Mother-Enmeshed Men: Is A Woman Trying To Earn Love Is She Ends Up With Mother-Enmeshed Men?

Right now, a woman could feel very frustrated and angry, and be deeply deprived. This could show that she is in a relationship with a man who is rarely physically available, and, when he is, he is typically somewhere else emotionally.

The reason for this is that he can generally be focused on his mother and do what he can to take care of a number of her needs. As a result of this, he is not going to have much time or energy left for himself, let alone anyone else.

A Draining Existence

Assuming that this is what is going on, it is to be expected that she wouldn’t be in a good way. She will be an interdependent human being who has needs and she will be with a man who can’t be there for her.

For however long, then, she will have been emotionally and perhaps mentally and physically deprived. And, to make matters worse, she might have given a lot to the man she is with.

Lop-Sided

If she has been with him for a number of months or even years, she may have spent a lot of time trying to understand why he is this way and change him. Thus, instead of acting like his partner, she will be more like his parent.

She will be like a mother who is trying to make her son do something that he doesn’t doesn’t want to do. And, if he has accepted that he is too focused on his mother and said that he would change, that might have been as far as it has gone.

Stepping Back

If she were to think about what is going on and how much effort she has put in, she could be shocked. Part of her could see that it is highly unlikely that he will ever change and that she is wasting her time.

Yet, another part of her could hope that if she keeps trying, he will finally change his behaviour. This part of her will be the part that is driving her behaviour and stopping her from drawing the line.

More of the Same

If she were to carry on as before, this is something that could go on for many weeks, months or longer. Sooner or later, though, she could arrive at the point where she simply can’t live in this way anymore.

If this is what takes place, as hard as it will be, it could be a blessing in disguise. What this comes down to is that she will be forced to stop behaving in the same way and this can cause her to look into why she is with a man like this.

A Pattern

Assuming that this takes place, what might enter her mind is that this is not the first time that she has been in this position. If so, she could be totally confused about why this keeps happening.

She could believe that she is just unlucky or question if there is something wrong with her. Either way, she is likely to be fed up with this area of her life and be desperate for it to change.

Going Deeper

Now, if she were to think about how she has been behaving in her current relationship, what could stand out is that she has struggled to make the man love her. She could see that this is how she behaved in her previous relationships, too.

But, no matter what she has done for him, she will have only received crumbs and won’t have been freely loved. What this is likely to show is that she believes that love is something that has to be earned and is not something that is given freely and that she is not lovable as she is.

What’s going on?

What this is likely to illustrate is that her mother and/or father loved her conditionally during her formative years. Then again, it might not be accurate to say that she received conditional love.

Throughout this stage of her life, she might have typically only received attention, approval and acceptance when she did what her mother and/or father wanted. She was then not freely loved for who she was; she had to earn the right to have her existence acknowledged.

Emotionally Malnourished

This would have wounded her and caused her to miss out on the nutrients that she needed to grow and develop in the right way. By not being loved for who she was, she wouldn’t have developed a felt sense of her own worth and lovability.

To handle what was going on, a number of her developmental needs and the pain she was in would have been repressed. Her need to be loved would then have been removed from her conscious awareness but it wouldn’t have disappeared.

The Next Stage

The years would then have passed but from outside of her conscious awareness, her unmet developmental need to be loved will have continued to influence her life. This need will have caused her to unconsciously be pulled to men who are not available in the hope that she will finally be loved.

Of course, the men that she is with and the men that she has been with won’t be her mother and/or father, but, to her unconscious mind, they will represent one or both of her parents. This shows that this part of her has no sense of time and is blind.

Drawing the line

This part of her believes that if she struggles enough, she will finally be loved. But, just as her mother and/or father were unable to love her irrespective of what she did, most likely due to the fact that they were not loved for who they were, the man that she is with and the men she has been with won’t be able to either. Moreover, as she is now an adult and not a child, it is too late for her to meet this need.

For her to gradually change her life, she is likely to have pain to face and work through and unmet developmental needs to experience. This will take courage, patience, and persistence.

Awareness
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If a woman can relate to this and she is ready to change her life, she may need to reach out for external support. This is something that can be provided with the assistance of a therapist or healer.