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work and told me I had an appointment today. I totally forgot about it.” You respond by saying, “That’s a shame, darling. I’m sure you can reschedule.” After enough missed appointments and forgotten events, your partner will learn to keep better track of his own schedule.

      3. Don’t speak to your partner in “mommy-talk.” Promise yourself that you’ll stop talking to your man as if he is a five-year-old. That means: No Scolding! It’s perfectly all right for you to let your partner know when you are upset or angry. But talk to him as one adult to another, not as an exasperated mother to her bad little boy.

      What about “baby talk” in a relationship? I think some baby talk is natural, an intimate way we share our vulnerable selves with each other. If you and your partner speak in baby talk a lot of the time, however, especially in bed or during sex, then you’ve got a problem. It’s time to have a grown-up relationship.

      4. Decide what responsibilities you want him to handle in the relationship, and don’t take over even when he makes a mistake. I know how difficult it’s going to be for many of you to do this. It means letting go of control and trusting things to work out all right in the end, even if they don’t happen as you would have liked them to. For instance, your husband says he will make reservations for dinner one evening, but he calls the restaurant too late in the day, and all the tables are booked. When he telephones you at six o’clock to say he couldn’t get reservations, you say, “That’s too bad. I’ll be ready at eight o’clock as planned. I’m sure you can find some place for us to go. See you then.” He’ll feel stupid for procrastinating, grateful that you didn’t berate him, and will remember this feeling the next time he plans to take you out for dinner.

      Warning: You will be tempted to intervene when you see the situation falling apart. Your vacation is coming up, and you know your husband hasn’t made plane reservations yet. Or your boyfriend decides to make some lasagna, and you know he is putting in too much sauce.

       DON’T GIVE IN TO THE TEMPTATION TO RESCUE HIM

      Let him make his own mistakes, and live with the consequences. That’s the only way he will learn to do things differently next time.

      HOW I STOPPED A MAN FROM “DRIVING” ME CRAZY

      Having spent fifteen years of my adult lift mothering men, I consider myself, unfortunately, an expert on the subject, and want to share a story about breaking the mommy habit. I was in a relationship with a man who was chronically forgetful. He’d forget his appointments; he’d forget to return phone calls; he’d forget to mail in bills; he’d even forget where he was going when we were driving somewhere, and would miss the correct exit on the motorway. For two years, I took on the responsibility of being his brain, reminding him of what to do and where to go in his life. Whenever we’d drive somewhere, I’d never relax – I’d be on the lookout for each exit and appropriate turn, to make sure we got to our destination on time.

      Finally, I got fed up with mothering him and decided that the only way he was going to learn to pay attention on the road was if I stopped doing it for him. One weekend we took a trip to a spa in southern California. We’d been there before and, of course, I knew the exact directions. We’d been driving for about an hour when we reached the signs that indicated that our turn-off was a few miles ahead. I glanced at my partner to see if he’d noticed, and felt my stomach tightening up. Not I warned myself. You promised you weren’t going to say anything. The closer we got to the exit, the more of a nervous wreck I became. And then we were at the exit, and my partner kept on driving. He’d missed it! I clenched my teeth tightly together to keep myself from screaming.

      Time seemed to stand still as we drove ten miles, twenty miles, thirty miles past where we should have turned off. It was beginning to get dark. Suddenly he turned to me and said, “Does this area look familiar to you?”

      “No,” I replied softly.

      “I didn’t think it did,” he said. “Maybe I missed the turn-off.” He stopped at a petrol station and found out that, sure enough, he had just driven forty miles out of his way, making us late for our arrival at the spa. It took all my self-control not to say anything. As my partner turned the car around and headed back in the other direction, he looked at me sheepishly and said, “You knew I’d missed the exit, didn’t you?” I smiled at him; he smiled back. We both knew that he’d learned more of a lesson from driving forty miles in the middle of nowhere than he would have if I’d intervened and pointed out his mistake.

      5. Make a list: “The Ways I Play Mommy …” Sit down and write out all of the ways you play Mommy in your relationships. Watch yourself over a few weeks, and add to the list whenever you catch yourself. If you’re really brave, ask your partner to suggest items that should go on the list! You may be surprised at how long your list turns out to be. The first step in changing your behavior is becoming aware of it.

      6. Talk with the man in your life about the mommy/son games you play together, and work as a team to create a grown-up relationship. I suggest you give this book to the man in your life, so that he can understand you and himself better. Have some serious discussions about everything you’ve read in this chapter so far, and ask him for his input on the topic. Then make some agreements together, guidelines you each agree to follow that will help you create a grown-up relationship.

      7. Be consistent. It’s essential to be consistent in following your new rules and avoiding the old mistakes. Stick to your commitments, no matter what the consequences. For instance, you agree not to clean up after your husband in his bathroom, and that he is responsible for taking his own underwear and towels into the laundry room. After one week you notice that there is a huge pile of clothing in the middle of his bathroom floor, and that he has no clean towels left on his shelf and no underwear in his drawer. Don’t touch that dirty pile of clothes! Wait until he complains that there are no clean towels, or that he has no underwear to put on, and remind him that all his towels and underwear are still on the floor where he left them. He may not be in the greatest mood, but he’ll get the message. If you give in for your own sense of sanity and orderliness, he’ll never take your new commitment seriously, and won’t stick to his.

      Remember, it’s not easy to break the mothering habit, but when you do, you will feel like more of a woman, and your partner will look and feel like more of a man.

      MISTAKE 2

      Women Sacrifice Who They Are and Put Themselves Second in Importance to the Man They love

       You’ve just spent several hours preparing a special dinner for your partner, fillet of sole almondine. You’re about to bring the two plates to the table when you realize that one of the portions of fish is larger than the other. Assuming you and your mate have equal appetites, will you give him the bigger portion, or keep it for yourself?

      Most women to whom I pose this question sheepishly admit that they wouldn’t even have to give this dilemma much thought – of course they’d give the bigger portion to the man, because they are so used to putting the man first and themselves second. In fact, many women I interviewed said they’d actually feel guilty taking the larger piece of fish; they used words like selfish, stingy, unloving.

      Mistake #2 has to do with how we as women sacrifice who we are, and put ourselves second in importance to the men in our lives. How do we do this?

      1. We give up our own interests, hobbies, and activities. Sara, 31, used to be very involved in studying and practicing meditation and yoga. She found it helped her relax, and kept her feeling healthy. Then she met Bill, 36, a computer consultant, who had a cynical and skeptical attitude toward “that Eastern stuff,” as he called it. In order to avoid conflict, she stopped going to her yoga retreats one weekend a month, and found she was skipping more and more of her regular meditations, until she stopped entirely. When asked why she gave

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