My MEM could be talking quite normal to me and as soon as I'd say “your mom,” he would turn into this raging lunatic with his eyes popping out, making no sense but screaming for all he was worth about all sorts of things that had nothing to do with the problem at hand.
His brain kicked into fight or flight, he wouldn't even listen, couldn't reason, just screamed and abused me verbally and emotionally. He felt justified because he was being respectful to his mother, loyal to the perfect image he had of her in his mind.
I have come to understand that she is in his mind. That is why I came up with the picture on top. She sits in his brain, she pushes the buttons and flips the switches. She controls his thinking, is always there, controls his emotions, his actions, his re-actions to his partner, his action towards his children, his every minute she is with him and directs his ways. There is no getting away from her for the son. He carries her with him. He knows her thinking, has been conditioned in her thinking, that he knows what she would say or do in any given situation and he will be true to her and make her proud of him by acting exactly how she wants him to. Like you can tap into your computer from another one, an enmeshed mother taps into the son's brain and directs him. He follows without engaging his own brain or emotions, he has none. He has been trained for decades to be his mother in emotions, thoughts, and actions.
The screaming and yelling and name calling and freaking is really what he wants to yell at his mother. He wants this control to stop but doesn't know how so he yells at the only person who understands and tries to help him.
I also think they express what the mother won't express to you. My MEMs mother hates me but would never admit to it. She could direct her son to yell at me and throw all her hate at me. She was often behind his outbursts that came after he talked to her on the phone. She would innocently mention what she doesn't understand about me and how I can act so against her, etc. and as soon as he hung up the war was on. He pulled out his biggest guns to shoot me down, no matter what I said, he didn't hear me. He kept shooting, not even listening. For a long time I would defend myself and yell back until I realized he doesn't hear me. His brain is not receiving, it is turned off. He is in the fight or flight, there is nothing I can do to reach him. Then I just stood there and let him scream, yell, swear, call me names, until he quit. Once I realized this isn't my problem and defending myself only wasted my energy, I would just wait for him to be done and think to myself, “what an idiot.” I totally lost respect. He wasn't molding me into what his family wanted, he turned me away from any kind of respect or good feelings I had for him or his family. Just made the gap between us bigger and bigger.
In the picture I picked a mother who looks sick because most MEM mothers play the victim role. They are always sick, always needy, always in a bad way, always an emergency, always need their little man to cater to them and she holds him on a very short emotional leash. Any time mom thinks her little man is not heeling by her side, she snaps the leash with an emergency or demand to bring him back to his senses of being hers, and hers alone.
A MEM is not a man. He is his mother.