Mother Wounds: Can A Man Be Guarded Around Women If He Had An Abusive Mother?

If a man were to step back and reflect on his life, what he may find is that he has the tendency to be aloof when he is around women. As a result of this, he will come across as distant and it won’t be possible for a woman to connect to him.

He could see that this has largely stopped him from being able to meet a number of his needs over the years. So, his need to connect to a woman, experience affection, and experience intimacy will have seldom, if ever, been met.

One Experience

If he has been in at least one intimate relationship and he was to think about what it was like, he could see that it was very challenging. He could see that he had his guard up and found it hard to be open at the start and as time passed.

Thanks to what he was like, the woman that he was with wouldn’t have been able to deeply connect to him. She might have soon concluded that he simply wasn’t into her and ended their relationship before long.

The fallout

If this was the case, after it came to an end, he might have been in a lot of pain and wondered why he behaved in this way. He might have also blamed himself for ruining a good relationship.

But, if he liked and even loved the woman that he was with but didn’t make this clear, it is not going to be a surprise if he criticised himself. However, he might have soon realised that being hard on himself wasn’t doing him any good.

Stepping Back

Taking into account what his relationship was like and perhaps others, and how he typically behaves around women, it is likely to show that he doesn’t feel safe around them. Due to this, he has the need to keep his distance, both physically and emotionally, and can’t freely express himself.

If he were to look back on his life, he may see that he has been this way for as long as he can remember. What might then enter his mind is that he was born this way and that there is very little, if anything, that he can do.

A Natural Outcome

But, if he has been this way for as long as he can remember, it is not going to be a surprise if he comes to this conclusion. Nonetheless, there is a chance that what took place during his formative years played a big part in why he is this way.

This may have been a stage of his life that was anything but nurturing, with him missing out on the emotional nutrients that he needed to grow and develop in the right way. The main reason for this is that his mother might have been anything but loving.

Back In Time

His mother might have been emotionally unavailable and out of reach. Along with this, she might have been verbally and even physically abusive.

Therefore, instead of receiving the attunement and care that he needed at this key stage of his life, he was greatly deprived and deeply wounded. This would have stopped him from being able to develop a felt sense of safety, belonging, trust, worth and lovability.

One Option

To handle what happened, his brain would have repressed how he felt and a number of his needs. Additionally, he would have had to lose touch with his connected and open, true self and form a disconnected and closed, false self.

Not being connected to his body and his feelings wouldn’t have stopped his mother from harming him, of course, but it would have stopped him from being consciously aware of the pain that he was in and she was causing him. Ultimately, he had to adapt to what was going on by armouring himself to handle a stage of his life when he was deeply hurt by the woman who was supposed to love and protect him.

Another Element

Moreover, there would have been the meaning that his underdeveloped brain made. He is likely to have believed that his needs and feelings were bad and that he was worthless and unlovable. And, although his mother didn’t represent all women, how she behaved would have defined his inner model of what a woman is like.

The inner model that he formed of a woman is likely to have related to someone who was a threat to his survival and would cause him a lot of harm. If this is so, keeping his guard up around a woman is going to make perfect sense.

Moving Forward

Most likely, his mother had also been greatly deprived and deeply wounded during her formative years. Consequently, it wasn’t possible for her to love him and she repeated what was done to her or something very similar.

For him to change this area of his life, he is likely to have beliefs to question, pain to face and work through and unmet developmental needs to experience. This will take courage, patience and persistence.
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Awareness

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