Raised By Women Who Hate Men - The Modern Man's Mother Wound

All right, team, welcome back to the Man Talk Show. Today we're going to be talking about the men who have been raised by women who hate men. The men who've been raised by women who have a dislike and a disdain and distrust of men. And I've called this the modern man's mother wound. Okay? The modern man's mother wound. So we're going to dive in, but as always, don't forget to subscribe, don't forget to hit the bell notification or man it forward and share this content with these. With. With somebody that you think will enjoy. It really helps the channel and helps me to produce better content for you, and it helps you to actually see the content because YouTube stuff sometimes. So let's dive straight in. In this video, I'm gonna lay out the problem, what forms it, how it shows up in your life, and how it shows up in a man's life when he's grown up in this environment. And then the end of the video, I'm gonna talk about what you can specifically do. So stick around for that. Cause I'm gonna give you some very specific things that you can begin to implement in your life to create real, substantial change. So here's a question for you. How do you become a man, a great man, a good man, just a man, when raised by a woman who largely hates men. Maybe mom, you know, thinks that men are dangerous. Maybe she thought that they're liars or cheaters or they're good for nothing or that her life was just better off without any men in her life. And the truth is that many of the men that I've worked with more increasingly over the years have grown up with this type of mom. Maybe the mom that walked all over dad, constantly criticizing him, complaining him. He was always the fundamental issue in the relationship. He was kind of quiet and subdued and didn't really have a presence in the home with a mom that divorced dad and. And chronically complained about how all of her issues in life revolved around him. And so even after the divorce, there was a kind of continuation of he's this, you know, terrible individual. All my problems are because of him. Or maybe you grew up in a household with the single mom that could never really seem to make the relationship work with a man. And it was always their problem. It was always because of all men bad, all men defective. And this trope has slowly started to seep into the modern narrative, right? Everything that's wrong with relationships and dating, the reason why 70, 75% of divorces that are initiated by women. It's all because men are the defective partner in the relationship. And of course, I'm not talking about all women before the comments on Spotify and YouTube start to come in. But there are a subset of women have increasingly been getting louder and louder and louder about how bad men are, that men are just the fundamental problem, and if men just got better, then everything would be better with the world. And the issue is that a lot of these women are raising young boys who are watching them divorce. And this is something that I've seen increasingly lately. People are, you know, because people always send me stuff online for me to talk about and comment on and on, on Instagram. And I've been sent a number of these videos of women celebrating in these sort of very kind of outrageous ways, celebrating their divorce. And sometimes their kids are in the picture and they're like burning a wedding dress and having cake and throwing a party and, you know, they're being celebrated in the comments. And I understand that some marriages and relationships are brutal or they're abusive, or they really do need to end because they are extremely unhealthy and unfixable. But the problem is that a lot of young men are growing up in households, right? One in four children in America will grow up without a father figure in a household. One in four. And the challenge is that that disproportionately affects young boys. It affects the development of a young man. Now, if you're a, if you're a man who was once a boy that grew up in a home where dad was absent, where he was the problem, and your mom is kind of like your only chance at a secure attachment, you are going to inevitably grow up in an environment where you side with her as a means of safety, as a means of alignment, as a means of self protection. And there's not really a lot of questioning around whether or not that narrative or that belief system that's being talked about and, and, you know, embellished or whatever in the household is, is, you know, true or false or the nuance that's involved in it. And then how do you actually become a man who doesn't have an innate or disdain or, and distrust for men and the masculine. It's very challenging. And so the mother wound is something that I've been seeing more and more and more and more as it has been more commonplace over the last two, three decades, to really have a kind of misandry, a dislike, a disdain towards men. I'm seeing more and more, especially young men, sometimes Middle aged men coming to work with me who have grown up in an environment where mom really disliked men, where men were just a fundamental problem and issue. And that boy grew up into a man who has had a challenge embodying some of the core masculine traits and tenants that he needs in order to succeed in life. Now, if you are a boy that was raised by a single mom who harbors this type of resentment or contempt towards men, really, it will have placed you in a psychologically difficult position. It will have placed you in a very challenging position. I'm going to lay out a couple of the things that make it very challenging. Number one, you will have likely not received any real positive masculine modeling. Maybe you had a stepdad in the picture or a coach that happened to come in. But oftentimes, even then, there's kind of a mistrust that that man's dangerous or maybe he's going to be, something's gonna be wrong with him, et cetera. And so because of this, there's no real access to the father archetype within the psyche. Okay, next. What I've seen is that a lot of men who grew up in this environment, the masculine traits that they want or need to develop and cultivate have become shamed or severely repressed. So they've really, you may have noticed that like, you disconnect from your own sense of power, your own sense of potency, your own sense of assertiveness or boundaries, your own sexuality sometimes, and even your own ability to say no or yes to things that, that truly matter to you. Outside of that, you might have internalized this message of being a man is dangerous, bad or not valuable. And that I need to. How I become a man is by conforming to what women are saying I should be. And so your whole orientation of what it means to be a man begins to get oriented and fixated on what do women want me to be, how do women want me to think and behave and operate and dress, and what decisions should they make and so should I make because of what women want from me. And so your whole orientation can go towards appeasing the sort of archetypal cultural mother. And you might unconsciously identify with the mom's worldview as a result of that creating a kind of negative mother complex. And this is a core theme that Carl Jung talked about, which I'm going to touch on a little bit more after. But it's, it's essentially what I was talking about before, where your whole orientation of how I know myself as a man is by referencing what women think I should be, how women think I should operate, what choices and decisions women think I should make for myself. So Jung believed that becoming a psychologically mature man is actually not dependent on having a father present, which is very interesting and counter to what most people would think. But it's on a man's ability to differentiate from the maternal complex, from the mother complex, and awaken your own inner masculine archetype, the inner father or the logos. So I'm just dropping this little seed and planting this seed for what we're going to talk about later. So part of what Jung really talked about was you don't necessarily have to have father present, but what you do have to eventually do is begin to create some space and differentiation from mom as an individual and from mom as a psychological complex and from mom as a cultural part. Power, which we're going to talk about more in a minute. So men who were once boys whose fathers had to fight for years to try and get equal custody, or maybe you were a boy whose father was made into being the fundamental villain in Mom's world. Maybe you grew up in an environment where dad genuinely was the villain. He, you know, was abusive and harmful and drunk. And so it was easy to side with mom because you could see, like, this guy's an actual shit show, and I never want to be like him. What ends up happening is all of this produces a kind of subconscious or unconscious distrust of men, of the masculine, because that what. That is what was modeled for you by your primary caretaker and the environment that you grew up in. Now, of course, this isn't all women. This isn't all single moms. I get messages from countless single mothers who are trying to raise really good, solid young men. And there are some single moms out there that just do a phenomenal job. They just. They just do, you know, they just do a phenomenal job. And I love that. And I know that there are some genuinely dead, deadbeat dads out there. There's some genuinely deadbeat dudes that are out there. And I've worked with men who have had these fathers, the drunk, the abusive, the abandoning dad. But that's not what we're talking about. We're not talking about the father wound. We are talking about the mother wound and the mother wound that specifically comes along with the general disdain of men. Now, what will this look like in your adult life? How can you identify this in your adult life? There's a couple things that I want to lay out so that you can start to look and Say, hmm, this is where exactly it's showing up. Number one is you just disproportionately prefer the company of women likely seeking their attention. Again, your orientation is towards getting their validation and having them inform you of how you can become a man. You generally trust women more than you trust men. And in a lot of the guys that I've seen that have this mother wound, it's that you trust women more than men in pretty much every single way, in pretty much every single category. For a lot of men, they have a pretty deep fear of men. And because of that, your relationships with other men are usually very shallow. You don't share a lot about what's going on in your life. There's a lot of hidden secrets. There's a lot of things that you just don't talk about. There's kind of this, you know, bro esque style relationship of yeah, yeah, yeah, everything's okay, man, everything's good. Because there's just a kind of deep mistrust there. Generally you will have a likely a repeated pattern of trying to be a savior to women. And who are you saving them from? Men. And you are the savior in the sense that you're not like other men. And this often gets you into dysfunctional dynamics where you're trying to rescue those women and you're trying to rescue the archetype of your mother. And sometimes these dynamics are very unhealthy. Sometimes they lead to harm for you. Because of this dynamic, you likely dislike authority. Very common that men grow up in these environments, dislike authority, especially from men. So you will be sort of passive aggressive with male bosses or colleagues that have assertiveness or authority because you will have repressed and disconnected and pushed parts of your psyche in into your shadow. You will have pushed your own anger, your own boundaries, your own assertiveness into your shadow and seen those as bad things quite often. And so you have a mistrust of your own power, your own potency and your own authority. And that's a big, big, big piece. Oftentimes men that have grown up in these environments, they really have a tumultuous relationship with authority in a big way. You might find that you lack boundaries, especially with women. Men, it's very common that, that, that generally speaking, I see this a lot, I'm kind of giggling cause I've seen it so often. But men that have grown up in these environments with women, they don't necessarily set boundaries with men, they just avoid setting the boundaries. So how they set boundaries just by not saying anything by just disengaging, by not committing to something. And so to other people, you'll likely feel very. To other men specifically, you'll likely feel very non committal, hard to trust, because you don't actually assert yourself in the relationship. You don't say, no, I don't want to do that. Yes, I'm interested in that. You either just kind of go along with everything and then hold some passive grudge towards them that fuels this internal dislike of other men. Or because you fear them. It's just, you fear men. It's just that you, you tune out, right? So they'll ask you to do something, you don't want to do it, you just won't respond to a text message, right? Or you just, you just won't bother to say like, no, I'm not interested in doing that. So two other things is that oftentimes these types of men are very dissatisfied in their relationships. And they're dissatisfied because of the savior dynamic, because they are the image, they are the representation. You become the representation of what's wrong in the relationship. So every single man that I've ever worked with that has this mother wound, that grew up in this environment is in a relationship where he is the fundamental problem in the relationship. He's taking all the blame, he's taking all the shame. There's no, you know, like, actually, here's what my wife is contributing, here's what my girlfriend's contributing to the dysfunction or the disconnection, he has taken on the whole blame because he's trying to save her from men, from himself. And lastly is you likely have very few male friends or the ones that you have are kind of shallow as fuck, right? They're, they're surface level, they lack depth, they lack transparency, they lack trust. So the big question here is how do you fully embody something and become something that you have been taught to dislike, to hate, or to not trust? How do you see the value, and this is super important, how do you see the value both externally and internally to being a man when maybe you've grown up in an environment where that value was significantly eroded over time, maybe because of his actions, but what we're talking about is because of mom's commentary and relating to men. So how do you actually become a great man or even just a good man when it's men that you've been taught to not be like, Right? So for a lot of these men, the last hallmark of this is there's no real image, there's no real role model. There's no real trajectory of who you could become. It's just a blank space. And how you know to be a man is by all the things that you should not do. This has become so culturally present, right? So many men are not trying to move towards becoming something. They are trying desperately to get away from being something, right? They're trying to get away from being the toxic masculine man, from being the man that you know is hurting a woman, from being the man that was like dad, the angry man, the dangerous man, whatever it is. But there's no real image or definition or archetype that that man is working towards. And that is a huge difference. So finally, what do you do? How do you deal with this mother wound now that we've flushed out, what causes it and creates it and how it shows up in your life, which, you know, some of that you maybe thought like, that's 100% me, and maybe other pieces were not so, you know, but some of those likely resonated with you very, very deeply. So take stock of those ones. What do you do? Well, the first thing you need to do, and this is you cannot get around this one. I want to make that super clear because every man that I've worked with that has this mother wound growing up with a mom that hates men, every man struggles with this very first thing, which is you need to get around other men, and you need to get around other men that have substance and, and depth. There is no way around it. Your dragon, your cave, psychologically and from an identity standpoint that you need to enter to reclaim a sense of wholeness is in the company of men. Now, where can you do that? I'm going to be very specific with you. One, this is what the Man Talks alliance is all about. So many of the men are in there because they are reclaiming a sense of wholeness with their own masculinity. They are doing the work to heal the wounds from their father, from their mother, so that they can actually step into a deeper sense of wholeness and self worth and self respect. So if you want check it out in the link below, you can check out the Man Talks Alliance. There's a thousand guys in there from all over the world. We've got programs and courses and I lead live calls and work with men live. So it's a great, great resource. So if you're looking for something, go check that out. Outside of that, there are tons of men's groups that you can join, and not all men's groups are made the same. But There are tons of men's groups and networks that you can join that are really about this piece about differentiating and breaking away from the archetype of the mother and from the archetype and this, the symbol of the feminine, so that you can begin to cultivate some type of an identity as a man, the masculine essence within you, not by having it be defined by women. That is the big differentiating factor. So you can join a men's group, you can join a sports team, you could go to Brazilian jiu jitsu, do some sort of martial arts. Maybe all of those would be helpful. You could go and do some hunting courses or tracking courses with other men. There's so many things that you could do but get around other men where you can start to face down and confront that distrust of men, that fear of men, that disdain of men. The next thing is define the values of masculinity for yourself separate from the value that women have assigned. Okay, this is going to be a hard thing because for you, initially, what you're going to find is that when you start to think about what is my value as a man, what are my values as a man? And then what is my value? What do I bring to culture, to community, to society, to relationships, friends are intimate, or what's the value that I actually bring into those spaces? And what you'll notice is that when you write those things down, the majority of them are going to be female centric. They are going to be in service of a woman. Because so much of your life will have revolved around having a woman inform you of how to be a man, how to be a good man for them, and how to not be a bad man according to them. So start to define the values of masculinity for yourself. Maybe providing is a big one for you. Maybe assertiveness is something that needs to be cultivated and something that you actually view as something that's valuable for you as a man. Maybe discipline is something that is incredibly important for you. I mean, this is one that I had to cultivate over time. I did not have discipline. It was a bit of a slog to cultivate, but very, very disciplined today. The next piece, number three, is stop living in opposition of the man that your mother dislikes or is trying to avoid and create your own path. So what I mean by this, many, many, many men are living in opposition to the man that their mother hated or was hurt by. I'm never going to be like him. I'm never going to be angry like him. I I'm never going to. Whatever it is, right? I'm never going to be angry like him. I'm never going to hurt a woman like him. And because of that, you, your whole identity has been shaped in opposition to someone. And that is a type of prison, right? That's a type of identity prison. You're not free to cultivate a sense of individuality. And this is what Jung called individuation, where we actually individuate. We create a sense of independence and our own unique identity independent from mom and dad. And what happens for so many young men that have grown up in these environments where mom dislikes men, does not trust them, has been hurt by them and wounded by them, and has communicated to her son, don't you ever be anything like, you're not like your father. You're never going to be like him. What happens for so many men is their whole sense of self and identity begins to align with, I'm going to exist in opposition to this image of a man that hurt my mom or that she didn't like, et cetera. And you have to break free from that. So you have to start to create a sense of identity, which likely is going to mean that. And I'm going to give you a very specific exercise here that you are going to have to begin to do and embody things, cultivate skills, cultivate traits, cultivate characteristics that likely your mom is not going to like. Okay? Whether that means you get a tattoo because it's something that you genuinely want and have always wanted, but, you know, she's been opposed to that forever, right? Or you start to play an instrument or dj, or, you know, you start to play a sport, whatever it is. But it's. It's, again, it's not in opposition to her. It's just something that you genuinely want to do that you know, she's likely not going to approve of or enjoy. And so that is starting to build an identity. The next piece is you're probably going to. Number four, you are probably going to have to take some type of a. A female pause, and that's a pause on talking to mom for a month or two, for a period of time, not in a malicious way, but just to have space to have some type of separation between you and the feminine, between you and women, so that you can start to orient towards who am I actually independent from women, who am I actually when I don't have the input from women trying to shape who I am, trying to tell me who I should be. Because your natural place is to act as the savior, to act as the female appeaser. Right? Let me appease you by becoming who I think it is that you want me to be. Now, the last piece I'm going to share with you, and this one's a little bit more in depth, is you have to confront and integrate the negative mother complex. And this is really a form of shadow work. And I have a shadow work program that I encourage you to check out. It's actually a part of the Man Talks alliance. So if you join the alliance for a month or two, you. You get access to it. You can go through the course. We've had a few thousand people go through the shadow work course, and people love it. But the mother complex is one of the most important factors in the psychology of a man. And this is to quote Jung, okay, that those are Jung's words. He said, the mother complex is one of the most important factors in the psychology of a man. So when the mother holds contempt for men, she will often cause the son to internalize shame about his own masculinity, fear of assertiveness or assertion, a compulsive need to appease her and avoid conflict with her, difficulty setting boundaries with women, and confusion about a sense of identity and worth. Because it's all outsourced, right? Your identity, your sense of worth is all outsourced to the feminine. Whether that's in a cultural sense where you're looking for, what do women in the culture want? In a dating sense, what does my girlfriend and my wife want? And then in a family sense, what does my mom want me to do? So what Jung would advise in this case, and I'm condensing this, the last piece down, is that you must bring these unconscious messages to the conscious. You have to kind of name and confront them and begin to live in a way where you're not following these messages. So some questions that you can write down and come back to, and we'll try and put those up on the screen for you. What beliefs about men did I inherit from. From my mother that are not mine? What beliefs about men did I inherit from my mother that are not mine? Where do I shame or suppress my own masculine traits? Or another way of saying, this is, what masculine traits do I have shame around or suppress? Where do I still seek my mother's approval or avoid her disapproval? Those are two separate things. Please answer them separately. Or where do I still seek my mother's approval or avoid her disapproval? And finally, where do I fear becoming a man because she despised men or how do I, you know, how do I fear becoming a man? Because she despised men. So what actions, what characteristics, what traits are you disconnected from because you're worried that she will be upset with you. You. So that's what I'm going to leave you with today. There's some very tactical, actionable things. Again, if you're interested, check out the Man Talks alliance below. It's a phenomenal resource. So many men have benefited from being a part of the community. We'd love to have you. Outside of that, I hope that you got something valuable from this video. Truly, I create this content because I want you to be able to do the work for free in your own way. Something that I could have used, you know, sort of 12, 13 years ago. And so I hope that you enjoy this. If you did, please man it forward. Please let me know below. What would you like for me to cover in the future? What questions do you have for me? And as always, thank you so much for tuning in. Take care and talk to you next time.