When love is perceived as excessive or based on sacrifice, some children experience a sense of debt that they feel unable to repay. To escape the weight of this guilt, they minimize what they received: “It wasn’t much,” or “It was simply their responsibility.”
In doing so, love shifts from a freely given bond to an obligation. And when love becomes a constraint, rejection can persist, not from a lack of affection, but under the pressure of a feeling of indebtedness.
6. A Self-Centered Culture:
Modern society places great importance on immediacy, personal fulfillment, and individual comfort. In this context, relationships that require patience, perseverance, and long-term commitment are often relegated to the background.
Maternal love—steady, predictable, and discreet—struggles to compete in a world that values novelty and constant stimulation. This doesn’t mean it’s worthless, but simply that it’s often overlooked.
7. The unexpressed injuries were transmitted forward.
An elderly woman is embraced by her adult son in the garden.
Many mothers were once daughters who felt invisible, devalued, or emotionally neglected. Having become mothers, they may unconsciously try to heal these past wounds by giving more than is reasonable, hoping to receive from their children what they themselves never had.
When a woman’s identity becomes entirely linked to motherhood
