Dudes (or moms): explain to me the complexities of relationship between mother & son

I have a v hard time understanding it, esp when a mom is really 'close' w/her grown-up son...

A roomie once told me, as he looked at a photo of his mom & her twin sister, that men have a 'very special' relationship with their mothers, which was a statement both vague and evocative in equal measures.

I love mamá.

I don't consider my relationship with my mom very complex or mysterious or whatever - she's basically like a standar sitcom-"wacky neighbor" character except instead of living next door she lives several hundred miles away and just sends me weird e-mails/visits a couple times a year

esp when a mom is really 'close' w/her grown-up son...

I don't think I know anyone for whom this is true...?

lolz Psycho jokes

I don't know anyone (male or female) very close to their mom.

what if the mom is a movie director?

I'd have to ask my mom but we are all really close to her and I don't think she has "special" relationships with my brothers any more than she does w me. I think to the extent that your OP situation is true, it has to do with the fact that men are assumed to be incapable of taking care of themselves domestically and will always need a "keeper" -- that mothers hand them over to wives for care-taking and will always retain some kind of primordial right to the benefits of a son's social standing and/or achievements.

Obv this is a fucked up kind of "traditional" nuclear family view of things, because the analog is that women are transferred from their fathers' authority to their husbands', which is generally a less benign kind of crazy.

On reflection: Also, maybe the time when a son became a mother's keeper in the event of the father's death is not that far behind us?

she's basically like a standar sitcom-"wacky neighbor" character

seems like a lot of ppl on ilx see their moms this way. bizarre.

don't really understand, my mom is a mainly a source of stress and aggravation

I keep reading the beginning of this thread title as "Dudes (or Momus):..."

first thing that came to mind is

zomg I wld love to hear Momus on this!

Maybe I just know guys whose moms are really...overbearing?

I think to the extent that your OP situation is true, it has to do with the fact that men are assumed to be incapable of taking care of themselves domestically and will always need a "keeper" -- that mothers hand them over to wives for care-taking and will always retain some kind of primordial right to the benefits of a son's social standing and/or achievements.

Laurel that is a great explanation.

Yay Abbott approves!

i know more chicks who are close with their moms than dudes

my brother is closer w/ my mom than i am but thats more in terms of "tells her more about his life" than anything else

i dont think my mom like me all that much tbh

i love cricket is your real mom

i dont think my mom like me all that much tbh

I heard she breastfed you with a slingshot

Well, the telephone is ringing
Is that my mother on the phone?
The telephone is ringing
Is that my mother on the phone?
The telephone is screaming
Won’t she leave me alone
The telephone is ringing
Is that my mother on the phone?

Well, every girl I got out with
Becomes my mother in the end
Every girl I go out with
Becomes my mother in the end
Well, I hear my mother calling
But I don’t need her as a friend
Every girl I go out with
Becomes my mother in the end

Oh...oh.....mother

Oh mother dear please listen
And don’t devour me
Oh mother dear please listen
And don’t devour me
Oh women please have mercy
Let this poor boy be
Oh mother dear please listen
And don’t devour me

See, you're not going to get anywhere here if you keep bringing that kind of stuff in.

oh shit I'd forgotten how awesome that song is

(the Police one, I mean)

Maybe I just know guys whose moms are really...overbearing?

― cant go with u too many alfbrees (Abbott), Tuesday, May 26, 2009 4:02 PM (14 minutes ago) Bookmark

we prefer the term 'Jewish'

my Mom is not overbearing

gabbneb are you trolling for bans at this point?

my mom is a little overbearing

you know you love landscape dan

xp

my mom was crazy overbearing, that's why I'm wearing her skin as a dress

my Mom doesn't ban either, Dan

i wish your mom had banned you. . . from her uterus!

cue horrible abortion joeks

Hahaha I guess yeah, my question is not going to get a lot of replies like 'yeah, my mom hugs way too long and too tight given that we're family and here's a thesis on the history & origin of this behavior and how it relates to my inner workings.'

que - horrible abortion joeks

I think it was the scare quotes around 'close'

xp

whoah wait are you talking about weirdly sexualized relationships? or just standard maternal intrusiveness?

i wish your mom had banned you. . . from her uterus!

^^^quality joeks bruv

http://jdetrich.homestead.com/files/jd/img/bucktooth.jpg

my mom was A LOT to take when I was *growing up. but she's been on Paxil (i think?) for like 12 years or so and it's a whole new world. We have very pleasant visits - when she's not going on with some Glenn Beck-esque bullshit

*tbf, i'm sure my sister and I were no picnic...

Basically I am talking about weirdly sexualized relationships in a way so circuitous it's not at all noticeable. But, yeah, a lot of guys I know have really creepy moms......what the hell is their problem? Or was I just raised in so prudish a home I am basically aspie abt how families express affection?

Oh gosh. I guess I don't know? We were probably v prudish too.

friend of mine comes from a v v tight family, and i'm pretty sure he has frank discussions of his sex life with his mom (not like the details, but say whether or not he's getting enough or whatever)

Basically I am talking about weirdly sexualized relationships in a way so circuitous it's not at all noticeable. But, yeah, a lot of guys I know have really creepy moms..

are we talking a Mormon thing here or are you referring to a wider swath of guys

No, friends who aren't Mormon & have semi-hippie-ish parents.

I withdraw the Jewish card now, we do not talk about such filth

Like is it creepy or no to go around in see-thru clothes around yr grown son? I think yes! But maybe it's normal to wider society?

wtf no thats gross i think even hugging your mom is weird tbh

this level of wrongness is so wrong you don't want to be any more wrong, or around people that are more wrong than this, because then you will either be a) dead b) in jail c) in a cult

or if you really want to scare her: "pfft, you should see MY dad's cock"

x-posts

I have talked to...a partner...about how yeah it creeps me the hell out and doesn't he think it's weird how she acts & what she says but he just says his mom is weird & you can't really change her. Admittedly she is just as huggy & weird and TMI about her daughters.

his mom is weird & you can't really change her

this is more or less true for all moms, I think

"My daughter just loved flashing her tits when she was 15 and punk rock! And she has such beautiful breasts, too."

Okay yeah okay I could not handle this if it were in the reverse, like, if it were a father being like this about a daughter we would call the police, right??? Ughghghhgadgdfskhbdvipo4tu9042gu0eirgbfdkvl nmc
xp! xpxp! xpxp!

does this person live close by?

I don't feel particularly grossed out or weird talking about sex with my mom. She's told me some pretty funny stories about when she was still dating or whatever and she used to know a distrubingly large number of gross jokes that she shared with me. That said, I am not particularly close to her mostly because I was raised by my dad and not her so she's more like a wacky aunt to me than a proper parent. I have known some guys who were really close to their moms, specifically, and there's always something weird about it, to me, not because I can't empathize or think that all parent/child relationships have to be the same, but be cause there's often something exclusive about such relationships - it's a very singular one gender-wise and if it's tight, no-one else is ever likely to get that close to the guy.

on one hand I think this thread is a rly bad idea and on the other I'm hoping tuomas shows up

are you sure you are not asking a 'explain to me the complexities of having hippy parents'?

my mom and i don't talk about private things particularly much and nevertheless i know more about her ex-girlfriends than i will ever ever need to.

yeah Mr. Que and she sometimes stays the night on the futon in the living room when she's too drunk to drive.

remember this is 'a guy I know' 'for' 'reference'

yeah Mr. Que and she sometimes stays the night on the futon in the living room when she's too drunk to drive.

aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaagggggggggggggggggggggggggggh

i keep thinking about this thx latebloomer Are human genitals pretty?

oh jeeze thanks for reminding me harbl ;_;

abbs is she saying stuff abt her sons dick to YOU or to her son

SORRY

if it were a father being like this about a daughter we would call the police, right

^^this is true, but male and female sexuality are pretty different and not necessarily comparable in this sense.

this thread omg

I had a b.f. whose mom would flirt with him, when they'd been drinking. He thought it was creepy, too. It had subtle overtones of that movie Spanking the Monkey ... plenty of it's your duty to help me with this that and the other. He was Catholic.

my s.o. comes from a Mormon family, but he was the oldest and the most independent and sees his parents on holidays and maybe one other time a year. His first brother (2nd oldest) has a closer relationship with his mother. I don't know if there's any weirdness w/his mom and his wife, but his wife's family is seriously fucked up, so the dynamics are different. One time, s.o.'s mom did say to me, "Thank you for taking care of my son," which weirded me out, because the s.o. seriously prides himself on being able to take care of himself.

bahaha Sarahel that's a totally Mormon thing to say. (I used to be Mormon.)

holy shit at harbl's link, lolololololol

xp Abbott: His grandmother (mom's mom) is worse in terms of stereotypical Mormon-ness. I think his mom struggles somewhat with trying not to be like grandma. Grandma is the queen of ambrosia salad. Mom actually doesn't cook. My mother was shocked that s.o.'s mom was Mormon and did not cook. She wondered whether a woman could get kicked out of the church for that.

http://i102.photobucket.com/albums/m97/youdjparents/carnage15.gif

^ otm. yikes, this thread.

This:
actual quote: "I know you have to have a great cock because your father sure did."

― cant go with u too many alfbrees (Abbott), Tuesday, 26 May 2009 22:39 Bookmark

Holy Shit!!!

I'm not as close to my mother as I was in my 20s (when we were very close, I'm her eldest and only son and the only one of her children she connects with on anything like an intellectual level) and we have, in the past, been moderately frank with each other about our sex lives. I'm still, to this day, not at all shy about checking out a girl if I'm out on the street with her, and she will comment on my taste. I do also know slightly more about her partner of 20+ years than I would like to. We've ever got to that level of wrongness, though.

There are some things you don't say to your mum and definitely things that you really don't want to hear from her.

One of my friend's mom's once asked him if he had a big dick because she said "it sure was big" when he was a kid. Ick.

ALL KINDS OF WRONG.

pls excuse the "'s" in that statement. i got all confused for a sec there.

mamas please don't talk about yr sons' junk

we implore you

lol I know the dude in that gif

it is an ice skating routine set to smells like teen spirit

did his mom talk about his junk y/n

cuz that definitely sets you up for figure skating to nirvana

afaik n

Stephanie: Me and Greg are having problems.
B. Rabbit: He found out about the eviction?
Stephanie: No.
B. Rabbit: The settlement check aint coming?
Stephanie: No, it's comin' it's comin'... it's our sex life.
B. Rabbit: Mom I don't wanna hear this shit!
Stephanie: I mean it's good, it's real good. He just doesn't like to...
B. Rabbit: (interupting) Mom I don't wanna hear this!
Stephanie: (complaining) Greg won't go down on me.
B. Rabbit: Mom!
(Shuts the bathroom door in her face)

more plz

A roomie once told me, as he looked at a photo of his mom & her twin sister, that men have a 'very special' relationship with their mothers

this is funny, insofar as it's exactly as true as saying

- women have a very special relationship with their mothers
- women have a very special relationship with their fathers
- men have a very special relationship with their fathers

i.e., amazingly enough, "human beings have complex and significant relationships with their parents"

My mind is still blown!

God maybe I need to take up drugs again.

The "very special episode" is occasionally billed as "an episode your family can't afford to miss", again dramatizing the importance of the episode by insinuating the issues presented represent mandatory viewing for the responsible parent and child. Often the "very special episode" concerns a moral issue.

Television websites such as Television Without Pity and jumptheshark.com deride the phrase. In an episode of Friends, Chandler Bing (Matthew Perry) mocked the ubiquitous NBC commercials that popularized the phrase ("A very special Blossom"); Perry himself appeared in "a very special episode" of Growing Pains earlier in his career, playing Carol Seaver's teenage boyfriend who dies of injuries sustained in a car accident after a night of underage drinking.

Diff'rent Strokes featured a very special episode that involved child molesting, hitchhiking, kidnapping, epileptic seizure, bigotry, bulimia and drug abuse.

In one episode?!??

I may have edited that part :)

Diff'rent Strokes' crack dealing episode is hilarious

I wld watch your made-up episode bnw.

There is actually one where Arnold gets molested, right? I may have just made that up but I seem to remember one.

^^^yes - some creepy old white guy takes Arnold and one of his friends back to his place and shows them dirty cartoons and then they take their shirts off and bad things happen. or something.

I may have edited that part :)

not as much as they had to hayoow

i'm a new dad and i think i might get what Abbot's talking about a little

fwiw this:

I think to the extent that your OP situation is true, it has to do with the fact that men are assumed to be incapable of taking care of themselves domestically and will always need a "keeper" -- that mothers hand them over to wives for care-taking and will always retain some kind of primordial right to the benefits of a son's social standing and/or achievements.

might be true for some people but seems like an artifact from some other time. (i don't know who is doing this assuming, anyway.)

what i took Abbot's question to mean was - what is there about moms and sons that is often different than moms and daughters?

here are my observations so far.

1 - the mother of my newborn son will sometimes call him by MY name. by accident obviously.
2 - she considered for awhile choosing a name that kind of sounded like mine, because it made her feel good for him to remind her of me
3 - he now retains a controlling interest in her tits

there isn't a sexual component per se in any of this - it's more like part of her feelings about me have transferred to him. these feelings aren't sexual, obv, but i AM her partner, so some of these feelings are necessarily partner-ish type feelings. so i'd say at least in our case it's kind of the obverse of what Laurel said - rather than the father being infantalized, it's the newborn baby that's adultified, in a way.

v interesting!