Mama, Are You Trying to Love Me?

Mama#2 burst into tears when Joshua, her five-year-old son, looked up at her with his large, sad brown eyes and asked if she were trying to love him.

Yes. Yes, of course she was. For some reason that bothered her no end, she always had so little feeling for this son. So what to answer?

She had no idea. Rather than answer Joshua, she took him in her arms and squeezed him tight.

This didn’t seem to reassure Joshua, who broke free from his mother’s arms and, with head down, ran into his bedroom howling with hurt.

Mama#2 knew she had to do something, but what? Where were her motherly feelings for Joshua? It wasn’t the same with her other two children, Caleb and Hailey. Just looking at either of them sent oodles of warm feelings rising up within her, lighting up her face and radiating outward as a tangible and unmistakable motherly love. She had no problem feeling for her husband, either. She constantly got proof from him that he felt satisfied with her deep and honest affection for him.

She knew Joshua wasn’t to blame. He was even more well-behaved than his younger siblings. Strange that he never doubted his father or his younger brother or sister loved him. She had tried forcing her own love, but Joshua saw right through her. Was something wrong with her? Even worse, was something wrong with Joshua? Was he going to grow up a woman-hater?

Mama#2 was not one to consult a therapist. So when Mama#2’s friend Mabel suggested she get her professional horoscope, which could possibly elucidate matters (makes no difference if you believe in the stars or not, honey), Mama#2 was desperate enough to consider it and aggrieved enough to finally schedule her energy chart and Joshua’s.

The results were at once shocking and revealing. The charts showed that she and Joshua, despite being mother and son, were incompatible.

“What that means,” explained the astrologer who was also a psychologist, “is that you have no intuitive understanding of, or feeling for, your son. It is as if you and he were born in different universes. That’s why much of your love doesn’t reach him.”

“How can that be,” Mama#2 asked. “We have the same signs. We’re both Virgo!”

The astrologer explained that it wasn’t a matter of sun signs. Determining incompatibility is a matter of comparing every aspect of the two horoscopes.

“It’s difficult for you to understand what Joshua is about. How he thinks, what he feels and why he feels as he does… What his dreams, hopes and especially his emotional needs are. In many ways, he is a stranger to you.”

“So what can I do?” Mama#2 was almost in tears.

“You need lots of time together with Joshua to get to know him on a deep level. Ask him questions about himself, about what he thinks about things, what he fears, what he loves, what he imagines. And take lots of time to share these same things about yourself generously with him. Because he finds you incompatible with him, too. He needs to understand you, too.”

“But love… Will I ever feel love for him, the way I do for my husband and my other children? Will he ever feel I love him without trying?”

The astrologer explained that if she did develop a strong relationship with Joshua and learn who he was and what he was about on a very deep level, she couldn’t help but love him freely and spontaneously. “When you feel cool toward him, admit to him it’s because you don’t understand what he feels or thinks or what he does, and invite him to share himself with you so that you can feel close to him. He will love it!”

©2012 Francine Juhasz, Ph.D.