When He's Married to Mom
Episode Stats
Summary
Your relationship with your mother is likely the first and most foundational connection in your life. At its best, this bond can be a source of comfort, strength, and love that lasts a lifetime. But sometimes the attachment between a mother and a son can become unhealthy, resulting in a phenomenon called mother-son enmeshment, in which a man can become a kind of surrogate husband to his mom. Here to unpack this complex issue is Dr. Ken Adams, a clinical psychologist who has spent much of his career working with what he calls mother-enmeshed men and is the author of When He's Married to Mom.
Transcript
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Brett McKay here and welcome to another edition of the Art of Manliness podcast.
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Your relationship with your mother is likely the first and most foundational connection
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in your life. At its best, this bond can be a source of comfort, strength, and love that
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lasts a lifetime and changes in healthy, appropriate, and adaptive ways as you mature
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into adulthood. But sometimes the attachment between a mother and a son can become unhealthy,
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resulting in a phenomenon called mother-son enmeshment, in which a man can become a kind
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of surrogate husband to his mom. Here to unpack this complex issue is Dr. Kenneth Adams. Ken is a
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clinical psychologist who has spent much of his career working with what he calls mother-enmeshed
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men and is the author of When He's Married to Mom. Today on the show, Ken impacts the characteristics
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of mother-enmeshed men and how to know if you are one. And he explains what can happen in childhood
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that would cause a mother to enmesh with her son. We discuss the problems enmeshment can create in
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men's relationships and other areas of life and how it can lead to things like compulsive
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porn use. And we unpack what it means for a man to become independent and emancipate from
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his mother, how it's different from cutting her off, and what it looks like to have a
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healthy relationship with your mom. After the show's over, check out our show notes at
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aom.is slash marriedtomom. All right, Ken Adams, welcome to the show.
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So you're a therapist and for your career, you've spent a lot of time working with men
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who you call them mother-enmeshed men. And you wrote a book about this called When He's
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Married to Mom. Give us a thumbnail sketch because we'll get into this deeper in our
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conversation. But what is a mother-enmeshed man?
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So enmeshed men is a word people use to describe too much entanglement between what is called
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in this case mother and son, although it could be between daughter and mother and father and
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daughter and so forth. But too much entanglement where the needs of the parent or the needs of
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one individual supersedes the other and that there's a demand for loyalty based on guilty
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obligation that is used to leverage. Love is transactional. So the enmeshed individual
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organizes their self around the parent and absorbs their feelings and needs as if it's their own.
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And then when they try to get off into adulthood, particularly romance, they're having a lot of
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trouble. So enmeshment refers as too much dependency, too much involvement, too much shared
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brain. I mean, certainly we all have dependencies, right? Emotional dependency is not pathological,
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but too much of it at the cost of your own autonomy and your own emancipation is very costly.
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These individuals struggle immensely in romance. And I get emails all the time, daily, from spouses
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and partners of these guys who say, you know, I can't take it anymore. I've been in the backseat
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of this marriage or this relationship. I've had enough. He's over at his mother's house every day,
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or he blames me for everything and protects his family and so on and so forth. So the evidence that
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these enmeshment dynamics impact romance is just overwhelming.
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When did you first start noticing enmeshed men in your practice?
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Well, you know, so let me take you back a little further. I was working when I first started my
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professional practice, I was working with kids and I was doing a lot of family system therapy and the
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family system therapists talk about enmeshment. And what they noticed is that a lot of these kids
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who had psychosomatic disorders and other issues really were symptomatic of the family enmeshed
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system. And so, you know, I began to take a look at that. When I was working at a children's
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hospital in Detroit, we were seeing school phobic kids. And I said to my supervisor, these kids are
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afraid of school. They can't leave their mothers. He goes, how did you know that? I said, well,
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that's a whole story there. So I really began to notice that early in my career with children
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and families. And then I moved into working with adults who were raised in alcoholic families, adult
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children of alcoholics. And I began to see adults who were over-involved with their mothers, adult
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men who were also sexually compulsive. And so I remember working with a man who was sexually
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compulsive, picking up sex workers. And he would do this when he was living, he would live with his
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mother part-time during the week. And then other part of the week, due to employment reasons, he
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was at his own place. And so he said, well, what should I do to stop the compulsive sexual behavior?
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And so I instinctively said, well, move out from your mother's home. I sort of just sort of
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intuitively knew that was the move. And sure enough, he did that. And to my surprise, his sexual
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compulsivity dramatically decreased. So I began to put together at that time, the link between
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enmeshment and sexuality, which was missing in the literature on family systems. So you don't need
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to be sexually, physically violated to have your sexuality hijacked. So if you've got a parent who
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has dominated you, say mother over son, and has turned you into her, you know, boyfriend, surrogate,
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husband, caretaker, you're in trouble. Because your sexuality can't unfold naturally and purely.
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So that's when I first began to notice it. I first began to notice the link between
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enmeshment and sexual compulsivity. I wrote my first professional article at that time based on that case,
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and everything went from there. So that was the beginning. And that was in 1991 or earlier,
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when I first published that article. So I've been working with adult men who have been enmeshed
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ever since then. What's interesting, I think there might be a tendency for people to think
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that this mother enmeshment is a modern phenomenon. But something I've noticed, I've read a lot of
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biographies for my work of like famous great men from history. A lot of them had unhealthy relationships
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with their mothers. Three of them come to mind. Lou Gehrig.
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Had an incredibly super close relationship with his mom during spring training. You know,
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most players brought their girlfriends or wives. He'd bring his mom. And then she would
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criticize and sabotage his relationship with women. He didn't get married until he was 30,
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Yeah. And then even after he got married, there's just a ton of tension between his mother
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and his wife. Because Lou Gehrig just felt this intense attachment to his mother.
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Yeah. Houdini was another one. He let his mother pick out his clothes. Even as an adult man,
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he would rest his head on her bosom to hear her heartbeat because he found it soothing.
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And then when his mother died, he wanted to die too. And he actually started trying to contact her
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through seances. And then another one was General MacArthur. Another guy, unusually close to his mother,
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when he was at West Point, his mother moved into a hotel near West Point so she could be by him.
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So those are some examples. But I was always surprised to see these men you think would have
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like sort of independence, but they had this like often weird kind of unhealthy relationship with
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Mm-hmm. Yeah. You know, that's fascinating. I didn't know about all three of those, but I think we'd find
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the evidence of the pathology in their romances if we interviewed their partners. They'd have a lot to
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say about the competition with mother and her unwillingness to let go and his unwillingness
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and their unwillingness to let go of mother. That's something that we've learned over the years
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is that we used to assume it was the parent holding on and we had to help the men sort of eradicate
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themselves from the trap and find a new way to communicate. But then we realized some of these
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guys don't want to leave that golden boy position. It's been an elevated position. I'm,
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you know, sometimes the mother will use the son in competition against the father. The father's a
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brute or an alcoholic. You know, I'll love my son more than you. I'll elevate him to boyfriend status
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and I'll show you a thing or two, right? I'll neuter the old man with my son. But in doing so,
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neuters both the men in terms of their ineffectiveness. And so we definitely see some
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competitiveness there when the mother turns the son into the boyfriend or the husband.
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How do you know if you're a mother enmeshed man? Like what are some of the characteristics? So
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overall, it's sort of an unhealthy closeness with a mother, but what are some other characteristics?
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Well, I think that you find yourself feeling tethered, you know, that's entrapped and unable
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to have any separateness and driven by guilt and worry and having to be on call for your mother's
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woes. To the point where you find yourself angry, frustrated, you're preoccupied with your mother's
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needs. You likely reject, distance yourself, detach, disengage from your romantic partner
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and or project onto her or him, you know, anger that really belongs to the mother. So ultimately,
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it's a set of characteristics in which I feel guilty, obligated, angry, frustrated, trapped
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around having to caretake. She's the only person I have or have had. And my wife just needs to
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understand and she's the problem, not my mother. So that's the core identifier that we seem, you know,
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probably eight out of 10 referrals that come into our workshop often come in under that umbrella.
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The other is, you know, the other sort of set of characteristics we see is that because these
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boys have been elevated by their mothers into the golden boy status, that comes with a certain degree
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of confidence, right? Almost omnipotence in the way they think of themselves. So they can develop
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some success in their lives. So the guys you just mentioned, all of them had degrees of high success.
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So in the effort to please mother, I can become very successful. So I've had lots of guys with
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tremendous success who endlessly try to please their family and their mother. In the meantime,
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not having much of a romantic life. So the other place that we see the sort of identifier is they
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really don't live a life of passion and purpose around what they really want in spite of their success.
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In other words, particularly in terms of relationships and romance, life seems to
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organize around me. They may pick the wrong, they may pick somebody like their mother to marry,
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right? Because they're not really free to choose and pick someone like their mother in the wrong way
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where the partner may have negative characteristics. So they seem to have a passivity, a disempowerment.
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Sometimes we even go so far as to say feeling neutered when it comes to romance, which is a strong word,
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but we use it descriptively rather than judgmentally. You can't be your mother's good boy and a man.
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You've got to choose. And so they live in sort of an ambivalent state, you know, and so oftentimes
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they can't make up their minds which restaurant to go to. Where do you want to go? I don't care.
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Where do you want to go, right? The relationship to needs, feelings has been interfered with by
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having to organize around the first love affair I've had. I mean, you know, parents love their
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children. Children fall in love with their parents. It's a wonderful thing. But the parent must let go.
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It is their assignment to let go. It is not the adult child's responsibility to cushion the blow
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of the emancipation. And ultimately, these men will compromise. We call it troublesome compromising
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in the workshop. They'll put one foot in and try to placate mother, try to placate the wife, try to
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placate the kids, try to placate friends. In the meantime, nobody's happy, most importantly themselves.
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So placating, ambivalence, difficulty with commitment, living in this dark space of I don't
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know what I want. So I'm just going to keep working at what I know I can do, whether it's being a
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magician or a ballplayer, right? I can do that, but I can't really figure anything else out like what
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restaurant to go to. So I'd be curious about these guys if you were to have them take the screening we
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have on our website, whether they pick things that would indicate that they don't do well with
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identifying their own personal needs. So that's a big issue. And living in guilt and projecting a lot of
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guilt onto other relationships. So they pick up, you know, the dinner tab, you know, more times than
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they should of their families. They say, feel obligated and guilty to caretake and take care of other
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people as well. So transferring that sort of guilty, loyal subjugation to others also is a tall tale sign.
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So they can carry that over, that guilt from their mother to other relationships as well. Could be their
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their employer. Oh, it's inevitable. It's inevitable. So we'll get guys who the mothers have passed away and
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they'll join the workshop. And what you'll find is they have transferred the whole dynamic to their partner
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and they can't figure out how to stand up for themselves or whether what they're doing is giving in or whether
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they, and they wind up being in extremes. They either subjugate themselves to their partner's needs or they get
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angry and rejecting. They don't have a way to discern how to be in relationship because their mother has
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taught them, you're obligated to me. I want you to absorb my feelings, my needs. So there's a lot of
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conflict when it comes to intimacy for these men. So having to learn to differentiate their inner sanctum
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where their mother still lives is really the key.
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Is this related to this idea you talk about in the book, the disloyalty bind?
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Exactly. Exactly. If I give to my wife, then I'm being disloyal to my mother. Yes. So I'm torn
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between that. I tend to organize the way I think about things in these dimensions of loyalty where
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someone else might just say, well, no, you know, that's not a big deal. I don't have to gauge my
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decision based on emotional loyalties. It's just a decision to be made. And sometimes people will be
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disappointed. So yeah, the disloyalty bind is that I really can't move on my own direction because I'll
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leave my mother behind. You know, one of the things that we have learned and we have been teaching in
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the workshops is that, you know, what we've noticed is that the men don't want to disappoint anybody,
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right? They want to figure out a way to get mom to co-sign their emancipation. So I'm chuckling.
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It's not funny. I'm not making fun of these men, but it's just so ironic. So they'll arrange a
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therapy session with mother and they'll try to sort of say, look at mom, I need to be my own man. I
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need you to understand and not call me five times a day. And what happens is, is that therapy session
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turns into a marital counseling session. And these men have worse problems afterwards because they're
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seeking their mother's co-assignment. The truth is, is that emancipation always means someone's
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disappointed. There's no way around that. You know, my son is 22. He's moving across the country
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from, from the, he's in New York now. We're in Michigan. He's moving to LA. I'm going to miss
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him. You know, it's my job to make the adjustment. It's not his job to disrupt his unfolding.
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So in emancipation, somebody always is getting disappointed. And the parents last, I've always
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said this, the parents last spiritual assignment in parenting, which is really hard to do. I'm doing
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it right now is they have to take the loss. It's their job to take the loss. It's not the adult
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child's job to cushion the blow. Now we hope your adult children return, but here's the irony. If you
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look at the family's therapy system literature, the more you let go of your children, the more they want
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to circle back around. The more you hold on, the less they want to be with you. So we try to remind
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the adult mesh man that he, you know, he has to be willing to disappoint. Otherwise he's going to live
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in that disloyalty bind and try to, try to balance out his loyalties to everybody, which never is
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successful, frankly. So in the book, you provide some questions that people can ask themselves to
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figure out if their mother in mesh or not. So yeah, if you feel obligated or guilty about taking
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care of your mom's problems, if you feel like your mother is perfect or is a martyr, but it goes beyond
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that. If you put other people's needs above yours all the time, if you feel guilty when pursuing your
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own wants or needs, that might be a sign that you are mother in mesh because you're taking that
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relationship you had with your parent as a child and projecting it on your other relationships.
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You mentioned earlier that sometimes you've seen patients or clients you've worked with,
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their enmeshment can display itself in passivity. I think it's probably the more common one. You just
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kind of a doormat because you're just ambivalent about your decisions because you don't really have
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a sense of self. So you're just like, whatever you want to do. But then also you talk about how it can
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manifest itself in sort of hyper-aggressiveness. Have you seen like what causes a mother-enmeshed man
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to tip towards passivity or hyper-aggressiveness?
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Yeah. So let's start with the latter. The sort of hyper-aggressiveness we might want to
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sort of put under the umbrella of a more self-centered, narcissistic, what we might say is a counterphobic
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response. I don't want to risk ever getting caught up in anybody else's needs. So the hell with you.
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I'll just focus on myself. And so what we see in those backgrounds, not uncommonly, is one of the
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parents, and it could be the mother, is also in addition to being dependent on her son, she's very
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self-centered and narcissistic. She needs him to be an extension of her. So that sort of precedes his
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own aggressive narcissism where then he gets involved with a romantic partner. And it's all about him
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because he can't tolerate the risk that he's going to get subjugated underneath another dependency.
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So usually there's a little mix or a lot of mix of narcissism from the parent that will drive that.
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We see that in over-sexualization, these sort of counterphobic, I'll just have a lot of women,
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right? I'll have sex with a lot of women, prove that nobody can control my sexuality when in fact
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mother has been controlling it. The more passive response is more typical, although you might see a
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mix. And often there, the child has been very burdened with responsibilities and caretaking. So
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the caretaking dynamic, my mother's depression, my brother and sisters, I had to take care of them.
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My father was an alcoholic. I had to fight with him. So usually the more passive enmeshed man has had
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a burden, excessive responsibilities. So by the time he gets into his youth and young adulthood,
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as you said, there's no self. My self is strictly organized around how I can take care of you.
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So when I search out a romantic partner, I search out somebody who has problems who I can take care
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of. So nobody's home inside of those men, sadly, which is a little dramatic to say, but that's just
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a way to say it. I mean, they have some sense of self, but many of them feel very neutered,
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very passive, disempowered, because I've been so weighted down by the problems of my mother and
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family that I don't even have it in me to protest for myself. So best just to just give in, right?
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It becomes its own trauma response. It becomes its own coping reaction just to say yes when I mean no.
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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
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with. And you talk about like sometimes it can be a mixture of both the passive and aggressive.
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So sometimes you've had clients and patients who are like, I'm just going to be passive. I'll just
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do whatever my wife says, whatever my mother says, but then I might have like a secret porn addiction
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or something. Exactly. Precisely. Yeah. So it's not uncommon, probably I'd say 60% of the guys coming
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into. So I've had this workshop going, oh, since 2013, 11 years now, close to about a thousand men
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and women from all across the globe. So it's been an interesting journey to watch them. And so they
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have kind of what you're saying here, for sure. Yeah. And it can also manifest itself. I think you
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talked about this in the book. It could be like a gambling addiction, like a secret gambling. It's like,
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I got this one area of my life where no one tells me what to do. Absolutely. It could be food too.
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Yeah. Sex is, I meant to say that sex is common at about 60% because sexuality is in the erotic
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template, if you will. And when I say erotic, I don't just mean sexual, I mean romantic,
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falling in love, you know, the whole gamut of what drives, you know, our pursuit of partners,
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right. Is that it's burdened. You know, I have to take along my mother or my caretaking feelings or
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my guilt. So I'm not really free. But if I go over here and gamble or use porn or pick up sex workers
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or have an affair or overeat, no one's going to tell me because it's, I'm not emotionally obligated to
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them. So I'm free sexually. So sometimes we see this splitting, we call it sexually, where I begin to
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shut down with my committed partner because my committed partner begins to feel too much like
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my mother. And through no fault of the partner, oftentimes it has more to do with the projection
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from the man. So what's the best defense against an intrusive mother who wants to turn you into her
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husband or boyfriend is shut yourself down sexually. So sexuality gets shut down, but then it goes out the
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back door. Yeah. Okay. So a man who is a pleaser who otherwise doesn't feel like he can act for
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himself, he might get into something like porn or gambling to feel like he's rebelling to feel like,
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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
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take a quick break for your words from our sponsors. And now back to the show. So this whole
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enmeshment, it happens in childhood. So what goes on in childhood that a mother would want to enmesh
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with her son? Yeah. So I think that's, you know, in most cases, it's a more innocent unfolding where,
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frankly, the parent is also trapped. They're not unfolding their true selves. All of a sudden,
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their needs become completely dependent upon their son. In most cases, although we do have some
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parents, some adult children who report their parents as cruel or deliberate, but in many cases,
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it's really more unconscious in which, you know, maybe there's an unhappiness with the marriage or
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the relationship, or there's maybe single parenting. Although most of the people we see come from
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families in which aren't single parents, you know, as a parent, you probably know this, you know,
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I mean, your kids adore you, right? Until they get to be adolescents and they have problems with you.
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But they adore you. And it's a love that has no match. And so it's easy for a needy parent who's
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beginning to feel empty or lonely in her marital bond or her friendship community to begin to overuse
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that adoration from her child and begin to depend on it. And so you might have slowly over time
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increased dependency in which now, what do you mean you, what do you mean you're going to a dance?
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No, you shouldn't, you know, pretty soon he's talking about having a crush at somebody at school
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and she's all of a sudden shaming him for, you know, something that he's just feeling innocent about.
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So she may, she may find herself in the trap of dependency of enmeshment through no conscious
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decision to do so, but kind of a slow holding on to that, which can't be matched. Again, you know,
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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
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.
00:27:30.040
Mm-hmm. Exactly. I remember a story I heard once, you may be familiar with the now past poet Robert
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
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
00:35:33.060
you'll become controlling. See, you're just like my mother, but I'm responsible for that. So I would,
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
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
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
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,
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
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
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
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
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
00:46:34.380
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
00:47:11.940
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00:47:16.160
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00:47:29.880
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