The Wound He Never Talked About (Follow Up to “Cheaters”)

Last week we talked about the types of cheaters.

But a few of you came back with the same question that I have to everything in life which is, “Okay, but why?” Why are they that way? Like what actually happened to create a person with that little impulse control, that little regard for someone else's feelings, that little ability to just... choose right?

That's the question I researched to dive into because I think it matters. Not so we can excuse the behavior, but so we can stop making it about us, and more importantly, spot and immediately avoid these people.

Again with the Science…

Last time I mentioned that the prefrontal cortex is basically your brain's decision-maker. Your pause button. The part of you that says wait, think about this first before you blow up a relationship, blow up your finances, blow up your life.

And I mentioned that some people's prefrontal cortex is underactive, which is why impulse control is genuinely harder for them.

What I didn't get into was why.

Let’s be clear, no one is born with a broken prefrontal cortex. Trauma causes the prefrontal cortex to become underactive. When the brain is exposed to chronic stress, it releases cortisol, a hormone that prepares the body to fight or run. High levels of cortisol impair the ability to think rationally or logically. And when the body is always operating like it's in danger, cortisol stays elevated constantly, affecting concentration, emotional regulation, and decision-making.

Exposure to uncontrollable stress can actually shrink or negatively impact your prefrontal cortex.  Stress literally damages your brain! That’s neither here nor there, just worth reiterating.

Yes, psychiatric and neurological disorders affect the prefrontal cortex, there are even triggers that can compromise it after you’re born, but I’m not talking about that. If you’ve read any of my blogs you already know where I’m going…

If your brain wasn’t born like that, then the answer is that it got shaped. By an environment. By what happened, or didn't happen, in childhood. Adults with a history of childhood trauma display increased activity in the amygdala, the brain's fear center, and decreased activity in the prefrontal cortex, which is responsible for impulse control and decision-making.

So the brain that's impulsive. The brain that cheats without thinking about the consequences. The brain that feels something and immediately acts on it without weighing what it costs somebody else. That brain, in a lot of cases, was built in a childhood that never felt safe.

Now Let's Talk About the Familiar Wound

This is not science, simply my observation, experiences, and the observations and experiences of friends and those around me that shared…I apologize in advance to whom this truth my offend.

Some of the most emotionally unavailable men, the ones who love you and leave, who cheat without remorse, who treat you beautifully at first and then seem to punish you for no reason, all have something in common.

They didn't grow up with their mother. Or their mother was there physically and absent in every way or many other ways.

And I don't say that to place blame on women or mothers, because a lot of those mothers were fighting their own battles, their own trauma, their own survival. I say it because the science actually supports what a lot of women feel or notice, but couldn't articulate or identify the pattern.

The remaining ideologies that you read in this section is not my opinion, it is from an article from counseling professionals. However, once you read it, I don’t think you’ll disagree or question it.

From infancy, every child needs the tender touch, attention, comfort, nurture, and love of a mother. If the infant's mother is largely emotionally absent, the child does not learn to internalize a healthy representation of attachment. And later in life, that plays out in relationships with other people.

The consequences in adult relationships for men can be emotional detachment, emotional dependency, or a repetitive pattern that alternates between the two. Women get pursued as an idealized mother figure who can save from all the pain of being isolated and alone. Or they get avoided and devalued the moment they prove to be imperfect, because in his subconscious, that's what women do, they leave.

Read that again. He's not cheating on you. He's reenacting a wound that had nothing to do with you before you ever met him. A wound that you can never heal.

The Men Who Treat Their Mothers Like Queens and Women Like Options

This one is specific, but some of you know exactly what I'm talking about.

There's a type of man who will speak of his mother with reverence. Put her on a pedestal. Call her a queen. And then turn around and treat the woman he's in a relationship with like the queen’s jester or peasant. Like she's temporary. Like she doesn't quite deserve the full version of him.

That's not a contradiction. That's a symptom.

The way we are spoken to as children by the most important adults in our lives becomes how we speak to ourselves and how we perceive threats versus trust from new people. There is a pattern consistent with men who had a difficult, strained, or absent relationship with their mother: lying becomes a tool to protect yourself, to hide emotions, to survive in any situation.

He worships his mother because he never got what he needed from her, and he's still reaching. But you, the woman he's actually with, you're the one he gets to be real with. And real, for him, looks like pushing away, testing, disappearing, cheating, staying halfway in.

Mommy issues can show up in men anywhere from teenage years well into adulthood and can alter the course of how they pursue their lives and their relationships. The issue is that most of them don't know that's what this is. They think they're fine. They think you're the problem.

And Then There Are Men Who Grew Up Without Their Fathers

I don't want to leave this out because it's equally real.

Approximately one in four children across the U.S. are raised in households without a father. The father wound can also be based on intergenerational trauma, consistent and persistent years of traumatic challenges within families across generations. Mother and father wounds are often passed down from one generation to the next if not treated, and the cycle is not stopped.

A man who didn't have a father didn't have a model for how to be a man in a relationship. He didn't see what it looks like to stay. To choose someone consistently. To work through conflict without leaving. To love without conditions. Nobody showed him. And nobody told him that was a gap, because we don't talk about this. We just send him out into the world and then wonder why he keeps failing at intimacy.

Father wounds are almost universal for certain men due to absent or unavailable father figures. These male children often have no appropriate male role models to help them develop responsible and loving adult behavior. Many fathers who were absent were also carrying unhealed wounds themselves, and the cycle continues.

It's generational. It's not an excuse. But it is an explanation. Obviously, not an explanation that fits everyone.  I myself have a father who is a very devoted and loving father and husband to my mom, but he did not grow up with his father.  He revered the women in his life, and took what they gave him to be the father that he is, without the male role model.  This is not the case for A LOT of men.

So What Does This Mean for You?

Here's what I want you to walk away with.

When a man cannot love you well, it is almost never actually about you. It is about what he learned or didn't learn about love before you ever existed in his world. Childhood is not just a phase of life. How our needs were met or not met in childhood affects how we relate to ourselves and others in relationships, friendships, parenting, and developing self-esteem. It is the foundation on which every relationship he will ever have was built.

And here's the part that might sting a little: you cannot love someone out of a wound they don't know they have. You can be patient. You can be understanding. You can be the most emotionally available, consistent, loving partner that has ever existed in his life. And if he has not done the work to recognize and address what happened to him, your love will pour right through him like water through a cracked cup.

That is not a reflection of your worth. That is the nature of unhealed wounds.

If you are a man reading this, and I hope some of you are, this is not an indictment. This is an invitation. The fact that your childhood shaped your brain and your attachment patterns is not your fault. But staying unaware of it, and continuing to let the women in your life absorb consequences from wounds they didn't cause, that part is yours to carry. I hope it’s heavy.

The work is hard, but therapy is real (therapy, not your friends or a revered family member).  Healing is possible.

Please do the work that no one did for you, for your current/future partner and your current/future child(ren), but more importantly for you.