Early Deprivation: Can A Man Try To Get Into A Woman’s Body If He Had An Unavailable Mother?

When a man starts dating a woman, he can spend a lot of time messaging her and want to spend as much time with her as possible. Due to this, it can be hard for him to concentrate on other areas of his life.

His performance at work can then suffer, and other areas of his life can end up being neglected. When he does spend time with her, he can be very focused on her and lose touch with his inner world.

The Other Side

As a result of how he behaves when they are not together and when they are, she can see him as being very needy. She can feel smothered by him and need to create distance between them.

But if she does text him less and spends less time with him, it doesn’t mean that his behaviour will change. Instead, he could end up messaging her even more and try to spend more time with her when they do get together.

His Side

As he sees her less and spends less time with her, he can become even needier and start to feel anxious. During this time, he could start to hope that, sooner or later, things will go back to how they were before.

His attention could also be even more scattered than it was before, with him spending more time checking his phone to see if he has a reply from her. If her were to reflect on his behaviour, he might see that he has become obsessed with her.

The next Stage

After a while, he might get in touch with her to find out what is going on. At this point, she could say that she has just been busy or that she doesn’t think they are right for each other.

Assuming that they break up, he can soon feel very low and may even start to think about ending his life. If this is what takes place, he might end up talking to a friend about what he is going through.

If so, his friend can be understanding and supportive. This friend can say that although he feels low now, what he is going through will soon pass, and he will then be back on his feet, so to speak.

Stepping Back

If he does settle down before long, he might see that this is not the first time that he has had this experience. He can see that whenever he starts to see or date a woman, he finds it hard to be centred, and as things progress, he more or less loses himself.

After becoming aware of this, what can enter his mind is that it is as though he doesn’t just want to spend time with her, he wants to devour her. She is then like his favourite food, and he wants to consume all of her.

It’s symbolic

Nevertheless, this is not to say that he wants to physically eat her; most likely, it will relate to him consuming what she represents to him. So, when he thinks about what it is that she represents to him, it can be love, stability, and wholeness.

Thus, by consuming her, he will be able to feel loved, settled and emotionally whole. She is then not just doing to be a fellow human being who has her own needs, feelings, hopes, dreams, fears, insecurities and challenges; no, she will be someone who can emotionally fill him up.

Out of Balance

Considering this, when he is with a woman, he is going to expect a lot from her, and this is going to put a lot of pressure on her. So, as opposed to him adding to her life, he will be like a needy boy who looks to her to mother him.

Moreover, as opposed to him being fairly regulated and then both of them being more regulated by being in each other’s presence, he will be dysregulated and will look to her to regulate him. The outcome of this is that being in his presence will dysregulated her.

What’s going on?

It is then not a surprise that she will feel repelled by his behaviour, lose her attraction to him and end up pulling away. Still, what this will show is that she is not rejecting him; she is rejecting the version of him that behaves in this way.

When he thinks about this area of his life, he can wonder why he behaves in this way and looks to a woman to complete him. He might conclude that there is something inherently wrong with him.

Deeper Look

In all likelihood, the reason he is this way is largely a consequence of what took place during his early years and the impact it had on him. This may have been a time when his mother was emotionally unavailable and out of reach.

If so, he would have missed out on the attunement, care, affection and support and, therefore, love that he needed to grow and develop in the right way. Not receiving the emotional nutrients that he needed would have stopped him from being able to experience an emotional birth.

One Option

To handle being greatly deprived and deeply wounded, his brain would have repressed a number of his needs and the pain that he was in. This would he involved him losing touch with his embodied, connected, and fully feeling true self.

In its place would have been the creation of a disembodied, disconnected, and not fully feeling false self. The years would then have passed, and his physical and mental self would have grown, but his emotional self would have stayed frozen in time.

A Replay

This is why, when he starts to become attached to a woman, some of the pain that he had to repress as a boy will be unlocked, as he will unconsciously see her as his mother. He will then look to her to soothe him and give him what his mother couldn’t.

But, just like when he looked to his mother to be there for him, the woman will end up pulling away and will be out of reach. The rejection, loss, sadness, feeling of being abandoned and wanting to die that he experienced as a boy and had to repress will then enter his conscious awareness.

Moving forward

For him to gradually reconnect to his body and experience an emotional birth, so that he feels whole and complete, and it is easier for him to soothe himself, 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, among other things.
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