If the husband became your mother

“My husband bribed me by cooking me dinner on our first date. Twenty years have passed since that day, but he still cooks, makes tea for me, gives me a pedicure, scolds me if I don’t wear a scarf. He’s cleaning up the banana peels I leave on the table before I even realize he’s washing my coffee cup.

When he found out about my joint disease, I also began to hear “don’t jump – your knee will hurt”, “don’t run, your back will hurt”. Every time I have to fight for the right to do something on my own.

And everything would be fine, but sometimes I hear in my address that I am a “kulema”, “lazy person” and so on. All this is served as a joke, but the sediment remains.

So I sometimes think, why are we together? Why have I been taking this overprotection for 20 years and only now realized how much it sometimes suffocates me?

Worst of all, she strangles him too. After all, he refuses his own hobbies so that I and the children allow themselves what we want. Or maybe he just doesn’t want to do anything other than household chores and work that he doesn’t like, and sacrifice is just an excuse? – says Lyudmila, 40 years old.

Indeed, why do some people consider it their duty to patronize others to their detriment, literally entangling them with their care?

After all, in this way a person is deprived of the opportunity to take responsibility for his life upon himself, to grow and find strength and, in the end, not to feel guilty for the constant sacrifice of another.

We are used to the fact that such behavior is more typical of women. But, contrary to the stereotype, sometimes men are ready to look after day and night, not even allowing their wife to wash the dishes.

I know better!

“Care is the desire for the well-being of another person. The best option is when one partner compares his ideas about well-being with the desires and ideas of the other.

Supercare is when I do not take into account the desires and needs of my partner, but do to him and with him only what I consider necessary, ”explains Ekaterina Klochkova, family system consultant.

Before doing anything, it is still better to make sure that the partner wants it. Otherwise, it turns out the imposition of their own ideas about what is best for him. And in the end, it remains for a loved one to either obey and adjust to the one who cares, or begin to defend their rights, which will result in a constant conflict.

Never decide for others. Otherwise, doing a seemingly good deed, for example, helping your wife, you can, to your surprise, get in response not the most pleasant reaction.

You are sure that you are doing everything right, that this is exactly what your partner needs, but in the end both remain disappointed. Because one does not receive gratitude for the help, and the other is perplexed, well, what did she do wrong again, since she needs to be corrected and replaced. She did not want this, did not ask for such help.

“Perhaps his wife is so dear to the spouse that by surrounding her with total care, he copes with his anxiety that something bad might happen to her or their relationship. As in the movie, the Beast put the rose that his life depended on under a glass jar so that nothing would bother her.

But this is in a fairy tale, and the rose was magical – therefore, the absence of wind, sun and rain did not harm it, without which a real flower will wither even faster, – says Ekaterina Klochkova. “Perhaps at first the wife is pleased with such care – here he is, the prince from a fairy tale.

But the wife is also not a fabulous disembodied princess, she has needs for personal growth, development, becoming – and therefore she needs to feel responsible for her life. And this is quite difficult if you drown in the care of a partner, when desires are fulfilled without having time to mature, and even those that were not satisfied are also satisfied.

I will part the clouds with my hands

What roles do such a husband and his wife play? And what makes a man take care of his woman like a helpless child? Perhaps the answers are to be found in his childhood or even in his family history.

“There are many constructs and concepts in different theoretical approaches that provide answers. The therapist, in the course of long work, carefully sorts through and offers the client interpretations, from which he chooses the one that suits him and helps him work with the symptom. Therefore, there is no single universal answer.

But if we reformulate the question to “Why?”, then a semblance of a certain general idea arises. This is a way to deal with anxiety for relationships and for a partner, with fear of the uncertainty of the future. To surround with super-care is a rather complicated and energy-consuming event. By devoting himself to this, the spouse is temporarily distracted from anxiety.

But there is also no time left to tell why he is so worried, why his wife is so dear to him and his relationship with her, too, ”explains the family therapist.

It seems that such a husband is always tense, always on the alert – no matter what happens. The world around him is too dangerous.

But where does this fear come from?

“Our society in the XNUMXth century faced an abundance of traumatic events (World War I, Civil War, repressions, the Second World War, etc.), when only concern for loved ones and well-being was an adequate adaptive response and helped to survive,” says Ekaterina Klochkova. – Therefore, you need to look at the history of the family, if possible, restore the whole picture, how the ancestors survived the XNUMXth century, what they lost, whom they lost, at the expense of what resources they coped.

This will help to better understand the causes of anxiety and the origin of many habits and disturbing thoughts, to get to know them better in order to understand what impact they have on today. It will help to look at your family differently: perhaps many threats have become irrelevant, and family members can cope with others. This therapeutic process will help reduce anxiety, and there will be more scope for choosing other actions.”

Why do they think that everyone does everything wrong? Why should they criticize others?

In order to cope with anxiety, perhaps, such people create a clear, stable picture of “the right way”, which in their imagination guarantees immutability and security, the expert says.

Unfortunately, the picture exists only in their head. If you do not remind yourself that this is just one of the options for a prosperous future, then any deviation will just cause this anxiety.

And since this representation exists only inside, then only its creator knows the nuances, and no one else can know. Not to mention the fact that other people may have their own ideas about a prosperous future and present.

Who if not me

But it’s not just anxiety. Overprotective men seek to remind others, but first of all themselves, that they are needed and important, irreplaceable, and without them everything will go wrong. With incessant concern, they try to assert their own power, reassuring themselves with the thought: only if I control everything, nothing will happen to their loved ones.

Even when you can wait for the wife or child to do something themselves, these husbands and fathers rush to do it for them. It is also associated with the need for control and gaining support through guardianship over loved ones.

“In the case of a parent, the growing up and separation of the child in the long term reminds us of the transience of life, aging, death.

Trying to prevent the child from growing up (and this is how the interception of the initiative in everyday affairs should be understood), the caregiver tries not to notice that his ward is growing, developing, expanding his range of opportunities. It is as if he places the best moment of life in resin, in amber – so that nothing changes and remains so indefinitely.

In the case of a spouse, an additional motive may appear: “I am important, necessary and irreplaceable, she cannot cope without me,” the expert says.

Why do we choose them and how to live with them

Why do women choose such men? Perhaps they seem to be reliable partners, embodying the image of a “man with a reliable and strong shoulder”, which is not scary to lean against and which will protect against all adversity, the expert believes.

But the constant clash of the real desires of a living person and the far-fetched partner’s ideas about his well-being become the cause of a conflict, which in the end can lead to a breakdown in relations.

However, healthy boundaries in the family can and should be restored. Expert advice can help with this.

5 easy steps to restore boundaries

1. The first and most important thing is to work on communication in the family. Tell your partner more about your feelings and thoughts, ask what he feels and thinks. This is important for establishing direct, non-fantasy-filled contact.

2. After that, a caring spouse needs to see that the partner as he is and the ideas about him are two different, albeit similar people.

3. Try to discover something new in each other every day – firstly, it will be interesting, and secondly, it will correct the invented image and bring it closer to a real person.

4. The sponsoring partner should try to notice every time that the other is doing well, highlight the moments when he successfully coped with the task, even if this is a surprise for the one who cares.

5. As far as possible, restore the history of the family, paying attention to memories and facts about people and periods about which little is known or relatives are reluctant to recall.