of listeners out there
dealing with the same drama in their own lives. We give our opinions on the
situation, and some sound suggestions for how they can get out of the mess
they’re in with the hope that the advice we’re passing on helps not only the
person who wrote us, but the legions of fans also looking for answers.
A lot of the “Strawberry
Letters” touch me, but one that stood out to me recently was from a woman who
wrote an attention together in the subject line: Did I Marry a Man or a Boy?
She went on to say that she’s a thirty-five-year-old woman who is married to a
thirty-year-old man she’d dated for ten years before they got married about six
months ago. She claimed that although their relationship is great, his
“controlling” mother is driving her crazy. Here’s some of what she wrote:
She controls my husband
like he is a little child. She calls on him to do everything. She calls my
house late at night and I can hear her through the phone, screaming at him
about something that she may not have agreed on. She calls on him for money, to
paint her house, to pick her up from the movies, to cook for special
occasions, and even wash her clothes. What prompted me to write this letter is
the fact that it is now 10:42
., and I am home alone
because my husband was just called by his mother to come to her house to help
bake cakes for a fund-raiser tomorrow. I had plans to spend time with my husband
tonight, but once again, his mother got in the way. Don’t get me wrong: I love
the fact that he respects and helps his mother, but some- times I feel left
out. My kids and I are often put on the back burner because he is always doing
something for his mother. All these years I have kept my thoughts about this to
myself, but I don’t know how much more I can take . . . his mother is always
taking away from our family. I sometimes feel like I didn’t marry a man . . . I
need him to be a man and take control.
Now I sympathise for “Did
I Marry a Man or a Boy?” I hear from all too many women who face the same
problem: their men are excessively attached to their mothers at an age where
you expect the sons to be totally independent—it’s a bond that allows the
mothers of these men to exert all kinds of control over their lives, usually to
the detriment of romantic relation- ships. The mother says, “Jump,” the son
asks, “How high and when do you need me to be back?” and the girlfriend/wife
rolls her eyes and sits in the corner with her mouth poked out, wondering (a)
why this grown man just can’t fix his mouth to say no every once in a while,
(b) why this woman holds so much power over her man, and (c) what kind of tool
can she buy/ rent/borrow/invent to detach the two of them so that she and her
man can get back to the business of building a life together. No matter what
they say, no matter what they do, no matter how many different ways they
slice it, women like “Did I Marry a Man or a Boy?” feel like they just can’t
compete with The Other Woman—the mother. Those same women will toss up more
motives than a DA to 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 significant 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 recognise 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
., 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 moth- er’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 first 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 centre 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 finds
a woman he loves and who loves him back and has sense enough to set some ground
rules and re-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 moth- er’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 mother- in-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 be- tween 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 figure out a way to get his mom on board 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
Favorited 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 realise 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 be- tween 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/fiancee/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
recognises 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 find 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.
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