of cheese and not even realised – it was so embarrassing. From then on I was known as the weird, quiet girl who really liked her cheese.

Ramzy Alwakeel, 22, a musician from North Hykeham, explained that the constant tension between his partner and his mother was making his life a living hell.

"There’s a delicate balance and it’s hard to get right," he said.

"On one side I feel like I have to stand by my partner because, if there’s no trust, the relationship is just going to collapse. But then, I have to keep reassuring my mother as well.

"I’m an only child and I’ve flown the nest. She just needs to know that I’ll always love her.

"I’m looking to start a family of my own, just like she did. This is the next chapter of my life and I want her to be a part of it."