Michael Gurian - The Invisible Presence: How a Mans Relationship with His Mother Affects All His Relationships with Women

This absorbing book explores, with great feeling, the positive and negative features of the mother-son bond and how they show up in adult relationships. Michael Gurian uses mythic stories and examples that help us understand how we men got to be the way we are. He also offers practices that empower us to become what we can be, fearless lovers. Women will also benefit from this book since it helps them see into our wounds and our potential to grow from them.

David Richo, PhD, author of How to Be an Adult in Relationships

A caring and compassionate journey. Michael Gurian teaches us to separate the threads of our mothers influence in our livesthe parts we love, as well as the parts we hateand to claim all the power contained in the motherson bond.

Warren Farrell, author of The Myth of Male Power

Sensitive, thoughtful, readable, and practical. Michael Gurians work has the potential to transform men and women from adversaries into respected partners and friends.

Carol S. Pearson, author of The Hero Within

Enlivened by examples and easy to read, this book makes a contribution to the literature on male personal development.

Library Journal

ABOUT THE BOOK

Whether hes conscious of it or not, a mans mother is the model for just about every relationship with a woman he has for the rest of his life. Sometimes its obvious (just ask his wife or girlfriend), sometimes its more subtle, but when you see it, it becomes crystal clear. For fifteen years, this book has helped men understand their mothers pervasive influence over the way they relate to womenboth the positive and negative aspects of it. But more than that, it has helped thousands of men break free of old relationship patterns. Gurian gives men a wealth of practical exercises and meditations they can use to recognize their mothers influence in relationships, and to establish a healthy and rewarding new basis for relationships that will benefit themselves and the women in their lives as well.

This new edition of the book formerly titled Mothers, Sons, and Lovers includes a new preface and study questions by the author.

MICHAEL GURIAN is a pioneer in the study and application of gender studies as they affect homes, schools, businesses, corporations, and public policy. Cofounder of the Gurian Institute, he teaches, lectures, and leads workshops in the United States and internationally. He is the author of more than twenty-five books.

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The Invisible Presence

How a Mans Relationship with His Mother Affects All His Relationships with Women

MICHAEL GURIAN

Shambhala

Boston & London

2012

Shambhala Publications, Inc.

Horticultural Hall

300 Massachusetts Avenue

Boston, Massachusetts 02115

www.shambhala.com

1994, 2010 by Michael Gurian

Cover art: Portrait of man, Shutterstock/photobank.ch.

Portrait of woman, Shutterstock/Varina and Jay Patel.

This is an updated edition of a book previously published as Mothers, Sons, and Lovers (Shambhala Publications, 1994).

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Gurian, Michael.

The invisible presence: how a mans relationship with his mother affects all his relationships with women / Michael Gurian.

p. cm.

This is an updated edition of a book previously published as Mothers, Sons and Lovers (Shambhala Publications, 1994)T.p. verso.

eISBN 978-0-8348-2246-7

ISBN 978-1-59030-807-3 (pbk.: alk. paper)

1. Mothers and sons. 2. MenPsychology. 3. Man-woman relationshipsPsychological aspects. I. Gurian, Michael. Mothers, sons, and lovers. II. Title

HQ759.G87 2010

155.332dc22

2010009752

The section constitutes a continuation of the copyright page.

Michael Gurian and his colleagues at The Gurian Institute offer keynotes, consultation, and training in education, family issues, community development, and corporate leadership. To learn more, please visit www.gurianinstitute.com or www.michaelgurian.com.

For my mother and father,

Julia and Jay P Gurian,

and the Herzog family

Since the original publication of this book (in 1994, under the title Mothers, Sons, and Lovers), I have received many powerful letters and e-mails from both women and men. Many have been from women who say, Help me understand my relationship with my husband better, or Help me do best by my growing son. The study guides at the end of this new edition are meant to provide women with help in their interactions with boys and men.

When I wrote the book, I set out to provide a course of healing and growth for men, as well as a blueprint for mothers raising sons and for women in relationship with men. As a therapist and a student of attachment psychology and human brain development, as well as a practitioner of Jungian archetypal theory, I hoped to write a book that would unveil the mother-son relationship with clarity and power. In that relationship I believedand still believewe each find individually, and all find collectively, the life-blood for our civilization.

The title of this new edition is no accident. It is the result of reflection on reader responses, and on my continuing clinical work. I am even more convinced than before that the initial female relationship in a boys life remains an invisible presence throughout his whole life as a man. The power of this invisible presence, its beauty, and its constancy grow within the complex webs of love between male and female, webs that are meant to be both unyielding and flexible. By this I mean that some of the initial bonds established between a boy and his mother must stay strong throughout both their lives; simultaneously, many others must be dissolved in order for a man to become independent of his mothers psychological will, and thus take a step toward becoming the loving, wise, successful man his partner and children need him to be.

The invisible presence can remain active between lovers later in a mans life. In the time we call adulthoodwhen we have all ostensibly finished with childhood wayswe can still be confused by our childhood relationships. As we seek attachments with lovers, we want attachments that are immensely strong, yet do not overwhelm the pull in each person toward independent psychological strength. Many times, however, we may sense that the invisible webs woven by us and our partners were crafted long ago, long before we even came together, and we sense this from inside a cage that does not allow us our freedom to fully and gracefully love one another.

For a man, graceful love is immensely difficult, and nearly impossible, if his relationship with his mother is not fully understood. Once understood, it can become as mysteriously beautiful and practically useful to him in adulthood as it was in boyhood.

For a woman, love of a man and love by a man can become difficult, and can seem, after the initial years of pheromones and hormones and other blisses have diminished, like a trap, a cage, even a depressing nightmare. If a womans relationship with her father and a mans relationship with his mother are not fully understood, a long-term relationship or marriage may simply not happen.