Sons of Borderline mothers

This post is from an email sent to me by a viewer. I have republished it with his permission.

The reason I asked him for permission to publish it here is because his experience with a Borderline mother is not the sort of thing most men will talk about. The psychosexual derangement, and the indirect incest, is common from Borderline mothers to their sons.

If you are a man who had a mother who behaved in this way, you are not as rare are you think you are. I say to you what I said to this kind viewer: it is her shame, not yours.

To my correspondent: thank you for writing this, and thank you for giving permission to publish it.

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First of all, thank you for producing Disaffected. Your show is great. I don't agree with everything you say; however, I appreciate it all. 

There were glimmers of realization beginning for me (regarding our situation in the West, culturally speaking) around 2012. However, I am embarrassed to admit that my transformation did not properly begin until 2015. I did not begin researching the conservative / rightist intellectual canon until a few years after that, roughly 2019. Reading Byung Chun-Han's work changed my life. I strongly suggest you read his work.

The frenzied, unmistakable "Cluster B" quality of progressive rhetoric—the progressive fashions which abruptly altered the personalities of otherwise pleasant people that I knew just before we graduated from college— is, like Josh, what clued me into what was really happening culturally. All of a sudden, romantically, I noticed that the color of my skin was important to the women I met and loved. Socially, I began experiencing challenges which previously had not beset me. Professionally, I see that I am further behind than I rightfully should be. No amount of compliance or virtue signaling seems to help. I guess that I am just too white; too straight.

I had a difficult childhood. Everywhere was unsafe. My neighborhood was terrifying because I belonged to the only white family around. I got into more fights than I can remember. Our door was kicked down more than once. I was bullied mercilessly at school. My sister hit me. My father was an alcoholic, in and out of prison. I frequently went to school with burst blood vessels in my eyes.

My mother likely has Borderline Personality Disorder. I don't have any good memories from my childhood. What few people know about that— they think I am being hyperbolic. I stopped talking about it long ago because too many people accused me of lying. They just see who I am today. They don't know just how bad it was. They don't know how hard I worked to become "normal" and "well-adjusted" as quickly as I could.

They saw me do well in school and succeed with women (until about 2015 anyway). They don't know that I used to frequently have nightmares; that I would wake up screaming; that I would walk and talk in my sleep; that I struggled with major depression; that I have nowhere to go during the holidays; that I used to physically shake my head whenever an awful memory arose; that I did not finally feel peace until I was twenty-nine years old. I am thirty-two years old now.

I am emailing you because the latest show of Disaffected triggered me. In particular, the scene with that person lounging in the nude around their children is what triggered me.

The primary reason for my "triggering" is, admittedly, small and petty. It's jealousy. How is it that someone like that has children? How is it that so many decent and kind people my age are chronically single? Why is it that so many decent, kind, and handsome people are subjected to Linkedin-like dating applications with harrowing rates of success, meanwhile that person has children? I am actually handsome. I am intelligent. I am funny. Yet, that person has children. I don't. I am beginning to doubt that I ever will. I am beginning to feel bitter. I am not just frustrated anymore. I am angry.

The secondary reason for my "triggering" is, well, quite different. It concerns something my mother would do every morning when I was growing up. Early in the morning, before I woke up, she would go into the restroom, wipe herself, and use that same rag to "clean" the sink and bathtub.

Everything had her scent. I kept a bottle of disinfectant in my bedroom. I would clean the restroom every morning before I touched anything. When I finally confronted her about it (read: when I was so broken that I just said whatever because I didn't care anymore), she broke down in tears. I just walked away and accepted that my father would have it out for me later. Which he did.

It isn't like me to email someone like this (as I hope you can imagine). Then again, I don't see many shows which articulate something so basic yet so powerful. I am sorry for oversharing; however, I think you might be one of the few people who appreciates it, or at least understands. You and Kevin are the sort of friends I wish I had; however, life has not afforded me the chance to meet people like you two. 

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Note from Josh: This type of experience is common for boys from homes with Borderline mothers and violent, personality-disordered fathers (or absent, or weak fathers, really). Perhaps not this exact act, but what I call indirect incest. Physical and sexual boundary-breaking with sons is common; even when it’s “only emotional” and not outright sexual molestation, it is deranging.

In my work so far with coaching clients, I’ve heard several even more extreme stories of Borderline mothers and their sons; your imagination is probably right.

Most men don’t know this, and society doesn’t know it, because men are more reserved and taciturn. Men are not naturally inclined to “share feelings” as much as women are. In addition, we are punished (by both men and women) when we do. Damned if you, damned if you don’t.

Correspondent, it’s not just you. When I was 9 or 10, my mother came out of the bathroom in a too-short towel to berate for something I said. I don’t remember what it was.

She walked into the bathroom, picked up the bar of soap she had just used all over her naked body, and swiped it down my tongue with an order to “swallow it.”