Mother Wounds: Can A Man Feel Empty If His Mother Was Unable To Love Him?

Even if a man feels as if something is missing, it doesn’t mean that he will be consciously aware of this. One reason for this is that he could live in a way that allows him to avoid how he feels.

So, he could spend a lot of time in doing mode, which will stop him from having to be with how he feels. Additionally, thanks to the defences that he has in place, even if he were to slow down and relax, he might not be able to connect to how he feels.

The Experience

Instead, this could be a time when he experiences a fair amount of tension and feels compelled to do something. By taking action, he will be able to release this tension and feel more at ease.

Now, one of the main ways that he can keep his awareness away from what is going on in his body and, thus, how he feels, is by more or less always being in a relationship. Having a woman in his life will then play a part in keeping his inner emptiness at bay.

Another Reality

Alternatively, he might only have casual encounters and could have a number of women on the go. In this case, he won’t get close to one woman but he will still be able to keep a lid on how he feels.

Then again, he could have been in a number of relationships and had a number of casual encounters over the years. Either way, there could be a point in time, when this approach no longer works.

A Different

For example, after experiencing a breakup, he might not be able to start another relationship or find a woman to have a casual enter with. Consequently, he could end up coming into contact with how he feels.

This can be a time when he is overwhelmed with pain and ends up looking for answers. Yet, he can still have moments when he will shut down and lose touch with how he feels.

Confusion

He can struggle to understand why he feels so low and why it is as if he is an empty shell. What might enter his mind is that he was simply born this way and there is nothing that he can do.

Or, he might believe that he just needs to be in a relationship, for instance, and he will be fine. But, if he has been in at least one relationship before, it will be clear that this won’t change how he feels deep down; it will merely allow him to avoid how he feels.

Stepping Back

If he were to look back on his life, he may find that he has more or less always needed to be with a woman or to have a woman on the go. He could see that when this hasn’t been the case, he has not been in a good way.

For example, this may have been a time when he felt down and found it hard to cope. He may have had moments when he drank a lot, took drugs and/or ate a lot to keep his true feelings at bay.

What’s going on?

However, as confusing as what is going on for him might be, if he were to reflect on his early years, it might soon start to make sense. So, this may have been a stage of his life when his mother was typically emotionally unavailable and out of reach.

Not only this, but she may have also been verbally and physically abusive. But, even if she wasn’t also this way, she wouldn’t have been able to provide her son with what he needed to grow and develop in the right way.

The outcome

He would have been deprived of the attunement and care that he needed and this would have stopped him from experiencing an emotional birth. This birth would have allowed him to go from being emotionally dependent, to emotionally interdependent.

As a result, he would have stayed in an emotionally underdeveloped state, while his mental and physical self would have grown. This is why, at an emotional level, he won’t feel whole and complete.

A Short-Term Solution

Now that he is an adult, this inner emptiness is not something that can be filled by receiving the right responses. For this inner emptiness to be filled, it will largely be about him facing the pain that he was unable to fully feel and had to repress as a boy.

The reason that he will be able to experience a sense of wholeness when he is a woman is because, to his unconscious mind, she will represent his mother. He will then be deceived into believing that he is finally relieving what he missed out on.

The Wrong Time

But, as this stage of his life has passed and another woman is not his mother, it will be too late. If this wasn’t so, the experiences that he has had with women would have changed how he feels deep down.

As to why his mother wasn’t able to provide him with what he needed, she was probably also deprived during her formative years. She was then developmentally stunted and while she was in a position to birth a child, she wasn’t in a position to mother a child.

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