'Why is the mother-son relationship so complicated?' That is the question posed at the top of this column by William Sutcliffe. To which I have two responses.
One of them is 'Eh?'
The other is: 'Because a lot of close relationships are complicated.'
I come back to 'Eh?' in a moment. But, you know - the human person is a strange and wondrous thing: s/he walks, s/he talks, and while doing either the one or the other s/he constructs a whole world. Each person a different world, even if this means there are zillions. Two of them together - the persons I mean - they talk the one language but they hear the words differently. This one feels something that the other one never knew existed. Each of them has an extra ear. Of course it's bloody complicated.
And yet, 'Eh?' Components, supposedly, of the special difficulty between mother and son:
(1) Confessing to his friends that he sometimes calls his mum for a chat 'is something few do'. (2) Men are 'ashamed to be seen being kind to their mothers'. (3) A mother of boys knows that her job is to prepare them to be handed on. (4) She harms them by 'keeping them too close for too long'. (5) Teenage sons behave in ways designed to create a distance between them and their mothers.With respect to (1) and (2): er, no and no, is all I can say. Your mileage may vary. With respect to (3), (4) and (5), there is truth in all of them but they aren't mother-son specific; they're parent-child.
Incidentally, you want complication? I could direct you to some fine cases of mother-daughter.