Men who had abusive mothers, how has that affected your dating life?

16 comments

1. Pretty badly. My mother (who I have not spoken to in fourteen years) was physically and psychologically abusive and a fairly radical feminist to boot. Pretty much everything she taught me about being male was wrong. After I left home, my notions of what constituted a sane, normal relationship (let alone what a sane woman behaved like) were pretty skewed. I had to figure a lot of stuff out on my own, the hard way. But marriage number two has been a raging success; that sort of things can be overcome.

2. I assumed every woman was crazy until I had been married to a decent one for about 5 years. I looked down on most women because I thought they were all crazy and abusive like my mother.

   I’ve gotten over it by introspection and thoughtful appreciation of one woman in particular, and knowing more and more women (mostly wives of friends) who are decent people.

3. My mom was a very sex negative feminist. Every tittilating image was just another example of how awful men were for objectifying women. All men – including her two sons apparently – were sexist pigs.

   Because of this I have huge amounts of shame about being a heterosexual male who likes to have sex with women and thinks they’re attractive.

   The worst part is she probably thought she was raising me to respect women when really I just fear them. And myself.

4. My mom is an alcoholic and relatively emotionally abusive. She constantly lied to my siblings and me, feigned emotions to garner sympathy and seemed to enjoy arguing with everyone, especially when she’s drunk. No one is all bad of course. She raised and cared for me and my siblings, but she had a lot of very negative qualities that make it hard to be around her. Subsequently I have avoided her for the majority of my adult life.

   I have huge trust issues because of my mom. I never believed that people are being genuine, I just assume everyone is being passive aggressive or have ulterior motives. I am now married and I find it very hard to believe my wife when she tells me she’s not angry or mad at more. I started our relationship asking her to never lie to me, no matter what it is, no matter good or bad, and that I would never lie to her. We are both committed to this aspect of or relationship and we take it very seriously. And yet I still have issues believing she isn’t hiding some resentment or bitterness. I actively work to improve this feeling, but I don’t know if it will ever truly go away.

5. I passed up every golden opportunity to avoid disappointing her.

6. So I was raised by a narcissistic mother, and I’ll try to recreate her mindset so you might have insight into how someone like that thinks:

   “My children are supposed to love me and give me affection. If they don’t, they’re malfunctioning and must be fixed.”

   “I brought their lives into existence, therefore I can take them out of existence if they rebel against me.”

   “If I lose my temper, my children should understand that it’s stressful to be a parent, and they should understand that I can physically hurt them in anger and still love them. If they hurt me out of anger, however, that must be swiftly and severely punished.”

   “My children should sacrifice their own time, money, and happiness for my benefit, regardless of context. After all, I gave birth to them, so they owe me everything.”

   “My children shouldn’t keep money they’ve inherited or earned with part-time jobs. They should let me hold on to their money, and spend it as I see fit, because I know better than them, and they should support me since I represent the family itself.”

   “Yes, I’ve called my children worthless pieces of shit and thrown them into furniture by their hair, but it’s hard being a parent and I did the best that I could’ve during that time in my life. My children should accept that and forgive me without my apology or contrition. I did nothing wrong, because I didn’t know any better.”

   “You want me to tell my kids that my ex-husband didn’t actually abuse me?… Well, I called the cops, they believed me, and your father was taken to jail. The cops thought he was guilty, therefore he was guilty. It doesn’t matter whether or not he actually hit me. I won that battle, and he needs to deal with it.”

7. [removed]

8. A few women have claimed that not having a close relationship with my mother is a red flag. I’d assume the red flag would have been sticking around for mistreatment, but apparently there is a common belief around it…something like “how he treats his mother is how he’ll treat you”.

   For the record, I am now married and have never once had to pull a knife out of my wife’s hand, or ask her to stop throwing batteries at other cars when we’re out driving. I guess it turns out I *don’t* treat them the same.

9. I’m sure everyone is quite different. I had a step mother from 4 and beyond that was abusive physically and emotionally. However, my father was also physically abusive towards me (like throwing me through the closed closet door) which made her punches seem almost excusable. But she was emotionally abusive towards my father as well which doubled down on that aspect for me. I left home at 15, so I was able to get out from under direct influence pretty early into the dating scene.

   But I’ve always tended towards being a pleaser. I’m married now, but the patterns were the same in all of my relationships. I would only ever do things for myself when my SO wasn’t around. This results in needing alone time every now and then in order to truly relax. I absolutely cannot stand family gatherings with any families, so time with the in-laws is indescribably difficult. I’ve attempted to portray this to my wife, and while it is an unavoidable necessity to spend time with her family, her reaction towards my feelings are always more “I don’t want to either, but suck it up.” Rather than, “I understand this must be extremely difficult because of your past, but you’re doing me a huge favor.”. (Not that it’s right for me to expect gratitude for what should be a rather simple social obligation)

   I think it is important that you discuss it when necessary. Let him feel heard and that will probably give him a lot more than what he was used to growing up. The fact that you care enough to seek out suggestions is already a good start.

10. Sometimes reddit addresses a specific issue thats been bugging me for a long time.

    This is one of those times. Thanks for starting this, OP.

11. I have attachement issues because of my mom, I have a hard time feeling close to people or trusting people. It’s too easy for me to find a reason to push people away.

12. I think you can get better answers at /r/raisedbynarcissists

    Usually the abuse is emotional/psychological and it might leave them dependent on the women they seek. They’re not leaders but they’re great followers.

13. I don’t generally comment. But here it is. If you do genuinely care, go and ask him instead of lurking around the Internet.
    Everyone’s experience is different and more importantly he would be happy that someone cares to ask (hopefully).

14. I had a physically, emotionally verbally and abusive mother, and it really affected me and how I related to women in relationships. I carried a lot of anger around and was/am overly sensitive to perceived criticism from my SO. It cost me my first marriage because I didn’t think I could be “fixed” so never did anything about it. Glad to say however that a combination of EMDR therapy, meditation and medication have finally allowed me to “break the cycle”.

    Edit: Added the word “verbally”

15. If he had mother issues, then he will have a fundamental misunderstanding of how a relationship with a female should be. You should just try to keep an ‘overall’ view of how he is doing and consider that he may be thinking about a situation in a way that is twisted.

    For most issues between my wife and I, when I’m able to actually express my thoughts, even while vocalizing what I was thinking I’m able to realize my view of the situation was skewed.

16. I don’t know about ABUSE but I dated a guy once whose mother basically gave him up to his dad because her new guy (that she eventually married and had another child with) didn’t want to deal with her kids. Pretty fucked up.

    She had visitation but he still had issues with it, despite having a good upbringing with his dad. She died in a car accident like 6 months before I met him, so he never resolved his mother issues. We had a volatile relationship, mostly due to him taking out those issues on me. In fairness, I was fresh out of my previous marriage and rebounding, otherwise I never would have put up with him after the first sign of trouble.

    If your guy seems OK then great but take things slow. Not everyone from a bad family background is worth helping through their issues. Some people really need to be alone in order to work out their shit completely.