Mama's boy phenomenon and its impact on wife

IWill blogs

Mama's boy is not a man in love with his mother. Mama's boy is a phenomenon where a man is controlled by this bond to the point that he cannot think or act or love independently outside this bond.

There are some obvious issues that women when married to mama's boy, would face. Mama's boy is a psychological classification of a child dependent on his mother's validation for everything and having unrealistic emotional bondage, guilt-laden duty assumptions and inability to form relationships where there is disapproval or discomfort of the mother.

 

Why does this impact a woman as a wife?

 

1. The way she is treated in her marriage is dependent on some other person than how she deserves to be treated

 

A woman gets married with hopes and dreams. But when a man is in an enmeshed relationship with his mother, he cannot see the love, sacrifice, commitment of anyone else... His view of the world comes from his mother, especially at home. So even when a wife loves her man with all her heart, a man may choose to ignore it just to not threaten his mother or make her feel insecure... How he behaves with his wife, how much time he spends with her is all not basis what their relationship deserves, but basis how his mother feels about it.

 

This can break any woman down... She committed to this relationship with all her independence, she has committed to this relationship for life and then getting this insecurity in return, getting into this dependent dynamic and marriage can be very anxiety-causing, depressing and threatening to her emotional and perceived life's wellbeing! 

 

2. Getting entrapped in an ego and power tussle is not a pleasing experience.

 

So who does he love more? Who does he give more time to? Who does he listen to first? Is he forgetting the old bonds and if not what is he doing to prove this? So will he fight with his wife or not? Will he go and tell his wife that she was wrong here or not... The power dynamics that come into play, the ego and its impact that it has on a woman early on in marriage where her expectations were of acceptance, love, and warmth can be very unsettling... 

She wasn't there to fight for a man or fight for who he loves more. She wasn't there to be involved in ego battles which she would lose anyway because of an enmeshed relationship. This pattern breaks her... It makes her self-respect impacted, makes her question her presence in the home

 

3. You cannot treat her like a second fiddle or the other woman which is a feeling she gets in enmeshed relationships.

 

Oh, I had to sit with mom, I cannot be spending this time with you. You should not compare yourself to my mother. What she did for me no one can. Don't try to take my mom's place in my life.  No one cook like my mom. My mom is and will always be my first love... These words look well-meaning but the way are used in enmeshed marriage settings is to make the wife feel secondary, inferior in comparison to someone who already occupies all the space of a husband's life. In reality, the two ladies should never be compared in one sentence. Why is there a need to validate a mother by putting the wife down? 

 

There are independent ways of showing love to both, independent ways of showing care and yet in enmeshed relationships, a wife is reminded of her "secondary status" time and time again to create a hierarchy. This secondary feeling and unnecessary hierarchy puts the woman in a spot of humiliation. 

 

Will it be ok if a woman compares her husband all the time with her dad and give a secondary status to the man she is going to live for life with?

This is not how relationships that are healthy with healthy boundaries operate! 

A couple-relationship is an individual bond and an enmeshed mama's boy phenomenon threatens the very formation of this bond. Therefore you see so many women in IWill therapy struggling with depression, so many marriages on the verge of breaking! 

It's important to realize and understand why being a good son is not the same as being a mama's boy! The former is an ideal thing, the latter is not!