I'm worried my partner’s mum will be cruel to our future kids

I’m a 30-year-old woman who has been with my partner for almost four years. We’re very happy and we want to spend the future together.

- Annalisa Barbieri

The most significant problem in our relationship is his mother’s treatment of him and her behaviour affects both of us. She is cruel towards him. She criticises my partner over innocuous things: telling him to stop talking, saying cruel things about his appearance, calling him useless. She then acts as though he’s overreacting if he tries to stand up for himself. She tries to embroil me in her behaviour but I’m firm in telling her I’m not going along with it.

She leaves us feeling completely exhausted, and my partner sinks into a depression for at least a week. But he is also defensive of her. He claims her behaviour is because of grief over the loss of her husband a few years ago, but my mum also lost my dad and she hasn’t become cruel to other people.

My partner spent many of his teen years and 20s in addiction but he’s been clean for almost a decade. I see the connection between her treatment of him and his past problems, but he can’t.