Early Deprivation: Can A Man Have The Need To Please Women If His Mother Abandoned Him?

If a man is dating a woman or is in a relationship with one, he may find that he has the tendency to do what he can to please her. This can involve him agreeing with her and not speaking up when he has a different view, and endlessly doing things for her.

The outcome of this is that he will rarely show up when he is around her, and a number of his own needs will be neglected. He may see that he has more or less been this way since he first met her.

A Tiring Existence

Thanks to how he behaves, he is likely to often feel drained, resentful and helpless. But, as he will be acting more like an extension of the woman that he is with than a separate individual, this is to be expected.

However, he can keep how he feels to himself, with him doing what he can to ensure that she doesn’t find out how he feels. It might not be long, though, until he is no longer able to do this, and it starts to impact his behaviour.

External Feedback

There may come a time when one of his friends or family members’ notices that he is not in a good way and asks him about what is going on. If so, this can be a time when he will act like everything is fine.

Or, he could be honest and talk about what is going on in his relationship. After he talks about how he seldom shows up around the woman he is with and is neglecting himself, they could be supportive and say that he doesn’t have to behave in this way.

The next Stage

Once their time together has come to an end, it might not be long until he thinks about this area of his life. What can cross his mind is why he can’t just show up around her and be there for himself.

He might see that when he has spoken up and not been there for her, he has experienced anxiety, with it being as if something bad was going to happen to him. This may have been a time when nothing bad happened, but he soon felt the need to go back to how he was.

Another Scenario

Then again, she might have typically pulled away when he has done this and withdrawn. She would then have moved away from him, and he wouldn’t have been able to reach her.

When this has happened, he might have experienced a lot of anxiety, with it being as though his life was going to come to an end. He might have practically begged her to talk to him and acted more like a dependent boy than an interdependent man.

The end

Assuming that this is how he has behaved, he might see that this is not the first time that he has been in this position with a woman. He might see that he has been in this position on a number of occasions.  

Now, if he or she were to end the relationship, he could find it hard to function, due to feeling very low and even suicidal. It can be as if he has been abandoned and, unless they get back together again, he won’t survive.

What’s going on?

As the weeks and months pass, and perhaps with the help of external support, he might gradually settle down and be able to function. If this is what takes place, it will be easier for him to explore why this area of his life is this way.

There is a chance that his early years were not very nurturing, with this being a time when his mother often rejected and abandoned him. This would have meant that he missed out on the attunement, mirroring, care, affection and support that he needed to grow and develop in the right way.

Brutal Time

Therefore, instead of having a mother who he could securely attach to, bond with, and who would help him to regulate his inner world, he had a mother who was emotionally unavailable and out of reach, and unsettled him. When he was left by her, he would have been overwhelmed with pain and felt like he was going to die.

To handle the pain he was in and be able to keep it together and function, he would have gone into a disconnected, collapsed and frozen state. Over time, this would have been how he was, and he would have done his best to focus on and please his mother, to try to ensure that she wouldn’t pull away again.

No Other option

At one stage, then, he would have been connected to his embodied, connected, and fully feeling true self, but as time passed, he would have ended up with a disembodied, disconnected, not fully feeling and outer-directed false self. He would have also lived in the hope that, by becoming who she wanted and behaving how she wanted, she would love him.

This would have been futile, as most likely, his mother had been greatly deprived and deeply wounded during her formative years and couldn’t provide him with what he needed. Nonetheless, this hope would have served as a secondary defence, as it would have aided in repression and allowed him to release tension.

Moving Forward

For him to gradually reconnect to his body, feel comfortable freely expressing himself, and no longer re-experience what it was like for him when he was a powerless and dependent boy, he will have a number of steps to take. He will have beliefs to question, pain to face and process, and unmet developmental needs to experience.

This will take courage, support, patience and persistence.

Awareness

If a man can relate to this and he is ready to change his life, he may need to reach out for external support. This is something that can be provided with the assistance of a therapist or healer.

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Oliver JR Cooper
http://www.oliverjrcooper.co.uk