Hey, deserving listeners. It's just me today. Recently, I sent out a survey for people to submit

questions for me and Bob to answer. But a number of the questions were not really up Bob's

alley. So I decided I would just answer them on my own. And there were no names associated

with the question. So I'm just going to read the questions. This first person asked the question

and it was not really a question. It's where I was statement. The mother and son relationship

that doesn't look normal. So I'm suspecting that this person is like, hey, you know, talk about

mother-son relationships that don't look normal. Well, there's a lot to say because I don't exactly,

I'm not exact sure what you're referring to the person who submitted this. But the first question

is what is normal, right? And there's a lot of dimensions we can think about. And I want to delineate

between two main ones. One is the difference between quote unquote normal and healthy and pathological

or unhealthy. So we can have a spectrum from normal healthy to abnormal unhealthy. The other dimension

we can think about is culturally approved of versus culturally disapproved of. So sometimes

these dimensions coincide and sometimes do not. For example, you can have a relationship between

a mother and a son in which the mother relies way too much on the son. And the son feels as though

he can't ever leave the house. And there's a lot of dependency going on between the two of them

over dependency. And so in this example, both culturally, it would look strange to people. And it

would also be abnormal and unhealthy, meaning that the son and the mother for that matter are not

able to get their full range of their needs met because of the limitations of their anxiety that

drives them too close together and to keep other people out. So in that situation, the mother

son relationship is both unhealthy and culturally stigmatized. But it's a little interesting that

we're focusing on mother son. And the reason why I think it's because we have a particular

bee up our bonnet culturally regarding mother son mother and sons, uh, mothers and sons being

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