There are lots of studies out there on attachment. A successful marriage or partnership is build on a secure attachment. Unfortunately securely attached partners are not always around and often we might not be securely attached to be seeking out the securely attached person. We might be anxiously attached or avoidantly attached.
I believe most partners of MEM are anxiously or securely attached and we feel attracted to a MEM, who is, in my observation, always Avoidantly attached. I see a lot of MEM around me, talked to lots of spouses of MEM, and it seems MEM are always avoidantly attached. Unless they seek counseling, they will always be avoidant of intimacy.
Jeb Kinnison in his book “Avoidant, How to Love (or Leave) a Dismissive Partner” explains that having an avoidant attachment type is not a disease or disorder; it simply means early childhood experiences with caregivers left them with little trust for intimate companions, and a desire to avoid the pain that might come if they became dependent andthen were hurt by a loved one's failure to help them, as likely happened to them when they were infants. This subconsious lack of trust and desire for intimacy means they are “intimacy avoidant”- note that this is unrelated to Avoidant Personality Disorder , a DSM-IV-TR-defined disorder of oversensitivity and social anxiety leading to isolation. (Author's note introduction).
This makes perfect sense when looking at MEM. A mother of a MEM raises the son to be at her disposal. Whenever she has a need, the son needs to step in and make her happy. The son is not allowed to have needs. They are not allowed to have opinion, they are there to praise the mother.
I am thinking of a time when an acquaintance of my mother in law met me and reported back that she found me to be really beautiful. As my MEM visited with his mother, she continuously said that nobody ever told her she was beautiful and she just would like someone to tell her she is beautiful, she never heard that from anybody. By that time my MEM had already started to see that some things his mother demanded were weird and not what other mothers would do. He felt awful, he knew his mother expected him to tell her she was beautiful but he felt strange because a son wouldn't tell a mother she was beautiful. He ended up saying that he is certain somebody in her life told her she was beautiful. This was the beginning of him to realize some of the things she did and said were not normal. Until I started pointing them out, he thought everything she did was wonderful.
Interestingly he would always, always, without fail, be furious with me every time I pointed out when his mother was acting weird, strange, and out of line in behavior seen between mother and son.
I once took a Christmas card she had written to my MEM and showed it to my sister. My sister asked if this was an old card from a girlfriend. It was all mushy stuff you would write to a lover but not a son.
Anyway, back to avoidant attachment. In a secure relationship, if one partner needs reassurance and moves closer to the partner, the partner is ready to reassure, no questions asked. An avoidant partner will get up and move away. He feels like the partner is demanding because she expected something from him. He is not willing to be “controlled.” Which is exactly what mother is doing. Because his experience with females, his mother, has always been one of being controlled, a MEM is going to push all other females away and keep control of the situation. No true honest intimacy with a MEM.
As a spouse of MEM you keep lowering your expectations. You know they are not going to support you emotionally. Often you'll look for others to support you, usually your family. A sister, a mother, grandmother. Of course you don't want to sound too dramatic and you don't tell the complete truth of how lonely and controlled you are, really emotionally abused. We don't want others to see we are failing in our relationship or that we picked a guy that avoids being close and always runs to mom for comfort.
Every time the partner tries to be close, to honestly share feelings of coming in second with mom being overpowering, the MEM will draw further away. YOU are the problem in his eyes. His relationship with mom is right and the only one that matters. If you can't support that, you have become the problem and instead of hearing you out and understanding, you will become the enemy.
Gottman, known for his marriage research, in an experiment found that avoidant partners have a physical reaction to being close to their partner. Even when talking about mundane things, their heart rate was up and they shifted to a fight or flight attitude and were more aggressive with their partners. Securely attached partners were calm and connected and attentive to their partner.
Kinnison says, “An unhappy relationship with a partner who is adversarial and undermining is worse than no relationship at all.”
So overtime, often years, when your MEM has abused emotionally by constantly accusing you of being controlling, of not understanding his family, of not trying hard enough, of not being enough, of pretending to be different before you got together, etc. will erode all the in love feelings you had for this person. You will loose all respect for your MEM and his family.
Abuse comes in many forms from a MEM, all to avoid intimacy. The emotional abuse never ends, they hardly have a good word for you, so much criticism, so many accusations, you will always be thrown under the bus, always.
I remember after years of being married to a MEM, I was working with the youth in our church organization and we had a little trouble with a couple of the girls. Our leader delivered yellow roses to all youth leaders to thank us for our time, effort, and love for the youth. I was floored. I sat down crying. I realized it was the first kindness I had received in years. I had not heard a nice word, any kind of praise from my MEM.
I lived in a cycle of abuse. His mother would call Sundays. Always a private conversation, I never knew what was being discussed. Then all hell would break loose. The children were not dressed cute enough, their hair wasn't done well enough, the house was a mess, the food wasn't good, the dishes weren't done, and so on. That went on until about Thursday or Friday. Saturday we could do something with the family without being in trouble every few minutes and Sunday we anticipated his mother's call again. The distance became greater and greater and my trust in him was completely destroyed. I knew I could not turn to him for help in anything. He avoided me and the children as good as possible. Stayed at work late, didn't want to eat with us because I didn't cook nutritious foods and he couldn't stand seeing the children eat the junk I made (which I didn't, we ate nutritious homemade meals). I read to the children at night, he was never there. He denied it over and over and said he was always around and present. Reality becomes distorted for a MEM.
When giving birth to our third child, my midwife said to push as hard as I can, our baby was turning blue and he needed to be out now. I did, I gave it all I had. It took me a minute to regain some energy to hold him. I thought the birth was beautiful. Hard work for me but so special. I loved this little guy and couldn't get enough of him. My MEM's brother and his wife stopped by a couple of days later and asked how the birth went. I said it was beautiful. My MEM said, no it wasn't, it was awful. You pooped on the baby, you swore, and it was a mess, nothing beautiful. Even in one of the most vulnerable moments he managed to put me down and in my place. I had no right to feel good about anything. The only thing I managed to say was that I never swore, which I didn't but would have every right to do during labor. Later he said he had to say that because his sister in law has such a hard time giving birth and it really hurt her feelings when I say my birth is beautiful. That is what a MEM is capable off. He has not been allowed to feel. To express emotions. His entire life is patterns around what mom needs. How can I make her happy. How can I avoid being in trouble with her and my siblings. A MEM mother is hostile to dependency. If she realizes a child depends on her, she pushes the child emotionally away. She alone will be in charge of the child and only her needs matter. A MEM mother causes a child to mold himself to please her to the point that little or nothing of his personality remains, they are trained to display a false personality to gain parental approval. It is the only way to survive. A MEM has been abused through verbal and emotional rejection. They loose track of who they are, what they like, who they want to become. They are mom's puppet.
Kinnison says an avoidant person has no feelings, they have the alexithymia syndrome.Alexithymia means literally “having no words for feelings.” Kinnison adds “which is not at all the same thing as not having feelings. The worst case can only express themselves with inchoate rages and tantrums, or unexplained physical symptoms like stomach pains and adrenalin rushes.”
I always called it the avalanche of emotions. Whatever I said, I just needed to say, mom, and the avalanche of emotions, the tantrum, would be unloaded on me. I never knew what triggered it, I just knew intuitively that I had nothing to do with it that those penned up emotions were there long before I met my MEM but for some reason he wants to unload on me. Consequently not only could I not trust him, I also had no respect for him.
Kinnison warns “the lack of real affection and feeling will show itself in unresponsiveness, and if pushed passive-aggressive contempt, verbal, or even physical abuse. The Dismissive wants to have his needs met, but yours are not very important to him or her.”
A MEM does want to be with someone, wants to be heard and understood but they can't control the urge to escape when things seem to get serious and out of control. They have never experienced a feeling of safety in their early relationships, they don't trust anybody with their feelings. Including their mom, she does not know her son's feelings and is not interested in them. She only cares about her own and how well her son response to her needs. He gets praised for being a good son if he is obedient to her and since that is the first and most important relationship, his loyalty lays in that.
MEMs seem to have a poor memory of their childhoods. Besides saying everything was good, they can't recall details and won't report on anything negative which is totally unrealistic. Every child has negative experiences with their parents at times and it is perfectly fine to talk about it. A MEM and the closed family unit, does not recall anything negative, all was great, only with no detail. A child buries his feelings of being unloved and unwanted so as not to be destroyed by that feeling. They do give up their own emotions to mold into their mothers. A MEM is a poor abused child and doesn't know it.
That's why MEM also are not very service oriented. They help when being asked but they don't see a need and help out freely. They avoid getting close to anybody and helping someone would mean they'd have to get close to that person. The attitude of a MEM is that they are superior to their partners. It's the attitude that eventually brings out the abuse. They truly feel more important and more in control and therefor need to put you into your place. They will always justify why they have the right to put you down. It will always be your fault. You asked for it and they are just being honest.
MEM are avoidant. They cannot be truly intimate with a partner. They will push away and over time, if they are not abusive from the beginning, will become abusers. They cannot feel your emotions. Their emotions are so far tucked away, they have no access to them. The only time they are triggered is when you do something to trigger the rage in them and you get years of penned up emotions dumped on you. All negative. All hateful. All stem from abandonment and loneliness as children. A MEM is emotionally a child, not capable of being a partner.