You are at a party with three women who have practically begged you to come along. The party has a great atmosphere. You see a man seated at a nearby table with three of his buddies. You almost stop breathing as he looks at you across the room. Your legs tremble a little under your dress as he gets up and walks directly towards you, holding you in his sight all the time. You feel his hand on your arm as he leans towards you and whispers in your ear: “You look smashing, girl.”
The relationship is fast and furious. You can’t believe that you have met such a great guy. He’s tall, he’s got great soft grey eyes, his mouth is full, he has a six-pack, and you can’t look at him without wanting to touch him. Most of all, he has his own business and has money to treat a girl well. On the fifth or sixth night he takes you home to meet his mother. His mother likes you even though you are not Italian.
There is only one nitpicky thing bothering you. His mother practically runs his life. He makes no decisions without her and once had allowed himself to be on a television program where contestants dated various women and at the end the mother decided.
There is that 95 per cent of the relationship that overwhelms all your senses and you don’t want to take cognizance of the co-dependency between mother and son – and that five per cent that niggles under your skin and tells you that there is trouble ahead. You ignore it. He is too secure within himself to let his mother rule him as if he were still a child. He has his own mind, his own ideas and ways of doing things. All will be fine, you tell yourself; eventually he will let go of his mother’s apron strings.
Years later when the relationship breaks up and you look back on it you see that it was not the big things you thought were problems that ended it, but that it was the five per cent you ignored. We know instinctively in the first twenty seconds we meet someone what their psychological make up is, yet we sweep it under the rug. Women think they can save a man or reform him, but they can no more save him than they can save themselves. They should stick with their first instincts. And next time rearrange the percentages and put a twenty-five per cent hold on their feelings and think with their heads.
The relationship is fast and furious. You can’t believe that you have met such a great guy. He’s tall, he’s got great soft grey eyes, his mouth is full, he has a six-pack, and you can’t look at him without wanting to touch him. Most of all, he has his own business and has money to treat a girl well. On the fifth or sixth night he takes you home to meet his mother. His mother likes you even though you are not Italian.
There is only one nitpicky thing bothering you. His mother practically runs his life. He makes no decisions without her and once had allowed himself to be on a television program where contestants dated various women and at the end the mother decided.
There is that 95 per cent of the relationship that overwhelms all your senses and you don’t want to take cognizance of the co-dependency between mother and son – and that five per cent that niggles under your skin and tells you that there is trouble ahead. You ignore it. He is too secure within himself to let his mother rule him as if he were still a child. He has his own mind, his own ideas and ways of doing things. All will be fine, you tell yourself; eventually he will let go of his mother’s apron strings.
Years later when the relationship breaks up and you look back on it you see that it was not the big things you thought were problems that ended it, but that it was the five per cent you ignored. We know instinctively in the first twenty seconds we meet someone what their psychological make up is, yet we sweep it under the rug. Women think they can save a man or reform him, but they can no more save him than they can save themselves. They should stick with their first instincts. And next time rearrange the percentages and put a twenty-five per cent hold on their feelings and think with their heads.
