When it's time to meet his mother

Have you ever been in a relationship where you were more in love with the person's family than you were with them? I once carried on dating a guy for three months after I decided to break up with him, because I liked his mom and his sister so much.

I think I spent much of those three months trying to figure out how to break up with him without having to break it off with them, too. I told them it wasn't them, it was him, and asked them if we could still be friends, but sadly it didn't work out in the end.

We're still friends on Facebook, and we speak occasionally, but they're not the sister and the mother they could have been had I just stuck it out with the guy. If only he and I hadn't been so incompatible, then I'd still be together with them to this day, shopping and drinking tea and doing all the fun stuff we used to do together. Ah, the memories.

It can go the other way too, though. With this one guy I saw very briefly, I could tell almost immediately that his mom was more into me than he was. I think she'd just seen so many dodgy chicks dragged through that door that the fact that I had a job and a car, and no tattoos on my face, made her smitten. I think she would have married me, oops I mean us, immediately, if only she had the power vested in her.

But her son was never really that into me. I could feel his indifference from a mile away. Perhaps it was precisely because I didn't have any tattoos on my face. Also I suspect it's not so hot when your mom's more into your girlfriend than you are.

Then there's that other freaky thing that happens when you've been dating a guy for a while and everything's going swell. That's when he invites you home to meet his family. So you iron out your good behaviour and put on your Sunday best, with a million grand schemes of how you're going to win them over.

But then when you meet them, they're absolutely nothing like your guy - they're awful. His father's a little weird and has strange hair growth patterns, and his mother has the oddest smell about her and tongue kisses the dog at the dinner table.

You know it's incredibly rude, but you can't help yourself, so you struggle to find an appropriate way to ask if maybe he's adopted? But you already know the truth. He's theirs. So you spend the rest of the day eyeing out his dad, wondering if that's what your future looks like.

I guess the old maxim is true: if you really want to know a guy, live through a bout of him with Man Flu, and meet his family.

The way he treats his mom is a dead giveaway. If he steals 50 bucks from her purse when she turns her back, then you may not have bagged a winner. Or if she cuts the crusts off his sandwiches and strains his soup for him, then you've got bigger problems. Guess who's going to have to take on that role down the line? It begins with a 'y' and ends with an 'ou'. And I'm not talking about someone named Yolandou, that isn't even a real name, I made it up, I'm talking about you, that's who.

Meeting the folks can be scary. But whatever you do, don't drink four double scotches and smoke a joint to help calm your nerves before you go. I tried that once. It didn't end well.