A man who has not undergone separation or separation from his mother can feel completely different: he can be an ostentatious alpha male, or an overly soft, even infantile man-boy. What unites them is not the external, but the internal: such a man is very dependent on the women in his life, although this manifests itself in different ways. Thus, an alpha male can look super confident, he can have a lot of women to show off: like Don Jouan. But at the heart of his behavior is uncertainty and fear of being alone, on the one hand, and fear of being absorbed by a woman in a close, healthy relationship. It was the same in childhood: his mother was either unavailable, forcing him to cope with his experiences in infancy on his own, or she gave a lot, too much love and overprotection, which caused the child to fear being merged with his mother, i.e. to be symbolically swallowed. In adulthood, the fear of being in a close relationship remains, as does dependence on female love. Then the psyche finds a way out: you need to quickly get close to different women through sex, receive this surrogate of love, but change them as soon as attachment appears, so as to never be in a truly emotionally close relationship. The other pole, the infantile man, is also dependent on the woman, but he is constantly looking for maternal qualities in any partner: care, complaisance, everyday comfort are not even discussed. He lives with the same feeling as a boy who is lost in a shopping center, standing and frightenedly shouting “mom” with wet eyes. Such a man does not know much about his own and other people’s boundaries and is ready to bend and bend, just not to lose the object of affection. What unites such men is the search for a pattern of relationships that existed with their mother. They have a great unconscious fear of being left not so much without love as without the very object of love or lust. He does not understand his own and other people’s boundaries and can be either soft and compliant or aggressively abusive, subjugating. Such a person is very dependent on other people’s opinions: it is important for the first type to stand out among others, to create an image so that no one suspects how much he cares. in fact, it’s scary to be yourself, without beautiful cars and other pseudo-attributes of brutality. Another type will constantly doubt themselves, sit “in a hole” and try not to leave the comfort zone they created with great difficulty. I don’t want you to perceive metaphors as criticism or condemnation, but these are the words that such men often use to describe their condition when they have the opportunity to talk about it. Women often come in such posts, talking about how “yes” Yes, I had a man like that, it’s a nightmare.” But there is always a question - if a man has found in you the image not of a woman, but of a mother, then this is about a mutual unconscious desire for this role model. It is extremely difficult for both parties to admit this, but this is exactly where getting rid of roles unlived in childhood begins. For a man, it is the role of a boy dependent on his mother. From a woman - the role of a caring wife, not a wife, but a mother, ready to sacrifice herself for the sake of maintaining exactly the same image of a happy relationship as a man. However, recognizing the problem for each of the partners will, in any case, be useful, as well as understanding and which part of the psyche of each of them is immature. And this discovery is always a good reason to seek psychotherapy in order to overcome not only the negativity in relationships, but also to work through the topic of separation, which is directly related to anxiety, self-esteem and physicality.