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

(upbeat music) - All right team, welcome back to the Man Talk Show. Today we're gonna be talking about the men who have been raised by women who hate men. The men who have 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 I wanna 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 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 thinks that men are dangerous. Maybe she thought that their liars or cheaters are they good for nothing or that her life is 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 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 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 all man 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 starts to come in but there are a subset of women who have increasingly been getting louder and louder and louder about how bad men are. Men are just a 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, 'cause people always send me stuff online for me to talk about and comment 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 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 embellished or whatever in the household is 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 distrust for men and the masculine? It's very challenging. And so the mother one is something that I've been seeing more and more and more as a husband. More commonplace over the last two, three decades to really have a kind of misundry, 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 step down 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 going to 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 grow 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 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 a yes to things 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 we're gonna touch on a little bit more after, but 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 gonna 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 power, which we're gonna 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 was abusive and harmful and to drunk. And so it was easy to side with mom, 'cause you can 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 Distain 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 of relationship of 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 because of this dynamic You likely just dislike authority very common that men grew up in these environments Dislike authority especially from men So you will be you know sort of passive aggressive with with male bosses or colleagues That have a sort ofness or authority because you will have Repressed and disconnected and pushed parts of your psyche into your shadow You will have pushed your own anger your own boundaries your own assertiveness into your shadow and seeing those as bad things Quite often and so you have missed 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 because 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 might not say 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 not not interested in doing that so Two other things is that often times 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 when the 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 they're kind of shallow as fuck right there their surface level that 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 Detot to dislike to hate or to not trust How do you see the value 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 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 a hundred percent me and maybe other pieces were not so you 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 death 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 What where can you do that are 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 Brazil and 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, or intimate? What's the value that I actually bring in to 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 in form 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'm never going to, whatever it is, right? I'm never going to hurt a woman like him. And because of that, 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. This is what young 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-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, etc. 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. Whether that means you get a tattoo because it's something that you genuinely want and have always wanted, but she's been opposed to that forever. Or you start to play an instrument or DJ or you start to play a sport, whatever it is, but 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 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 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? 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 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, difficulties 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. We are looking for what do women in the culture want in a dating sense? What is 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 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. And finally, where do I fear becoming a man because she despised men? Or how do I fear becoming a man because she despised men? So what actions, what characteristics, what traits are you disconnected from because you are worried that she will be upset with 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 ManTalks 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, 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. [BLANK_AUDIO]