Usually Adult Males

“Usually adult males who are unable to make 

emotional connections with the women they 

choose to be intimate with are frozen in time, 

unable to allow themselves to love for fear that 

the loved one will abandon them. If the first 

woman they passionately loved, the mother, 

was not true to her bond of love, then how can 

they trust that their partner will be true to love. 

Often in their adult relationships these men act out

again and again to test their partner's love. 

While the rejected adolescent boy imagines that 

he can no longer receive his mother's love because 

he is not worthy, as a grown man he may act out 

in ways that are unworthy and yet demand 

of the woman in his life that she offer him unconditional love. 

This testing does not heal the wound of the past, 

it merely reenacts it, for ultimately the woman will

become weary of being tested and end the relationship

, thus reenacting the abandonment. 

This drama confirms for many men that they 

cannot put their trust in love. 

They decide that it is better to put their 

faith in being powerful, in being dominant.” 

~ bell hooks