Mother-Enmeshed Men: Can A Woman’s Brain Stop Her From Seeing Why She Ends Up With Mother-Enmeshed Men?

Although there can be a number of areas that are going well for a woman, there can be one area that is not going well. So, she can have a job or a career that is going well, she can be doing well financially, have good friends, and have good health.

However, when it comes to her love life, this can be an area that is anything but fulfilling. What can be normal is for her to end up with men who are overly focused on their mother and are emotionally and even physically out of reach.

Looking Back

If so, when she thinks about what it was like with her ex, she can see that he spent a lot of time doing things for his mother, and when he was available, she couldn’t really connect to him. Still, she might see that when she first started seeing him, he wasn’t as focused on his mother, and he was more available.

Assuming this is the case, it can be as though the man she was with, in the beginning, ended up being replaced by another man, as time passed, who looked the same. Certain needs that were being met would then have gradually stopped being met.

A Deeply Challenging

But even though he ended up giving less, she might have ended up giving more as time passed. For example, she might have become more like his mother than his girlfriend, with her doing what she could to try to change him.

On numerous occasions, she might have spoken to him about what is going on, but she might not have been able to make much progress. He might not have accepted that he was overly focused on his mother, or if he did, he might not have taken any steps to change his life.

One Big Drain

Thanks to how much she gave to him and how little she received in return, she is likely to have often felt drained and even been in a state of exhaustion a lot of the time. After arriving at the point where she had nothing left to give, or perhaps before, she might have drawn the line.

Once this took place, it might have taken her a number of weeks or months before she started to get her energy back and feel good about herself. And, if she were to look back further than this, she could see that her last relationship and the one before that were very similar.

Stepping Back

Now, when she thinks about what this area of her life is like, she can be frustrated and confused. The reason for this is that not only can other areas of her life be going well, but she can see herself as someone who is emotionally available and ready to have a relationship.

It will then be as if she just happens to end with men who are not emotionally available or ready, which is naturally going to cause her to feel angry, frustrated and even helpless and hopeless. Nonetheless, although it can appear as though she just happens to be in this position, what if there is more to it?

A Closer Look

What if only a smaller part of her is emotionally unavailable and is ready to have an intimate relationship, while a bigger part of her isn’t? After hearing this, she could experience a strong reaction.

She might even believe that she is being blamed for what this area of her life is like. But, even if she does react in this way, if she is able to mentally detach from what is taking place inside her and keep an open mind, it will give her the opportunity to look deeper.

Two Levels

What she can keep in mind is that, in addition to her conscious mind or conscious sense of herself, she also has an unconscious mind. In other words, she won’t just have one self; she will have two selves.

But, while it can seem as though this is just part of being human, it would probably be more accurate to say that this is an outcome of repression. Therefore, if her brain were no longer engaging in repression, she would only have one self.

The outcome

What this would do is allow her to become aware of the information that has been hidden for however long and see why this area of her life is the way that it is. The downside to this is that this would cause her conscious mind to be flooded with pain and needs, among other things, undermining her ability to keep it together and function.

What this illustrates is that the reason she has two selves is likely to be because there was a time in her life when she was greatly traumatised. This would have caused her brain to automatically repress how she felt and thereby prevented her from having an integrated brain where she had access to all of her emotional self and instincts.

Back In Time

When it comes to when she was greatly traumatised, this is likely to have been during her formative years. This may have been a time when her mother and perhaps her father were emotionally unavailable and out of reach.

She would then have missed out on the attunement, care, affection and support that she needed to grow and develop in the right way. What would have been normal is for her to be ignored, rejected, invalidated, and even abandoned.

One option

To handle what happened, her brain would have repressed how she felt and a number of her developmental needs. This inner material would then have been removed from her conscious awareness and ended up causing her to form an unconscious.

This would have meant that she lost touch with her connected, embodied, and fully feeling true self, and developed a disconnected, disembodied and not fully feeling false self. Furthermore, she would have lived in the hope that, by becoming who they wanted and doing what they wanted, she would be loved.

But, as futile as this was, as most likely, one or both of her parents couldn’t provide her with what she needed, as they had also been greatly deprived and deeply wounded during their formative years, it would have served as a secondary defence. Her underdeveloped brain is also likely to have come to believe that her needs and feelings were bad, that she was worthless and unlovable, and that she would be annihilated if she experienced human closeness.

A Replay

The years would then have passed, but due to how she adapted, she would have unconsciously created an area of her life that was very similar to how it was for her as a child. The trouble is that, as her conscious mind would have forgotten all about what happened and had no awareness of the fact that she had another, hidden self, and that this self was having a big impact on her life, she wouldn’t have been able to join the dots.

This other self, the self she doesn’t have access to, thanks to repression, will be trying to receive what she missed out on as a child. It will do this by unconsciously causing her to be pulled to men who are unable to give her what she needed and needs, in the hope of finally making him into someone who can meet her needs, so that she can receive what she missed out on.

Moving Forward

What this shows is that this other part of her has no sense of time and is blind, which is why it won’t be able to see that, as this stage of her life is over and another man is not her mother or father, it is too late for her to receive what she missed out on. For her to reconnect to this other self, become more integrated, and no longer look for what she missed out on as a child, there will be a number of steps for her to take.

She might need to experience some kind of body work to loosen her defences, and after this has taken place, she will be able to gradually face and process her pain and experience her unmet developmental needs. This will take courage, support, patience and persistence.

Awareness

If a woman can relate to this and she is ready to change her life, she 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