Mother Wounds: Can A Man Hide His Needs Around Women If He Had A Neglectful Mother?

If a man was to take a step back and reflect on how he behaves around women, what he may find is that he has the tendency to hide his needs. When this takes place, he will create the impression that he doesn’t have any.
Or, if this doesn’t take place, it will be as though he only has a few basic needs. Either way, this is going to mean that he won’t fully show up and all or most of his needs will end up being unmet.

Two Scenarios

Naturally, when he hides his needs around a woman who he speaks to whilst socialising, it is unlikely to have the same impact as when he does this with a woman with who he is in an intimate relationship with. The former can cause him to experience a small amount of frustration, whilst the latter is likely to cause him to experience a lot of frustration.

With this in mind, if he is not in a relationship, he will still pay a price for behaving in this way. And, if he is in a relationship, the price that he pays will have a massive effect on just about every area of his life.

The First Part

Now, assuming that he is in a relationship, he may find that very early on he was more or less solely focused on his partners needs. So, if he needed something, he was there, and, if she wanted to do something, he was down for it.
This would have meant that he was neglecting himself but it would have also meant that he was receiving her approval and attention. Thanks to this, he would have lost touch with most of his needs.

The Second Part

As time passed and her approval and attention were no longer enough to stop him from being oblivious to the fact that he was overlooking the rest of his needs, he may have started to get angry and experience resentment. After fulfilling another need, his need to be in a relationship with the woman, he will be able to access his other needs.

Even so, this doesn’t mean that he will be able to express what is truly going on for him at this point. This could be a time when he comes across as passive-aggressive and/or no longer has the same level of interest.

The Third Part

This could be a time when his partner will end up pulling away or he could end up pulling away. Then again, he could just put up with what is going on and stay in the relationship for a number of years.

If he is not in this position right now, he may have been in a relationship like this a little while ago. What is clear, though, is that behaving in this way is not serving him and he needs to start expressing his needs.

A lot of Discomfort

If he was to imagine expressing a need, he could end up experiencing a fair amount of fear and anxiety. This can be seen as something that would cause him to be rejected and then abandoned.

Thus, it is not that he can express a need to his partner (or another woman) and she would or wouldn’t fulfil this need and stay around; it is that expressing a need would cause her to pull away and leave him. Not only this, it would be as though his life would come to an end.

One Outlook

If this is what is going on inside him, when it comes to expressing his needs, it is to be expected that he would do his best to keep them to himself. Hiding his needs will cause him to experience pain but at least it won’t be as bad as what he sees as the alternative.

It won’t occur to him that he can have his needs met and that, even if his partner can’t meet one, it doesn’t mean that she would leave him. In his model of the world, there is no such thing as negotiation, at least when it comes to interacting with a woman.

A Deeper Look

To understand why he would experience life in this way, it will be a good idea to take a closer look at what his early years were like. This may have been a time when he didn’t receive the nurturance that he needed in order to grow and develop.

He may have often been neglected and when he was given attention, it might have typically been the wrong kind of attention. In other words, he wasn’t given the attuned care that he needed.

A Brutal Time

Along with being left when he did express a need, he would have also come to believe that having needs would cause him to be left. Due to being egocentric at this stage of his life, he would have taken everything personally.

This would have stopped him from being able to realise that he was not left because he had needs; he was left because his mother had her own issues. Throughout this stage of his life, he would have regularly been rejected and abandoned.

It’s over

Many years will have passed since that stage of his life but he won’t know this at the core of his being. The pain that he experienced all those years ago will have stayed inside his body and he will do his best to keep it at bay.

His partner, if he has one, and the other women that he meets, will, at an unconscious level, represent his mother and be seen as the key to his survival. Therefore, not revealing his needs and keeping them around will be a way for him to keep this pain at bay and to survive.

Awareness

When he was left his only option was to disconnect from his body and to lose touch with his pain in the process. It will be this pain that he will need to face and work through; this is what will allow him to truly let go of his past and to freely express his needs.

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