The good news which should make you feel a whole lot better:  a top psychologist tells me that even Angelina Jolie would get the same treatment!

These guys may sometimes be handsome and charming (not always they come in many guises) and they may have respectable jobs such as barristers and accountants – which is why they are so plausible because they can say they are working long hours – when they are really with mummy! They are also very clever at hiding their tracks – and may have their own home which of course they never or rarely live in. 

But its a clever subterfuge  – because they can tell you they live there and tell mummy that is where they have gone when they visit you on those rare occasions. They can also register there as a voter.

In reality they hate woman because of the resentment of the emotional enmeshment with mummy that they don’t have the guts to break.  Many serial killers have been mummy’s boys – Jeffrey Dahmer for one.  I know it was a film but Norman lived with Norma’s corpse at Bates Motel…

But these are men who cannot be turned.  Mummy has spent years patting their little heads and telling them what wonderful and clever little boys they are, making them their favourite teas and washing and ironing their clothes for them.  So they are mummy’s special little boy and no-one else’s.

It’s a kind of emotional incest where mummy has groomed her little boy for years so he can only be happy if he makes her happy.

I recently received a telephone call from a girlfriend about one of my exs from many years ago (I’m too embarrassed to say how long ago).  She said that this particular man who is now in his 60s who lived and worked with his mother and never married despite having numerous girlfriends – had recently disappeared without trace along with his mother – and she was worried about them.Their business has gone into liquidation and their landlands are not working. Very scary….

I said his mother who must be in her late 80s had probably died and he was living with the dead body.  She got a bit angry with me and said I had been watching too many episodes of the US crime forensic programme Crime Scene Investigation. 

But she is very wrong.  As a journalist I have sat in several inquests where one half of a couple – and that is what these incestuous relationships are – has died and the husband or wife has  refused to accept the death and lived with the decomp body for weeks…so I wait to hear because nobody can trace this bloke and his mother.

Still I am fascinated by this bond. But experts warn that is a very serious mental health condition and not easily broken.  I do wonder what mummy’s boy’s and their mummy’s do together for so long…but not enough to buy self-help books and waste my time and money.

And I have this analogy whenever I am even tempted to believe anything these guys say:  If I was called to explain my behaviour by a judge in a court of a law and he/she said to me:  “Well Miss O’Connor.  This is the evidence: “This man is 50 years old and he has never been married or lived with a woman other than his mother. So what is it you thought you could do that other women before you were unable to do?”

I am afraid for once in my life I would be lost for words. I would also look very stupid.  So the best advice is don’t even go there you won’t win and may waste months and years of your life! They won’t hang around because they know when they’ve been found out and there is always another gullible woman to lure in and lie to for a few months….