Subject: This is my kitchen, not your mama’s
Dear Steve and Shirley, I’m a 33 year old recently single woman and I was in a tumultuous relationship with a wimpy man. We’ve been on again, off again and he’s inconsolable whenever we are apart. We broke up over the way he washed the dishes and he’s been calling me non-stop to plead his case. He’s called my mom crying and she wants me to get back with him so she can get out of our drama. This man is 40 years old and very set in his ways. I won’t say he is a mama’s boy but if things are done differently than the way his mama does them, it sets him off. His mama still keeps all of his favorite snacks and she makes Kool-Aid for him when she knows he’s coming over. I drink Crystal Light instead of Kool-Aid and that’s a problem for him. I’m sick of the long and drawn-out discussions on why I can’t just do things the way his mom does them. I tell him over and over that it’s my house and I do not care what his mama does at her house and he should go over there and stay with her since everything’s better over there. We never have normal arguments like other couples do. Sex is great and our conversations are good. It seems like we are only at odds when it comes down to how I cook some foods or how I do things in my kitchen. To get back to our last big argument, he didn’t use dishwashing liquid to wash the dishes. He rinsed all of the plates in hot water and dried them off. He got frustrated after I rewashed everything and started yelling that his mom said that hot water kills germs. I cannot allow this grown man to tie up my mental energy over such foolishness. Should I try to continue to work around his mama’s influence or is he a lost cause?