Did you know that you can attend a mini-workshop on romantic relationships in the comfort of your own home for the price of a rental movie and be entertained at the same time? That’s because this “home workshop” uses movies you may already own!
Excerpted from the book, “Getting Back To Love: When Pushing And Pulling Threatens To Tear You Apart” (Copyright 2008, All Rights Reserved), this article shows you how to pay attention to your momma’s boy/daddy’s girl. dynamics in certain romantic relationships found in specific films. It even shows you the movies where you can find evidence of the father’s sons and the mother’s daughters.
Mama’s Boys are tied, either consciously or unconsciously, to the influence of their mothers. They believe they get their power from the women in their lives. For systemic reasons, they did not have the opportunity to bond with their parents in adolescence. Mommy’s boys are naturally drawn to daddy’s girls, who complement them in the masculine/feminine dance of life.
Daddy’s girls are tied, either consciously or unconsciously, to the influence of their parents. They believe they find satisfaction in caring for the men in their lives. For systemic reasons, they did not have the opportunity to bond with their mothers in adolescence. Daddy’s girls and mommy’s boys attract like magnets! Each of them feels in the other what was missing from childhood and believes that he can find the missing pieces together. Their relationships start with a lot of chemistry and happiness. However, when they reach a certain level of commitment, they risk falling out of love unless they can learn to be together as adults, rather than as parents and children.
On the other hand, the Children of the Father came to bond with their parents in adolescence. These men know that they draw their power from within themselves. Similarly, the Mother’s Daughters were able to bond with their mothers in their early teens. They know that fulfillment comes from within.
An effective way to watch mommy’s boys and daddy’s girls in action is to look for them in the movies and on television. That takes the subject far enough away from oneself to be entertaining and educational!
Television’s newest classic Mama’s Boy can be found in reruns of Everybody Loves Raymond. Raymond and his brother are so tied to his mother’s apron strings that it can be repulsive and hysterical to watch. Raymond’s wife, Debra, is also a typical daddy’s girl, as she barely tolerates Raymond’s behavior and bosses him around. Routinely, the most tension-filled moments in comedy occur when Ray has to choose between his mother and his wife. Invariably, he goes to great lengths to choose both, disappointing both women every time!
One of the most painful depictions of Daddy’s Girl is found in Funny Girl. As depicted in that film, Fanny Brice takes very sweet care of her husband, Nick Arnstein, as if she were a child and not a grown man. Out of love for him and unaware of what she is doing, she demands it over and over again, undermining her masculinity and destroying what remains of her love. She is not her intention, but she can’t help it. She is desperate to hold on to him. The choice to let him handle the consequences of her own actions must have felt like a surefire way to lose him. But caring for him ensured that she would lose him. If you or someone you love is at risk of jeopardizing your relationship because of this kind of caring, Funny Girl can be an effective, if painful, mirror to help you encourage yourself or someone else to make a change.
In movies like Sex, Lies, and Videotape, or Enough, or Hanging Up, the depictions of Mama’s Boys and Daddy’s Girls are equally obvious. In Enough we find a representation of a mother’s boy who tries to obtain power from his wife in an abusive way. In it, Slim and Mitch Miller are newlyweds apparently in love and with a prosperous future ahead of them. However, the honeymoon ends quickly when Mitch becomes abusive. He becomes increasingly controlling of his and his son’s environment, isolating Slim from his friends and potential support. He eventually starts having an affair. Between learning of the affair and Slim’s desire to protect her daughter from Mitch’s abuse, he leaves her house with her son only to have Mitch relentlessly pursue her. Mitch’s obsession with controlling and belittling his wife, having an affair, and seeming entitlement to that affair are all symptoms of a mama’s boy using abuse to try to gain his power from women.
What about witnessing a father’s son and a mother’s daughter in a movie? Are any of those available? Yeah!
In the movie You’ve Got Mail, you find a mother’s daughter and a father’s son in action. Kathleen Kelly is her mother’s daughter and followed her into owning and managing her mother’s children’s bookstore. Joe Foxx is the son of her father, having succeeded his father in ownership and management of the family business, Foxx Books.
Next time you see You’ve Got Mail, pay attention to how Joe and Kathleen handle their relationships. Joe doesn’t push or pull the women in his life. And the women in his life don’t treat him like a little child. Kathleen doesn’t care for the men in her life like little children. Although Frank, the man in his life when the film opens, may be a mama’s boy, Kathleen doesn’t care for him that way. And when her life throws her into a serious curveball, with the loss of her business, she reaches deep and takes care of herself. The film makes it clear that the resource she draws on is her relationship with her deceased mother.
In Open Range you will find a character who is probably the son of a father. Charley Waite is a middle-aged cowboy and ex-gunfighter who enjoys the last few years of free range grazing his cattle in the open. He is a man who has never been married and apparently has not had much contact with the opposite sex. When he meets and falls in love with Sue Barlow, he doesn’t quite know how to let her know of her growing interest and love. Her attempts to tell him that he finds her attractive are awkward, but attractive.
In the end he approaches her, hat in hand, offering to marry her and a kind of leadership as an old-fashioned, macho husband. Sue is also middle-aged and has never been married. She’s too wise and brave about life to try to pretend it will come true as the little wife whose husband protects her from harm. She challenges Charley to know her as one adult to another. He’s man enough to rise to the challenge, and the movie ends with the promise that her spirited romance is just beginning.
Speaking of spirited romances, Bull Durham gives the viewer a bird’s eye view of a mama’s boy and a father’s son looking for the same woman. In this movie, there is a love triangle that forms around Crash Davis, an experienced baseball catcher, Annie Savoy, the team’s best follower, and Nuke LaLoosh, the team’s new young rookie.
Although Crash and Annie prove their attraction to each other at the beginning of the movie, Crash quickly steps aside to let Nuke and Annie do their thing. He’s too experienced, both on and off the field, and too self-sufficient to waste his energy competing with the high-strung “pup” that Nuke surely is.
Annie is in the habit of signing one ballplayer a year which she helps to mature. She says: “There’s never been a ballplayer that has slept with me who hasn’t had the best year of his career… There’s a certain amount of life wisdom that I give these guys. I can expand their minds… I make them feel safe and they make me feel safe and pretty.” As such, she puts herself in the position of Mom to her chosen ballplayer and lets him be her Child.
The first night he meets Nuke and Crash, he invites them to his house, where he sits them down and explains the rules. “I hook up with one guy a season. It usually takes me a couple weeks to pick the guy. It’s kind of my own spring training. And, well, you two are the most promising prospects of the season so far. So I just thought we should try to get to know each other.” Crash stops her right there. He wants to know why she chooses. Why not one of the men? She continues with quantum physics and how no one can really choose anyone. Crash gets up to leave. Annie asks where she is going.
Crash replies, “After twelve years in the minor leagues, I don’t do testing. Besides, I don’t believe in quantum physics when it comes to matters of the heart.”
“What do you believe then?” Annie asks.
As he puts on his coat to leave, Crash responds with one of the most famous movie speeches that ends with these words: “…and I believe in long, slow, deep, soft, wet kisses that last three days. Good. -evening.”
Annie breathes, “Oh my.” She then chases him out the door to tell him that she just wants to date, not fall in love with her. Crash tells him, “I’m not interested in a woman who’s interested in that boy. Good night.”
When Nuke hits the big leagues and leaves town, Crash makes himself available to reconsider the chemistry that was and still is evident between him and Annie. At that point, he asks her to introduce herself as an adult to join the dance with another adult. It’s overkill for her, but she’s woman enough to rise to the challenge.
Movies are a great way to attend mini-workshops to witness the ramifications of being blind to the momma’s boy/daddy’s girl dance and the relative ease of the father’s son/mother’s daughter dance!