> This makes it all the more apparent to me -- even back when all this was happening, i.e., this wasn't something it took me any particular amount of time to realize -- how much damage parents have done to people I know by holding on too tightly.

I bet you had us in mind when you typed that. ;-}

I've always been a very independent person, and I've always taken a very laid-back approach to life. As such, I went off to college at seventeen, got my own apartment at nineteen, and was married at twenty. None of that seemed strange to me at all; I can take care of myself, and don't need people holding my hand and walking me through everything. And if I *do* get into a situation in which I need help, I'm also not too proud to ask for it. Altogether, I think that's a pretty decent attitude to have.

My wife is very dependent, in no small part because her mother is the absolutely smothering type. Her mother guided her step by step through the first twenty years of her life; my wife never really had to deal with anything or make any decisions, because it was all done for her. Neither she nor her mother was really prepared for her (admittedly rather sudden) independence; it's been three years now since we moved to where we live now, and her mother still isn't speaking to us. Not to mention the riot at our wedding. Hey, how many people do *you* know who had - and needed - bodyguards at their weddings? ;-}

I think it was also easier on my parents than on hers. When I told my parents I was getting married, my father was... surprised, to say the least. My mother was positively shaken, though, but nothing at all like my mother-in-law. I reassured my mother, told her that everything would be alright, and that I knew what I was doing, and she was fine. As I said before, three years have gone by, and my mother-in-law still hasn't accepted the fact of our marriage. There's a decent example of someone fifty years old who is still very much a child.

Not that I say that to score a cheap point or anything. What she is doing is throwing a protracted temper tantrum - she's hurting her husband, her three children, and herself most of all, and for what? There's nothing she can possibly accomplish.