Free Act like a lady, think like a man by Steve Harvey Page A

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