My Boyfriend Chooses His Mother Over Me

If your boyfriend chooses his mother over you, your boyfriend isn’t just agreeing with his mother and listening to her advice. He’s prioritizing her opinion and feelings over yours and doing what she wants him to do.

Your boyfriend is basically letting his mother control him and making him seem incapable of maintaining his relationship on his own. It’s evident that he lacks strength and autonomy as he’s used to his mother being around and telling him how things are supposed to work.

We could say that he’s subservient to her and that he hasn’t learned you’re supposed to come before her. Despite committing to you and telling you he loves you, the guy is showing you that you’re not his number one person and that things will stay that way for as long as his mother is around.

It’s not unusual for men to listen to their mothers as many sons and mothers have strong bonds and get along well. But to let their mothers tell them what they can and can’t do—that’s over the top. Relationships are hard enough with just two people.

They don’t need a third person meddling with their business and giving them conflicting advice.

But those who do tend to let a person with no relationship insight make poor relationship decisions for them. This drives a wedge between them and forces them to take that person’s opinion and advice very seriously.

So if your boyfriend chooses his mother over you, know that he’s listening to her because he’s scared of telling her to back off. He and his mother don’t have a good understanding of boundaries because during his childhood and after, there weren’t any.

His mother was in charge of things— and sadly still is. This is why she continues to feel the need to control her son even now that her son is an adult.

Deep inside, she probably knows she’s being controlling and overprotective.

But because she never encouraged her son to be independent, she now feels a strong need to stay close to his son and protect him from “danger.”

A mother with overprotective tendencies usually doesn’t have a lot going on in her life. She often feels lonely and doesn’t have productive things to engage in, so she focuses on people in her family who can give her a sense of importance.

In your case, she’s focusing on your boyfriend. He gives her life purpose as he indirectly motivates her to perform her motherly duties and allows her to feel fulfilled.

Therefore, a mom who meddles with her son’s relationship usually:

• doesn’t have a relationship of her own
• lacks friends
• feels lonely or jealous
• doesn’t understand relationship boundaries
• doesn’t know what to do with herself

She should be focusing on her own life/relationship, but because some important part of her life is lacking, she’s trying to take charge of her son’s. She doesn’t realize that she’s trying to fill the hole in her life and feel needed and important.

Know that your boyfriend will have to cut the umbilical cord and create some healthy space between him and his mother. That’s the only way he’ll regain some independence and demonstrate that he respects you and prioritizes you.

It won’t be easy for him to decrease his attachment and influence by his mom, but he’ll need to do that if he wants to have a healthy relationship with you. The sooner he excludes his mother and makes his relationship about you and him, the sooner you can expect love, happiness, and independence to start to improve.

This post is for women whose boyfriend chooses his mother over them. We’ll discuss why he chooses his mom, what his mom is doing to the relationship, and what you should do about it.

Why is your boyfriend choosing his mother over you?

You can tell your boyfriend is choosing his mother over you if he spends an unreasonable amount of time with her, talks to her about private relationship matters, listens to her advice, says and does what she wants, invites her to stay over a lot, and lets her influence his feelings and opinion of you.

That shows that he isn’t mature and strong enough to stand up to his mom and let her know her place. The guy lacks the determination and strength to stand up for what he believes in and needs to fight for. That’s why he lets his mother do what she wants and allows her to get inside his head and affect his relationship.

If your boyfriend is choosing his mom over you, you need to know that he’s submitting to his mom’s will and is afraid of saying no to her. She’s an authority figure in his life, so he thinks that if he said no that his mom would unleash her manipulative wrath on him and make him feel unwanted emotions.

She’d do something he isn’t prepared for and hurt him badly.

And hurt, he’d rather not get. He’d been wired to avoid pain and drama by yielding to superior forces. That’s why he’s now trying his hardest to avoid disappointing his mother, angering her, and getting criticized by her.

Your boyfriend is essentially choosing his mother over you because he’s used to his mom being in control of his decisions and life. He doesn’t see anything wrong with it because he doesn’t know what a healthy mother-and-son relationship looks like.

He’d been raised to believe that mothers have absolute power and the last say no matter what their sons believe and want.

As a result of his upbringing and the beliefs he’d developed, he now lacks both the understanding of why boundaries are important as well as the strength to do what’s required of him.

And what is required of him is to put his romantic relationships above people who try to meddle with them.

Don’t get me wrong. Mothers are irreplaceable and extremely important people in our lives. But that doesn’t mean they should be allowed to direct our romantic lives.

Romantic relationships are ours alone to maintain. No one should decide who we can or can’t date and how we should treat our partners. Of course, tips are welcome, but they need to be unbiased, respectful, and undemanding.

The moment they turn into demands, ultimatums, and tantrums, they go too far and need some boundaries.

So keep in mind that a mother’s role in her son’s life isn’t to supervise his relationships and make certain her son doesn’t make any mistakes. Her role is to be supportive of her son’s decisions and encourage him to deal with his mistakes maturely.

Everyone makes mistakes, including me and you. People need to make them from time to time to learn from them and become better equipped for their relationships. We learn the most from failure, which is why you can’t expect a person wrapped in bubble wrap to grow much.

Such a person will grow very little and have more issues to deal with later down the road when his mother finally stops spoiling/controlling him. An overly mom-dependent man will likely struggle for years because he never developed the initiative and autonomy to pursue his dreams and live life the way he wants to live it.

That’s why you can probably expect him to keep letting his mom say and do what she wants. In doing so, he’ll placate her anger and make her feel important for being listened to.

With that said, here’s why your boyfriend is choosing his mother over you.

How to make your boyfriend choose you over his family?

First of all, you can’t make your boyfriend do what he doesn’t want to do. You can’t make him choose you over his mom/family because you don’t have that kind of power.

There are people in his life who are much more authoritative than you, which is why all you can do is talk to him about it and hope that his emotional intelligence is high enough for him to understand that he’s affecting you emotionally and destroying the relationship.

When you’re prepared to open up to him about it, tell him you’re not trying to cause problems but that you want to talk about something very, very important to you. Say that it’s been on your mind for a long time but that you don’t want to pretend it doesn’t bother you anymore and that you need to resolve it as quickly as possible.

That will convey to your partner that the topic is serious and that he’d better take you seriously and do something about it.

What you don’t want though is to come on too strong. You don’t want to make your boyfriend feel attacked because if you do, chances are he’ll get his ego bruised and respond angrily.

And that won’t solve any problems. It will create new ones.

So start the conversation respectfully (not meekly). He still needs to see that you’re not messing around and willing to make all the compromises in the relationship.

Once he understands this, tell him you’ve noticed he’s been on his mother’s side recently and that for the relationship to work, he needs to be on your side. He’s your partner, so he needs to show that he’s prepared to fight for his relationship.

Fighting includes:

• listening to your wants and needs
• caring about your emotions
• setting healthy mother-son boundaries
• getting out of his comfort zone and making decisions without his mother

Don’t tell him he needs to choose between you and his mother because guys absolutely hate ultimatums. Ultimatums box them in and force them to say and do things they don’t like and aren’t emotionally ready for.

An ultimatum should be the very last thing you give to solve a relationship crisis.

Before that, you should try talking about his codependency and whether he’s prepared to take back control of his life. If he is prepared, you can give him some healthy suggestions on how to make you a priority and his mother someone he speaks with (not over-relies on).

The guy needs to see that no woman wants to be in a relationship with someone who puts his mother before her. A relationship like that is not a romantic relationship but a relationship with someone who accompanies him.

Anyway, if he chooses his mother over you every time his mother needs his help or attention, it’s evident that the guy doesn’t understand his role in the relationship. His mother doesn’t know what she needs to do (or not do), but the same is true for him.

Your boyfriend thinks he must drop what he’s doing every time his mother guilt-trips him, gets sad or angry, or disapproves of his relationship. This isn’t just unhealthy but also damaging to the relationship.

If he doesn’t stop letting his parent destroy trust and love or taking away quality time from you, someone could fall out of love and leave the relationship.

Parents can have a very influential effect on the relationship. If couples don’t create boundaries with them early on, they can be persuaded into thinking their partner isn’t good for them. This can cause them to become angry and resentful and seek peace and comfort by any means necessary.

My advice is to talk about it with the guy first and try to resolve things. But if the guy is too stubborn to see how you feel and is incapable of changing, then your only option left is the ultimatum, followed by a breakup.

You shouldn’t stay with someone whose life revolves around his mother.

What if he breaks up with you because of his mother?

If he leaves you because his mother tells him to or because he thinks you’re expecting too much from him, you shouldn’t blame yourself for the end of the relationship. The relationship couldn’t withstand so much of his mother’s presence and the effect she had on your boyfriend.

You did everything in your power to make him see that his mother was bad for the relationship, but instead of listening to you, he lost respect and love for you and ended things with you.

You can’t do anything about a guy so closed-minded and exploitable. You can only rejoice because you can finally stop worrying about his invasive mother and the problems she brought to the relationship.

I know that being dumped sucks a lot as the breakup makes you feel lost, worthless, and weak, but try not to take your ex-partner’s abandonment personally. As difficult as it may be, try to remind yourself that your ex left because he wasn’t willing to understand you and compromise.

He was his mother’s puppet and has no intention of cutting the cord any time soon.

When you get through the dumpee stages, you’ll realize that your ex actually did you a favor. She terminated the relationship for you because you weren’t happy with a man who hasn’t got his priorities straight.

Does your boyfriend choose his mother over you? What does he do that makes you feel insignificant? Share your story below.

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Zan

My name is Zan and I’m the founder of Magnet of Success. I enjoy writing realistic relationship and breakup articles and helping readers heal and grow. With more than 5 years of experience in the self-improvement, relationship, and breakup sphere, my goal is to provide advice that fosters positivity and success and avoids preventable mistakes and pain. Buy me a coffee, learn more about me, or get in touch today.