Freedom And Dependence: Background

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

Recently, a friend called my mother with a request to suggest the specifics of the numbering of houses on the street where our friends live. When I asked why she needed it, my mother replied that her friend tried for her son, who needs to go to this address. And my son, no less than forty …

And this is just one episode that clearly characterizes the peculiarities of the relationship between mother and son. It is not absurd for this woman to seek to help in this way. It does not occur to her that such a trifling task for a forty-year-old man is quite capable of solving himself (I am more than sure that he did not ask his mother for this service). And here a dilemma arises: if HIM does not need it, then HER needs it. What for? It is the lot of all single women to live the life of their grown children. Moreover, such loneliness does not always mean the absence of a husband. You can be married for many years and remain in inner isolation. This is the tragedy of most married women.

Listening to the stories of my clients, I am constantly convinced of this: “My husband and I live like neighbors in a communal apartment,” a rather young attractive woman with sad eyes tells me. “And it seems that we have everything for life, only … there is no understanding, we hardly talk to each other. In the best case, we can discuss some everyday issues. I generally suspect that he has a woman on the side. And my only joy is my son. He understands me without words. Always ready to help. And how much pride and self-righteousness there is in this - “behold, I brought myself up for joy”! And what is it like for a son to be the meaning of a mother's life? And the whole bitterness of the situation is that a child is perceived by a woman as a part of herself, which means that he cannot have his own life … How does it all begin? With loneliness in marriage. When the euphoria disappears, and each other's shortcomings become more visible than their merits. You can, of course, start the difficult path of building relationships, but after all, it is much easier to switch your attention to the child (and it does not matter here whether it is a girl or a boy, the key emotions are those emotions that can be exchanged with the child as filling the marital void). One of my acquaintances shared her experiences in such expressions: “You cannot imagine how HE hugs me, kisses me, how he looks at me”! So the woman spoke of her two-year-old son. Their emotional fusion is evident. You can imagine how their relationship is transformed when the boy becomes a young man, and then an adult man, if his mother does not find female happiness in marriage. After all, the Oedipus complex has not been canceled …

I would like to dwell on this phenomenon - emotional fusion in a relationship. I must say that this phenomenon occurs quite often at different levels of communication - both in marriage, and in partnership, and in child-parent interaction. In a mother-child relationship, such fusion is very common. How is it formed? Have you ever heard the expression: mother and child are one? And for the time being this is normal, namely, up to the age of three. By the age of three, both mother and child must be mentally prepared for the first stage of psychological separation. It is at this age that dad should enter the educational arena and take a leading role here.

Do you know what are the main functions of fatherhood and motherhood? In short, a loving dad is responsible for power, discipline and order, and a mother is responsible for love, protection and support. In other words, dad is the guardian of family order, mom is emotional, caring, gentle, affectionate. Have you often seen such a distribution of roles in modern families? I suppose the answer is negative, and this is confirmed by the crisis of the family, which teachers, psychologists and sociologists are now trumpeting about.

So, the father must play a decisive role in the process of separating the child from the mother. How? It is the dad who forms femininity in a girl and masculinity in a boy. The daughter should feel attractive, smart, interesting in the eyes of the dad, and the boy, guided and supported by his father's hand, cultivates such strong-willed qualities as purposefulness, initiative, decisiveness, perseverance, endurance and discipline.

In real life, we often see self-withdrawing husbands and fathers - too busy at work, too passionate about their interests, or simply infantile persons spending time at the computer, in front of the TV or with friends over a glass of beer. This is the truth of life. And there is a way out - an exhausted, exhausted mother, forced to take on work, everyday life, issues of upbringing, finds an outlet in excessive emotional closeness with a child who becomes her “psychological husband”.

How does it look in reality? An obedient, organized, exemplary student, often a son (or daughter) with an "excellent student" syndrome and an overbearing mother who is authoritative for him in all matters, is always ready to help, loving him unconditionally (such a mother will justify in any situations, for her son - the standard, and, of course, there is no woman in the world worthy of him, EXCEPT HER, HIS MOTHER).

But back to the issue of child-parental separation. If the dad did not cope with his task on time, the child has a chance to psychologically separate from his parents after the adolescent period of his life. Much has been written about the psychology of adolescents and the search for mutual understanding with them. I would like to dwell on such an important aspect of the transition period as the acquisition of personal freedom. After all, what is the essence of this crisis - in the search for the identity (self-expression) of the child. And on this path, everything that scares parents so much: mistakes - "he is friends with the wrong people", worries - "he fell in love, no matter how disappointed", falling into extremes - "yesterday he decided to enter the economic program, and today he said that will become a trucker. " How then to give him freedom? It is much safer to make sure that the child adopts the parental point of view: to be friends with boys from decent families, to take care of the daughter of our friends, and in the profession you need to follow in the footsteps of his father - he is a famous professor of exact sciences, and you go there. And it does not take into account the fact that the child has very developed artistic abilities, and from childhood he dreamed of being an artist. But how can all this be achieved? Only by conquering the will of the child with his own, making him emotionally dependent, that is, being with him in emotional merger. Such a mother will never be alone.

Remember, in the film “For family reasons,” an elderly mother has a hard time marrying her son: “He painted seventeen of her portraits, calls her“Galchonochek”, but for me he has one dry“Ma”! Earlier, before going to bed, he came into my room to talk about what happened during the day, to consult about his plans for tomorrow, to wish me good night. And now he has no time, he speaks out in another room. These are the complaints of a lonely woman who has lost her habitual and so important - her significance in the fate of her son. But in fact, everything just fell into place.

But this is in the film, and in real life, such sons and daughters rarely decide to start a family, because bringing a spouse (or spouse) to the house is for them equivalent to betrayal in relation to their mother.

The topic of psychological separation is vast and painful. One thing is important to know: a child's personal freedom is impossible without the parents' "permission" for it. After all, if a mother wants to "bind" her son or daughter to herself, she will find many ways to do it (manipulation of health - "if you leave to enter another city, I will not survive this, you yourself know what a weak heart I have"; instilling a sense of guilt - "I sacrificed my female happiness for you"). But in fact, such a mother needs to admit one thing - her boundless selfishness. After living the life of her child, she does not allow him to live this life himself.