Experience dating a guy with "mommy issues"?

[melllllx]

My boyfriend has an absolute monster of a mother. She's neglected him most of his life, blames him for everything, makes empty promises, doesn't believe he has depression and that he's lazy... Calls him a piece of shit, doesn't acknowledge his birthday or anything he does for her, always lets him down. And then randomly out of the blue one day she'll call him asking how he is and tell him she loves him. It's heartbreaking because he knows and expects to be let down but he still has hope that "this time (next thing she says she will do with him/for him) will be different".

This affects our relationship because he has high expectations for me, and a lot of the time isn't able to see that I want to be there for him, unless I point out after the fact; or all that I've done for him, also after the fact... And I'm really the first person in his life that has shown him love, loyalty, compassion. He's so used to being let down time and time again that he's grown to expect it. However, expecting to be let down also makes him have high expectations of what it is to NOT be let down. If that makes any sense.

I'm an extremely understanding and empathetic person so I understand why he is the way that he is and I am patient with him... I feel sometimes it's to a fault. When I was able to explain the correlation between his relationship with his mother and how it affects us and the way he treats me, he's able to see it and wants to change and now hates his mother even more.

There is so much more that I could go into but trying to keep this as breif as possible.
So I guess I'm just wondering if how others have dealt with this?

[sparkie101]

It is incredibly difficult to begin not placing expectations on people. Both from your side of the fence and his. He is expecting this perfect ideal that he holds in his head to be true, while you on the other hand are kind of expecting the same thing from him.

You really do understand what is going on with him, at the same thing you seem to be expecting him to start working towards bettering himself, but he has to want to do that himself. It is his mother, and very doubtful that he can start cutting her out of his life. I actually did cut my mother out of my life and it was incredibly difficult, but she never did change until about a year before she died. This may be something the two of you want to consider therapy for in my honest opinion as these issues are very deeply rooted.

[Anonymous]

I know guys like that, just need to be patient