Steve Harvey: Act Like a Lady, Think Like a Man

If he takes you out on a date and lets you pay, or only kicks in his portion of the bill, he's sport.shing; if he pays the bill, he's showing that he's willing to provide for you, which means he's likely looking for a keeper.

If he tells you he's going to be somewhere at a certain time, and he consistently shows up late without so much as the courtesy of a phone call, he's probably sport.shing; if he shows up when he's supposed to, he's looking for a keeper.

If you never meet his friends, family, co-workers, or other people who are important to him, he's sport.shing; if he introduces you to his people, he might be looking for a keeper.

If he keeps offering up excuses for why he can't meet your friends and family, he's sport.shing; if he agrees to go to the family barbecue or a social event where he will be introduced to family, friends, and co-workers, he might consider you a keeper.

If he cringes at the mere mention of children, he's sport.shing; if he's willing to meet your kids and shows up with gifts and can relate to them in a way that makes them comfortable with him, then he might consider you and your kids keepers.

If he does not have himself together.nancially, emotionally, and spiritually, he may be sport.shing; if he is capable of providing and protecting his potential family the way a real man should, then he might be searching for a keeper.

If he lobbies for an open relationship and says he's cool with you seeing other people, then he's sport.shing; if he wants your relationship to be exclusive and he agrees to date only you, he considers you a keeper.

Every day 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-.ve-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.x 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 title: his mother refuses to cut the umbilical cord and let him be a man; his mother doesn't think there's a woman alive good enough for him; his mother has something against his signi.cant other; he doesn't want to grow up; he jumps through hoops for his mother because she spoils him rotten and takes care of his every need. We've heard them all.

To Did I Marry a Man or a Boy? and all the other women in relationships with mama's boys, I say: stop coming up with excuses, and recognize that he's a mama's boy because you let him be one.

Yes, I said it: It's. Your. Fault.

Let me tell you why a man will get up out of a warm bed with a beautiful naked woman in it, pull on his clothes, grab his keys, and get in his car at 10:42 P. M., with his children and woman in the house alone, to drive all the way across town to bake cakes doggone near the middle of the night for his mother's bake sale: because his mother has set requirements and standards for that man, and his woman has not.

Look, I already told you how this works: a man who loves you will be the man you need him to be if you have requirements standards you set to make the relationship work the way you want it to. A real man is happy and eager to live by your rules, as long as he knows what the rules are and he's sure that abiding by those rules will help keep the woman he loves happy. The only thing you have to do is establish the rules, say them out loud early in the relationship, and make sure he sticks to them.

But if you don't have any standards or requirements, guess whose rules he's going to follow? That's right, his mother's. She was the.rst woman to tell him what she would and would not accept; if she told him to wash his hands before he sat at the dinner table, be back in the house before the streetlights came on, go to Sunday school on Sundays, protect his sister when the two of them were out, and always always listen to and trust his mother, guess what this boy was going to do? He was going to follow those rules to the letter (mostly), because he did not want to deal with the consequences that came if he didn't listen to and respect his mother. He also followed those rules because he loved his mother, and her rules (mostly) never changed; oh, they adapted to his age and circumstances, but a mother always keeps some rules front and center for the men in her life, no matter her son's station in life, including respecting her, loving her unconditionally, and protecting and providing for the woman who gave him life. She never relinquishes those standards and requirements, and her son, if he's a responsible, thoughtful, loving son, doesn't really ever break away from them.