There is an expensive looking bouquet of flowers that are losing their will to live in our sunny window. I put them in a vase without water after my daughter’s boyfriend gave them to me two days ago and haven’t had a drink from them since.
“I don’t know where Alex gets the flowers he brings you,” my husband Martin remarked. “They die so quickly.”
Then he saw my grin and it all clicked. “Are you killing them on purpose?” he asked. Yes, I am.
I also know that Alex doesn’t like onions – apparently they give him gas. So when he’s around, I sneak them into every dish I can find. Even I’m surprised at how much fun I get out of making sure he gets the smallest portion when I dish up dessert.
Nicola’s boyfriend brings Alison flowers and she always kills them on purpose (photo posed by model)
Alex is my daughter Nicola’s boyfriend. They are both 30 and she recently told me that they are planning to try for a baby.
Of course, my first reaction to this news was a joyful thought that I would become a grandmother for the first time.
But it was also a mixture of fear at the idea that she would finally have to accept Alex as a permanent part of her life – and therefore mine too.
Why? Because he gives me “the ick”—that indefinable twinge of disgust that can instantly turn you off someone for good. I hate the smell of Alex’s aftershave, while his voice—an octave too high in my ear—irritates me to no end. After he hugs and kisses me, when no one is looking, I wipe his kisses from my face and go wash my hands.
I haven’t had a man make me feel this way since I was sixteen. When I saw my then-boyfriend letting his dog lick his mouth—the same mouth I had enthusiastically kissed five minutes earlier—I got such a shiver that I never spoke to him again.
I’m surprised Nicola doesn’t have the same visceral reaction every time she looks into Alex’s eyes, which are a fraction too close together, and that she belly laughs at his jokes, which I don’t find funny at all.
Nicola and I are very close and have always shared the same dry humor. Alex’s is much clearer, less sarcastic. In fact, he is furiously cheerful; a glass three-quarters full.
You can’t complain about anything in his presence – the weather, the price of butter, snails feasting on your dahlias – without him smiling broadly and reminding you ‘how incredibly lucky we all are’.
Horribly enough, he calls my daughter “pumpkin” because they met around Halloween. Every time I hear him say that, something inside me dies.
So to make myself feel better, I’ve resorted to mean and sneaky acts of attrition, like pretending not to see the dog grab his left trainer and start chewing on the insole. Am I trying to secretly drive them apart? I would never do anything intentionally deceptive, but I refuse to let the fact that they’ve been living together for two years and are now talking about starting a family get in the way of my belief that he won’t last.
I admit I didn’t really like any of her previous boyfriends either, I always wonder if they are good enough for my little girl. But I did get used to them eventually. I can’t imagine that happening with Alex.
“She’ll come to her senses any minute and leave him,” I tell Martin. But he just says that Alex has become too much for him and that I have to accept that our daughter is in love and that it has nothing to do with me.
It would be so much easier if I had some hard, tangible evidence that Alex is no good. But he has a good job, seems both solvent and loyal, and there are no obvious signs that he is a secret gambler.
He brings me flowers, usually flowers that I like. He is affectionate towards me and shows interest in what I have to say.
I once asked Nicola if pharmaceuticals played a role in his seemingly boundless energy. She looked irritated and said, ‘No, he’s just fun.’
He also clearly adores my daughter. I’ve never heard her laugh so hard as when he’s around. Yet I still wonder, “What does she see in him?”
I really wanted to like him, very much so.
A year before Nicola and Alex got together, she was in a relationship with a man who dumped her for her girlfriend. Nicola suffered terribly from that double betrayal. Alex, she told me cheerfully, was ‘the man who would mend her broken heart’. But it all went wrong when she first brought him home. As he pulled into the driveway, she said: ‘I think I love him, Mum. I hope you do too.’
I told her that if he meant that much to her, I would be overwhelmed by him too. What a cliché that turned out to be.
A moment later Alex – quite handsome – walked into the kitchen, shook Martin’s hand and then gave me a warm kiss on the cheek. So far so good.
But then he saw lunch – a steaming lasagna on the counter – and he completely lost his mind.
This grown, bearded man suddenly started cheering with joy and then began dancing happily on the spot.
At that moment the dog – an old labradoodle – walked in to see what all the fuss was about, resulting in that cry of joy that turned into a cry of alarm.
“Oh, I forgot to tell you that Alex is terrified of dogs,” Nicola said as she shooed poor Barney out of the room. If he’d just been stared at by a Rottweiler, I might have had some sympathy. But a quick sniff from a freshly washed fluffball? Really?
This provoked such a strong reaction in me that I have since expressed my disapproval of Alex to my husband, my friends, and my dog groomer.
While I pretended to my daughter, who moved in with him six months later, that I thought he was absolutely wonderful, I know how hurt she would be if I told her otherwise.
You may find this hard to believe, but Nicola has absolutely no idea how I feel. My façade of affection is so convincing that Martin now wonders if he can ever trust me again. (And lest you think it was a one-off, I’ve seen Alex do his “happy dance” countless times since we first met. According to Nicola, most mornings he wakes up so happy that he does it all the way to the bathroom.)
Recently I couldn’t resist taking a closer look at this.
“But what if the honeymoon is over and he turns out to be a sad old man?” I asked her.
She pointed out that honeymoons usually don’t last two years and I quickly shut up.
Alison says her daughter’s boyfriend is afraid of her labradoodle (file photo)
I couldn’t bear to see my relationship with Nicola suffer because of how I feel about Alex, and I’m not crazy – I know that mothers who criticise their daughters’ partners only become closed off and lonely. I really hope I can get over my bad feelings for him so I can stop pretending to her that I really like him.
Meanwhile, my friends think I’m being unreasonable and that I should give Alex a chance. In fact, those who know him really like him and follow him on Instagram.
One of them also noted that his fear of dogs might have something to do with childhood trauma, but they all agreed that calling Nicola a “pumpkin” is a step too far.
But now that he may be the father of my grandchildren, it’s more important than ever that I keep her in the dark about my true feelings.
I know I have to do everything I can to make Alex feel welcome in our family, deep down I know the problem is with me, not him.
But as anyone who has ever suffered from it knows, it is nearly impossible to get rid of once it starts.
So how do I keep up appearances without internally imploding? Easy. Through discreet acts of revenge, like waxing lyrical about the flowers he brings me, knowing that I’ll soon be tossing their withered remains onto the compost heap.
Last weekend Nicola asked me if I would make my famous lasagna soon, because Alex really liked the first lasagna I served him.
“Let me know when you know,” he said cheerfully. “I’ll be there as soon as I can.”
Note to self: Never, ever make lasagna again.