Mother-Enmeshed Men: Has A Mother-Enmeshed Man Lost Touch With His Masculinity?

What a man may realise, if he was to take a step back and reflect, is that he is not very balanced. The reason for this is that he may see that he finds it hard to stand his ground and take action.

In general, he may find that he allows other people to walk over him and he only does things if he is told to do them or if another person is there to guide him. He can then see that he lacks the inner strength and the courage that he needs to act like an independent human being.

A Norm

So, while he could often be walked over by his friends and his colleagues, this could typically be something that his mother does. Moreover, he could spend a lot of time doing things for her.

When it comes to what he does for his mother, it is likely that this is something that automatically takes place. In other words, this won’t be something that he consciously chooses to do.

A Mirage

From the outside, then, it can seem as though he doesn’t have trouble taking action but this won’t be the case. Thanks to how much he does for his mother, he could also be seen as behaving in a very masculine way.

Like a father who looks after and protects his children, he can appear to be doing this for his mother. Once again, this is unlikely to be something that he has chosen to do; he is likely to be doing this purely out of habit.

A Very Different Experience

It may be clear to him that if he was in touch with his masculinity, he would stand his ground and do what he needed to do. This is because he would have the inner strength and courage that he needed to truly embrace life and to make a mark.

Until he is in touch with this part of his being, he will continue to live a life that is out of alignment with who he is and doesn’t fulfil him. Ultimately, he will be out of touch with his power and he will need to reconnect to it; if he doesn’t, his life is likely to get worse.

A Closer Look

At this point, he might wonder why he is this way and what he can do to transform his life. There is a strong chance that what took place during his formative years played a big part in why he is estranged from his masculinity.

This may have been a time when his mother used him to meet some of her adult and unmet childhood needs, thereby causing him to lose touch with his self in the process. He wouldn’t have received what he needed, which would have stopped him from being able to grow and develop.

Emotionally Stunted

Naturally, his physical self would have grown, as would his intellectual self over time, but his emotional self wouldn’t have grown beyond a certain point. As an adult, he will look like a man but he can feel like a neglected boy.

His purpose was to be there for his mother and to provide her with what she wanted and this would have set him up to be a people pleaser. If he didn’t do what she wanted, he would have probably been punished, disapproved of and/or abandoned.

Pushed Down

This would have meant that the part of him that would have allowed him to emotionally separate from his mother and to express himself, his aggression/fight instinct, would have been repressed. It simply wouldn’t have been safe for him to express his needs or to behave how he wanted.

His feminine aspect wouldn’t have been able to develop, due to him not having received the emotional nutrients that he needed, and his masculine aspect wouldn’t have been able to develop either, due to him having to lose touch with his inner fire. Along with this, there can be another factor that stopped him from being able to develop this part of him.

Father Wounds

Now, assuming that this father was around, he might not have been emotionally available, and this would have meant that he wasn’t there to pull him out of his mother’s world. His father would have played a vital role in allowing him to start the individuation process.

The support, guidance and encouragement that he would have provided if he was available, would have played a key part in his development. As his father wasn’t present, he wouldn’t have had anyone there to separate him from his mother.

Greatly Undermined

Additionally, his father may have verbally and physically abused him once he got to a certain age. If his aggression wasn’t already split-off, his father would have made sure that it soon was.

His father would have also provided him with a negative model of what it means to be a man and of aggression. This would have made it hard for him to fully identify with his father, making it hard for him to grow into a man and to embrace his own aggression.

The Fall Out

Quite simply, his early experiences would have set him up to fail and to live a miserable existence. There will be wounds that he needs to heal in relation to his mother and his father.

He may believe that his aggression is bad as a result of the experiences that he had but he will need this power to change his life. Without it, he will continue to be tossed around like a leaf in the wind.

Awareness

If a man can relate to this and he is ready to change his life, he may need to reach out for exte
al support. This is something that can be provided with the assistance of a therapist or healer.