I’m sat here on my Hackney rug at 1:17 a.m., legs crossed, blue nail polish chipped to hell, cherry vape cloud hanging thick enough to set off the smoke alarm. My oat-milk flat white went cold two hours ago and I’m still replaying the voice note my mate Leah sent me at teatime.
She was proper fuming.
Her fella, let’s call him Dan, 32, works in IT, calls himself a “modern man” had just spent twenty minutes waxing lyrical about how his mum is “an absolute queen,” how she “sacrificed everything,” how no woman will ever compare, how he rings her every Sunday without fail and would “literally die” if anything happened to her.
Then, in the same breath, he turned to Leah and said, “Babe, can you sort the washing out? It’s been piling up for days and you know how my mum always kept the house spotless.”
Leah just stared at him.
I listened to that voice note four times and laughed so hard I nearly choked on my vape. Then the laugh died in my throat because… fuck. I’ve heard this exact script a thousand times. From my exes. From my mates’ boyfriends. From random blokes in the comments under my threads.
Men will put their mums on a pedestal so high it needs its own postcode, then treat their girlfriends like unpaid housekeepers with benefits.
And they genuinely don’t see the contradiction.
It’s wild. It’s unhinged. And it makes zero fucking sense until you zoom out and realise it’s not about mums or girlfriends at all.
It’s about the patriarchy doing what it does best: turning women into symbols
Let me take you back to last Christmas. I’m at my mum’s in Basildon for the big Sunday roast, the one I still drag myself home for every other weekend because council-estate loyalty runs deep. My brother’s there with his new girlfriend. Lovely girl. Proper sweet. Helping in the kitchen, laughing at Nan’s dodgy jokes, offering to do the washing up.
My brother? He’s on the sofa with Dad, feet up, banging on about how “Mum’s gravy is unbeatable, no one will ever match it.”
The girlfriend shoots me this look across the table. Half amused, half “is this real life?”
Later, when we’re in the kitchen loading the dishwasher, she whispers, “Does he ever talk about *me* like that?”
I didn’t have the heart to tell her the truth.
No. He doesn’t.
He talks about her like she’s “great” or “fit” or “proper sound.” But the pedestal? The awe? The “no one will ever compare”? That’s reserved exclusively for Mum.
And every woman I’ve ever spoken to about this has the exact same story.
My mate Hollie’s boyfriend once cried – actual tears – telling her how his mum raised him single-handed after his dad fucked off. Two hours later he had a go at Hollie for “not being nurturing enough” when she was on her period and didn’t feel like cooking.
Make it make sense.
It doesn’t. Not on the surface.
But dig a little deeper and the pattern is so obvious it’s embarrassing.
The Madonna/Whore Complex Never Left The Building
This isn’t new. Freud called it the Madonna/Whore complex back in the day. Men split women into two categories: the pure, selfless, saintly mother figure who can do no wrong… and the sexual, messy, demanding girlfriend/wife who exists to serve and can never quite measure up.
Except Freud was a Victorian prick who didn’t have TikTok or group chats, so he missed the modern update.
In 2026 the script is exactly the same, just dressed up in therapy-speak and “I’m in touch with my emotions” nonsense.
Mum = safe. Mum = unconditional love. Mum = never asks for anything except a phone call and a hug. Mum cooked, cleaned, sacrificed, wiped his arse when he was little and never once complained about the emotional labour.
Girlfriend = threat. Girlfriend = expectations. Girlfriend = wants foreplay and emotional reciprocity and to be treated like an actual adult human instead of a bang-maid.
So the brain does what brains do when it’s confronted with cognitive dissonance: it files Mum in the “perfect” box and girlfriend in the “needs fixing” box.
I’ve lost count of the number of men who’ve told me, unprompted, that their mum is their “best friend.”
Meanwhile their actual girlfriend is “nagging” if she asks him to empty the bloody bin.
One of my Coven girls sent me a screenshot last month. Her boyfriend’s mum had posted some cringey “my son is my whole world” Facebook update. He liked it instantly and commented “love you mum ❤️❤️❤️”.
Twenty minutes later he messaged the girlfriend: “Babe why is the flat such a state? You said you’d tidy up.”
She replied with the screenshot and just wrote “make it make sense.”
He replied with three dots and then ghosted the conversation for two hours.
Classic.
The Sunday Roast Hypocrisy
My mum still does the full roast every other weekend. Proper Essex spread – Yorkshires, roasties, three veg, gravy you could stand a spoon up in. I turn up, help chop, set the table, wash up afterwards.
My brother turns up, eats, burps, and says “Mum, that was banging, best in the world.”
Never once offers to peel a potato.
And here’s the kicker: he’ll go home to his flat and moan to his girlfriend that she “doesn’t cook like Mum does.”
The same man who has literally never turned an oven on in his adult life.
I asked my mum about it once, late at night after everyone had left. She just laughed that tired, knowing laugh.
“Love, they all do it. Your dad still talks about his mum’s shepherd’s pie like it was Michelin starred. Never mind I’ve been cooking for him for thirty-odd years.”
She said it without bitterness. Just fact.
And that’s what gets me the most. The mums ‘know’. They’ve lived it. They’ve raised the boys who grow up to worship them and then expect the exact same service from their partners.
It’s passed down like a family heirloom. The emotional labour baton. Handed from mother to son to girlfriend without anyone ever questioning why the girlfriend is expected to pick it up.
The Real Damage (It’s Not Just Annoying)
This isn’t cute. It’s not “aww he loves his mum.”
It’s a slow, grinding form of emotional abuse dressed up as nostalgia.
Because when a man puts his mother on a pedestal, he’s unconsciously setting an impossible standard for every woman who comes after her. No girlfriend can ever be as selfless, as nurturing, as *convenient* as Mum was. Mum didn’t have a career that stressed her out. Mum didn’t have her own needs. Mum existed to serve.
So the girlfriend is always failing by comparison.
She works full time? “Mum never complained about being tired.”
She wants him to do half the housework? “Mum always kept the place spotless.”
She has her own opinions and boundaries? “Mum never argued like this.”
I’ve watched it destroy relationships. Proper good ones. Women who bend over backwards trying to live up to this imaginary saintly mother figure only to realise they’re fighting a ghost.
And the men? They’re genuinely confused when it blows up.
“I just want what my parents had,” they’ll say.
Mate. Your parents had a 1950s division of labour where your mum was exhausted and your dad thought loading the dishwasher was women’s work. That’s not a blueprint. That’s a warning.
The Class Angle (Because Of Course There Is One)
This hits different when you’re from a council estate.
My nan raised four kids on her own after Grandad pissed off. She worked in the factory, came home, cooked, cleaned, patched up grazed knees and broken hearts. Never had a day off.
My brother and all his mates grew up watching that and now they talk about their mums like they’re superheroes.
But ask them to put the bins out without being asked? Suddenly it’s “I’m not your slave.”
Working-class mums get the worst of it. They’re romanticised as these unbreakable saints who “did it all” while the sons grow up expecting their girlfriends to magically replicate that same superhuman level of unpaid labour.
Meanwhile the middle-class boys I dated at uni would bang on about their mums being “such a strong feminist” while expecting me to do all the emotional admin in the relationship.
It’s the same script, different accents.
The patriarchy doesn’t care where you’re from. It just needs women carrying the load.
So Why The Fuck Do They Do It?
Because it’s comfortable.
Because it lets them stay little boys in grown-up bodies.
Mum represents the last time they were unconditionally loved without having to give anything back. No emotional labour required from them. Just take, take, take.
Girlfriends require reciprocity. Growth. Actual adult partnership.
So the brain does the mental gymnastics: Mum good. Girlfriend… needs work.
And society cheers them on. Every Mother’s Day post, every “my mum is my hero” TikTok, every time a bloke says “I want a girl like my mum” – it’s all reinforcement.
Nobody ever stops to ask: why the hell would you want your romantic partner to be like your ‘mum’?
That’s not romantic. That’s weird. And a bit Freudian in the worst possible way.
What We Can Actually Do About It
Look, I’m not here to tell you to “fix” your man’s mommy issues. That’s not your job. You’re not his therapist.
But you can stop playing the game.
Next time he starts the “Mum would never…” speech, call it out. Calmly. Directly.
“Interesting. So you want me to be more like your mum? Because I’m not her. I’m your partner. And I need you to treat me like one.”
Watch the reaction. It tells you everything.
If he gets defensive? That’s your answer.
If he actually listens and reflects? Rare, but possible. Miracles happen.
And for the love of god, stop trying to compete with his mum. You will never win. She’s had thirty-plus years of head start and zero sexual expectations.
Instead, demand the standard you actually want.
Equal emotional labour.
Equal domestic labour.
Equal respect.
And if he can’t give you that because he’s too busy worshipping at the altar of Saint Mum, then maybe it’s time to let him go back to living with her.
The pedestal has room for one. Let him stay up there alone.
I’m not saying all men do this.
But enough of them do that it’s become a running joke in every woman’s group chat I’ve ever been in.
And the ones who don’t? The ones who talk about their mums with love but treat their partners with the same respect?
They exist.
They’re rare.
And when you find one, you’ll notice immediately because he doesn’t make you feel like you’re auditioning for the role of “better than Mum.”
He just sees you as you.
Flawed. Tired. Human.
And that, babes, is the bare minimum we should all be holding out for.
Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to text my mum and tell her I love her.
Then I’m going to text my brother and tell him to sort his own fucking washing out.
The cycle ends here.
Or at least in this flat.
Drop your own “my man vs his mum” horror stories in the comments. I read every single one and I promise you’re not alone.
We see you.
We believe you.
And we’re done competing with ghosts.
Love,
Emma
