Untangling the Tricky Dynamic of You, Your Husband, and His Mother with Dr. Tracy Dalgleish

Family dynamics can feel especially intense around the holidays and one of the most challenging patterns many parents face is the triangle between you, your partner, and your mother-in-law. In today’s episode, Dr. Tracy Dalgleish returns to the podcast to help us make sense of this dynamic with compassion, clarity, and evidence-based tools. In this conversation, I sit down with Dr. Tracy Dalgleish, psychologist and author of You, Your Husband & His Mother, to unpack why the mother-in-law / daughter-in-law dynamic is so emotionally charged and how it quietly strains couples. We talk about boundaries, guilt, generational differences, cultural expectations, and what couples can do to stop feeling divided and start acting as a solid team. In this episode, we cover: Why this family dynamic is uniquely triggering How boundaries get misunderstood and what actually works What to do when your partner shuts down or minimizes the issue How to recover after a difficult family gathering Why connection comes before problem-solving