explain why their man proudly answers to the mama's boy title: his mother refuses to cut the umbilical cord and let him be a man; his mother doesn't think there's a woman alive good enough for him; his mother has something against his signi.cant other; he doesn't want to grow up; he jumps through hoops for his mother because she spoils him rotten and takes care of his every need. We've heard them all.
To Did I Marry a Man or a Boy? and all the other women in relationships with mama's boys, I say: stop coming up with excuses, and recognize that he's a mama's boy because you let him be one.
Yes, I said it: It's. Your. Fault.
Let me tell you why a man will get up out of a warm bed with a beautiful naked woman in it, pull on his clothes, grab his keys, and get in his car at 10:42 P. M., with his children and woman in the house alone, to drive all the way across town to bake cakes doggone near the middle of the night for his mother's bake sale: because his mother has set requirements and standards for that man, and his woman has not.
Look, I already told you how this works: a man who loves you will be the man you need him to be if you have requirements standards you set to make the relationship work the way you want it to. A real man is happy and eager to live by your rules, as long as he knows what the rules are and he's sure that abiding by those rules will help keep the woman he loves happy. The only thing you have to do is establish the rules, say them out loud early in the relationship, and make sure he sticks to them.
But if you don't have any standards or requirements, guess whose rules he's going to follow? That's right, his mother's. She was the.rst woman to tell him what she would and would not accept; if she told him to wash his hands before he sat at the dinner table, be back in the house before the streetlights came on, go to Sunday school on Sundays, protect his sister when the two of them were out, and always always listen to and trust his mother, guess what this boy was going to do? He was going to follow those rules to the letter (mostly), because he did not want to deal with the consequences that came if he didn't listen to and respect his mother. He also followed those rules because he loved his mother, and her rules (mostly) never changed; oh, they adapted to his age and circumstances, but a mother always keeps some rules front and center for the men in her life, no matter her son's station in life, including respecting her, loving her unconditionally, and protecting and providing for the woman who gave him life. She never relinquishes those standards and requirements, and her son, if he's a responsible, thoughtful, loving son, doesn't really ever break away from them.
Until, that is, he.nds a woman he loves and who loves him back and has sense enough to set some ground rules and requirements for the relationship, chief among them the following:
You need to respect me.
You must put me and our kids after God and above all others.
Be clear to everyone involved in our lives that they will respect your relationship and me.
Now, if you've never set those rules up, and his mother's never relinquished hers, is it a wonder that he's going to leave you in the bed naked while he goes to bake cakes? It's not that she has a hold on this man; it's that you never bothered to take the reins. Think about what Did I Marry a Man or a Boy? said: she's been in a relationship with her husband for ten and a half years, and not once did she step forward and express her displeasure when her man's mother called the house to put him to work. All these years I have kept my thoughts about this to myself… she wrote. So if she never told her man she doesn't like it when he leaves her and the kids to run over to his mother's house, and she doesn't like it when he allows his mother to yell at him like a child, and she doesn't want him cooking, painting, driving, and doing laundry for his mother when she needs him to do things around their house, how, exactly, was he supposed to know that his interactions with his mother violate his wife's standards? Men cannot read minds, and we are completely incapable of anticipating what you want.
So you have to speak up.
She didn't say it in the letter, but my guess is that Did I Marry a Man or a Boy? failed to speak up about her motherin-law's abuse of power for over a decade because she was afraid that he would leave her that if she tried to drive a wedge between her man and his mom, he'd choose his mother over her. I'll tell you, though, that men don't work this way; if your man truly loves you and he's a real man, he'll.gure out a way to get his mom onboard with making his woman happy to smooth everything out so that the relationship can work for all parties involved.
First, acknowledge that you can't compete with this woman: she changed his diapers, she can cook his favorite dish exactly the way he likes it, she knows most of if not all of his friends, and she's known him longer than anybody. Her blood courses through his veins. If he loves his mother and they have a good relationship, you're not going to get in the middle of that. (And honestly, you'll realize it's much better to be in a relationship with a man who loves his mother than it is to be with someone who can't stand the woman who gave birth to him; I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that the latter probably won't ever be able to commit to a loving, stable relationship with a woman if he couldn't get that single most important, obvious, easy male/female relationship right, but the guy who loves his mother and treats her with respect is the guy who will know how to act with you.) But you most certainly can work with your man and his mom by controlling what you do have control over by using your powers to set standards and requirements that he needs to abide by as the two of you work to create a family or to blend your families together. Instead of writing an angry Strawberry Letter in the middle of the night when her man tiptoed out of the house to help his mom, Did I Marry a Man or a Boy? should have stopped her husband at the bedroom door and told him something like, Look, I know you love your mother and you'd do anything for her, but it's not acceptable to me for you to leave me and these babies here in this house alone to bake cookies. If you choose to go over there, then you need to stay over there for the night.
This would not have been evil or unreasonable. Leaving a woman and children in the house at a quarter to eleven at night whether to bake cookies or go to the strip club is unacceptable if that woman thinks it is. And if she lets her man know this, she's making him aware of the standards he needs to live up to in order to stay in their relationship. Once it's said, the ball is in his court. He can either go bake cookies, or he can be a man and call his mother and set it straight tell her he can't come by tonight, but he can drop off some store-bought baked goods in the morning before he leaves for work. His mother may not be happy about this, but what would you care? Again, you can't control how she feels about her son's actions, and you can't control her son's actions, but you can control how you feel and what you expect of your man.
Now, Did I Marry a Man or a Boy? waited almost eleven years to have her say, but if you're just now getting into a relationship with a man, you're going to have to get this thing out on the table. Tell him that you don't ever want to come between him and his mother, but you sure don't want to compete with her, either, so he'll have to do what he has to do to let his mother know that (a) under no certain terms are the needs of his girlfriend/.ancTe/wife ever going to come second, and
(b) she should respect his need to be a protector and provider for the woman to whom he's professed his love. Don't worry, he understands his need to do this; no real man anywhere needs his mother more than he needs his woman. He recognizes pretty early on that the support he gets from his mother clothes, housing, education, nurturing, and so on needs to come to an end when manhood is full throttle, and that if he is to have a true, loving, lasting relationship with a woman, he needs to cut the proverbial umbilical cord from his mom so that he can give life to his new family his own family.
All you have to do is speak up.
Tell him straight up: I need you here to protect and provide for us, to give us security in our lives, to help raise these children, to set an example for this boy, who needs to see what real men do, and for this girl, who needs to know what a real man is so she can.nd one of her own someday. I need you to be the head of this family.
Lay it out like this, and your requirements will trump his mother's every time.
8
From the male perspective, the answers to the question Why do men cheat? are crystal clear. Not so much for women. No matter how good or sensible the reasons are, men know that women will never hear one and say, Oh! Now I get it! There are neither words big enough nor experts with enough credentials and letters behind their name to slice it and dice it up in a way that's palatable for most women; inevitably, responses to this million-dollar question are always going to sound like ten-dollar answers. And who could argue with that? For (most) women,
