Navigating Family Estrangement for Men and their Partners
For men, estrangement may bring up feelings of resentment, outrage, or anger versus the traditional emotions of sadness, guilt, and shame in women. This could be in part due to men not feeling the same kind of pressure to win their mother’s approval or be in helpful or caregiving roles to parents the way women are expected to be. The common expectation for men is that they will grow apart from their mothers in seeking partners and creating families of their own. Estrangement can occur for various reasons, including financial strain, relational conflict, mental health, and trauma. It’s important to recognize that men may choose estrangement because of partners or spouses as well. Perhaps the partner or spouse is encouraging a man’s estrangement from his mother in believing the mother-son relationship is unhealthy. A man may pursue estrangement if his family does not approve of his spouse, feeling that he must choose between them. He may justify estrangement for this reason, stating he no longer wants to hear the criticisms or slights he perceives are being made against his spouse or partner by his mother or both parents.
A final area to emphasize is a gender difference observed by Agllias (2016) in her research on estrangement. Men and women respond differently in how they move toward acceptance of estrangement. Women tend to be more emotive in order to grieve and process the loss associated with estrangement, whereas men are more likely to respond with problem solving and intellectualizing what happened, in order to help them move on from an estranged relationship. There is also a societal expectation that men will “get over” things more quickly than women, which could include relationship rupture. As a support person, be sure to honor their experiences and meet them where they are, just as we would any person going through the process of estrangement. Asking clarifying questions and helping them connect with their emotions can be impactful in helping men heal.
Helping Your Partner
Recognizing how painful the process of estrangement can be for your loved one, here are some things to consider as the compassionate partner or spouse of a person who has experienced a relationship rupture with their mother.
1. Know That the Holidays Can Be Heavy
Holidays are challenging for folks for a variety of reasons. This might include family conflict, death, trauma anniversaries, and toxic relationships. When it comes to estrangement, the cultural expectation of holidays being focused on family can feel ostracizing to an estranged person. If your partner is not currently connected to family but is subjected to movies, advertisements, and events catered to holiday family fun, they can experience additional or elevated grief and loss.
2. Recognize That the Body Remembers
Trauma events have a way of sticking with us, not just in our memory but at a deeper, cellular level as well. As a therapist, I’ve had dozens of clients over the years come into sessions reporting they felt symptoms of depression, dread, anxiety, or loss seem- ingly out of the blue and couldn’t pinpoint why. When I asked them if there was any significance to the season, month, or day, oftentimes they would identify a trauma they hadn’t consciously tracked, but that still had a tremendous impact on them, such as a family member’s death, a car accident, sexual assault, suicide, or natural disaster. They weren’t actively recalling these events, but their body remembered and responded by recreating some of the emotions or sensations associated with the trauma.
3. Acknowledge Cultural Expectations of Family
In addition to holidays being heavy, a cultural expectation of the importance of family can increase your loved one’s feelings of shame or guilt about their estrangement from their mother. This occurs because of messages about the importance of family such as “family comes first,” or accusations of adult children being self- ish and dishonoring their family by straying from their family’s values or sphere of influence. Additionally, your loved one might interact with a person who reiterates these messages, arguing that they should reconcile with their mother or risk significant regret, such as when their mother dies. Cultures that emphasize family over individuals can bring up self-doubt in your loved one about not trying hard enough to repair the relationship, or can intensify feelings of failure that they weren’t successful in healing the relationship with their mom. It’s important to recognize how every day, normed portrayals of family can be triggering for your loved one in not having that expected dynamic.
4. Follow Your Partner’s Lead
When walking into a scenario where discussions of family systems or dynamics come up, allow your partner to lead the conversation. Support them in their decision to disclose as much or as little as they need to in order to interact with others in ways that feel safe to them. If they decide to not disclose their estrangement, they have their reasons. If they choose to name their current status as an adult estranged from a parent, that’s their choice too. Showing up in solidarity for whatever response might come next from others will help your loved one feel sup- ported by you, especially if the other person’s response is unsympathetic, argumentative, or unintentionally hurtful.
5. Ask, “What Do You Need?”
When your partner or loved one finds themselves triggered by people, places, media portrayals, or memories, there is one powerful question you can ask them as their partner. Couples’ therapists would agree with me when I say this question has saved relationships! Try asking your loved one, “what do you need?” Or ask, “what do you need in this moment?” These questions can be especially helpful because they give your partner permission to advocate for what might help them best. Perhaps they want a hug or to be left alone. Maybe they want to brainstorm or are asking for your help to fix things. Oftentimes, they actually just want to vent by expressing their thoughts and emotions in ways that leave them feeling seen by you as someone they trust.
6. Encourage Chosen Connections
As a partner, it’s not expected that you be the one and only support person to your loved one. It’s not fair to them and it’s not healthy for you. Putting all of our needs on one person is a recipe for disaster because it can result in inequality, resentment, codependency, and burnout. Therefore, it’s recommended that you encourage your partner to develop additional healthy relationships, including some with parental figures if appropriate. Similar to folks who describe their chosen family as people who love and respect them, can your loved one cultivate this kind of relationship with another mother-like or father-like figure? Can they lean on friends, colleagues, mentors, or family members as needed? Chosen connections such as these can have healing qualities for an estranged person. By exploring and building their support network alongside them, your loved one will feel they have options without over-relying on any one person, including you.
We encourage you to take a deeper dive into the thoughts, feelings, and decisions of nine women who pondered the difficult decision to cut ties with their mothers in our book Understanding Ruptured Mother-Daughter Relationships: Guiding the Adult Daughter’s Healing Journey through the Estrangement Energy Cycle and access all our therapeutic tools for adult daughters available for download at estrangementenergycycle.com.
