You can fight and fight with all your might, but you can't stop it. You will turn into your mother. Fiona Gibson laments the inevitable

You are turning into your mother. Yes, you. You may laugh (or, more likely, shudder in recognition) but the bald fact is: you can't help it. The moment I realised it was happening to me was last night, during a spat with my husband: It's all self, self, self! I roared. He had committed the mortal sin of placing his dirty plate on the carpet, by his feet, instead of washing it, drying it and placing it neatly in the cupboard.

Let's not get into this, he muttered. But I wasn't listening. I realised, with horror, that I'd nicked the self-self-self line from a similar bust-up, sometime in the late 1970s, between my mum and dad.

I'm so like my mum it scares me, admits my friend, Laura. All the daft, anally retentive things I do, like ironing tea towels so they sit neatly in the drawer and washing out that day's knickers in the washbasin. I know what she's saying. I bleach coffee cups. On a more profound level, Laura says she behaves just like her mother in relationships. On the plus side, I'm stoic and self-sufficient like she's always been. Less positively, I bottle up resentments until I finally blow a gasket like mum does with dad. Hearing her words come spouting out of my own mouth always shocks me. I find myself thinking, Oh, hi, Mum! Wonder where that line came from?

Yet we should hardly be surprised when mummy dearest puts in an uninvited appearance. Sue Quilliam, Couples Counsellor for iVillage, observes, You learn the life rules of love from your parents. Which means we glean the good, bad and (sometimes) ugly bits of being grown-up from the very people who created us. Human beings tend to repeat what they are familiar with, whether it makes them happy or not, simply because it is what they are used to, says Sue Quilliam.

Mummy mimicking tends to kick in after the wild freedom years. We settle in to long-term relationship territory. We grow up, becoming more confident and less likely to kick against parental intervention. Kirstie, 29, found herself coming over all concerned and conventional when she had her first child. Suddenly, it mattered that my home looked nice and that I was getting enough sleep. I started taking Mum's advice on board. I suspected that qualities in her that I'd always found appalling (her stubbornness, her strictly ordered life) were perhaps necessary when she was bringing me up. And I decided I'd like a smidgen of order in my life too.

The more you try not to be like your mum, the more she rears her carefully-coiffed head. Mum and I had a feisty relationship right up to my early thirties. She would disapprove of my partners, my choice of flats, and the messy scramble of my life. Occasionally, I would remind myself that she was my mother I had bounced around in her womb, for goodness sake but quickly reassured myself that it hardly made us the same species.

Then something switched. Her marriage to my father ended and I started to see her as a real, rounded person (rather than someone to tolerate). When my first marriage ended too, she didn't blame or waggle a disapproving finger. Perhaps we were alike. Maybe we had views and experiences to offer each other. We have since grown to like each other, stopped fighting and are now planning a holiday together (surprise, surprise: each of us chose the same destination). I am immensely proud when mum says she has enjoyed something I've written.

Occasionally, of course, the extent of her influence comes as an almighty shocker like during the row last night. I hope I didn't sound like my mum, I wheedled, giving my husband a back rub in order to make amends.

He laughed and said, Don't you think I'd be first to let you know?

I nodded, temporarily reassured. Then I trotted to the kitchen and bleached the coffee cups.