The Oedipal Complex

It's not that I don't believe what Freud said, but I never really got it.

Until today. At church.

This very attractive family with a teen daughter and two sons - one 15, the other 11 - sat two rows in front of me. The mom was a size 4 on her worst day, her daughter's frame exactly the same. Before the service began, the youngest boy was bickering with his older brother, sitting nearly on his lap, so they were promptly separated, as all good parents know to do. The younger boy was now between his sister and his mother, though he was basically in the lap of the latter.

The mother leaned over and kissed the boys forehead, at which he tilted his head up and she kissed him on the mouth. I shuddered, visibly, but let it go at that point.

While I was interested in the sermon, which was about singleness and how people like us can fit into the church culture, I was distracted every 2 minutes by the 11-year old as he turned his head to his mom's shoulder and began kissing it, over and over and over, moving down her arm to about her elbow. Now his mom was wearing a lace shell over her fitted tank, and at first I thought maybe the kid has super sensitive appreciation for textures - lace is a cool texture. But as the service proceeded and he continued to kiss her shoulder, her arm, her bicep, etc., that theory evaporated.

At one point, he put his arm around her, which I thought could have been cute, if it was just a sweet little boy putting his arm around his mother, but he started massaging her neck, her shoulder, with his long-fingernailed hands. It was revolting at this point.

The mom kept throwing glances at the dad, and whispering things to him. Near the end of the service, which to me had now seemed to last forever, the dad put his arm around the mom, shoving the kissy kid away. But the kid still managed to lay his head delicately on her shoulder, around the massive arm of his father (he'd been wallowing on her shoulder, aside from the kissing, the entire time).

Everyone stood to sing a closing song, and the boy took his mother's arm and kissed it again. She actually shoved him away, which I thought was a great move. But when we sat back down, she wrapped her arms around him and drew him close to her. Bad move, I wanted to tell her, he'll never get over you now. But it wasn't my place, and I'm not accustomed to speaking up in public.

I had never fully contemplated what it meant for a boy to have a thing for his mom. But this boy, with his pretty little face, long eye lashes and long fingernails, had definitely not learned to separate from his mom.

When I left church, I was so grateful that my family didn't, and doesn't, touch.