Anwar White breaks down three types of maternal relationships that create problems in adult men: enmeshment, codependence, and abuse. Watch for constant calls to mom, resentment toward her, or clinginess after her death. These patterns show up in how he treats romantic partners.
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Okay, how to know if a guy has mama issues? Good question. So.
I think about this in three ways. I think about.
I'll put it in the, in the context of the mother. So I think guys have three different mothers, mothers that have used their sons as emotional or let's just say surrogate partners. There's what we call enmeshment. And so oftentimes what will happen, this man will be spoiled. And so when you are engaging with men, especially black men now, you have a lot of enmeshed and spoiled black men because they grew up with single mothers.
And a lot of those single mothers made them their partners. And so they did everything for them as if these sons were their husbands. So when you're talking about, oh my God, these guys think that they're the prize, well, girl, 76% of black households in the 90s were single parent households. What did you expect?
Okay, so that's one thing. The other thing that I'm seeing a lot of in terms of mommy issues is codependence.
If he's talking to his mom multiple times a day.
That'S an issue.
That's an issue.
Grown man needs to be doing grown man things. That's no shade.
Right? Codependency is, you know, he feels in charge of her emotional, physical, everything. Well, being. It's not, it's, respectfully speaking, it's not his job. I mean, if he's the only one there. Of course you want to protect and sometimes provide for your mother if she doesn't have any other means. But this is important because if he is hyper focused on mom, he can't be hyper focused on you.
Okay? And then the third one that I see is the abusive parent.
Which is the mother who.
Did not speak life into her child, always dogged him out and talked about how he wasn't shit and how he's not going to amount to anything. Right?
Those, I think, are.
Really scary guys because generally what will happen. So if you hear a guy and he says, oh yeah, I don't talk to my mother anymore.
You should ask why. Because eight times out of 10 it's because that's the kind of mother that he had. And what that means is because that was his foundational or core relationship with a woman.
He is going to be.
So resentful of women that he's going to take it out on you, his mom rage. He's taking it out on you and every other woman that's out there.
So don't be afraid to ask these men, oh.
Talk to me about your mom.
A lot of people saying yes, yes, yes for that third one.
Because as you may know, ladies.
A lot of these moms are really critical and judgmental, especially black moms.
It's the trauma that they've received that they push out to the other generations.
Yeah.
What if his mom has passed? Then he's going to have abandonment wounds, and he's going to be clingy.
