Do You Feel Like You Have To Choose Between Mom & Your Partner?

It’s a terrible choice to have to make.

When you have to choose between your partner and Mom — it can be gut-wrenching. Your childhood self is programmed to obey and respond to mom. You feel guilty if you don’t choose mom.

On the other hand, you know you need to choose your partner to establish trust and closeness.

When mom puts herself first and doesn’t let go, this makes it hard for you to connect with and invest in your partner.

Here is how this breaks down-

When a daughter leaves home and makes a healthy separation from mom and dad ideally she transfers her primary emotional connection from her parents to her partner.

This is healthy and necessary.

Mom’s task is to let go and her daughter’s task is to grow up and leave.

Each has her own separate emotional task.

Leaving and being left is a necessary developmental task for both adult daughter and her mother.

If this doesn’t happen the adult daughter will not be free to invest fully in her relationship with her adult partner.

This transfer is vital to the health of the newly developed partnership.

It is mom’s job to let go and accept her daughter’s leaving. She needs to connect and get her emotional needs met by her peers.

It is a daughter’s job to enter into an equal relationship with a peer and leave behind her role as a child.

This is the way of healthy development.

Each task has its own challenges and responsibilities.

Leaving home and making a home of your own is the healthy trajectory, one paved with both loss and gratification.