When He's Married to Mom: How to Help Mother-Enmeshed Men Open Their Hearts to True Love and Commitment

by Kenneth M. Adams, Alexander P. Morgan

A practical, compassionate relationship guide for women who are involved with mother-enmeshed men, mothers who wish to set their sons free, and men dealing with issues of commitment, sex addiction, and unhealthy attachments.

Why can't he commit? Many women find themselves asking this question when in love with a man who won't get married, won't stop womanizing, or refuses to give up his sex addictions. Often this kind of man is bound by an unhealthy attachment to his mother. This phenomenon is called "mother-son enmeshment." In When He's Married to Mom, clinical psychologist and renowned intimacy expert Dr. Kenneth M. Adams goes beyond the stereotypes of momma's boys and meddling mothers to explain how mother-son enmeshment affects the mother, the son, and the woman who loves him. In his twenty-five years of practice, Dr. Adams has successfully treated hundreds of enmeshed men and shares their stories in this informative guide. He provides proven methods to make things better,

—Guidelines to help women create fulfilling relationships with mother-enmeshed men
—Tools to help mother-enmeshed men have healthy and successful dating experiences leading to serious relationships and marriage
—Strategies to help parents avoid enmeshing their children

Genres: Psychology, Self Help, Relationships, Marriage, Nonfiction

267 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2007

Reviews

[Mari]

My partner of 4 year and I have had troubles our whole relationship. I never felt “protected”, he never had my back. He never held himself accountable. In arguments he’s say I act like a mother and he would go in rage. The list goes on. My spirit started to get broken when I stumbled upon an article that mentioned “mother enmeshed men”. I couldn’t believe it. Every single word in that article described him to a t.
I just finished the book and I’ve moved from anger to a strange kind of relief. A relief to finally have answers to all of the questions that were left unanswered, every time his words cut like a knife. Not all of the examples given match him a 100%, but rather, there are bits and pieces of him in almost every story. The book made me understand that my wish of wanting to distance from his mother is indeed not crazy or rude, but needed for my well-being.
The book was an easy flow to read, nothing judgmental, realistic and I appreciated the section about women who get romantically involved with MEMs as well as tips and questions to ask your therapist.
My partner has just started reading the book and agreed to couples therapy. (Finally!) If nothing changes however - I know from the book as well, breaking up can be the right choice as well. I’m so grateful this book exists.

[Grace Hunt]

I found out about this book after a late night phone with a friend. I was having so many problems with my mother in law controlling and manipulating my marriage. My friend suggested my husband and I read this book. I got the book off Amazon and my husband and I sat down and read it. Not even two chapters in my husband told me “I think I’m emeshed.” When we finished the book he was disgusted with himself and his mother. It took him a while to realize that it was his mother’s actions and wasn’t his fault. He is moving forward slowly in the relationship with his mother and setting boundaries, but this book has helped us tremendously overcome some major problems in our relationship!

[Ian Miller]

Tea

[Greta Cribbs]

The three star rating is no reflection on the authority of this book or the expertise of its author, but refers instead to the execution of the book.

I suppose the choice to make the first half of the book purely anecdotal was for the purpose of holding the readers' interest, and to that end it worked. I found the book highly engaging. However, to begin, over and over again, with patient x coming into the office exhibiting symptoms x,y, and z, and always end with the same diagnosis...it made me question whether the author ever considered that there might be some other cause to what was going on.

And, considering the subject at the center of this book, the whole thing started to come off as a bit Freudian after a while. You can almost imagine this exchange: Patient: Doctor, I'm feeling dissatisfied with my life. Doctor: Tell me about your mother.

I mean, yes, our mothers have a HUGE influence on our lives. Lord help me, I understand that as well as anyone. And I have no doubt that enmeshment exists and can have extremely damaging effects. I've witnessed firsthand those weepy, clingy mothers slobbering all over their sons and trying to control their lives in the name of "protecting their babies". Yes, it happens. Yes it's a problem. I have no beef with the subject matter of this book, and I very much appreciated the information provided in the second half. It was just the first half that had me scratching my head. I would have liked to see some other alternatives explored, but instead the book seemed to imply that EVERY time a man has trouble committing to his girlfriend, every time he becomes controlling and paranoid, every time he spends too much or too little time focusing on his career, every time he commits adultery, it's because he has a creepy, borderline inappropriate relationship with his mother. There are other factors that influence the kinds of people we grow up to be, but this book explored none of them. I know an in depth discussion of those other factors would have been outside the scope of the book, but at least a mention would have been nice, rather than implying that it's always Mama's fault.

I did enjoy the final chapter which spends a little time discussing cultural influences on the mother/son relationship and would have liked to see that expanded a bit more. Mainly because, growing up in America, we're so focused on the individualism that defines our culture we often look at other cultures and think theirs is healthier than ours. They have a sense of community which we lack. They understand the importance of family whereas we're obsessed with forcing our young people to fly the nest and never look back. The message I usually receive from the world around me is that other cultures get it right where ours usually gets it wrong. It was interesting to read this book and see someone point out other cultures and call them toxic. It wasn't surprising. Cultures are made of people and people are flawed beings, so naturally there will be toxic elements in every culture of the world. It was just a point of view I don't see often, because normally I'm listening to other Americans talking about the toxic elements in our own culture. It would be very interesting to explore this topic further and get a better perspective on toxic relationships throughout the world.

[Joseph Thiessen]

I am a MEM.

I knew I had issues with my now deceased mother. I thought I had dealt with much of it (I may have), but in reading this book, I realize the dynamics of my relationship with my mom are affecting my life in the present. I’m stuck in fear and a Disloyalty Bind to my mom.

Thankful for the stories and helps offered in this book. Shockingly, I think this is the first time I read a full book of this sort in 5 days cover to cover!

[Candice]

Useful, compassionate insights into so-called "Mama's boys" psychology and behaviors.

[Shannon]

Very informative. Downright shocking in places with how accurate it is. I wish there were more books about this topic. It needs to be more prevalent.

[Zoe Salanda]

The author offers detailed anecdotes from his counseling practice. Many of the concepts discussed here will take practice for me to identify as I come across cis straight men who are MEM. For example‘the disloyalty bind’. The idea that a man can be acting out consciously (or unconsciously) the relationship triangle between his mother and father in his adult relationship. Not many therapists are speaking about this psychological schema in an accessible ways. This book reinforced for me the origin of red flags that I had experienced early on in a few relationships of my past. He touches on the contrast between a pacifist, a controller and a narcissist regarding their willingness to pursue self improvement. The author also details how to create healthy boundaries between your relationships with your partner and their mother. How to recognize the stages of readiness for commitment you perceive in potential mates and helpful examples of what courtship can look like. He doesn’t skirt away from the topic of infidelity either. This is why I hate Ester Perels work, it feels like she skips the vital step of healing past trauma bonds BEFORE starting any kind of new romantic relationship. This book has 5 different case studies of what healing past a trauma bond would look like. And it doesn’t make a case for or against monogamy.

This book was fantastic and I will have to read it a few more times in the next few years

[Leib Mitchell]

Book Review
When He's Married to Mom
3/5 stars
“Just so-so”
(246 pages)
*****

I read this book because I have seen helpless mama’s boys so many times that the phenomenon is crying out for an explanation. I live in an Orthodox Jewish community, and it is practically a sociological cliché around these parts.

In some ways, the main thing I got from this book was a series of interesting stories—some of which, the author says, were cut and pasted and had details rearranged to avoid identifying the people involved—that demonstrate that excessive attachment is bad.

As if we didn't already know this.

The author offers explanations for why these relationships develop, but I don't know how much I believe any of them.

The first reason is that Samuel Arbesman has pointed out that different academic disciplines lose and update their “truths” at vastly different speeds. In psychology, he estimates the half-life of knowledge at approximately 7.15 years.

This book was published in 2007—about 2.65 half-lives ago. There could be about as much current psychotherapeutic practice in this book as there is in Mother Goose's Stories.

The second reason is that I can't quite figure out where the author is coming from.

Is this warmed-over Freudianism?

Is it one of those many theories in which psychologists tried to blame everything on the mother—refrigerator mother, schizophrenogenic mother, and so forth?

Is the basis attachment theory?

Is it (now forgotten) transactional analysis, a la James and Jongeward?

I genuinely don't know.

---

Some other questions

1. Whither gay guys?

There is nary a mention of gay men in this book. This seems like a fairly significant omission, particularly because at least a couple of the severely mother-attached men I know personally are raging flamers.

What does the dynamic look like when the mother knows that her son has NO interest whatsoever in women?

Is he functioning as a substitute best girlfriend?

Does he not perceive his father as a rival because, in NO conceivable scenario, is he going to want the one thing that all women have to offer?

I don't know, but the absence of this population from the discussion is striking.

2. Why so much hatred for mothers?

The book spends a great deal of time discussing dysfunctional mothers.

Is there an equivalent book about father-daughter enmeshment?

If not, why not?

3. What about selection bias?

A lot of the enmeshed men I know have never been able to live independently. But the author recommends years of psychotherapy.

That creates an obvious sampling problem.

If the people who are most severely impaired by this problem cannot afford hundreds of sessions of psychotherapy—or cannot independently arrange to get themselves into therapy in the first place—they are going to be virtually invisible in the author's sample.

And what if the majority of men who live with their mothers indefinitely really do look like this?

The clinical population might be a very peculiar subset of the actual population.

4. The quantitative measurements are extremely weak.

There are at least two obvious questions.

a. What is the author's success rate?

People come to him for treatment. Fine. But how many actually improve?

b. How common is the phenomenon?

The author has a chapter discussing the number of enmeshed men, but I still don't feel that I have a clear answer to the basic epidemiological question:

Is this a 10% phenomenon?
A 20% phenomenon?
1%?

Without knowing the denominator, it is difficult to know how large the problem actually is.

5. How do you distinguish emotional enmeshment from generalized failure to launch? (And this can be enabled by BOTH parents for a child of EITHER sex.)

Suppose you have a 32-year-old man who lives with his mother, has never held a serious job, has no romantic relationship (that we know of), has never managed his own finances, owns no car, and has no checking account. (In case you didn't realize, this is somebody that I've actually seen.)

Is that necessarily a mother-son enmeshment problem?

Or could it simply be a generalized failure to launch that is being enabled by both parents?

The book seems much more interested in the mother-son relationship than in disentangling these possibilities.

---

I know that psychotherapists are not allowed to prescribe medication—and that may be with good reason—so I suppose there is a certain temptation to construct increasingly elaborate theories about why people behave the way they do.

At one point (p. 165), the author suggests two to five years of weekly therapy.

That's roughly 100 to 250 sessions.

At $100–$200 per session, we're talking about somewhere between $10,000 and $50,000 worth of therapy.

If a man has that much disposable money, it should be a relatively small matter to find female companionship willing to tolerate a considerable degree of enmeshment in exchange for access to his checking account.

After all, mother-in-law is not going to live forever.

And if she can stick it out for ten years, she gets half of everything even if mother-in-law does live that long.

---

There is also some neurobabble/brain porn about the right brain and left brain (p. 148), which did not exactly increase my confidence in the book's scientific rigor.

Moral of the story: Too much attachment is bad, and you will know it when you see it.

Incidentally, if you see two people involved in it, they will probably be the last two people to know.

Verdict: I'd recommend this book at a price of about $3–4, mainly because of information decay in psychotherapy, but also because the clinical stories are interesting enough to make the book worth reading as a collection of cases. And even they aren't that interesting because if you are of a certain age (let's say over 40), then you've already seen at least a half a dozen examples of this.

[Michelle M]

This was an interesting read. My partner and I had been having issues and when he said he was exploring this subject I bought the book and read it within 48 hours. I was desperate to understand his experience. It definitely helps partners of Enmeshed Men understand what factors cause various things like addiction and avoidant attachments. I feel enlightened through this book. It allowed me to be filed with compassion for my partner in addition to forgiveness for myself. It is a tough road for a partner who has such deep rooted struggles. I high recommend this read to anyone who might feel like they have a connection to this subject

[Alex Giurgea]

O carte despre baietii cocolositi de mame atat in copilarie, cat si in viata adulta. O carte despre consecintele limitelor netrasate intre mama si fiu, limite care influenteaza puternic relatiile cu femeile din viata adultului. De la control-freaks in relatii la servili si submisivi, de la afemeiati la anorexici sexual, modul in care se face si se desface legatura cu mama este un pilon care joaca un rol important in maturizarea emotionala a barbatului.

[Tamara]

Very good, plainly written book. Answers the basic questions. Not a book for a professional or someone already well versed in codependency but a nice introduction. I would recommend if this book appeals to you and strikes a cord, try Terrence Real and Pia Mellody.

[Sebastian Gil]

Absolutely brilliant book on mother-son enmeshment. A must read for every man and mother, just in case you have missed something which is important. Great story telling by author. Good references to other materials. Great explanations and insights. Simply, 5 starts is not enough.

[Matt]

Another professional development book. Very good for dealing with enmeshment and how it affects men.

[Dhiviya]

Interesting idea. But lacks depth and conviction. It was just stories about people he's worked with.

[Rafael Serra]

What this book does quite well is to walk you down a road of explaining what MEM (Mother enmeshed men) are. And at each step the author presents you with additional roads you can take by giving you book recommendations - that expand on each topic more in depth.

This is extremely useful because it helps tailor the healing quest to your specific individual needs.

As the author expands by providing several examples how MEM can present, he further displays how the mother-son diad can be toxic, stunting, castrating, hindering, and so on.

The books provides correct insights that encapsulate both the nature of the relationship, the problems that surface and the strategies to overcome the pathologies that arise and are generated from such impositions and trespassing of boundaries.

What I thought was a double edged sword is that the book didn't tie the idea of enmeshment with the more overarching concept of 'shared fantasy' that originally happens within a pathological paternal-filial relationship that is marked by NPD, BPD, and DPD - narcissistic [schizoid] core. This could have cast a more suitable and synoptic light on the issue and its geneology to delve deeper in the issue of enmeshement. Because it's very hard to separate all these themes and motifs that characterize MEMs and their mothers outside of the narcissistic quasi-psychotic parachosm.

Nevertheless, it's also useful to keep things focused on the topic without going astray excessively, or addressing too many aspects at once for the sake of not overcomplicating for the average person.

All these sorts of books, as insightful as they are, they somewhat pretend that there is the possibility of fixing these characters. I'm much more of a pessimist in this regard. Personality is largely shaped by the relationship with our primary caregivers - our style and dynamic with them is shaped by the style of our caregivers. Like a lid for a pot we are entrained into a style which makes us look for partners that replace and mimic the style of our caregivers. This seems like a possible thing to work through by making small incremental changes but our personality, life trajectory and who and in what we can count on keeps reinforcing and perpetuating the same patterns of behavior and life trajectories. This emerges both circumstantially and genetically. It's a fish bitting its own tail.

Emotions are definitely a problem that hinders any strategy worth persuing. What this book will have you do is making preemptive corrective moves and to micromanage your thought patterns and psychological traps. Anyone that has tried these strategies knows how energy depleting and frustrating they are to see through. You will end up cutting your own legs as a measure to not fall in the same patterns. Which is my fatal conclusion: you can't escape enmeshment just by knowing what to do and what is healthy; inside the shared fantasy you get lost and dissolved, as your emotions blind you by changing your psychological state into a suggestible and even hypnotic state - you become a child again.

Attatchment styles would also have been worth mentioning, to paint a better picture.

I liked the idea of making a relationship plan. Writting things down contractually (to your partner and for yourself) does give them more gravitas. When things turn sideways you can't forget or rationalize; they're there as contract to oneself of your boundaries, dealbreakers and promisses.

Overall, I think it has good anecdotes; it's simple and to the point; but it does make it sound easier than it might be to fix MEMs and their mothers lives. It really may be complicated versus narcissistic contumacious mothers that will do everything in their power to stop you from growing. DeFOOing/No contact may be the only solution in some cases.

Certainly, this book doesn't do much to deal and explain how to overcome feelings of guilt and attatchment but I guess the author is expecting us to pay for therapy as if everything magically falls into place just by talking it out.

This is the sort of book that might change your life or not at all. Give it a try MEMs!

[Raakel]

Excellent and comprehensive in depth book about mother-enmeshed men. Explains the dynamic, the man’s mindset and the source of the problem clearly and with various examples and case studies. I also liked reading about how to prevent this dynamic in your own son

It would have been a 5 star book if it had given advice and tips for tackling this problem without therapy as not all men are willing to go to therapy. The book was very hopeful about therapy and kept saying it is necessary but didnt seem to leave any room for hope for men who don’t go to therapy. Also, what about men who come from a culture where enmeshment is not only widely accepted but expected and idealised?

[Josette Garfinkiel]

Enmeshed

Very interesting. Every parent would wish to have read this book before having children, me inclusively. However, no mom who didn’t know all I’ve read unconsciously enmeshed her son shouldn’t feel guilty and stop sleeping at night. Sons can keep mothers accountable for their past, although whatever mom did was unconscious, but overall it’s their responsibility to find their appropriate way in life and heal the wounds, if any left, through maturity and a happy life beside the woman they love. In our days, many mothers over the world enmesh their boys unconsciously.

[Tina]

change can only happen after we bring the unconscious to consciousness. every kid thinks the way they were raised as normal, unfortunately a lot of the time that's not the case.

it's not normal to feel immense guilt to care for your mother at the expense of your own individualism and identity.

it's not normal to be "friends" with your mother when adults should be having adult friends to discuss their adult life with.

it's not normal for the kid to learn to be attuned to the parent's needs instead of the other way around.

useful and compassionate

[Amanda]

An amazing read that really prioritizes thinking through your own circumstances, and an aim to make you aware of your past traumas. As a woman, I started reading this because I believed someone I love to be a MEM. I also found that I had similar actions and thought processes which has led me to really focus on dealing with my own enmeshment and healing. I'm very glad to have read this book!

[M Esther Fernandez Martin]

Very eye opening

I got this book because my therapist recommended it , and it has
been very helpful to understand my situation. However, I believe that most people also feel many of the situations in this book , as a nother is always
close to his son in nature. I recommend reading it if you are the husbandm but also the wife.

[Maria Roodnitsky]

This book gave me a lot of insight into enmeshed family dynamics. I found every case study uniquely interesting, and the section on “what should I do” from multiple points of view (the enmeshed, the loved one of the enmeshed, the enmesher, etc) to be useful guide on how to prevent harmful family systems. I recommend this one to anyone struggling to understand “clingy family.”

[Kristin Hoffman]

The first part of this book kind of read like a serialized TV show in which a rotating cast of characters encounter variants of a situation of mother-son enmeshment, who seek the council of the narrator. So it was both entertaining and informative. The second part has very clear step by step advice on how to identify and take action in these situations.

[viktoriia voronina]

Eye opening... truly

This book is a must read for LITERALLY EVERYONE! I recommend it especially to all women who are single and looking for a partner. Be aware of what you are getting yourself into by recognizing the red flags from the book.

[Sioux]

Everyone should have to read this before they turn 18/before they start dating.
Sadly there is only hope if the MEM is willing/able to acknowledge the problem and spend 2-3 years in therapy with a skilled clinician. The outlook for their partners seems dubious.

[Kel Caffekey]

Even though this is an old book I took a lot away from it regarding my brother and mother. This truly helped me to understand that need to always defend and be there no matter what and at what risk to others.

[Emma Pasteris]

This book was amazing. If you think your husband is enmeshed with his mother, please listen to this to better understand him and the process. It helped me realize that we chose each other for a reason as partners and I have some more digging/learning to do on myself.

[Solly Chedid]

Great book

Very insightful eye-opening a definite must read highly enjoyed reading this would recommend it to anyone with children to Men and women

[CJ]

One of the best books on the topic of enmeshment.

[Jara]

Insightful.