Growing up… and distant!

My 18-year-old son started studying at university this year. Over the years our relationship has become more and more  distant. I am beginning to realise that while we are deeply connected in one way, we are not really close or even friends at the moment. Every talk turns into a mild argument. Do you think it is time for him to move out or is there another way to solve this situation?
                               
I can feel how painful this is for you. You love your son probably more than most anyone in the world. It hurts when the love we feel for someone cannot be shared.

Your son is not really able to explore and adjust his own values and stand behind them if he keeps enmeshed in your life and value system. Self-esteem through opposition is not heartful and healthy. I’m sure this is not news to you. It is part of the mother’s contract. Kids will move away one day but it is sad when it happens with a feeling of estrangement.
We live in such a crazy world with so many lonely people. Do you know many adults who are not emotionally distanced and withdrawn from their parents? Why is that? So many mothers and fathers put so much energy and love into raising their children, make so many sacrifices only to end up being their adult kid’s ‘worst enemy’. Where do we parents go wrong?
It has taken me much effort and heart-wrenching to heal my own emotional blocks enough to realise that loving and treasuring my two sons was not sufficient. In order to feel safe enough to be authentically themselves, safe enough to not need to create an inner world to which no-one has access, they would have needed more of me than I was aware of. If they could have felt me not just understanding, but literally feeling what they were feeling while they were feeling it, their inner world would have been validated in a vital way and thus it would not have been necessary to hide it. They would not feel separate from any part of themselves or their emotional expression if they had had a mother who was open and tender enough in herself to feel what they were feeling while they were feeling it. Getting that kind of attention they could have remained authentically themselves in a deep and natural way. They would have felt fully validated in their goodness and uniqueness.

I now know that I was too   preoccupied with hiding my own emotional inner world, which made me less sensitive to theirs. I was not emotionally present enough to fully and vitally meet them in a real and nurturing way. My intentions were good but my own access to myself was too dull to really capture and sense their purity and the natural love they came into this world with. I had become used to relating to life and loving from a slightly removed spot, trying to understand rather than feel, keeping my emotional richness and sensitivity hidden from everyone, to a large degree even from myself.
My sons knew that I loved them, but they could not experience me feeling their feelings, their world, and their way of perceiving reality. They could feel me understand and support them, but not delicately and sensitively, literally, feel their feelings. So as most of us have done from an early age on, they too, started to shape themselves away from their authentic selves. Even though I loved who they were, they subtly had to keep adjusting their real emotional self to match what they saw me wanting them to be. In that way they were unconsciously taking care of me at the cost of their own aliveness.

Had their mum been in a natural, easy way available to her own emotional aliveness, who did not need love from her children because she was so full in her own being, had she been able to pick up and feel the fine emotional nuances in her sons and thus verified their inner worlds for them, not just mentally and energetically, but emotionally, they would not have had to create a secret inner world and present a pale version of themselves to everyone.

The fact that none of us have felt our parents feel what we were feeling while we were feeling it on a continuous basis, is in my opinion one of the main factors why our relationship with our parents and the world at large is somewhat distant.

Your son’s distance is the direct result of him having a hidden inner world, which is unsafe to show, not only to you but to everyone. It is healthy for him to challenge your belief systems and values. He needs to do this if he wants to define his own. Wouldn’t it be lovely though, if he could do that and stay emotionally connected with a mum that is neither invasive nor aloof; a mum who has just the right distance and warmly feels how perfect he is and how much he is learning; a mum who is emotionally healthy and home in herself, who does not need love from him to feel good about herself.

What to do now? You have to find a way to heal your emotional blocks. The first step is to be honest about how you needed love from your son because you felt a lack of love in yourself. This is a subtle and uncomfortable look into your own emotional landscape. With the second step you might need the support of a professional who has done emotional healing work. The best method I have come across, and I work with many facilitants, is EBE (emotional body enlightenment). EBE’s criteria for emotional health is far higher than what is commonly called healthy. It sees emotional healing as part of the spiritual journey to awaken our full potential.

It is so much easier to see ourselves as good parents rather than looking at where and how we have failed. Unfortunately we do need to acknowledge and feel our failures, and heal our own emotional body, so we can create healthy boundaries for ourselves and become emotionally vibrant and alive. Only then will we not need our children, but instead be the truly supportive parents they so deserve.