The eternal quest for maturity.

[dreadedcandiru2]

As you will recall, one of the things that really made a mess of Mike's romantic entanglements is his inflated self-image. As what I called Foob Fact Seven mandates, Mike believed that he was a much better catch than he actually was; while we saw a paranoid, touchy ignoramus with an inability to trust, forgive or understand, Mike still manages to blame all the mess Martha is going through now on being mean to the coolest kid ever.

The reason that I mention this is that it also makes him something of a pain in the ass to raise. While John and Elly are content to blame this on his reaching a certain age, history teaches us that his mistaken belief that he was being held back by parents who didn't want to admit that he was their peer has always made his life a mess. What he's at pains to avoid admitting is that his belief that he looks like an adult is so much nonsense because it would mean admitting something he doesn't want to. It means admitting that people who ain't gonna shut up about it are right for the wrong damned reasons. It's one thing to be an arrogant goof who thinks he's ready for things he ain't; it's quite another to be bossed around by nitwit parents who make that the case owing to what we can call

Foob Fact Forty-Eight B: Since Elly and John would far rather win arguments at any cost because they inflate the downside of letting their kids be right about something, the result of their damn-the-consequences belief that they have to win all the time has created passive idiot children who, despite their belief otherwise, can't cope with life's demands.