One of my clients, Bonnie, found her emotional freedom by daring to look at this aspect of her mother. Bonnie was a thirty-year-old woman who had struggled to come to grips with the painful truth about her childhood Her mother had been a sexually repressed, bitter woman who had been dealt a hard life of oppression by an angry, alcoholic husband. Even though Bonnie was her father’s favorite, she had always identified her father as the bad guy, because his rages and lack of responsibility made him such an easy target Her mother fanned this belief, encouraging Bonnie’s disdain and fear of her father. To all appearances, her mother was a selfless victim who stayed with her husband for the sake of the children.
As Bonnie grew up and started to date, a self-defeating pattern began to emerge. Bonnie was a bright and very pretty girl whose good looks and confident flirtatiousness brought her the attentions of Ted, a decent and highly attractive young man. Their mutual attraction was intense, and Ted and Bonnie dated seriously through her last year of high school. Bonnie even found a climate of safety and acceptance within his close, devoted family that she had never felt at home. But as Ted became more serious and seemed about to propose, Bonnie suddenly panicked She cooled off toward him, and soon started making excuses for not returning his calls. No amount of Ted’s earnest persuasion could move her, and before long the happy relationship had collapsed.
After graduation, Bonnie continued to work and live at home until she met her husband Tom, a man who made her feel safe but who held little attraction for her. Accepting his marriage proposal was easy. Tom was neither especially handsome nor sexually exciting, and Bonnie settled into married life with relief. After a few years, Bonnie was no longer placated by the satisfactions of her role as wife and mother of their two children. Without ever crossing the line into an affair, Bonnie began to form crushes on attractive men with whom she had contact at work. Once again, if the desirable man responded to her; Bonnie became extremely anxious and withdrew. By this time Bonnie had entered therapy to deal with her feelings of inexplicable depression. She was willing to be extremely honest with herself and soon she was able to identify what she saw in her mind in that split second when a handsome man began to respond to her. “I see my mother,” she confessed “She’s furious and is going to attack me. Her face is ugly with hate, as if she wants to kill me.”
Bonnie shocked herself when she came out with this image. She had no idea where it came from, but it led her to explore the issue of her mother’s envy and anger. Bonnie had always remembered her father’s dramatic temper, but now she began to recover memories of her mother’s fits of anger, and her bitterness over Bonnie’s special place in her father’s heart Bonnie’s insight had touched the icy core of her mother’s envy.
Rapunzel’s Dilemma
Bonnie hit upon the fairy tale of Rapunzel as a vivid metaphor for her childhood relationship with her mother. In this story, the wicked witch isolates the golden-haired Rapunzel in a lonely tower, possessing her youth and beauty as only a jailer can da When the witch comes with food, Rapunzel must let down her cascade of hair to allow the witch to climb up with her basket. The witch poses as caretaker and protector, but her real purpose is to satisfy her sadistic envy by keeping Rapunzel away from grown-up happiness with a man. The witch uses Rapunzel’s hair, her “crowning glory” symbolic of her greatest gifts, in a coarse, unappreciative way, as a ladder for her own ascent.
As long as there is no prince to tempt Rapunzel, she and the witch keep up their uneasy arrangement. But when the prince does come, tricking Rapunzel into letting down her hair for him, he intrudes into the forbidden domain of mother domination and tempts her to freedom. Here was the dilemma of both Rapunzel and Bonnie: pleasure and fulfillment are standing before them—but the witch is on the way. Sure enough, when the witch sees the prince climbing down the priceless hair after a visit, she is enraged. Once inside the tower, the witch confronts Rapunzel and in one horrifying swipe of the shears, cuts off Rapunzel’s hair, triumphant in the fury of her revenge.
This is the prototype metaphor of parental envy. Rather than giving the child permission and encouragement to enter the world, the envious, sadistic parent destroys the child’s chance at happiness, even if it requires the psychological mutilation of the child’s greatest gifts. The point is that the envious parent will do whatever it takes psychologically to hang on to control of the child; for to see the child go off and experience true fulfillment would be maddeningly painful.
Bonnie’s mother prevented the necessary mother-daughter separation by poisoning Bonnie’s mind about the motives of men. She tried to possess Bonnie’s beauty herself taking vicarious pleasure in Bonnie’s pretty vivaciousness but making the girl feel guilty for using it with men. Bonnie was deeply confused about her mother’s mixed messages to be sexy and pretty, but at all costs not to give in to her sexual feelings. As a result, Bonnie was free to flirt and attract (under her mother’s watchful eye), but not to have a real relationship that would psychologically take her away from home for good. Caught in this bind, Bonnie struggled to find some happiness, but not to be so happy that her mother’s life would be revealed for what it was: bitter, miserable, and squandered. By marrying a man who did not excite her, Bonnie stayed her mother’s little girl and made sure she was not any happier than her mother or anyone else.
Bonnie became conscious of this terrible childhood dilemma only after her husband Tom died, and she was once again free at a relatively early age to explore what she wanted out of life. She met a “prince,” one of those men who do not mind pursuing and awakening reluctant ladies. Finally, Bonnie was able to complete the hero’s task of braving her mother’s anger and fear of men in order to enjoy life on her own. She cut the negative ties to her childhood, and proceeded to enjoy a love affair that allowed her to complete every unfinished crush she had ever had—without her mother’s permission.
Breaking the Rules
Permission-seekers are never good rule-breakers. That’s why they need to make a point of breaking rules once in awhile. Bonnie did this by breaking out of a stifling subordination to her mother in order to really live. She broke their secret rule that Bonnie could leave home and marry only if she agreed to never have a more fulfilling life than her mother did.
Most of us have these kinds of old, unexamined “rules” that govern our choices in adulthood. Some of them may be helpful, enabling us to expedite our daily decision. Many other “rules” are just plain harmful, such as when a person unhappily stays in a family-owned business because his parents want him to, a couple pressures themselves into having a family because their parents want grandchildren, or a daughter puts off a career change because her parents are proud of her current status. There are many unspoken rules that may need to be broken in order to release us to our own adulthood.
The key is not in the rule-breaking, but in the creativity and productivity that are released when we do things differently than we have always done them. Joanne, another client of mine, was an example of a woman who followed all the rules, putting up with her husband’s drinking and waiting around for him to come home whenever he pleased. She always prided herself on being a “good wife,” but finally her deep frustration had resulted in depression, which caused her to stay close to home and stop driving her car. She also had a ballooning weight problem. In therapy, Joanne worked on identifying what she really wanted to do, instead of waiting around to see what she had time for after her errant husband got home to help with the children. One day she decided to try out her new behavior. She informed him he had to be home early because she was going out shopping. Laying aside her worries about supper and bedtime, she handed the kids over to him and cruised the store aisles until closing time that night, blissfully savoring her freedom. It was around that time in her life that she began to drive again, something she had given up when her depression started. A tiny broken “rule” about what good mothers should do in the evening opened up a sense of freedom and determination that was just what Joanne needed to begin seeing herself as a separate person with the right to pursue her own goals.
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