MEN'S DIFFICULTIES IN RELATIONSHIP WITH WOMEN

2024 Author: Harry Day | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 15:43

Some of my male clients have experienced quite great difficulties in communication and relationships with the opposite sex. Often these difficulties became a big problem for them, which interfered with friendly, romantic, love, family relationships, made them suffer, feel loneliness, self-doubt and inferiority.

In search of solutions to such problems, men often resorted to such a method as training communication skills. This method is the simplest and most obvious, which, undoubtedly, can lead to a result, especially at the stage of meeting girls, but has always turned out to be insufficient for the development of relationships. Everything from the fact that such difficulties have deeper roots than the lack of communication skills, and often affect: the core aspects of trust, attachment, emotional sphere, sexuality, prejudice, fear. So, a young man learns the rules of courtship, conducting a conversation, but in the future continues to experience confusion. After acquaintance, the skills that have been worked out are exhausted and significant difficulties arise with the possibility of closer communication.

In some cases, communication skills are present, but rapprochement with girls causes fear, stupor, mechanical and tortured attempts to communicate. Complexities like these can last a lifetime. The solution of such problems, depending on the specific case, can take a long time.

If a man is filled with some prejudices and myths regarding his relationship with a woman, which he is ready to debunk with the help of a psychologist, it can be a rather short work. However, if a man from childhood experienced rejection, contempt, humiliation, aggression, "capture" from his parents, close women, then his natural activity is significantly repressed so that this can be helped in a short time.

A man from childhood, who is undergoing severe personal deformation, faces difficulties that seem insurmountable, which leads to a drop in self-esteem, disappointment, uncertainty increases and despair arises.

Many clients who were desperately trying to get rid of their difficulties read many popular books, became participants in trainings, but all these efforts were ineffective or helped to overcome an insignificant part of a common and more complex problem than can be considered in any book or suggested to train even in the very flawless training.

The greatest period of dealing with difficulties in such ways was observed in those clients whose focus of attention was shifted, and the reason for the failure was explained by external circumstances. For example, “all women need only money”, “all women need only very handsome and athletic men”, “there are no good girls in our city”, “such a fate”.

Knowledge of the essence of the problem, its root causes make it possible to consciously approach the choice of a way to solve it and purposefully move towards its implementation. So, a 28-year-old man (hereinafter Vladimir *), having tried many trainings, rereading many books and spending about 7 years solving his problem, came to the conclusion that psychotherapy was necessary. Vladimir's distorted development was evident from the first sessions. The separation / individuation process remained incomplete for Vladimir. For the healthy development of the child, it is necessary that he learns that the mother's sexual partner is the father and, through identification, separation and individuation, develops his own mental identity. This development has a good prognosis if the parents ensured the child's safety and security. Unfortunately, Vladimir's parents did not provide the boy with favorable conditions for him to abandon his passivity in favor of active entrepreneurial behavior. The necessary process of separation from the mother and identification with the father did not take place, in any case, it did not happen completely. Vladimir's mother always marginalized his father, and in the perception of the boy, the father looked humiliated and helpless. Vladimir preferred to identify himself with a dominant and domineering mother. Mother always used Vladimir as her toy to cope with her own emptiness and loneliness. Gradually, Vladimir became, as it were, a part of his mother, her phallus; becoming a symbolic maternal phallus, Vladimir could not come to the male stage of development, being narcissistically held by his mother, he found himself in a difficult situation. Unconsciously, he was very flattered by the fact that he is the phallus of the mother, but he did not realize the high price for this. The absence of a healthy separation / individuation process from the mother did not occur and the development of psychosexual identity was thus cut off. His mother kept Vladimir in the state of a partner, and he identified himself with this role, but was absolutely not aware of this state of affairs. The result of this identification was an unconscious desire to enjoy symbiosis with the mother and constantly offer oneself as an object of replenishment of maternal deficiencies. In this kind of relationship between mother and son, the son is positioned as a "partner" of the mother, but in a more sophisticated way than is the case in cases of incest.

One of the dialogues with Vladimir at a more "advanced" stage of therapy:

- "Actually, I feel like a criminal when I talk to a girl or think about dating her."

- "What crime have you committed?"

- "Maybe he killed someone"

This short dialogue is quite eloquent and, in my opinion, does not require detailed explanations. All that can be said is that the symbiotic relationship with the mother is dangerous. This confusing dyad in which the child became overly attached to his mother through perverse pleasure, fear and guilt. The fear of losing the "main love" is a leitmotif in this interactive dynamic, which had a negative impact on Vladimir's internal working model, on how he exists in this world, how he builds (or rather does not build) relationships with women.

Most of my male clients, who had difficulty building relationships with women, were narcissistic or very peculiarly loved by their mothers, to whom they became overly attached **. Being held hostage by their unfortunate mothers, men suffered from great confusion in themselves and in their relationships with women. The question of the origins of problems in relations with women cannot be reduced to a single etiological factor, this is a complex process in which many factors play a role, however, therapy in such cases always focuses on the themes of primary object relations, the nature of attachment, the dynamics of mother-son relationships, mechanisms protection, various cognitive aspects and, of course, requires both great efforts and a long time of work.

* Name changed, permission to publish received.

** In one extremely interesting case for me, which I hope to prepare for publication, the man's difficulties were associated with the narcissistic takeover of the father, which turned his son into a "good wife" for himself.