Mammy Daughter or Mammy Boy?

Recently, there has been a very curious occasion in our marriage agency. One day a beautiful divorcee and her equally beautiful mother came into our office. They brought some professional photos of the daughter who was supposed to be our new client. The mother sat down in front of the computer and began the process of sorting out worthy candidates for her daughter.

BUT what was the 30 year old daughter doing? She was showing her photographs off to the staff and flirting with the men! She has completely forgot about what she was supposed to be doing there!

Russians have a great number of jokes, some of which are rather caustic, about the conflicts betweeen husbands and their mothers-in-law. Usually the mother-in-law appears in these stories as an object of scorching irony. For sure, some mothers really desire to keep their grown up children at home whatever will be the price for that, even when the children have already reached the age of consent, which is 18-21 in most countries. These clinging vines of a mother descend to all sorts of foolish tricks: they bring false charges, simulate heart attacks, even pretend to commit a suicide and all these to maintain control over their adult sons and daughters. Luckily these women are rare.

In most cases, parents just suggest their own views and wishes, give their advice and hope their children are mature enough to understand AND make up their own minds. And parents as well as all other people have their right to suggest.

Perhaps, the majority of problems in realtionships between mothers and their sons-in-law happen because of the woman who being a daughter and wife at the same time cannot put aside her infantile instincts. From her early years this woman was trying to find a husband as soon as possible, but she never wondered if she was mature enough for the role of a wife.

Thus, thoughts of an infantile daughter will always be ABOUT her mother's well-being and her mother's wishes, while her husband's needs and wishes will be regarded not so important, or, which is even worse, will mean nothing at all.

Of course, no one should forget about his or her parents completely. There are some occasions when you should care about the people who brought you up. But, although we can wish our parents happy birthday or merry Christmas and sometimes support THEM in hard times, both men AND women ought to understand that now their NEW family and their partners in life ARE the people they should consider most of all. We can either create or ruin our own family, but we MUST take the resonsibility for that. As soon as we get married, it is OUR HUSBAND or OUR WIFE who becomes our family.

What may all these unfortunate men and women expect taking the risk of marrying a mammy's darling one? From the very beginning, such a situation is hopeless for all the sides involved. Mom's wishes, needs and wants will always be more important for a such a molly than those of his or her husband or wife.

We cannot even imagine the harm made to OUR FAMILY when our own mother's views RULE it! Can you think of any self-confident man or woman who, coming into a NEW FAMILY, will be able to tolerate interference from his or her mate's mom? Mom's daughter and mommie's little boy are not the case for a mature NEW FAMILY. This should be considered a lot. Think about the client we have mentioned above. I believe her new attempts to get married also would be a failure, since she has missed the very point of her visit; she missed the very fact that it was her mother who was doing all the work for finding her a new mate.

OUR NEW FAMILY must be our main concern. Our new husband, our new wife. They are IT. We always live in the present, although we can enjoy the past and can look forward into the future. But now OUR PRESENT is OUR FAMILY.