Priscilla Presley never met Elvis Presley’s mother, Gladys, but she heard all about her. One of the biggest tragedies in Elvis’ life was his beloved mother’s premature death, and he spoke to Priscilla about her often. As a result, she felt she understood the dynamic between mother and son. When Elvis began pulling away from Priscilla after she gave birth to their child, she felt Elvis’ relationship with his mother was partly to blame.
Priscilla Presley shared how Elvis’ relationship with his mother impacted her marriage
Priscilla and Elvis shared one child, Lisa Marie. While Elvis loved being a father, Priscilla noted a distinct shift in the way he treated her after she gave birth. Her motherhood had a “disquieting effect on him,” she wrote in her book Elvis and Me.
“I am no purveyor of Freudian theory,” Priscilla wrote. “I believe when a man comes into the world, his first unconditional love is his mother. She cuddles him, gives him warmth, the breast for nourishment, and everything he needs to exist. None of these feelings has a sexual connotation. Later, when his own wife becomes a mother, this bank of memories is ripped open and his passion may dissipate.”
Priscilla explained that Elvis and Gladys were “unusually close” during her lifetime. He slept in her bed after adolescence and wanted all of his serious girlfriends to live up to her standards.
“Now I was a mother and he was uncertain how to treat me,” she wrote. “He had mentioned before we were married that he had never been able to make love to a woman who’d had a child.”
She explained that while they had sex throughout her pregnancy, they hadn’t for months after she gave birth. Priscilla began to feel unfulfilled.
Priscilla Presley believed Elvis’ mother was the love of his life
While Priscilla was the only woman Elvis married, she believed Gladys was the real love of his life. She picked up on this very early in their relationship when he spoke about her impact on him.
“I was to learn that Elvis’ mother, Gladys, was the love of his life,” Priscilla wrote. “She had died on August 14, 1958, at age forty-two, of heart failure following a long siege of acute hepatitis. He expressed how deeply he loved and missed her and how in many ways he dreaded returning to Graceland without her there.”
Priscilla had a brief affair because of their fraught dynamic
Priscilla’s frustration and unfulfillment ultimately led her to fall for her dance teacher, an “extremely attractive and dynamic” man named Mark. She felt he understood her, something she couldn’t say about Elvis at this point.
“Mark was charismatic and I was particularly vulnerable,” she wrote. “In lieu of a passionate marriage, dance was becoming my life; I was obsessed with it, taking all my frustrations and feelings into the studio. I found myself thinking about Mark even when I was home. I had only seen him a few times in my life and yet I was unable to get him out of my mind.”
