#48 - Relationship Boundaries with Mother Enmeshed Men (MEM)

Welcome to Beyond Bitchy, mastering the art of boundaries with Vicki Tidwell Palmer. Do you think of personal and relationship boundaries as harsh, rigid or bitchy, or do you feel clueless about how boundaries work? Whether you think boundaries are bitchy or baffling, we will give you a fresh vision of personal limits as a source of freedom and liberation. Every week, Vicki shares expert information about how you can master the art of boundaries so you can get the space you need and the connection you crave. Hi, this is Vicki Tidwell Palmer and welcome to episode number 48 of the Beyond Bitchy podcast. Since this is the first episode of the month, I am dedicating this one to the topic of women and boundaries, and this episode is inspired by a listener's request for me to talk about boundaries in relationship with a person, specifically with a man who suffers from what's called mother in measurement. Now this term may be something that you have never heard of before. In fact, I think, unless you're in certain, maybe, recovery circles, or you have a lot of awareness around childhood trauma or issues of enmeshment in family systems, you've probably never heard about it before, but not to worry. I'm going to talk about enmeshment, I'm going to talk about mother enmeshment, and the other thing is I can pretty much guarantee that by the time you've listened to this episode, even if you've never heard the term, you will be able to identify at least one person that you know, and it could even be yourself, who suffers from either enmeshment or mother enmeshment. So the listener wanted to know about how to be in a relationship with someone who struggles with mother enmeshment, because there's a lot of information, or I should say a fair amount of information out there for a person who suffers from mother enmeshment or who experienced mother enmeshment in childhood, but there is not as much information for people who are in relationship with that person. And so that's what I'm going to speak to today. So first let's define enmeshment, and then I'll also define mother enmeshment. When you think about interpersonal relationships, enmeshment is a boundary issue, and enmeshment means that there are poor or no boundaries between two people or within a family system. An enmeshment can happen in adult relationships, and then it can also happen in family systems, so children can experience enmeshment. And it can happen on many different levels. There can be physical enmeshment, emotional enmeshment, intellectual or thinking enmeshment around thinking or thoughts, and there can also be spiritual enmeshment, so to speak. It means that there are no clear defining lines about what is yours, what is mine, what belongs to someone else, and this can include almost anything. It can include beliefs, attitudes, thoughts, personal property. I mean, the list is almost endless. So for example, in family systems where there is a high level of enmeshment, it will be pretty much expected that everybody holds the same views about most topics. And there is no room for independent thinking, for independent opinions, or even emotions. There may be certain emotions that are just not allowed. Because we just don't have those emotions in this family. That is an example of enmeshment. And when the enmeshment is physical, children may not even be allowed to have private space, or close the bathroom door, for example, and, you know, sadly, on more than one occasion when I've been working with people specifically doing family of origin, trauma resolution, I've heard of parents who have literally removed doors from rooms like bedrooms or bathrooms to prevent their children from having any privacy whatsoever. And when it wasn't warranted by a need for safety, for example. So if you're not familiar with mother enmeshment or the concept of mother enmeshed men, it's a term coined by Ken Adams, who is the author of a book called Silent Least Seduced, and also a book called When He's Married to Mom. So if this is the first time that you're ever hearing mother enmeshmen, when he's married to mom or Silent Least seduced, which you can kind of guess hearing the other book title that he's talking about, the seduction of the mother, my guess is that your first sort of knee-jerk internal response might be that it just sounds really gross or icky. And if that's the case, then I want you to understand that that's exactly what it feels like to the child, the child's son. It also can feel that way to the adult son who has suffered this in childhood. And actually, I think that this sort of ick factor, this feeling of just kind of I don't want to go there. I don't want to think about it. It's one of the reasons why we don't really know more about mother enmeshment that we don't talk about it. We really just want it to go away, we don't want to think about it. And I want to say about that that it's a great example of it's a little more complex issue that I'm not going to go into detail here, but I really want to bring it up because it's important that sort of ick factor or that sense that this is gross. That is the shame that happens when, in this case, we're talking about mother enmeshmen. It's the shame that a child feels and it's the shame that an adult son can't feel when a mother is, when his mother is boundaryless, even if it is not overtly or obviously sexual. So this kind of boundary crossing, this what we'll talk about later, making the child, the boy child into a confidant or a surrogate partner or spouse, it causes the boy and then the man to feel shame and it's not his shame. It's actually the shame of the mother. And we talk about this a lot in family of origin working again, it's just much more complex and deeper and more layered than I can get into today, but when our parents act in a shame less way, we as children have no boundaries, it's not our fault, we're just like sponges, we don't have tools to have boundaries. And so we just absorb this shame less behavior and the shame that the parent should be managing and dealing with but is not because, you know, just a quick example. And again, this is not that uncommon. A mother who inappropriately shares with her son as a child how disappointed she is in her spouse, meaning the boy's father or how hurt she was by the way her own parents treated her or how abused she was and all kinds of inappropriate information that she would share a healthy parent would actually feel shame about sharing that with a child. But these boundaryless mothers who create mother and meshed men, they don't have any shame around sharing these kinds of inappropriate, this kind of inappropriate information. And that's the shame that gets on the child, I hope that makes sense. It is a hugely important concept when processing childhood trauma, but I wanted to take a little diversion there and describe it a bit more to you. So this term, mother and meshed man, it's a term coined by Ken Adams. And I highly encourage you if you're curious about this or you may think, you may believe that you or your spouse is impacted by mother and meshed that you read silently, so do store when he's married to mom. So as you can tell by what I've said already, mother and meshment is an unhealthy attachment to the mother that persists into adulthood. And again, it's not the child's fault. The in-meshment is created by the mother and it's essentially passed down to the son as a child who then carries that into adulthood. And in adulthood it can manifest in many ways, including being commitment phobic or terrified of making commitments, even small commitments, maybe being even in the size of or appearing to be in the size of about simple questions like, you know, do you want to do this or that or what restaurant do you want to go to? He may be a womanizer, he may be a sex addict, he may be a perpetual adolescent, which actually is very common for people who have any type of addiction they look like. When they're active in their addiction, they look like a perpetual adolescent. They may be a burned out caretaker, they may be sort of this disappointed hero, or they may appear as sort of a lost man and as children and then as adults, they will feel trapped. They will also feel very guilty or disloyal when they act in ways that are contrary to or in ways that they believe will be contrary to the wishes of their mother, which then spills into their primary relationships with women as adults. So they are very, very prone to feeling trapped, which let's think about this. I mean, they come by this very honestly. And you have a very intrusive parent, parent who overshares a parent who gives you no privacy, a parent who gives you no room for independent thinking or action, you will feel trapped. And that experience of feeling trapped will continue into adulthood. And as essentially, and again, you know, we're talking and using a lot of sort of technical psychological terms here, but it's important in order to understand this. This feeling of being trapped essentially gets projected onto important women in their life. Now, I want to say to here that I'm really focused today on heterosexual relationships, but I want to say that this this phenomenon of mother and meshment, it can impact all kinds of relationships. It can impact same-sex relationships, but I might just do want to acknowledge it today. I really am focused more on adult relationships, important relationships, intimate relationships between men and women. So the mother and meshed man will feel trapped. He'll carry that sense forward to him because really the relationship with the mother is the template through which he experiences important other relationships with women in adulthood. I also want to add that it is completely possible to be a mother and meshed or a father and meshed daughter. There's not as much information out there available around mother and meshed daughters or father and meshed daughters, but I just wanted you to know that it is possible. And essentially what we're talking about are poor boundaries between a parent and a child that don't allow the child independence or the ability to make independent decisions or to express themselves independently of the mother's wishes. And often when people talk about mother and meshment, it's described as when the mother makes the boy child kind of a hero or puts the boy on a pedestal of some kind which can actually feel good to the child. So when a parent treats a child as if they're sort of a little adult or they tell them how wonderful they are because they're listening to the parent or they're doing what the parent wants them to do or they're otherwise taking care of the mother. It can feel good. Unfortunately, it is actually using the child, but it causes more confusion for the child and then eventually for the adult because part of it felt good, but there's another layer in which it feels very burdensome and frankly impossible because it is impossible for a child to meet an adult's needs. And it can feel very overwhelming. So a lot of people who are enmeshed like this as children, they felt this simultaneous like, well, I'm really great. I'm kind of a hero, but on the other hand, I'm secretly overwhelmed and terrified that I can't quite measure up or I'm not up to the task. And that's this impossible bind of the enmeshed boy in this case that we're talking about mother enmeshed men. But I also want to add that there are times when the enmeshment doesn't feel, it doesn't have this hero element. And I want to give you some examples of that because if you've read Ken's books or you learn more about mother enmeshment and you may even wonder if your mother enmeshed, you may dismiss, dismiss it as having anything to do with you if you had this other type that I'm getting ready to talk about. So sometimes a person can be enmeshed by the mother in ways that are not as positive. And usually these are in situations where maybe the mother may be a single mother and is using the child as a surrogate spouse or partner, but in a very burdensome kind of way. Like, you know, I need you to cook dinner and I need you to do the dishes. And I essentially need you to be the little man around the house, but you're not getting a lot of praise or kudos for doing that. I've also seen this happen in families where the father is mostly absent for many different reasons. They may have a job that takes them out of town. They travel quite a bit. I've seen this in military families where the father gets deployed sometimes for long periods of time. So like it could even be in situations of a war where the father is gone for a year or sometimes more and the father may literally tell the son, I mean, a little 5, 6, 11 year old son, you're in charge now or take care of your mother. So this is a huge, huge burden for a child. And you know, to be fair, I think sometimes when parents say these kinds of things to children, they don't realize the impact on the child. They may even think that they're trying to make the child feel better by saying this, but it is a huge burden for a child to hear that they need to take care of their mother or they need to be the big man or they need to, now they need to be the one to take care of things because the father is away or absent for some reason. So that's what I mean by the enmeshment can be. I think the simplest way to think about it is it can feel positive or negative. Essentially, it's all negative and it's all very harmful to the child. And like I said, it causes a bind for this young child who may feel simultaneously very proud of being confided in or treated like an adult, but on the other, on some other level, understanding that he isn't really up to the task because he's not an adult. He doesn't have the capabilities or tools in order to do the job that's being given to him through no fault of his own. And so even as an adult, he will struggle to set boundaries. He may even continue to be a confidant to his mother well into adulthood or take care of his mother in different ways. So let's talk about how does all of this impact the partner, the spouse of a person who had this history of mother enmeshment and childhood. The really almost always continues into adulthood unless the adult person is very aware and does the kind of deep work that's necessary in order to be aware of and heal from mother enmeshment. So what I'd like you to do, if you're in a relationship with someone who you suspect has this issue or you know is mother enmeshed, what I'd like you to do is to think about the situation as the same as being in a relationship with a person who is on the avoidant end of the attachment continuum. And if you haven't heard me talk about that before, I have talked about attachment styles in several past episodes. The most recent one was episode 47. So it's the episode right before this one where I talked about boundaries with avoiders. But when you think about enmeshment, enmeshment as lack of boundaries creates avoidance. Enmeshment is experienced as intrusiveness and when there is intrusiveness a person's natural instinct and actually it's a very healthy instinct is to want to back that other person on. off. And that's what creates avoidance. So everything that I said, or most of what I said in episode 47 about boundaries with the voters will be very helpful for you, you can apply it to a situation of being in relationship with a person who suffers with mother in measurement. And so the other thing to be aware of if you're in a relationship like this is that your spouse most likely sees you through this lens of his childhood experience with his mother. Now if this causes you to bristle, which I would imagine that it might, please remember that we all do this to one degree or another. You know, humans have the longest period of childhood of any animal species on the planet. And because of that, we are highly and deeply impacted by our childhood experiences. So if you live with one or two parents for 18 years, it's going to be almost impossible for you to come out of childhood without at least on occasion, projecting your experience of one or both of your parents onto other people that you have close intimate relationships with as an adult. And depending on the level of in measurement, this can be quite severe. For example, if your spouse had a highly intrusive mother, he's going to struggle to tell you the truth about many things. Because again, he sees you through this lens. It's almost like there's a projection screen. And when he looks at you, he's looking at you through this projection screen. And he sort of sees this sort of hazy image of his mother. And so he is responding to you from that internal image that he has in his head. And that being the case, he's going to struggle to be very forthcoming with you. He may not tell you the truth about many things, including things that you have that you would have no negative response to at all. And keep in mind his inability or and or reluctance to be very forthcoming and honest with you about his thoughts and feelings has everything to do with him and his history and has pretty much nothing to do with you. Again, this can be very hard to wrap your mind around and even more difficult to manage in a relationship. But I just want you to know the truth about it. This has nothing to do with you, but rather what he learned, what he experienced in childhood, which was in order for me to have a life of my own or some kind of independence, I need to hide myself. And as I said, this can be terribly painful to the person who's in a close intimate relationship with the mother and mesh person, but it's it's the reality. And you know, in order to manage these kinds of situations or to know how to interact with a person like this, we need to accept that this is their history and this is what they're dealing with. And it impacts you of course. So because of this lens that I talked about, I encourage you to be very mindful of when it feels like your spouse is not responding so much to you, but rather to his projection onto you of his experience with his mother. And it is completely up to you whether or not you accept meaning that you take on this projection that is being put on you. This is very difficult. And it requires a high level of what I call internal boundary work. That is the ability to listen to what he's saying to filter what you're hearing and to be mindful of how you respond. And for more information about how to use the listening boundary, I actually did a two part series on the listening boundary, which starts with episode number 37. And I want to underscore that this is not easy. It's not easy to deal with this when you know that the person talking to you is actually not really responding to you, but is rather reacting out of their own past, frankly, their own trauma history. So if you believe that your spouse is responding not really to you, but through this lens of being mother and meshed or projecting his mother onto you, I don't recommend that you say to him, you know, I think you're projecting your mother onto me. I don't recommend that you respond that way at all because it probably won't be helpful unless the two of you have really talked about this a lot. And he knows it's an issue for him. And maybe he's even invited you to tell him when he, but when you believe that he's doing this. But what I recommend, rather, is that you stay with whatever the topic is. So I want to give you a really easy to understand example that most of you will probably relate to. A common example of when mother and meshment comes up is when you as the partner may make a request of your mother and meshed spouse, you know, a classic typical response from a mother and mesh man would be, let's say you've made a simple request like, you know, would you be willing to do this? Or I'd like you to do this. Is that something that you'd be willing to do? And depending on the importance of the ask, especially in his own mind, he may tell you that you're trying to control him. He say, well, you know, you're just trying to control me or why are you trying to control me? And you're, you're going to be tempted to respond with something like, no, I'm not, I'm not trying to control you. Or you know, if you're not having a great day, you may go for the jugular and you may say something like, you know what, you just need to stop projecting your mother onto me. And you know, all of us have fallen into these traps. But if you want to respond more relationally when you believe that this is happening, that he's not really talking to you, he's more just talking to this old projection of his mother, you could just calmly and simply mirror back to him, something like, you know, it sounds like you're feeling like I'm trying to control you. Or, you know, something that I've actually said is not specifically about mother and measurement, but I'll use the term perception. I'll say, it sounds like you have the perception that I am. And in this case, it could, could be control. So it sounds like that you're, you have the perception that I'm trying to control you. And then I recommend you just repeat your request because you're going to be tempted to defend yourself. You're going to be tempted to get an argument about, no, I'm not. Or why do you think that? Or if you tend to sort of go into people pleasing, you might be really upset that he thinks that and you want to make sure that he doesn't think that about you. I mean, there's so many possibilities. But basically what you're doing is you're mirroring, you know, it sounds like it sounds like you're, you're perceiving this as control. What I want to know is would you be willing to do so, so you're just returning back to the topic. You are acknowledging what you heard, but you're not responding. You're not reacting. You're just returning back to the topic. And these kinds of situations are when understanding a tool that I call the politician, which is essentially just sticking to your talking points, which in this case is the request that you made can be extremely helpful. And if you're not familiar with this tool, I talked about it at length in episode number 24. So, you know, I talked about this when I did the episode on boundaries with avoiders. But I also recommend, if you're dealing with someone who's mother and meshed, that you consider giving your spouse time before answering any important request. So, if you have an ask of your spouse like you want him to do something or to go somewhere with you, and you know that it might be a stretch for him or something that he may not be 100% enthusiastic about, I highly recommend that you give him at least 24 hours to answer. And you could even say it like this. You could say, you know, I'd really like to go to such and such, and I'd really love for you to go with me. And I'd like you to think about it, if you're willing to, think about it, and get back to me tomorrow with whether or not, you know, you want to do that. So, you're building in this cushion of time so that he has a little space to really reflect on whether or not he wants to do it. So, people who are on the more avoidant end of the attachment continuum. And again, just as a refresher, you know, most of us tend to default toward more of the avoidant end of the attachment continuum, meaning how we relate to other people and important relationships are on the other side. We have a more anxious attachment style. But again, enmeshment creates avoidance. So people who are on this avoidant end of the continuum, or their mother enmeshed, they're going to tend to say yes to you without thinking about what they really want to do. And this is from a long habit of just doing what they've been told to do, doing what they know will please some mother not wanting to have any conflict, just sort of going along to get along. It's also just a way to hide. It's a way to hide and intimate relationships because if I don't tell you, you know, no, I really don't want to do that, or say yes when I'm really enthusiastic about it, you as my partner don't really have the opportunity to know who I am. And even though we often really don't want our spouse or partner to say no to us, in the end, it's really preferable for our spouse to say no when they mean no, because there are consequences to them not doing so. There are consequences in that we really don't know who they are. There are also consequences to us when they say yes when they really meant no. And then the entire time that we spend with them around something that they really wanted to say no to, but said yes, is completely miserable because they're pouting or they're just otherwise putting out a stink of some kind, right? I mean, that's just no fun. It would have been better to get the pain over with earlier on and just receive the no, but they will. They'll tend to agree or say yes when they really don't want to. And that's why just building in this cushion of at least 24 hours can be very helpful if possible. And I want to acknowledge, you know, it's not your job to make it easier for them, but it can often help to provide that bit of space. And it also, I want you to think about it this way. It is for your own self-care and maybe even for your own protection that you don't habitually get into situations with a spouse who tends to say yes and not reflect on whether or not they really want to do it. And over time, I've seen this with people who are avoidant or mother and meshed over time. They get a little bit better with it, but they often have to start with very low level things to which they say no and kind of build up this muscle that they never were able to. And again, I go back to, I hate to blame everything on the mother, but we're talking about mother and meshment when a mother or any parent doesn't give their child the freedom to say no to things like no. I don't want to wear that color. I don't want to wear those types of pants or no, I don't want to have my hair cut this way. All things that children should be able to choose, it's very difficult for that person when they get to be an adult to own their right to say no to things that they don't like. And this is one of the many consequences of enmeshment. The other thing I want to share is that I encourage you to not take it personally at all when your mother and mesh spouse is resentful or angry with you because he agreed to do something and he now regrets it or resents it. This one is tough, especially if he is very expressive or he's very skilled at pointing the finger at other people about his own choices. So if you made a request of him and he said, yes, he would do it. And now he regrets it or he resents it and he's trying to make it your fault because you asked him or because he might say, well, you knew that I couldn't say no. That is a complete cop out. And again, I highly encourage you to use this as an opportunity to build your own internal listening boundary so that you can watch and listen to what he's doing and saying and be aware internally. Don't say this out loud, but this is all his stuff. And again, you can like we talked about before, you could just say, you know, I hear that you believe that this is my fault and just leave it at that. You know, using your internal boundary means that you stay out of defensiveness which is what most of us do without even thinking when someone accuses us or tells us it's our fault because they said, yes, when they really meant no, this is hard. It is hard to do. That's why it is so important to learn about the listening boundary, how to use it and how to activate it and not take on other people's stuff. You know, one of the metaphors I use for this a lot, it's more effective in person than it is as you're listening. But I want you to imagine that it would be like if someone walked up to you and they had a notebook, for example, and they handed the notebook to you and as soon as you look at the notebook, you realize that it's not yours. You know beyond a shadow of a doubt that it's not your notebook, but the person is holding it out to you and here are your choices. You could reach out and you could take the notebook from them or you could keep your hands by your side. And when they let go of the notebook because they're trying to give it to you, what's going to happen to it? It's just going to land on the ground. And you can just look down there and watch it. And this is how I want you to think about any time that someone is trying to essentially hand you something, meaning an idea or blame of some kind. And you know, because your listening boundary is working really well, that it has nothing to do with you. You just let it fall and you don't pick it up and take it on as yours because it's not. It just isn't yours. You know, all of us are 100% responsible for the choices that we make. And even when we say yes, when we mean no, we're responsible for dealing with that. And we have a lot of choices. We can say, you know what? I realized later, I said yes to you, but I really don't want to do this. And I'm concerned that if I go forward with it, I'm just going to resent you and everybody else. And I don't want to do that. So I need to change my mind or you go through with it for whatever your reasons are. Maybe it's not that big a deal to you. But you keep your mouth shut because it's no one's fault except your own that you said, yes, when you meant no. So again, just to remind her not to take that on if your spouse tries to hand that to you. I think one of the most difficult things that you'll need to remember, if you are in a long term committed relationship with someone who is or was mother in meshed and is still still struggling or suffering from the consequences of that is that you cannot change another person and you cannot change their history. You cannot change how they got to where they are today. You know, your spouse may not believe that he's struggling with in meshment and you see it very clearly. He may still see his relationship with his mother is special or he may place her needs above yours or your relationship. And these are the kinds of things that frankly can end relationships and they can be extremely painful to the spouse who's experiencing this. I do want to say too that there are almost always signs that this is the case before you ever commit in a long term relationship. But sometimes you're just not aware of the issue or you may believe that it's not going to persist after you get married, for example. But if the mother in meshment is really pretty deep or profound, it is going to persist. And it's probably going to be something that your spouse struggles with for a lifetime even though they may get, he may get tools and skills and draw some pretty harsh boundaries, which I've known of people to do and it was very appropriate. So, you know, although you can't change your spouse, you can set limits around what his in meshment with his mother means to you. So, for example, if your mother in mesh spouse insists on going to his mother's house every Sunday for dinner and you feel very uncomfortable being around her or you feel very uncomfortable being with her and the three of you together, meaning you, your spouse and your mother-in-law. Because one of the things that happens in these scenarios is that the partner of the mother in mesh person can almost feel invisible or worse abused. You know, I've known many women who the mother-in-law literally emotionally or verbally abuse them and there was this dynamic of mother-in-meshment behind it and that's not something that you must tolerate. So, you have a right to create boundaries if you're dealing with the situation that just feels or is overtly abusive to you or maybe to your children. And again, this is not uncommon when you're dealing with a mother who really created this high level of enmeshment for her child that now persists into adulthood. You can choose not to participate or draw boundaries, the boundaries that feel comfortable to you. You know, I've known of women who have set some pretty strong boundaries with their mother-in-law, including not ever being alone with her, or not ever having any communication with her that another person didn't witness, because the mother-in-law is abusive or she lies about the facts of a particular event or interactions with her daughter-in-law. So what I want to emphasize here is that you have a right to set boundaries around situations regarding your spouse's mother-in-meshment issue in order for you to feel better. So I've even known of partners of mother-in-meshment who would make requests like, you know, if you're going to talk to your mother, I'd like you to do that somewhere else so that the partner didn't listen, didn't have to listen to the conversation. So there's lots of examples of how this might work. And by the way, this could be a situation where it'd be really helpful to use the five-step boundary solution clarifier to map out what you might want to do in order to create some boundaries that can, you know, give you more safety or comfort when dealing with these situations. Maybe not just even with your mother-in-law, she might even be deceased, but with your spouse around these issues. And again, if you are new to the podcast and you haven't heard of the five-step boundary solution clarifier, you can download one on the BeyondBitchie.com website. Also, it will be included with the show notes for this episode. So the last thing I want to share with you is that it is possible with some distance and understanding the abuse of enmeshment. And I hope that really came across today because it can be very easy to get sort of hyper-focused on the mother-in-meshed man and to become really frustrated and exasperated about the whole thing. But when you have a little bit of detachment and you understand the abuse of enmeshment and the impact that it has on people, you may actually develop some compassion for your spouse around this very toxic legacy of enmeshment that he's dealing with, especially if he's aware of it and he's taking actions to work on and heal from mother-in-meshment. And as a trauma therapist and someone who's worked for years with people to help them resolve family of origin issues and issues of enmeshment, I can tell you that enmeshment can be literally crippling to a person. And when enmeshment is severe in childhood and it persists into adulthood, which it usually does, if it's severe in childhood, the parent will actually keep an adult child very close, may even encourage them to remain at home long into their 30s and 40s, will not create any kind of boundaries or requirements, for example, that they even have a job, they want to keep the child close, or otherwise just unwilling to do what a good parent would do, which is to set appropriate boundaries that help the child, even as an adult child to grow up. To me, one of the most heartbreaking examples of this is when an adult child is an addict, especially an alcoholic or drug addict, and the parent allows the child to come back home, and essentially the adult child commits suicide slowly by continuing with their addiction, and the parents have set no boundaries, have no expectations, and it's just horrifying. I don't have words for it, but I really want to paint a picture for you of the consequences of enmeshment. They are severe and profound. So today we talked about mother enmeshment, an enmeshment in general and what it is, and what to do when you're in a relationship with someone who experienced this kind of enmeshment as a child. And it's a difficult situation. It's a difficult relationship issue to manage, and at the same time there are actions that you can take to that you have control over, to take care of you, your children, if necessary, to set the boundaries that you want to set, so that you can feel safe and protected. So until next week I invite every one of you to embrace the power you have to create the boundaries you want to create so that you can get the space you need and the connection you crave. See you next time. Vlog and other resources to help you master the art of boundaries. Till next time, remember, boundaries aren't bitchy.