Act like a lady, think like a man (8 page)

If he lobbies for an “open” relationship and says he’s cool with you seeing other people, then he’s sport fishing; if he wants your relationship to be exclusive and he agrees to date only you, he considers you a keeper.

7  M a m a ’ s  B o y s

Every day on the
Steve Harvey Morning Show
, my cohost Shirley and I have a really popular segment called

“Strawberry Letter 23,” during which we invite our listeners to let us help them solve their problems. We get all kinds of e-mails and letters from people desperate for advice on how to handle wild kids, overly demanding bosses, cheating boyfriends, out-of-control baby’s mommas, money-grubbing family members, horrible friendships—you name it, we hear about it. Some of the questions are extremely sad, some of them are so surprising they make you want to clutch your chest, and some of them just make you shake your head and wonder how the person asking for advice made it through. The people who write those letters aren’t doing it in a vacuum; for every problem addressed in “Strawberry Letter 23,” there are thousands 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 getter 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

P.M., 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 sometimes 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 sympathize 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 relationships. 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 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 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 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 finds 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 vio-

late 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 figure 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 un-acceptable 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/fiancée/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 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.

8  W h y  M e n  C h e a t

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, after all, cheating is unthinkable and (at first blush) unforgivable—you don’t and can’t comprehend why a man would be unfaithful, and you won’t ever pretend to. You figure that if you’ve told him you love him; given him your mind, your body, and your time; moved in with him; shared the bills with him; done his laundry; cooked his food; borne his children; and said an enthusiastic, “I do,” in front of the Lord, the pastor, your mother, and all her best friends and yours, too, the least your man can do is honor what is most sacred to you: the promise of fidelity. He can lie (every once in a while), fall down on the housework and the child rearing, get a little lax in the income department, pay more attention to his boys and his mother than he does to you, and slip into the mediocre category when it comes to the boudoir—even say the Lord’s name in vain while you’re walking out the door to go to yet another church ser vice alone.

But let a man step out on his woman, and watch the earth move.

That’s my way of saying that women will put up with a lot of things.