When He's Married to Mom: How to Help Mother-Enmeshed Men Open Their Hearts to True Love and Commitment

“It seems you try to stay as free as possible by being as uncommitted as possible,” I told him. “I admire you for having the spirit to resist being controlled. But can you see that you’re hurting yourself? Your resistance is sabotaging your ability to know what you love and to pursue it with full energy.”

Second, a little boy cannot be made to feel exploited, intruded on, and trapped by his mother without his budding masculinity and sexuality absorbing the force of the blow. These two factors create a sexual wound that goes deep and straight to the center of his being.

You might be wondering, “Aren’t family members supposed to help family members?” Yes, but we have to consider the long-term patterns: If the need for help by siblings is a repetitive problem that they really should be solving for themselves, what kind of realistic support can or should a brother be offering?

The unconscious mind can be provoked in situations that are parallel to those in a person’s past. When this happens, it may generate some of the feelings and strong emotions from the past, such as fear and anger. It has the power to override the conscious mind when it perceives a crisis.

There is a universe of difference between a mother who loves her son dearly and a mother who makes her son the primary focus of her passion and preoccupation in an attempt to compensate for her own emptiness.

He becomes inhibited and timid. John Bowlby, a developmental psychiatrist, has done extensive research on mothers as a safe haven for an exploring child. He observes that, because an enmeshed boy is discouraged from exploring the world away from his mother, he ends up believing that he will never be able to make his way on his own (paraphrasing fro

SAFE PEOPLE 1. Tend to express their feelings in moderate and reasonable ways. 2. Tend to be compassionate, understanding, and empathic when you share your feelings. 3. Show interest in you, what you are doing, and how you’re feeling. 4. Are willing to negotiate the relationship. They let you know if they feel there is a problem between the two of

A role is an outside presentation to the world that does not reflect the True Self. Roles enforce a rigid response to life that would otherwise be more naturally variable. Families are often containers and reinforcers of roles that are sustained by the denial of feelings, the denial of reality, and escape into numbing comforts.

Robert was not a cynical sexual hedonist or a compulsive womanizer. Rather, his problem lay in his willingness to believe his illusions of freedom and his fantasies of being saved by “the one” woman who was meant for him. It was a mutual illusion, since Martha was sharing it. The false promise of the affair is grounded in the false idea that our pr