Dear B:

It is a shame that you and your ex- ex boyfriend, the one having a troubling relationship with his mother, didn’t bond over this. In a thread almost five months ago, you wrote about your mother: “….she’s definitely always been a little unpredictable. She’s always a victim and blames other people and things easily…She can be very sweet, loving, generous, and then suddenly she explodes. Often, it’s because something I or my dad do (or don’t do) is irritating… if she’s in a bad mood and I am too busy to talk to her when with friends, she will tell me I am a mean daughter, that I’m pushing her away and don’t love her…”

When your mother accuses you of pushing her away, the truth is that she is pushing you away, the other way around. If your ex boyfriend had a similar type mother, that would explain why he was so scared of intimacy, scared of being involved with an unpredictable woman who is sweet and loving at one point, and unpredictably- abusive, like your mother. Maybe his quest for a predictable, loving mother led him to his much older girlfriend.

You wrote more about your mother that she “holds a grudge for a day or two, making sure I hurt too.”

If his mother does this too, no wonder he was/ is afraid of intimacy with a woman who will be “making sure (he) hurts too”- when she hurts, he must hurt.

You wrote: “She sometimes gives me the silent treatment. One time when I hit rock bottom emotionally after breaking up with my first boyfriend she told me on the phone that she didn’t want to talk anymore because I was making her depressed. I had no one else to talk to.”- see, you need a man you can talk to when you feel distressed, someone who will support you. And when he is distressed, he should be able to talk to you.

A note for the future: check out the man’s relationship with his mother. More often than you might imagine, you can bond with a man simply by the two of you having an emotionally unpredictable, blaming, abusive mother, and then the two of you can see to it that what you are to each other is predictable, responsible, loving people.

anita