Elvis Presley obtained many close relationships throughout his career. The preeminent of all his personal relationships, by far, was that he had with his mother Gladys, as described below.

In a newspaper interview with The Memphis Press Scimitar, Elvis himself was open about the close relationship to his mother. "She was the number-one girl in his life, and he was dedicating his career to her." Throughout her life, "the son would call her by pet names," and they communicated by baby talk. According to Elaine Dundy, "it was agony for her to leave her child even for a moment with anyone else, to let anyone else touch Elvis." Presley himself said, "My mama never let me out of her sight. I couldn't go down to the creek with the other kids." His father, Vernon Presley, talked about Elvis's close relationship to his mother "after his son became famous, almost as if it were a source of wonder that anyone couldn't be that close to him."

During Presley's rising career, Gladys became despairing, depressed and lonely and began to neglect her health. She put on weight and began to drink every day. She had wanted Elvis to succeed, "but not so that he would be apart from her. The hysteria of the crowd frightened her." Doctors diagnosed liver problems, and Gladys's condition eventually worsened so much that she was admitted to hospital in August 1958. At that time, Elvis was in Fort Hood, Texas, to fulfill his military obligations, but he got emergency leave to see her, and a special plane was chartered to take him home on August 12. Gladys died on August 14. Elvis and Vernon were deeply upset by her death, with Elvis "sobbing and crying hysterically," and eyewitnesses relate that he was "grieving almost constantly" for days. During and shortly after the funeral, Judy Spreckels and Nick Adams, Presley's best friends at that time, attempted to comfort the singer.

Presley's early experiences being teased by his classmates for being a "mama's boy" had a deep influence on his clumsy advances to girls. He didn't have any friends as a teen. Beginning in his early teens, Presley embarked upon the "indefatigable pursuit of girls," but was totally rebuffed. At school, anyone wishing to provoke a little girl to tears of rage had only to chalk "Elvis loves -" and then the girl's name on the blackboard when the teacher was out of the room.

His first true sweetheart was the fifteen-year-old Dixie Locke Emmons, whom the singer dated steadily after graduating from Humes and during his Sun Records time. While still a rising star, Presley also had a relationship with June Juanico, who is said to have been the only girl his mother ever approved of, but according to Juanico's own words, she "never had sex with Presley." In Juanico's book Elvis in the Twilight of Memory, she stated she was afraid of getting pregnant. However, since the singer's death, many claims to relationships have been made by women who were no more than acquaintances or had short affairs which were exaggerated for personal gain. Juanico even blames Elvis's manager, Colonel Thomas Parker, for encouraging Presley to go out with beautiful women only "for the publicity."

Between 1954 and 1956, when his stardom began to rise, Presley became the subject of adulation and adoration by young Hollywood starlets such as Natalie Wood, Judy Tyler, Shelley Fabares, and Connie Stevens. His mother believed that Wood was a schemer who hoped to "snare" the singer only "for publicity purposes." When a columnist wanted to know if the romance with Presley was "serious," Wood's answer was, "Not right now. But who knows what will happen?" One of her judgments of Elvis was, "He can sing but he can't do much else."

Several authors have written that "Elvis busied his evenings with various girlfriends" or that his "list of one-night stands would fill volumes." Actress Anne Helm, for instance, has stated that Presley "really liked sex": "I had fun," she said. "And it was special." She has further claimed that Elvis loved the flouncy, yellow baby-doll nightie he had bought her, and that he gave her pills after having sex with her.

It is unclear whether Presley actually had sexual intercourse with most of the women he dated. His early girlfriends Barbara Hearn and June Juanico say that they had no sexual relationships with Presley, and there were several women with whom Elvis quickly bypassed sexuality altogether, settling into comfortable friendships. Spreckels, singer Betty Amos, hairstylist Patti Parry, and others close to Presley all filled sisterly roles for Elvis. Despite claiming no sexual relationship with Elvis, June Juanico did say in an interview for the movie Elvis 1956, "I will not say what happened between us. It is personal." Byron Raphael and Alanna Nash have stated that the star "would never put himself inside one of these girls..." (for a number of reasons).