Mother-Enmeshed Men: Is A Mother-Enmeshed Man An Extension Of His Mother?

If a man behaves as though he is merely an extension of his mother, it is going to be clear that he needs to change his behaviour. Ultimately, he is not here to be his mother’s slave; he is here to live his own life.

However, even though he will need to change his behaviour, it doesn’t mean that he will be able to do this. The reason for this is that he is unlikely to have a separate sense of self.

Underdeveloped

Therefore, if he realises what is going on and his mother was to make it clear that he needs to live his own life; he wouldn’t just be able to do so. Instead, this is likely to be a time when he experiences a fair amount of fear and anxiety.

Along with this, he can experience guilt and shame. Due to this, he can have the need to continue behaving in the same way.

Another Experience

Still, even if he didn’t have this experience, he could feel lost and confused. But, if his mother has directed his life for as long as he can remember and he is out of touch with his own needs, this is to be expected.

For him to live his own life, he will need to be connected to his own needs and he will need to have a sense of self that is not dependent on his mother. When this is the case, he will be able to act like an individual and he won’t feel as though he is going to die.

It’s in His Hands

Now, if he is aware of what is going on, he can wonder why he doesn’t have a strong sense of self. He is then going to have his own body but he won’t know, at an emotional level, that he is separate from his mother.

What might enter his mind at this point is that there is something inherently wrong with him.  If so, he is unlikely to feel very good about himself and could feel helpless and hopeless.

What’s going on?

But, although he can believe that there is something inherently wrong with him, this is unlikely to be the case. Most likely, he is this way because he was greatly deprived and deeply wounded during his formative years.

At this stage of his life, then, he would have missed out on the attunement and care that he needed to grow and develop in the right way. He would have had a physical birth but he wouldn’t have received the nutrients that he needed to experience an emotional birth.

A Natural outcome

What this illustrates is that he wasn’t born with a fully developed sense of self. For his sense of self to have been birthed, he needed an attuned mother who was generally able to meet his needs.

If, on the other hand, he was born with a fully developed sense of self, it wouldn’t have mattered how deprived he was. He would have been wounded but he would still be able to act like an individual.

What happened?

Assuming that he didn’t receive what he needed during this key stage of his life, he can wonder why this was. This is likely to show that his mother had also been deprived during her formative years and simply couldn’t provide him with what he needed.

She would then have physically been an adult, but emotionally, she would have been a child. She would have been deeply wounded and desperate to receive the love that she missed out on, all those years ago.

Replaying Her past

Her childhood is likely to have caused her to lose touch with her connected, true self and to create a disconnected and unfeeling, false self. So, thanks to how she adapted as a child, she wouldn’t have been aware of what she was doing and how destructive her behaviour was.

Therefore, she was unable to deprive her son and use him to meet some of her needs, whilst being oblivious to the harm that she was doing. As he was powerless and dependent on her for his survival, he had no other choice but to adapt to her.

The Fall Out

In the same way, then, that she developed a false self to handle being deprived as a child, he also had to develop a disconnected false self. This would have caused him to lose touch with his body and thus, his needs and feelings and be focused on his mother’s needs.

The sense that he had when he was born, that he was part of his mother, would have continued. His emotional self won’t have grown but his mental and physical self will have.

Moving Forward

Considering this, there is nothing inherently wrong with him; it was that he had a mother who was unable to love him and this left him in a bad way. For him to develop a separate sense of self and live his own life, he is likely to have a lot of inner work to do.

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