Barbara Angelis - Secrets About Men Every Woman Should Know

Julie had been married to Fred for three years when she came to me complaining about her relationship. “I don’t feel like Fred’s wife,” she said bitterly, “I feel like his mother! He seems to act like such a baby around me, expecting me to pick up after him, think for him, and be the one who ends up in charge. He’s getting lazier and lazier, and I’m getting more and more angry!”

Julie wasn’t even aware of how natural it was for her to mother Fred. She’d been blaming him for being immature for so long, that she’d never taken a look at her part in creating the problem. As we talked about her parents, we could both see the roots of Julie’s mommy game. “I can’t ever remember my mother and father being intimate or romantic with each other,” Julie recalled sadly. “My dad traveled a lot for his business, and my most vivid and common memories of my mother are of her packing for him before his trips, unpacking for him after his trips, making sure he remembered to keep his appointments when he was in town, and constantly fussing over his clothes. I guess by the time we were in our early teens. Dad was kind of like one of the kids. Mom would scold us and scold him; she’d shove lunches at us and shove his lunch at him. I never realized that, on some level, I must have concluded that loving a man meant treating him like Mom treated Dad.”

Until recently, being a mother was one of the only acceptable “professions” for women with nurse and teacher close behind. We grew up seeing our mothers rewarded for their nurturing behavior, and getting rewarded for that same behavior in ourselves: “Good Sally, you’re taking care of your little brother so nicely.” “Be a sweetheart, Jane, and bring Daddy his slippers - that’s my girl.”

WE OFTEN RETURN TO OUR MOTHERING BEHAVIOR WHEN WE WANT TO BE LOVED BY A MAN

Darlene, married for fifteen years, described it this way: “Whenever I feel like I’m not getting enough attention from Charlie, I definitely fall back into the mothering mode - I start baking his favorite dishes, or organizing his drawers for him, or trying to be as helpful as I can. What I really want is more affection, more intimacy, for him to act like more of a lover and not just a husband. Of course, this is the opposite of what I get - the grateful ‘son’ thanking me for being so considerate.”

We mother men in order to become indispensable to them.When you work hard to fulfill all of a man’s needs, he becomes increasingly dependent on you. We’ve all seen the television commercials that show the man trying to make dinner for the kids on his wife’s night out. He’s depicted as an incompetent idiot who is helpless around the house without his wife. The more you take care of a man, the more he relies on you and the more indispensable you become. As women, we often deal with our fear of loss and abandonment by attempting to make men so dependent on us that they would never consider leaving us. It’s as if our unconscious mind thinks, If he needs me enough, he’ll never leave me.

Men are accustomed to being mothered and love the feeling of being taken care of.Recently, I was giving a seminar to a group of women and I asked a rhetorical question of the audience, “Why do women mother men?” Someone way in the back shouted, “Because men love it!” Everyone laughed because we all knew that there was a lot of truth in what she had said. Will men complain when you mother them? Sometimes - but not most of the time.

MEN WILL FEEL LOVED WHEN YOU MOTHER THEM

Men grow up with their mommies taking care of them, and they find it very easy as adults to allow the women in their lives to continue playing that maternal role. This is especially true of your man if he saw his mother treat his own father like a child. He might even associate the idea of “wife” with mother, caretaker, and nurturer, rather than lover, best friend, or partner. And if the man in your life didn’t get all of the love and attention he needed from his own mother when he was a little boy, he’ll gladly allow you to “finish the job.”

Acting out a mothering role with men might appear to have its rewards at first, but in reality, it will have some very devastating effects on your relationship.

1. Your man will end up resenting you and rebelling against you.In Chapter 1we talked about the psychological need every little boy has to assert his independence from Mommy in order to define himself as a male and not a female. When you take on a mothering role with your man, it’s inevitable that your man will begin to resent you, and eventually he will rebel against you. He may not complain about your behavior; he may insist that he doesn’t want you to stop; but he will end up rebelling, because all boys have to break away from Mommy someday.

Karen, 52, came to me after she discovered her husband was having an affair with a 24-year-old secretary from his office. Karen couldn’t understand why her husband, Leonard, had strayed from the marriage. “He always seemed so content,” she explained as she sat in my office. “I know I spoiled him – he used to say that he hadn’t even gotten this kind of treatment from his own mother – but he insisted that he loved being pampered and coddled. Now he tells me he felt stifled, trapped in the relationship, and that he wants his freedom. He never complained for twenty-seven years. I just don’t understand what happened.”

When I talked with Leonard, my suspicions were confirmed – he felt he was trading in a mother for a lover by leaving his wife and choosing a younger woman. Even the words he used to describe his relationship with Karen – “trapped, stifled, longing for his freedom” – sound like those of a teenage boy who can’t wait to leave home and be on his own. Karen thought she was being a good wife by mothering Leonard, but in the end it drove him away.

2. Your man will end up feeling incompetent.When you continually treat a man as if he is incompetent, he begins to feel incompetent. The more incompetent he feels, the lower his self-esteem, and the more he will actually behave incompetently. This creates a vicious circle:

WHEN A MAN DOES NOT FEEL GOOD ABOUT HIMSELF, HE WILL BECOME LESS LOVING TO YOU

A man’s self-worth comes from his sense of competence. And when a man feels he is not doing a good job in any area of his life, it becomes very difficult for him to be loving toward himself or you. Emphasizing a man’s incompetence by treating him like a child is guaranteed to inhibit his ability to love you.

The other side of this is that the more incompetent your man appears to you, the more turned off to him you will become. Women are turned on by competence. So the more inept he seems, the less attractive he’ll be.

3. You will kill the passion in the relationship.

THE QUICKEST WAY TO KILL THE PASSION IN YOUR RELATIONSHIP IS TO MOTHER THE MAN YOU LOVE

The more you act like a man’s mother, the more he will treat you like his mother. But no man wants to sleep with his mother. The sexual taboo against feeling attracted to a female with mothering energy is so deeply rooted in most men that it will be impossible for your partner to continue to see you in an erotic, romantic way when you are constantly picking lint off of his clothes, reminding him to do his chores, and otherwise treating him like your son.

Of course, treating your man like a child will turn you off as well. How romantic can you feel at the end of the day when you see your man and think to yourself. He couldn’t find his socks, he lost his keys again, I had to call the plumber because he forgot? How excited can you get about someone who you’ve just finished treating like a three-year-old?