How Does Our Relationship with Mother Affect Our Romantic Relationships?

The first and most important relationships in our life have been created during the early childhood, in our family. By watching our parents, we learn how to bond with others, how to express our needs and how to love and accept ourselves and others. The both parents are necessary for a healthy development of our relationships. However, very often our relation with the parent of the opposite sex greatly affects our romantic relationships. This influence can vary in its intensity and depends on our awareness of issues we have not resolved with our parent. Namely, if the man’s relationship with mother carries some difficulties, they will not disappear until have been resolved and we will unconsciously choose a woman who will awaken the same problems, but in a different way. The article “Your Mother’s Role in Your Relationship Disasters” describes the common examples of the unhealthy bonding with the mother.

1. All the reminiscent clutter that lay dormant in the mind, reincarnate every time you are with a woman. These are memories that, whether you realize it or
not, have a heavy influence on many aspects of your dating life, from the kind of women you chose to how the women treat you.

2. You did not have the chance to grow into psycho-sexual independent man who stands up for what he believes in and wants. As a result you have trouble
choosing a good woman; one who does not expect you to give her everything she wants, but one who is going to be kind, considerate, loving.

3. You’ve never had the experience of seeing your mother engaged in a loving, positive healthy relationship with a man to learn how to give love to a woman.
Instead you were forced to become the “man” in her life before you’d learned to be a “man” by yourself. Your relationship with your mother has somehow
taught you that you are responsible for women rather than that you are responsive to women. In some way you feel that you have to take away the hurt.

4. You unconsciously replace your mother with the women in your life and mistakenly turn into their confidant and pal.

5. In an effort to have an intimate, loving relationship with a woman, you unconsciously default to recreating your parent’s relationship. It’s great for a
while, but then all the same issues resurface.

6. You have difficulty finding the right balance of love and “power”, strength and softness etc . When you have difficulty finding the right balance of
strength and softness etc you may be attracted to the idea of having someone in your life but aren’t actually interested in a relationship because all
you’ve known is hurt and pain. So as much as you get into a relationship, there is a sense of “pending” doom and you feel helpless and powerless about
it. The women interpret it as lack of commitment on your part, you are boring, you are not strong enough or man enough etc. They test you and test you to
get a different reaction which you are not able to give because you don’t know how.

7. Consequently, as an adult you pull away from women, become distant, abrasive, unaffectionate etc. when you cannot provide that kind of counsel or feel
that despite what you do you are not living up to what you think they want.

This unconscious conditionality can be changed, but only if we decide to let this change happen. In real life, we are ready for this shift when we fed up with bad and unfulfilling relationships. For many of us, this shift is not an easy one and we can become ready to break the chain of suffering only in the phase of exhaustion. In many cases, to resolve current problems in a relationship requires to recognize the old issues with mother and cut the cord in a symbolic way. This does not suggest that the mother failed or is guilty for our present situation, but rather implies that our mother is just a human being who makes mistakes, and we are not a little boy who responds unconsciously to a mother’s needs and expectations. As a grown man, we have to reconsider our choices and behavioral patterns, take full responsibility for our life and always be devoted to freedom of choice we have in any situation, in spite of the strength of the old habits. Breaking the chain of the past is not easy, but it is the only way to make a room for more freedom and quality in our love life.