Editor's Note: Do you need sound, Biblically-based advice on an issue in your marriage or family?  Dr. David Hawkins, director of the Marriage Recovery Center, will address questions from Crosswalk readers in his weekly column. Submit your question to: TheRelationshipDoctor@gmail.com. 

When we get married, we understand we’re marrying not only our spouse, but their family as well.

Though we have an intellectual understanding of this process, working out the details is often another matter. What do you do when your mate wants to spend more time with their family than with you? What do you do if your mother-in-law seems to have more influence over your mate than you do? These are horrific problems and can be incredibly divisive. Once a division has begun, it can be very difficult to repair the rift.

The trick, of course, is not to allow a rift to occur in the first place. In an ideal world you take your time in getting to know your future mate, and their family, and then in cleaving to your mate—as the Scriptures indicate—you create your own solid bond, remaining open to your extended family, but not controlled by them.

However, this is not an ideal world, and loyalties are hard to break with your biological family. Perhaps you’ve grown up in a family where the attachments run deep, or at least the obligations to them seem very strong. This creates a threat to your marriage as was shared with me by a woman recently.

Dear Dr. David: I have been married to my husband for several years and we have had a strong marriage except for one thing—his mother. I have had an on-again, off-again relationship with her, but throughout our marriage my husband has always taken her side. At times I have even felt abused by her, and still he stays loyal to her.

This issue has been the undoing of our marriage. He spends more time and attention talking to her than he does to our children and me. No matter how hard I plead with him to push away from her, he won’t. He says I’m being immature and that he should be allowed to be as close to his mother as he wants. He says our marriage should be strong enough to have her in our lives, while I want her to get out and allow us to rebuild our marriage. We fight about this issue so much that our marriage is threatened. What advice can you offer us? ~ Threatened by Mother-in-Law

Dear Threatened: I can empathize with your feelings of frustration and anger. It sounds like your husband has failed to fully embrace you and his marriage and is quite possibly enmeshed with his family.