I have a massively frustrating predicament.

My mother is extremely prude, bigoted, polarising and unkind. I have suffered much resentment, nastiness and unfairness in my childhood – to the point that now, as it stands, I have become rather desensitised and apathetic to anything emotional.

Except that I’ve met somebody – she is amazing. She makes me feel worth something again and extracts things from me I thought were long gone… Tears, lauging from the depths of my gut and an inability to stop staring at her as she sleeps. I can’t imagine living without her.

I’ve had 2/3 girlfriends before, and almost as few good friends, but the maternal one incessantly hunts for reasons to dislike and alienate them, purely out of dislike and contempt for me. It is cruel and embarrassing to put my beautiful saviour through the torment of even meeting her; I can’t even realistically hope for a civilised and courteous exchange, because I know what impends.

I’m 31, she is 19 – intelligent, funny, caring, cute, Swiss and really special, genuinely loving; gorgeous from the inside out – we met through my work. I am the vice chairman of a non-profit organisation where she applied to volunteer and regrettably, I work there with my mother daily. Ordinarily this isn’t too enormous a problem, but now I have to listen to all manner of nonsense like “the two of you will drive me to jump off a cliff” or “she’s evil, a terrible influence on you, she’ll ruin our lives” and the like.

I have no idea what to do – there are children here that I care for deeply and I need to be here for them, long term; I can’t simply leave and move to Europe to be with her when she eventually goes back in a few months, but I can’t keep taking all this family warfare on the chin – I’m nigh reaching breaking point…

However morbid and ugly this sounds, I’m basically just sitting around waiting for her to die so that I can eventually be happy. I have exhausted every attempt I could fathom to address and/or solve the issue, but there’s literally nothing else left! Does anybody have advice, however bizarre?

Please, help me…