An ancient quote that I want to vent about and comment on. "A son is a son till he takes a wife, a daughter's a daughter the rest of her lif

I guess it's all logistics. Like in Asia, it's the son that is expected to take care of his aging parents, not the daughter. Which is why having a son is SO important. It's the parent's 'insurance' policy if you will.
Lucky fella....

Magnum I have found a man who is good to his mother is always a good husband be it a mama's boy or not. If he treats his mother well, he will treat a wife well too.

Tell you a short story. I was working in a sqank restaurant, (soux chef was my second career). I passed a table on my walk around the restaurant to talk to the guests and came upon this table that was arguing loudly. Needless to say I did not stop to chat with that table.

After about 20 minutes of mingling on my way back to the kitchen the lady was there alone and I stopped by and sat down as she looked very distraught. I asked her how she was enjoying the meal. She started telling me about how she and her husband live in Hawaii and they come out west twice a year and stay with her mother in law. Said her husband always seems to team up with his mom and they leave her out in the cold and get into arguments. And that's why they were arguing. When I heard this I was blown away and had to tell her like it really was.

I told her first off you're living in Hawaii and that's a far cry from living anywhere else. How good does it get to be able to afford to live in Hawaii, I mean the cost of living is high there and you'd have to be earning top dollar to afford it. I then reminded her how many miles Hawaii is from the husband's mother. I then reminded her that they ONLY visit moms TWICE a year.

When I figured I'd made my point I looked at her and asked if she see things in a different perspective. How hard is it to let mom have the last word if she only has to do it twice yearly.

When we were done with our conversation she gave me a big hug and thanked me for words of wisdom and giving her a whole new way to look at her situation.

She wrote to my corporate headquarters too and that letter was a most remarkable compliment. I left shortly thereafter for a better restaurant but I'll never forget that incident.

Yes Crowemagnum I'll take a man that's good to his mother anyday and a mama's boy wouldn't be that bad either because no one lives forever.

Well said. I think we both know of the extremes that I'm speaking of. Being nice to one's mother as a son is important, but when I say 'mam's boy I mean someone who still really has not left home and wants their wife to treat them like a boy and the wife act like a mother. On the other hand, I've read stories here where the MIL hated the SIL for she wanted the daughter all to herself and in at least one story I read was able to destroy the daughter's marriage.

So, what I am trying to say is not in regaurd to not being or being nice to one's parents, it's the lack of healthy boundaries that all too often exist between parent and child like I grew up with.

I'm sorry that I did not write that clear enough which is something I can do all too easily.

No I understood you completely. I still say it's a thin line and mama don't live forever.

Yes, it's a thin and very real line which my wife has had an extremely hard time with and spent years in therapy to define which in turn made her more fully present with me as a wife and with the children as a mother. I've had my own battles with this line with my own very intrusive mother who spousified me as a young boy. Mom's don't live forever is true, but daughters are not meant to be slaves for their parents to the destruction of their marriages and children also. For the longest time in my marriage it was like being married to three people becuase she was also enmeshed in her head more than in reality with her identical twin sister.

Crowemagnum bottom line is that you are both still together. With all that's said and done isn't that what matters that you both had enough love and respect for one another that you thought it worth working out.

hey pamela i love your story ! it put a smile on my face when you explained that young lady about seein mom 2 times a year . yes ai gree with you momma s boy would make a good husband , my husband was momma s boy but he also let me know that i am in his heart , he s a good man ! 30 yrs and still going . i never once complain about him wantin to go visit his mom . in fact im the ones that wanted to go see her . she was good to me and treated me that im one of hers .
i lost a mom and gain a mom ....

CROWE:

When I was growing up in the Amazon, the males went out to "hunt" (work, bring home the bacon) and the females cooked whatever he brought, maintained the household, and raised children year after year. They also provided stability and continuity in a man's world where women actually pulled the strings and kept everything from falling apart.

In highly technocratic, culturally-diverse societies like the American, women do have more choices; but the notion that they are genetically predisposed to a life of servitude is alive and well. Unfortunately, instruments of socialization like churches and traditionalist older women without a personal understanding as to what it's like to be destined to a life of poverty, multiple pregnancies, and occasional beatings at the hands of a drunken husband perpetuate this notion. The idea that all females crave caregiving as a source of self-validation, self-fulfillment, true purpose in life, and overall identity becomes more preposterous as the years go by. And that well-educated, so-called "modern" people still expect them to makes it even more ridiculous.

Oscar Wilde once said “How can a woman be expected to be happy with a man who insists on treating her as if she were a perfectly normal human being?" Caregiving might seem natural for many females, but what woman in her right mind would expect to do it her entire life and be happy with not knowing who she really is and even censure herself for having dreams of "trespass"?

Magnum I kept thinking about this thread, much more than I should have as you and I have been down this road before so here I go with another story.

As you know I WAS a mama's girl, remaining at home till I married @28.

Make a long story short, one day after we'd been in our home about 3 years and just after our first was born hubby decided to paint our 2-story 4 bedroom home. We went and picked out the colors and hubby got started. He was so jazzed about painting that he started one weekend and had the entire front painted. Keep in mind he was painting the frame. Well then it set in that whoaaaaaaaaa this isn't as easy as he'd thought so 2 weeks go by and nothing more has been done.

Well mom had come over now and while we're in the jacuzzi mom nonchallantly says to hubby: "when are you gonna finish the house" hubby says "when I finish it".

Next day mom get's the penny saver and finds a painter, calls him and has him come over and gets an estimate and volunteers to pay the painter. Stupid me instead of putting my foot down and NOT letting her go through with this I fall right into that trap and say yeah let's do this.

When hubby gets home and we tell him about the painter THAT WILL BE COMING BACK THE NEXT DAY TO COMPLETE WHAT HE'S STARTED I still didn't realize what it took me a divorce to realize. I should have let hubby finish painting the house no matter how long it took him because he could look back on it and feel that special accomplishment.

This realization and rehabilitation did not happen over nignt as it took me a few years to figure this out that a man has to be a man.

A few years later I had a very special friend who would buy things for me. Once he bought me the ugliest pair of heels you could ever imagine. I hated them but do you think I told him, hell no...........I wore those heels out whenever we were together, and that was a lot of time. I learned, I learned, and I'm still learning. But I will never make the mistakes I made back in those days. I crown my man and declare him the king and I preach the same thing to my married friends when they start crying about stupid idiotic BS that we as women sometimes do.

Even with my boyz when they make up their beds, clean their rooms, iron their clothing, wash their clothes. I had to learn how not to redo it, learn to relinquish the control because ultimately that is what it's all about CONTROL.