The Art of Manliness - When He's Married to Mom

00:00:00.000 Brett McKay here and welcome to another edition of the Art of Manliness podcast.

00:00:11.460 Your relationship with your mother is likely the first and most foundational connection

00:00:15.140 in your life. At its best, this bond can be a source of comfort, strength, and love that

00:00:19.820 lasts a lifetime and changes in healthy, appropriate, and adaptive ways as you mature

00:00:24.060 into adulthood. But sometimes the attachment between a mother and a son can become unhealthy,

00:00:28.260 resulting in a phenomenon called mother-son enmeshment, in which a man can become a kind

00:00:32.860 of surrogate husband to his mom. Here to unpack this complex issue is Dr. Kenneth Adams. Ken is a

00:00:38.000 clinical psychologist who has spent much of his career working with what he calls mother-enmeshed

00:00:42.040 men and is the author of When He's Married to Mom. Today on the show, Ken impacts the characteristics

00:00:46.840 of mother-enmeshed men and how to know if you are one. And he explains what can happen in childhood

00:00:51.060 that would cause a mother to enmesh with her son. We discuss the problems enmeshment can create in

00:00:55.300 men's relationships and other areas of life and how it can lead to things like compulsive

00:00:58.480 porn use. And we unpack what it means for a man to become independent and emancipate from

00:01:02.420 his mother, how it's different from cutting her off, and what it looks like to have a

00:01:06.000 healthy relationship with your mom. After the show's over, check out our show notes at

00:01:09.560 aom.is slash marriedtomom. All right, Ken Adams, welcome to the show.

00:01:28.140 Thank you. Nice to be here, Brett.

00:01:29.780 So you're a therapist and for your career, you've spent a lot of time working with men

00:01:34.180 who you call them mother-enmeshed men. And you wrote a book about this called When He's

00:01:39.540 Married to Mom. Give us a thumbnail sketch because we'll get into this deeper in our 0.80

00:01:43.780 conversation. But what is a mother-enmeshed man?

00:01:47.060 So enmeshed men is a word people use to describe too much entanglement between what is called

00:01:53.660 in this case mother and son, although it could be between daughter and mother and father and

00:01:58.460 daughter and so forth. But too much entanglement where the needs of the parent or the needs of

00:02:03.980 one individual supersedes the other and that there's a demand for loyalty based on guilty

00:02:10.860 obligation that is used to leverage. Love is transactional. So the enmeshed individual

00:02:16.540 organizes their self around the parent and absorbs their feelings and needs as if it's their own.

00:02:23.600 And then when they try to get off into adulthood, particularly romance, they're having a lot of

00:02:28.580 trouble. So enmeshment refers as too much dependency, too much involvement, too much shared

00:02:35.380 brain. I mean, certainly we all have dependencies, right? Emotional dependency is not pathological,

00:02:41.800 but too much of it at the cost of your own autonomy and your own emancipation is very costly.

00:02:47.980 These individuals struggle immensely in romance. And I get emails all the time, daily, from spouses

00:02:55.860 and partners of these guys who say, you know, I can't take it anymore. I've been in the backseat

00:03:00.900 of this marriage or this relationship. I've had enough. He's over at his mother's house every day,

00:03:06.260 or he blames me for everything and protects his family and so on and so forth. So the evidence that

00:03:12.420 these enmeshment dynamics impact romance is just overwhelming.

00:03:16.220 When did you first start noticing enmeshed men in your practice?

00:03:21.040 Well, you know, so let me take you back a little further. I was working when I first started my

00:03:25.460 professional practice, I was working with kids and I was doing a lot of family system therapy and the

00:03:31.960 family system therapists talk about enmeshment. And what they noticed is that a lot of these kids

00:03:36.520 who had psychosomatic disorders and other issues really were symptomatic of the family enmeshed

00:03:42.560 system. And so, you know, I began to take a look at that. When I was working at a children's

00:03:48.280 hospital in Detroit, we were seeing school phobic kids. And I said to my supervisor, these kids are

00:03:53.260 afraid of school. They can't leave their mothers. He goes, how did you know that? I said, well,

00:03:57.660 that's a whole story there. So I really began to notice that early in my career with children

00:04:02.580 and families. And then I moved into working with adults who were raised in alcoholic families, adult

00:04:09.320 children of alcoholics. And I began to see adults who were over-involved with their mothers, adult

00:04:15.680 men who were also sexually compulsive. And so I remember working with a man who was sexually

00:04:23.260 compulsive, picking up sex workers. And he would do this when he was living, he would live with his

00:04:28.620 mother part-time during the week. And then other part of the week, due to employment reasons, he

00:04:33.260 was at his own place. And so he said, well, what should I do to stop the compulsive sexual behavior?

00:04:39.860 And so I instinctively said, well, move out from your mother's home. I sort of just sort of

00:04:45.760 intuitively knew that was the move. And sure enough, he did that. And to my surprise, his sexual

00:04:50.200 compulsivity dramatically decreased. So I began to put together at that time, the link between

00:04:56.360 enmeshment and sexuality, which was missing in the literature on family systems. So you don't need

00:05:03.860 to be sexually, physically violated to have your sexuality hijacked. So if you've got a parent who

00:05:11.940 has dominated you, say mother over son, and has turned you into her, you know, boyfriend, surrogate,

00:05:20.160 husband, caretaker, you're in trouble. Because your sexuality can't unfold naturally and purely. 0.99

00:05:28.700 So that's when I first began to notice it. I first began to notice the link between

00:05:33.060 enmeshment and sexual compulsivity. I wrote my first professional article at that time based on that case,

00:05:39.980 and everything went from there. So that was the beginning. And that was in 1991 or earlier,

00:05:46.320 when I first published that article. So I've been working with adult men who have been enmeshed

00:05:51.200 ever since then. What's interesting, I think there might be a tendency for people to think

00:05:55.000 that this mother enmeshment is a modern phenomenon. But something I've noticed, I've read a lot of

00:06:00.100 biographies for my work of like famous great men from history. A lot of them had unhealthy relationships

00:06:07.840 with their mothers. Three of them come to mind. Lou Gehrig.

00:06:12.420 I'll be darned. 0.90

00:06:13.000 Had an incredibly super close relationship with his mom during spring training. You know, 0.96

00:06:17.260 most players brought their girlfriends or wives. He'd bring his mom. And then she would

00:06:22.060 criticize and sabotage his relationship with women. He didn't get married until he was 30,

00:06:28.300 which was pretty late for that time.

00:06:30.880 That age, that time, yeah.

00:06:32.060 Yeah. And then even after he got married, there's just a ton of tension between his mother

00:06:35.900 and his wife. Because Lou Gehrig just felt this intense attachment to his mother.

00:06:40.880 And loyalty, no doubt.

00:06:42.420 Yeah. Houdini was another one. He let his mother pick out his clothes. Even as an adult man,

00:06:48.320 he would rest his head on her bosom to hear her heartbeat because he found it soothing.

00:06:52.960 And then when his mother died, he wanted to die too. And he actually started trying to contact her

00:06:58.480 through seances. And then another one was General MacArthur. Another guy, unusually close to his mother,

00:07:05.720 when he was at West Point, his mother moved into a hotel near West Point so she could be by him.

00:07:12.640 So those are some examples. But I was always surprised to see these men you think would have

00:07:16.560 like sort of independence, but they had this like often weird kind of unhealthy relationship with

00:07:21.220 their mom.

00:07:22.260 Mm-hmm. Yeah. You know, that's fascinating. I didn't know about all three of those, but I think we'd find

00:07:28.540 the evidence of the pathology in their romances if we interviewed their partners. They'd have a lot to

00:07:33.660 say about the competition with mother and her unwillingness to let go and his unwillingness

00:07:38.280 and their unwillingness to let go of mother. That's something that we've learned over the years

00:07:42.460 is that we used to assume it was the parent holding on and we had to help the men sort of eradicate

00:07:47.780 themselves from the trap and find a new way to communicate. But then we realized some of these

00:07:52.360 guys don't want to leave that golden boy position. It's been an elevated position. I'm,

00:07:57.420 you know, sometimes the mother will use the son in competition against the father. The father's a

00:08:02.640 brute or an alcoholic. You know, I'll love my son more than you. I'll elevate him to boyfriend status 0.99

00:08:09.220 and I'll show you a thing or two, right? I'll neuter the old man with my son. But in doing so, 0.97

00:08:14.740 neuters both the men in terms of their ineffectiveness. And so we definitely see some

00:08:21.520 competitiveness there when the mother turns the son into the boyfriend or the husband. 0.91

00:08:27.420 How do you know if you're a mother enmeshed man? Like what are some of the characteristics? So

00:08:31.880 overall, it's sort of an unhealthy closeness with a mother, but what are some other characteristics?

00:08:38.220 Well, I think that you find yourself feeling tethered, you know, that's entrapped and unable

00:08:44.940 to have any separateness and driven by guilt and worry and having to be on call for your mother's

00:08:54.160 woes. To the point where you find yourself angry, frustrated, you're preoccupied with your mother's

00:09:00.600 needs. You likely reject, distance yourself, detach, disengage from your romantic partner

00:09:07.440 and or project onto her or him, you know, anger that really belongs to the mother. So ultimately,

00:09:15.080 it's a set of characteristics in which I feel guilty, obligated, angry, frustrated, trapped

00:09:22.400 around having to caretake. She's the only person I have or have had. And my wife just needs to 1.00

00:09:29.420 understand and she's the problem, not my mother. So that's the core identifier that we seem, you know,

00:09:36.220 probably eight out of 10 referrals that come into our workshop often come in under that umbrella.

00:09:41.400 The other is, you know, the other sort of set of characteristics we see is that because these

00:09:47.260 boys have been elevated by their mothers into the golden boy status, that comes with a certain degree

00:09:53.680 of confidence, right? Almost omnipotence in the way they think of themselves. So they can develop

00:10:00.600 some success in their lives. So the guys you just mentioned, all of them had degrees of high success.

00:10:06.000 So in the effort to please mother, I can become very successful. So I've had lots of guys with

00:10:11.800 tremendous success who endlessly try to please their family and their mother. In the meantime,

00:10:17.920 not having much of a romantic life. So the other place that we see the sort of identifier is they

00:10:25.960 really don't live a life of passion and purpose around what they really want in spite of their success.

00:10:32.640 In other words, particularly in terms of relationships and romance, life seems to

00:10:38.740 organize around me. They may pick the wrong, they may pick somebody like their mother to marry, 0.97

00:10:45.400 right? Because they're not really free to choose and pick someone like their mother in the wrong way

00:10:51.580 where the partner may have negative characteristics. So they seem to have a passivity, a disempowerment.

00:10:58.540 Sometimes we even go so far as to say feeling neutered when it comes to romance, which is a strong word,

00:11:05.280 but we use it descriptively rather than judgmentally. You can't be your mother's good boy and a man.

00:11:12.540 You've got to choose. And so they live in sort of an ambivalent state, you know, and so oftentimes

00:11:19.400 they can't make up their minds which restaurant to go to. Where do you want to go? I don't care.

00:11:23.500 Where do you want to go, right? The relationship to needs, feelings has been interfered with by

00:11:29.660 having to organize around the first love affair I've had. I mean, you know, parents love their

00:11:35.080 children. Children fall in love with their parents. It's a wonderful thing. But the parent must let go.

00:11:42.340 Yeah.

00:11:42.460 It is their assignment to let go. It is not the adult child's responsibility to cushion the blow

00:11:48.400 of the emancipation. And ultimately, these men will compromise. We call it troublesome compromising

00:11:56.080 in the workshop. They'll put one foot in and try to placate mother, try to placate the wife, try to 1.00

00:12:01.560 placate the kids, try to placate friends. In the meantime, nobody's happy, most importantly themselves.

00:12:07.700 So placating, ambivalence, difficulty with commitment, living in this dark space of I don't

00:12:14.700 know what I want. So I'm just going to keep working at what I know I can do, whether it's being a

00:12:19.400 magician or a ballplayer, right? I can do that, but I can't really figure anything else out like what

00:12:24.040 restaurant to go to. So I'd be curious about these guys if you were to have them take the screening we

00:12:29.700 have on our website, whether they pick things that would indicate that they don't do well with

00:12:34.620 identifying their own personal needs. So that's a big issue. And living in guilt and projecting a lot of

00:12:41.540 guilt onto other relationships. So they pick up, you know, the dinner tab, you know, more times than

00:12:49.260 they should of their families. They say, feel obligated and guilty to caretake and take care of other

00:12:54.540 people as well. So transferring that sort of guilty, loyal subjugation to others also is a tall tale sign.

00:13:03.720 So they can carry that over, that guilt from their mother to other relationships as well. Could be their

00:13:08.420 their employer. Oh, it's inevitable. It's inevitable. So we'll get guys who the mothers have passed away and

00:13:16.280 they'll join the workshop. And what you'll find is they have transferred the whole dynamic to their partner

00:13:21.540 and they can't figure out how to stand up for themselves or whether what they're doing is giving in or whether

00:13:28.120 they, and they wind up being in extremes. They either subjugate themselves to their partner's needs or they get

00:13:33.880 angry and rejecting. They don't have a way to discern how to be in relationship because their mother has

00:13:39.720 taught them, you're obligated to me. I want you to absorb my feelings, my needs. So there's a lot of

00:13:46.260 conflict when it comes to intimacy for these men. So having to learn to differentiate their inner sanctum

00:13:52.960 where their mother still lives is really the key.

00:13:56.640 Is this related to this idea you talk about in the book, the disloyalty bind?

00:13:59.780 Exactly. Exactly. If I give to my wife, then I'm being disloyal to my mother. Yes. So I'm torn

00:14:09.720 between that. I tend to organize the way I think about things in these dimensions of loyalty where

00:14:16.440 someone else might just say, well, no, you know, that's not a big deal. I don't have to gauge my

00:14:20.700 decision based on emotional loyalties. It's just a decision to be made. And sometimes people will be

00:14:26.140 disappointed. So yeah, the disloyalty bind is that I really can't move on my own direction because I'll

00:14:32.320 leave my mother behind. You know, one of the things that we have learned and we have been teaching in

00:14:38.380 the workshops is that, you know, what we've noticed is that the men don't want to disappoint anybody,

00:14:44.260 right? They want to figure out a way to get mom to co-sign their emancipation. So I'm chuckling.

00:14:52.040 It's not funny. I'm not making fun of these men, but it's just so ironic. So they'll arrange a

00:14:56.840 therapy session with mother and they'll try to sort of say, look at mom, I need to be my own man. I

00:15:01.960 need you to understand and not call me five times a day. And what happens is, is that therapy session

00:15:07.420 turns into a marital counseling session. And these men have worse problems afterwards because they're

00:15:13.520 seeking their mother's co-assignment. The truth is, is that emancipation always means someone's

00:15:21.040 disappointed. There's no way around that. You know, my son is 22. He's moving across the country

00:15:25.900 from, from the, he's in New York now. We're in Michigan. He's moving to LA. I'm going to miss

00:15:30.560 him. You know, it's my job to make the adjustment. It's not his job to disrupt his unfolding.

00:15:37.700 So in emancipation, somebody always is getting disappointed. And the parents last, I've always

00:15:44.160 said this, the parents last spiritual assignment in parenting, which is really hard to do. I'm doing

00:15:49.160 it right now is they have to take the loss. It's their job to take the loss. It's not the adult

00:15:56.100 child's job to cushion the blow. Now we hope your adult children return, but here's the irony. If you

00:16:02.860 look at the family's therapy system literature, the more you let go of your children, the more they want

00:16:08.440 to circle back around. The more you hold on, the less they want to be with you. So we try to remind

00:16:17.760 the adult mesh man that he, you know, he has to be willing to disappoint. Otherwise he's going to live 0.90

00:16:25.780 in that disloyalty bind and try to, try to balance out his loyalties to everybody, which never is

00:16:31.240 successful, frankly. So in the book, you provide some questions that people can ask themselves to

00:16:36.400 figure out if their mother in mesh or not. So yeah, if you feel obligated or guilty about taking

00:16:41.280 care of your mom's problems, if you feel like your mother is perfect or is a martyr, but it goes beyond

00:16:46.440 that. If you put other people's needs above yours all the time, if you feel guilty when pursuing your

00:16:52.340 own wants or needs, that might be a sign that you are mother in mesh because you're taking that

00:16:56.820 relationship you had with your parent as a child and projecting it on your other relationships.

00:17:02.440 Exactly.

00:17:02.880 You mentioned earlier that sometimes you've seen patients or clients you've worked with,

00:17:07.620 their enmeshment can display itself in passivity. I think it's probably the more common one. You just

00:17:12.720 kind of a doormat because you're just ambivalent about your decisions because you don't really have

00:17:17.380 a sense of self. So you're just like, whatever you want to do. But then also you talk about how it can

00:17:21.540 manifest itself in sort of hyper-aggressiveness. Have you seen like what causes a mother-enmeshed man

00:17:28.760 to tip towards passivity or hyper-aggressiveness?

00:17:34.100 Yeah. So let's start with the latter. The sort of hyper-aggressiveness we might want to

00:17:38.560 sort of put under the umbrella of a more self-centered, narcissistic, what we might say is a counterphobic

00:17:45.120 response. I don't want to risk ever getting caught up in anybody else's needs. So the hell with you.

00:17:49.920 I'll just focus on myself. And so what we see in those backgrounds, not uncommonly, is one of the

00:17:57.740 parents, and it could be the mother, is also in addition to being dependent on her son, she's very

00:18:04.100 self-centered and narcissistic. She needs him to be an extension of her. So that sort of precedes his

00:18:10.060 own aggressive narcissism where then he gets involved with a romantic partner. And it's all about him

00:18:16.580 because he can't tolerate the risk that he's going to get subjugated underneath another dependency.

00:18:22.160 So usually there's a little mix or a lot of mix of narcissism from the parent that will drive that.

00:18:28.080 We see that in over-sexualization, these sort of counterphobic, I'll just have a lot of women, 1.00

00:18:32.620 right? I'll have sex with a lot of women, prove that nobody can control my sexuality when in fact 1.00

00:18:38.060 mother has been controlling it. The more passive response is more typical, although you might see a 0.99

00:18:44.420 mix. And often there, the child has been very burdened with responsibilities and caretaking. So

00:18:52.580 the caretaking dynamic, my mother's depression, my brother and sisters, I had to take care of them.

00:18:59.760 My father was an alcoholic. I had to fight with him. So usually the more passive enmeshed man has had

00:19:07.180 a burden, excessive responsibilities. So by the time he gets into his youth and young adulthood,

00:19:12.400 as you said, there's no self. My self is strictly organized around how I can take care of you.

00:19:19.620 So when I search out a romantic partner, I search out somebody who has problems who I can take care

00:19:24.400 of. So nobody's home inside of those men, sadly, which is a little dramatic to say, but that's just

00:19:31.680 a way to say it. I mean, they have some sense of self, but many of them feel very neutered,

00:19:36.720 very passive, disempowered, because I've been so weighted down by the problems of my mother and

00:19:45.260 family that I don't even have it in me to protest for myself. So best just to just give in, right?

00:19:51.820 It becomes its own trauma response. It becomes its own coping reaction just to say yes when I mean no.

00:19:57.880 I don't even know how I can say no. So I'll just say yes and agree with you. And let's get this over

00:20:02.920 with. And you talk about like sometimes it can be a mixture of both the passive and aggressive.

00:20:08.080 So sometimes you've had clients and patients who are like, I'm just going to be passive. I'll just

00:20:12.700 do whatever my wife says, whatever my mother says, but then I might have like a secret porn addiction 0.98

00:20:16.900 or something. Exactly. Precisely. Yeah. So it's not uncommon, probably I'd say 60% of the guys coming 0.89

00:20:23.620 into. So I've had this workshop going, oh, since 2013, 11 years now, close to about a thousand men

00:20:33.260 and women from all across the globe. So it's been an interesting journey to watch them. And so they

00:20:40.400 have kind of what you're saying here, for sure. Yeah. And it can also manifest itself. I think you

00:20:46.180 talked about this in the book. It could be like a gambling addiction, like a secret gambling. It's like,

00:20:50.260 I got this one area of my life where no one tells me what to do. Absolutely. It could be food too.

00:20:56.100 Yeah. Sex is, I meant to say that sex is common at about 60% because sexuality is in the erotic

00:21:04.220 template, if you will. And when I say erotic, I don't just mean sexual, I mean romantic,

00:21:09.980 falling in love, you know, the whole gamut of what drives, you know, our pursuit of partners,

00:21:15.240 right. Is that it's burdened. You know, I have to take along my mother or my caretaking feelings or

00:21:21.560 my guilt. So I'm not really free. But if I go over here and gamble or use porn or pick up sex workers

00:21:27.620 or have an affair or overeat, no one's going to tell me because it's, I'm not emotionally obligated to

00:21:34.100 them. So I'm free sexually. So sometimes we see this splitting, we call it sexually, where I begin to

00:21:41.160 shut down with my committed partner because my committed partner begins to feel too much like

00:21:47.300 my mother. And through no fault of the partner, oftentimes it has more to do with the projection

00:21:53.400 from the man. So what's the best defense against an intrusive mother who wants to turn you into her 1.00

00:21:59.360 husband or boyfriend is shut yourself down sexually. So sexuality gets shut down, but then it goes out the

00:22:05.000 back door. Yeah. Okay. So a man who is a pleaser who otherwise doesn't feel like he can act for

00:22:11.160 himself, he might get into something like porn or gambling to feel like he's rebelling to feel like,

00:22:17.960 yeah, I'm my own man. I can do what I want, even though he's not able to break free. We're going to

00:22:23.180 take a quick break for your words from our sponsors. And now back to the show. So this whole

00:22:32.080 enmeshment, it happens in childhood. So what goes on in childhood that a mother would want to enmesh 0.98

00:22:38.680 with her son? Yeah. So I think that's, you know, in most cases, it's a more innocent unfolding where,

00:22:48.420 frankly, the parent is also trapped. They're not unfolding their true selves. All of a sudden,

00:22:52.640 their needs become completely dependent upon their son. In most cases, although we do have some

00:22:58.240 parents, some adult children who report their parents as cruel or deliberate, but in many cases,

00:23:04.920 it's really more unconscious in which, you know, maybe there's an unhappiness with the marriage or

00:23:11.320 the relationship, or there's maybe single parenting. Although most of the people we see come from

00:23:16.120 families in which aren't single parents, you know, as a parent, you probably know this, you know,

00:23:22.240 I mean, your kids adore you, right? Until they get to be adolescents and they have problems with you.

00:23:26.940 But they adore you. And it's a love that has no match. And so it's easy for a needy parent who's

00:23:36.680 beginning to feel empty or lonely in her marital bond or her friendship community to begin to overuse

00:23:44.580 that adoration from her child and begin to depend on it. And so you might have slowly over time

00:23:51.020 increased dependency in which now, what do you mean you, what do you mean you're going to a dance?

00:23:56.460 No, you shouldn't, you know, pretty soon he's talking about having a crush at somebody at school

00:24:00.760 and she's all of a sudden shaming him for, you know, something that he's just feeling innocent about.

00:24:07.040 So she may, she may find herself in the trap of dependency of enmeshment through no conscious

00:24:13.800 decision to do so, but kind of a slow holding on to that, which can't be matched. Again, you know,

00:24:21.300 children love their parents in, in, in ways that just can't be matched. And, you know, I think that's

00:24:26.820 just normal. So I think that's what happens mostly, but we also have a percentage. I don't really have

00:24:33.060 a number for you that I've heard over time. I mean, it's more than 5%. It's probably not 50%.

00:24:38.960 So someplace in between probably close to the 25% of the parents we hear reported about

00:24:46.340 who are deliberate. They particularly get more deliberate over time. Although you'll see some

00:24:52.140 of it in childhood. No, I don't want you playing football. No, I want you here at home, you know,

00:24:56.500 be careful out there. So there's an excessive hold and carefulness that begin to wrap around the

00:25:03.880 child we see in early, which is why I saw these kids, these school phobic kids at five

00:25:08.900 and six years of age, right? Is they had already been caught in the web of their mother's worry

00:25:14.040 and they couldn't leave. Most of the time, the children who are most prone to getting caught in

00:25:20.180 this are the kids who have the highest degree of empathy and sensitivity. So it's not going to be

00:25:25.660 the kid in the family who is, you know, more able to say, buzz off. I don't want to deal with

00:25:29.900 that, right? They have a little more feistiness in their temperament. These are typically the kids

00:25:35.520 who are nice boys, nice girls, sweet boys, sweet girls, loving, caring. The parent's job is not to

00:25:42.600 over solicit that. So what happens is, is that if you're dealing with a marital bond that's

00:25:49.520 problematic and your partner is not being particularly solicitous about how you're doing,

00:25:53.720 and you've got this wonderful sensitive boy who says, mommy, I'll never leave you. I mean,

00:25:58.960 she just latches onto that, right? So the easy-tempered, sensitive, sweet boy is often

00:26:06.500 targeted. And so it's this increased bonding over time that begins this mutual dependency that is,

00:26:15.180 by the time we see these guys, it's really hard to unravel, although it's possible.

00:26:19.240 As I was reading your book and this idea of enmeshment, and like, you know, it's caused by

00:26:24.720 maybe the mother having a bad relationship with her husband. So she's trying to create

00:26:28.800 like a pseudo-husband relationship with her son. It reminded me of from Bowen Family Systems Theory,

00:26:34.520 the idea of triangulation, right? So it's like, you know, there's, there's a tension in between a dyad 0.55

00:26:40.200 between the husband and wife. And so to alleviate that tension, mother looks to son to sort of dissipate

00:26:47.880 that. Mm-hmm. And may use him, you know, using that language of triangulation, may use him as,

00:26:55.340 and weaponize him against the father. And then you have two attachment failures for the son. He's got

00:27:01.680 an over-involvement with the mother that feeds the mother, but not him. And then he has a distant,

00:27:08.220 competitive, if not angry relationship with the father. The father begins to feel jealousy towards

00:27:14.200 the boy. Mm-hmm. And so then he gets some hate and the mother wins in that battle. Yeah. Which is

00:27:20.020 really sad to watch. Or yeah, you can see like mom turns son against dad. You know, she tells her son,

00:27:25.240 your dad isn't this, he doesn't do that. And the son starts thinking, yeah, my dad is a bum. 0.99

00:27:30.040 Mm-hmm. Exactly. I remember a story I heard once, you may be familiar with the now past poet Robert 0.98

00:27:37.800 Bly, who did a lot of men's work over the years, which is where I first got a little bit of my

00:27:43.700 introduction to looking at men's issues a little differently than what I had learned in graduate

00:27:48.500 school and so forth. And so I remember telling a story about, and this was a secondhand story,

00:27:54.240 so I don't know the real details, but he told the story of a man who surprised his father,

00:28:00.280 flew across the country, surprised his father with a visit, knocked on his father's door and said to him,

00:28:05.720 I no longer accept my mother's version of you. I no longer accept my mother's version of you.

00:28:12.640 I might be angry with you. I might have issues with you, but they're not my mother's. Oftentimes we

00:28:18.220 see these adult men who have been enmeshed with their mothers carry a layer of rejection and anger

00:28:25.560 towards the father that's not theirs. And that's another piece of differentiating. Yeah. Is to say,

00:28:32.560 no, I'm not carrying my mother's anger. That's her job. Yeah. Which might be as straightforward as

00:28:38.160 having a boundary when she calls and says, you know, your father once again fell asleep in front

00:28:42.340 of the TV rather than going out on a date or going to bed with me. He's got to say, look, I don't want

00:28:47.380 to hear that anymore. We're done with that. There has to be a clear, fairly rigid boundary around that

00:28:54.420 kind of stuff. So we've kind of mentioned some of the problems that these mother-enmeshed men can 0.98

00:28:59.780 experience in their adult life. I guess the primary one you see, it affects the relationship

00:29:03.740 with their romantic partners. It could be their girlfriend or wives. What have you seen are the

00:29:08.400 most common complaints in the relationships of mother-enmeshed men? From the men themselves or

00:29:14.100 from their partners? Either. It could be both. Well, let's start with the men. Well, no, let's go

00:29:20.140 reverse. So most of the time when we get complaints from the partners and what the men will report

00:29:25.840 is that the partners are frustrated with their less than co-equal status in the marital bond or

00:29:32.760 the relationship bond. And so that the mother has taken priority all of, you know, where the son will

00:29:38.620 call the mother and discuss vacation plans or financial plans or have a secret bank account.

00:29:44.900 I mean, I can't tell you the stories I've heard that just kind of, still kind of, you know, blows my

00:29:50.340 mind when I really see it. And then I realize, oh, we're really talking about a specific issue here

00:29:54.640 that needs clarifying. So the women will mostly, the women, and we've had some gay men who have had

00:30:01.040 very similar dynamics, the partners, the same. They'll complain about not having a voice, not

00:30:07.760 having a vote, and having to live with losses over the course of their relationship. Sometimes the

00:30:14.260 parents, the grandparents will then usurp the spouse and become the parental figure to the children,

00:30:21.640 criticizing the man's wife or partner. So usually the spouses have had enough. I'm tired of this. I

00:30:29.580 can't live with this anymore. So that's a common complaint of, and where they have felt overt hostility

00:30:36.760 sometimes from the competitive mother-in-law. The man will initially complain that his wife doesn't

00:30:43.100 understand. That'll be his initial complaint. I'm laughing because it's not funny, but it's always,

00:30:48.560 it's fascinating to me to see how frequently that occurs. She just won't understand. I just,

00:30:55.540 I'm not being disloyal to her, but I have to take care of my mother. My mother didn't have anybody

00:30:59.980 growing up. My father left when I was 10. So I'm the whole world to my mother. She just has to

00:31:06.020 understand. So the first complaint by the man is that he wants his wife to accept more loss, but he's

00:31:11.700 not calling it that way. He wants his wife, quote unquote, to understand. So he'll report initially a

00:31:17.140 conflict with his partner. Following that will be, you know, a fair degree of frustration with the

00:31:23.780 mother and that he finds himself shutting down with his partner, with his romantic partner and a

00:31:30.060 sexual complaint. So sexuality is again, in about 60% of the cases, a problematic issue. So the men will

00:31:37.480 also report not being able to feel sexual or be sexual and, or I'm excessively acting out or acting

00:31:44.860 outside of my marital or relationship contract with other sexual partners or porn. So that'll be a

00:31:52.440 common report of complaint too. So sometimes the couple will be fighting about mother and the

00:31:57.580 betrayal by the mother that the partner will talk about. And then they'll also, right along with that,

00:32:04.240 be talking about the betrayal by their sexual behavior. So when you get both of those,

00:32:09.060 it's really an intense conflict. Yeah. And then you've also, you encounter men who haven't been

00:32:15.460 able to get into a romantic relationship or a long-term one because mom always gets in the way.

00:32:20.780 Yeah. Yeah. So, you know, it means we've got men, not that, not that being married is the

00:32:26.980 representation of, of relational health, but we'll, we'll use it as an example. So, so some men

00:32:34.120 haven't made any commitments. They've had short, they've had transactional relationships and they've

00:32:40.080 not been able to really open up their hearts to intimacy with, with a romantic partner because it

00:32:48.280 feels too engulfing, too confining. And so I've learned to live my life alone. And while there

00:32:54.740 might be advantages to that it's a very lonely experience. So we've definitely seen that. And

00:33:01.200 we've seen too, interestingly enough, as, as these men emancipate from their mothers and families.

00:33:09.100 And when we say emancipation, we don't mean cutting off a family. We mean, look at, I'm a man and I

00:33:16.840 need you to treat me as that. And if you don't, it's going to be hard for me to circle back and visit

00:33:21.400 with you. So I need to operate differently with you. And I need a different response from you.

00:33:26.260 The more the man can do that, the more available he is to his romantic partner in his own sexuality.

00:33:33.240 And as these men embody themselves and say, no, no, I'm going to put a stake in the ground.

00:33:38.880 It's just as my space, nobody gets in without my permission. And most importantly, you mother,

00:33:44.340 as he does that without raging or grabbing the mother by the lapels, you don't need to confront

00:33:50.280 your, your, your, your mother or your family to do this. It's an internal shift. I now become more

00:33:55.660 available erotically, romantically to my partner. Something you mentioned earlier is that enmeshed

00:34:02.980 men can get into a relationship with someone who's like their mother. Is that common? And do they tend

00:34:09.080 to repeat the relationship patterns that they had with their moms, with their romantic partner?

00:34:14.360 Well, you know, so there's a acronym called three Ps, pick, project, or provoke. Meaning we recreate

00:34:21.580 the past through picking someone just like our parent. We provoke them or we project onto them.

00:34:27.520 I'm not sure I can give you the percentages, but yes, sometimes we see that a mother enmeshed man will

00:34:34.100 pick a partner who is over-controlling, over-dominant, over-intrusive. And there can be a familiarity

00:34:41.920 in that the man gets caught up in a bond with a woman who is like the mother. And unfortunately he

00:34:48.220 may have to divorce both of them if there's no changes. Divorce in the, sort of differently,

00:34:54.540 I'm using divorce in, in, in sort of a general sense here, but separate out, I don't know what

00:34:59.080 that would mean with the woman. Sometimes the man will project onto the woman feelings of engulfment

00:35:06.060 that aren't there. Then she'll say, what are you talking about? I didn't need you to do that.

00:35:10.680 You don't need to keep pleasing me. I just wanted to know what dinner you wanted to go to, right?

00:35:14.560 So sometimes there's a projection and his job is to pull that back so that he can be in relationship

00:35:20.460 with the woman. It's independent of the ghosts of the mother. And then other times the man will provoke

00:35:26.360 the woman to be like the mother. So I'll betray you sexually. I'll have an affair and then 0.99

00:35:33.060 you'll become controlling. See, you're just like my mother, but I'm responsible for that. So I would, 0.95

00:35:38.260 I would urge the men to look at the three Ps, pick, provoke and project and figure out where the line

00:35:44.800 is. It's not easy to do. All three could be operative in the same relationship. Yeah. And then we've

00:35:51.640 also talked about this mother enmeshment can affect your career too, because you, you project that 1.00

00:35:56.020 desire, need, unhealthy need to please onto your employer. So it might cause you to stick with

00:36:02.960 a job that's just awful. Cause you're like, well, I got to be loyal to my boss or I just, I got to do

00:36:08.460 this just sort of out of obligation. Absolutely. Absolutely. Or I find myself sort of even at a deeper

00:36:16.020 level in a career or a job or, or a path in which my mother wanted me in, but I never wanted. And so

00:36:23.660 now I'm struggling and we've had guys change horses in the middle of the stream as part of their

00:36:28.420 emancipation change careers. Fascinatingly enough. And so, yeah, the response to this. So let's say 0.99

00:36:34.380 if you are a mother enmeshed man, the idea is you have to unmesh and you've been calling it

00:36:38.240 emancipation. And I've seen a lot of articles lately about children cutting off parents. Like my parents

00:36:45.320 are toxic. I need to cut them off completely. And cutting off is different from emancipation. So 1.00

00:36:51.040 what's the difference? And why do you think this whole cutoff idea, it could be healthy in some

00:36:55.140 situations, but maybe it's not the most healthy thing to do either. Yeah. Yeah. Well, let's

00:36:59.960 acknowledge that certainly there are people that we shouldn't have in our lives because they're

00:37:04.600 abusive to us. Right. And one of the strategies, and often if the person can't change, the strategy

00:37:10.920 is to, is to get away from them. Right. And being a family member doesn't permit you to be abusive.

00:37:18.540 You don't get a license to do that. So there is a percentage of people who need to look at,

00:37:24.400 look at, I can't have you in my life if you keep doing this, but let's set that group aside. I just

00:37:28.980 want to acknowledge that that can't happen. But most of the guys coming into our workshop

00:37:33.820 and sometimes the spouse will, will try to demand it. Uh, look at, I want you to cut off your mother, 1.00

00:37:39.600 but that's not a solution. And because it's really a phobic response. In other words, I'm so afraid that 0.96

00:37:46.420 if I talk to my mother, I'll get swallowed up by her worries. I'm just going to cut her off.

00:37:50.360 There's nothing particularly empowering about that. It's really phobic. So the man never really

00:37:56.880 emancipates. He just stiffs arm the family, cuts them off, and it gives them a pseudo sense of power.

00:38:04.800 But then he's over here subjugating himself to his friend who wants to borrow a thousand dollars

00:38:09.060 that he doesn't have. And he says, yes, when he really can't do it. He hasn't really emancipated.

00:38:14.100 So emancipation really is, look it, I might need some separate time. I have new boundaries. No,

00:38:22.140 you can't talk about your loneliness with dad anymore. I'm out of that. You want to talk about

00:38:26.100 the weather or sports, we're good. We'll skip politics too these days, but we'll, we're not

00:38:30.680 talking about your loneliness with dad, mom. And you say you love me. And so I need you to respect me.

00:38:36.280 So we begin to have adult conversations because we are no longer held hostage by the fear of

00:38:42.780 disappointing mommy. I'm now willing to be a disappointment to her. So emancipation is

00:38:49.820 changing the role assignment that you've been burdened with. And it might have periods where

00:38:56.780 you have more separateness, but it might be, you know, we're not coming to the holidays this year,

00:39:02.460 Thanksgiving, Christmas, Hanukkah, whatever. You know, we're going to be in Hawaii and your mother's

00:39:07.940 disappointed. And you say, you know what, we'll probably visit with you next year. You're

00:39:12.760 able to tolerate that disappointment. You don't need to stiff armor and you don't need to subjugate

00:39:18.100 her. Emancipation is, I'm my own man. My commitment is to myself, to my partner, to my kids, to my

00:39:26.580 unfolding. And now you mother and father, notice they've come down the list. So that's, that's

00:39:33.180 really emancipation. So cutting somebody off, stiff arming somebody is a temporary pseudo freedom

00:39:40.580 in my experience. Although, as I said, there are a certain population and I'll leave that to

00:39:47.420 people to sort out where obviously you're not having contact. If, if the parent's cruel and sadistic,

00:39:54.780 it's trouble. You know, you might need to have a more rigid boundary. So emancipation may have 0.99

00:40:00.720 boundaries on a continuum. Cutting off your family. So is a one trick pony, right? It's just stiff

00:40:06.700 arming. And what we see, I, so here's what we see. We've begun to see this with, with reporting

00:40:13.420 from the adult. This is all reporting from the adult and meshed man. So we're not getting the

00:40:18.420 direct report from the parents. So it's a little bit secondhand, of course, but what they're

00:40:23.780 reporting is initially the parents will resist. Mom won't be happy. But if she's got any moxie 1.00

00:40:31.020 of self to her, she will understand that she doesn't want to lose her son or her daughter. So

00:40:37.780 she'll, she or the father will learn to keep quiet. So there's a resignation. My kid wants his own

00:40:44.160 space. I don't like it. I'll shut my mouth. We, we hope they get at least that. It's not ideal.

00:40:50.460 The second phase is that in time, parents begin to accept, okay, I see now my son doesn't want to cut

00:40:57.640 me off. He just wants some space. I get it. I'm going to go out and join a bridge club. I'm going

00:41:03.120 to get a better marriage going with my husband here. So I'll, I'll do my own life. So ideally

00:41:08.420 we like to see parents move into acceptance. I don't know how often that occurs. And then finally,

00:41:15.220 the stage that we really look for, which we don't get a lot of reports of is that parents really come

00:41:21.000 to terms with and celebrate and bless their children's departure. And we say to the adult,

00:41:28.880 the adult man emancipating, look at emancipation is not a negotiation. You do not need your parents

00:41:37.500 approval. Don't seek it. It's not necessary. In fact, it's counterproductive. You deserve their

00:41:44.060 blessing, but you might not get it. And you don't need it. You deserve it, but you may not get it.

00:41:49.840 Don't wait around for it. So that really is an emancipated man. I'm my own man.

00:41:55.960 Yeah. So, yeah, I mean, it sounds like, uh, this reminds me of, you know, going back to family

00:41:59.300 systems theory, this idea of differentiation, it's being a self while still maintaining

00:42:04.340 relationships with people. Exactly. Differentiation is really the sort of the

00:42:09.960 inner piece of the process. You know, the first is boundaries. I can't talk to you about that anymore.

00:42:14.460 The last stage is emancipating in my own man. But the middle part, which is most difficult is

00:42:20.460 this differentiation, you know, wait a minute. Why am I picking up the bill all the time for 10

00:42:25.800 people? Yeah. I don't have to do that. So what does a healthy relationship look like with your

00:42:29.820 mother? We talked about like what an unhealthy relationship, like what would a good relationship

00:42:33.080 with your mother look like as an adult? Well, I think, I think it shifts from, uh, sort of,

00:42:39.280 you're my little boy is now you're my adult man, son, and I have to sort of regard you as an adult.

00:42:46.320 And so we have to renegotiate how we talk, what we talk about, how we visit. So we have more of a

00:42:53.700 consulting friendship and a love relationship, but not, you know, you're my little boy and,

00:43:01.260 you know, I need you to do what I want. So we see a shift in the way both the parent and the adult child

00:43:06.560 deal with each other, where there's a greater respect and tolerance for separateness.

00:43:11.840 You know, my son, he's visiting this weekend and he was going to show up, uh, the other day,

00:43:17.500 didn't he came a day late and, uh, you know, he's moving across the country. So we want to get as

00:43:21.640 much time as possible. So, you know, both of my, you know, I'm not a perfect parent. He'll remind me

00:43:27.040 of that. But so both my wife's response is great. We'll see you when you get here. Right. As was mine

00:43:32.880 versus why can't you make it here? Yeah. Just move that appointment aside. Right. Laying on the

00:43:40.900 guilt. So again, we're not perfect parents. He reminds us of that, but that's a difference is

00:43:46.020 the adult parent now begins to disengage from a dependency that was once there and they're both

00:43:54.660 agents. The mother and the son are free to move in and out of the connection lovingly without feeling

00:44:00.580 guilt for their times of separateness. And they can circle back out of choice and sure there might

00:44:07.840 be disappointment or missing. Oh, I miss you. I haven't seen you in a while. Can we put something

00:44:12.800 on the books versus, you know, don't you think about me anymore? You've been spending too much

00:44:18.340 time with your wife. So there's the difference is that both the adult man and the mother are separate

00:44:26.400 agents in the relationship and they come and go out of love and out of choice, not a, not out of guilt

00:44:33.740 demand or inappropriate loyalty. Anything dads can do to help their sons develop a healthy relationship

00:44:40.880 with their mother and not get in. Well, one is, is to get in there and have a relationship with your

00:44:46.000 son independent of the mother so that he can learn to turn to you and the mother can witness that she

00:44:52.580 doesn't get to be top dog. Right. And you're not doing it competitively. You're just doing it

00:44:57.600 lovingly. And I think too, to be solicitous of your partner and say, you know, let's go out of date

00:45:04.320 and, you know, reconnect, rekindle the love affair that was there before you had kids,

00:45:10.740 which most of us know is tough to do, but you know, with the help of, of good marital therapists

00:45:17.780 and counselors, you can do that. So you begin to put your energy towards your partner and you build

00:45:23.740 a relationship with your son independent of the mother. And if necessary, you create some challenges

00:45:30.540 to your wife and say, look, you can't keep doing that. You know, you're going to lose him. Yeah.

00:45:35.580 So you have to be a voice of reason there. Well, this has been a great conversation. Where can people

00:45:40.060 go to learn more about your work? Yeah. So you could go to the website, overcomingenmeshment.com,

00:45:45.860 all one word, overcomingenmeshment.com. I have lots of podcasts on there. Hopefully I'll get,

00:45:51.060 get yours on there. If you'll send me a link. It'd be great talking to you. We've got workshops,

00:45:56.380 educational workshops for men. We have them for women who are enmeshed. What's interesting is we 0.87

00:46:01.480 did some interviewing for, for qualitative research. We interviewed men and women and I did some of the

00:46:07.520 interviewing with the women. I was shocked. The women were just like the men. They'll report things like

00:46:13.000 when they're enmeshed with their mothers and fathers. You know, my boyfriend wants too much

00:46:16.620 of me. I'm going to run the other way and start a new relationship. I thought, oh my God, I'm talking

00:46:20.320 to the, just like the men. We also have workshops for the partners and the spouses of these individuals

00:46:26.260 who need help sort of getting their head back on straight and feeling valid and so forth. So

00:46:31.860 the website, we'll walk you through all that.

00:46:34.380 Fantastic. Well, Ken Adams, thanks for your time. It's been a pleasure.

00:46:36.700 Yeah. Likewise, Brad. I appreciate your working with me and talking. It's been a great conversation and I hope to

00:46:42.100 get a link so I can upload it on my website too. My guest today was Dr. Kenneth Adams. He's the author

00:46:48.040 of the book, When He's Married to Mom. It's available on amazon.com. You can find more information

00:46:52.640 about his work at his website, overcomingadmeshment.com. Also check out our show notes at

00:46:56.740 awim.is slash marriedtomom. We find links to resources. We delve deeper into this topic.

00:47:08.420 Well, that wraps up another edition of the AOM podcast. Make sure to check out our

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00:47:16.160 we've written over the years about pretty much anything you think of. And if you haven't done

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00:47:29.880 support. Until next time, it's Brett McKay. Remind you to listen to the AOM podcast, but put what you've

00:47:34.120 heard into action.

The Art of Manliness - August 26, 2024

When He's Married to Mom

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