As the child gets older, the boundaries get more shady. Mom makes sure her son thinks she does it out of love whenever she plows right over boundaries.
Enmeshed mothers will ask many questions, TOO many questions about activities, thoughts, or feelings. The son will give details, personal details, private details because mom means well and loves him, so he thinks. He is used to having no boundaries and invites mom to hear all the details of his life.
Mem mothers are very sneaky in controlling their sons. Mom will use the information she gained from the details to tell her son how he should be feeling.
My MEM realized years too late that his mother controlled him that way, allowing no boundaries. He would come home from a date, which was rare anyway because he felt bad for leaving her alone, she would start asking questions. Too many questions. Wanting to know every detail. He thought she cared and loved him and readily spilled all details.
She then would use the information gained to tell him how he should be feeling about this girl. As a good boy he should not like her being so forward, he should not like her because of this or that. She told him how he should be feeling, even if he didn't feel that way. Thinking his mother cared, he then adopted her interpretation of how he should feel towards the girl and of course realized that this girl is not for him. It didn't matter how he really felt, he always ended up agreeing with his mother and would not ask the girl out again. His mother won because she had made sure her son had no boundaries.
Lundy Bancroft explains about boundary violations (I changed it to fit the MEM psychology):
-she pays little attention to the child during his infancy
-she reverses roles with the child, where she expects the child to take care of her needs and feelings rather than the other way around
-she violates the child's emotional or physical boundaries
-she is very manipulative towards the child
-she drives wedges between the child and any other person that might be important to them.
-she targets one child for especially favored treatment
(When dad hurts mom, 101-102)
Lundy Bancroft then states:
“Underlying all of these parallels is the mentality of exploitativeness; that is to say, a belief, usually unconscious, that it is acceptable to use other people for your own purposes, without regard for their feelings or needs, or for the damage you may be causing them.”
MEM mothers are selfish, only concerned with themselves. They make the son a servant for their own personal needs with no thought of the child's emotional well being or his future happiness. They willingly sacrifice his happiness to be content themselves. In my opinion, MEM mothers are evil.