As he continued adjusting to his fame, he was dealt a blow one night while watching Hard Copy. "There's my mother, talking to the camera that is following her through our house on a guided tour," he recalls. "'And this is the bed where he lost his virginity to Melissa, I think her name was, anyway, doesn't matter, she didn't last...And this is his bathroom, just a shower, no bathtub, and you know what I caught him doing in there! Ha-ha, but trust me, it's no big deal, I've seen it plenty of times.'" When he called his mom to ask what she'd been thinking, she told her son, "'I didn't think you'd find out.'" Their relationship would be strained for the next eight years.
"She wanted a piece of my fame, and while I was still finding my balance with it, I wasn't self-assured enough to share it with anyone else, especially my own mother," Matthew writes. "The more she wanted a piece of my place, the more I locked her out. If Dad were alive he would have loved my success, but unlike Mom, he would have been in the front row, not trying to steal my show." Eventually, with his feet "more firmly on the ground," Matthew loosened the reins and allowed her to participate in his fame.