Mother-Enmeshed Men: Why Can It Be Hard For A Mother-Enmeshed Man To Separate From His Mother?

If a man is in a position where his life revolves around his mother, he is not going to have much of a life. Ultimately, a lot of his time and energy will be directed towards meeting her needs, leaving him with very little time and energy to meet his own needs.

He is then going to be her son but he will be more like her parent. To make matters worse, his mother might not be aware of the fact that her son is neglecting himself and is out of balance.

Caught Up

If this is the case, she is not going to say that he needs to spend more time being there for himself and that his life is important. What she might do is criticise him if he is unable to be there for her.

This is likely to show that due to how caught up she is with her own needs, it doesn’t occur to her that her son has his own needs and life to lead. Therefore, unless he decides to change his life, his life will continue to go in the same direction.

Trapped

The trouble is that even though it is up to him to change his life, he might not be aware of the fact that he is ignoring his own needs and is out of balance. This is because this can just be what is normal.

There is a strong chance that he has behaved in this way since he was very small, which is why it won’t stand out. Still, as he is not taking care of a number of his own needs, living in this way will be having a negative impact on him.

The Catalyst

So, after he has experienced a loss, a break up or a serious illness, for instance, he can end up reflecting on his life. During this time, he can see that he is too caught up with his mother and needs to do less for her.

However, while he can come to this conclusion, he can find that he is unable to just change his behaviour. When he thinks about changing his behaviour, he can be filled with guilt and shame and experience anxiety.

One Conclusion

Based on this, he can believe that it wouldn’t be right for him to change his behaviour and that his survival would be under threat. As a result, he can end up going back to how he was before.

After a while, though, he can wonder why he believes that living his own life is wrong and feels that his life will end. If he were able to go back in time and observe what it was like for him as a boy, he would probably gradually realise why he is experiencing life in this way.

Back In Time

This is likely to have been a stage of his life when he was greatly deprived and deeply wounded and was conditioned to focus on his mother. Practically from the moment he was born, ne might have missed out on the attunement and care that he needed.

He would then have often been left and when he did receive attention, it might have typically been misattuned care. As he was powerless and dependent, he had no other choice than to adapt to his mother.

The Next Stage

Over time, he is likely to have ended up doing things for his mother, with him being moulded into a parental figure. If he resisted, he is likely to have been punished in some way.

To handle the lack of love and the pain he was in, his brain would have repressed how he felt and a number of his needs. This would have involved him losing touch with his connected, true self and creating a disconnected and outer-directed false self.

The outcome

Instead of being able to go from an emotionally dependent to an emotionally interdependent human being, he would have stayed in an emotionally dependent state. Additionally, thanks to how he was treated and what he was told, he will believe that it is his purpose to be there for his mother.

With this in mind, he will look like an adult, but he won’t feel like one and he will have been brainwashed. It is then to be expected that he won’t just be able to change his life.

Moving Forward

For him to change his life, 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