Intimacy: Can A Man Be Out Of Touch With His Need For Intimacy He Had An Unavailable Mother?

If a man were to take a step back and reflect on his life, what he could find is that he generally acts as though he doesn’t have the need to connect to a woman. As a result of this, a number of his needs are typically not going to be met.

So, his need to be seen and heard by a woman, experience affection, and have sex, among other things, is seldom going to be met. Still, he might see that he doesn’t consciously choose to ignore these needs.

Missing Out

But, even if he doesn’t consciously choose to be this way, it is still going to have a negative impact on his wellbeing. The primary reason for this is that he is an interdependent human being.

Therefore, there are needs that he can meet and needs that he can’t meet, which is why living in this way is going to deprive him. However, if he is used to living in this way, he might have become accustomed to not having these needs met.

The Norm

If, then, he were to start dating a woman, he could soon find that he feels radically different to how he felt before. It can be as if he is receiving something that he has needed for a very long time.

But, due to not having a good connection with these needs and having been used to experiencing life in a certain way, he won’t have been consciously aware of what he was missing. He could wonder how it was even possible for him to have lived how he did before.

A Pattern

Now, this could mean that this is the first time that he has been with a woman, but, it might not be this black and white. If he has been with other women, he might have gradually forgotten about how he felt when he was with them and gone back to neglecting these needs.

When it comes to why these other relationships came to an end, it could be because the woman cut her ties with him. If so, after this happened, he might have ended up feeling very low, before turning his back on this area of his life.

What’s going on?

At this point, he could wonder why he has the tendency to overlook these needs and to only meet them from time to time. What could end up standing out is that he doesn’t feel comfortable with these needs and doesn’t expect them to be met.

And, assuming that his current relationship was to come to an end before long, he could end up feeling helpless and hopeless. He could also feel frustrated, angry, ashamed, rejected and worthless.

A Strange Scenario

Taking all this into account, this area of his life is not going to be very fulfilling and it will cause him a lot of misery. To understand why this area of his life is the way that it is, it is likely to be a good idea to explore what his developmental years were like.

This may have been a stage of his life that wasn’t very nurturing, with him missing out on the love that he needed to grow and develop in the right way. In general, his mother might have been emotionally unavailable and out of reach.

A Brutal Time

This would have meant that a number of his developmental needs would have rarely if ever been met. To handle the lack of attunement and love, he would have been forced to lose touch with a number of his needs and disconnect from his body.

His brain would have repressed these needs and the pain that he was in, to allow him to keep it together and function. Along with how he adapted, there would have been the meaning that his underdeveloped brain made out of what took place.

Taken To Heart

As he was egocentric, he would have personalised what took place. The outcome of this is that he would have come to believe that not only were his needs bad but that he was worthless and unlovable.

Thanks to how deprived he was, then, he wouldn’t have been able to be an embodied human being who felt comfortable with his needs or himself. Yet, as he was powerless and dependent, adapting in this way was his only option.

It’s over

Of course, many, many years will have passed since this stage of his life but a big part of him won’t have moved on. For him to get back into his body and embrace all of his needs and feel comfortable with them, he will have inner work to do.

He will have beliefs to question, pain to face and work through, and unmet developmental needs to experience. This will take courage, 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