The Eternal Boy

We have all met this type of man, this eternal boy. Most of us may have known him fairly intimately as the philandering partner, the irresponsible son, the black sheep sibling, the friend who is always the life of the party, or the elusive boyfriend one just can’t let go of, and yet have never been quite able to touch on his mercurial behavior. He is the perpetual adolescent who is dashing and exciting, and who likes to live dangerously. He has perfected the art of sweeping women off their feet but is totally unable to commit to a relationship. He is Peter Pan. He is James Bond. He is George Clooney. He is the late John-John Kennedy (not John F. Kennedy Jr. as he later came to be known in his adult life) or “Peter Pan with pecs,” as some American pop culture specialists had christened him.

I had gotten to know more of this eternal boy in theory and concept when I attended a workshop conducted by the Friends of Jung Society Philippines on Exploring the Self. Jungian analyst, Marie Louise von Franz (1915-1998), luminary disciple of Carl Jung for 30 years, called this, Puer Aeternus, latin for eternal boy.

This man remains a perpetual 17 or 18-year-old in adulthood, who, despite having everything: financial security; fulfilling job; perfect companion, is afflicted with a vague but discontent. It is a general dissatisfaction that, when verbally expressed, comes out as, “Nothing…but…” in answer to the question, “What’s wrong?” When outsiders assess his life, they ask themselves, “Why can’t he seem to settle down, he’s got everything?” Women, whom the eternal boy attracts in droves because of his extraordinary charm, delude themselves into thinking that they just might be the chosen ones to finally tame him into domesticity. But sooner or later, when the bored and anxious multi-headed monster inside the eternal boy finally surfaces, the stress and the frustration shred the women’s self-esteem because of failure to pin him down and make an honest man out of him.

Filipino society, which remains conservative in the matter of domestic arrangements, where church marriages remain the norm, and cohabitations and casual long-term liaisons are still frowned upon, the slippery eternal boy has been labeled a deviant. This elusiveness has been called a “problem” by older people; a personality disorder by some professionals; or commitment phobia by women who are after an engagement ring. His mother may quickly come to his defense by saying, “Oh, he just hasn’t found the right girl, yet,” depending on the degree of her attachment to him. If she is the rabid sort of Pinoy mother, who has made managing her son’s affairs her vocation in life, she may the one personally responsible for shooing away all the women who may be prospective partners.

Parents and friends of women he has wronged have condemned the eternal boy by tagging him playboy, or pabling, or even gago. What we may not be aware of is that the phenomenon of the eternal boy is deeply rooted in his relationship with his mother. He may not be inherently bad. He is simply trapped in what we have come to know as the Mama’s Boy syndrome. And since his mother has orchestrated this dysfunctional relationship since the eternal boy’s birth, his fate has been completely out of his control. In other words he did not have a choice; he did not bring this upon himself.

This phenomenon happens when a mother fails to find emotional fulfillment from her own husband. Her tendency is to redirect these needs to her son. Both become emotionally welded to each other in the process. The son becomes the mother’s emotional husband, thus the term “Emotional Incest,” which has come out of late as a more graphic description of the dysfunctional alliance. This results in the son’s inability to relate to women his own age and to sustain meaningful relationships.

When he grows up, every time an eternal boy zeroes in on a woman of choice, he projects his mother’s image on to her and does everything in his capacity to win her. But the moment he has taken possession of her, he disengages, because the nagging feeling of the what else is there syndrome or the is this all there is syndrome sets in, yet again.

Jungian analysis shows that the eternal boy has been made to feel special very early on either by his mother, or by himself. This latter phenomenon happens when a boy is neglected, making him resort to creating his own fantasy of being special. Whichever the case, the underlying concept is the feeling of being special. However, the self-inflicted mode of thinking is said to be more harmful than that instilled by the mother because the latter is a form of delusion.

Everything for the eternal boy is provisional and temporary. He is unable to commit to any long-term relationship because of the fear that the situation is ultimately not where he wants to be. This attitude may last an entire lifetime. He is said to have a Messianic or Savior complex. He enjoys the feeling of saving someone helpless from a problematic situation. He immediately assumes the role of gallant knight in shining armor only for the rescued damsel to realize very soon that this knight will gallop away shortly after the rescue, never to return again.

The eternal boy has a fascination with danger as a form escaping reality, which to their thinking is harsh and confining. He turns to extreme sports—sky diving, racing, mountain climbing, etc.—as his ticket to getting as far away from earth as possible. He is infamously impatient and easily bored, so to avoid boredom, he turns his entire life into a game. He cannot deal with mundane matters and the tedium of the everyday. He is incapable of grounding himself in real life and is therefore not equipped to deal with family matters—playing the role of husband and father and raising children. He may try to settle down into married life but all odds point to his, one day, walking out without a care. He might have spurts of intense interest and manic performance in certain projects but for limited periods of time and this, just as easily, wanes. Holding a 9 to 5 job will be the death of him.

We may wonder why many women are attracted to the eternal boy even with all his glaring flaws, but the truth is, he is extremely hard to resist. There is always something otherworldly about him. He is charming and effervescent like champagne and one gets heady and giddy in his company. When he speaks, he sounds very mature and full of empathy, which is misleading because he is not in touch with his true self.

The question that needs to be addressed then is, “Is there redemption for the eternal boy?” Jungian psychology has always been about transformation and individuation so, yes, there is. Self-awareness is key. If the eternal boy becomes fully aware of his plight, he can start his own transformation by stepping away from his mother’s clutches. In other societies, military service is a viable option that will have profound effects. While our own culture doesn’t make it easy for men to become adults because of the “doting Filipina mother” syndrome and the “live at home until you’re married no matter how long it takes” syndrome, sending a son to study abroad or in another city—anything that involves physical separation—will do the job.

The task will be a bloody one. Imagine having to extricate oneself from a mother who follows a toddler son’s every step, who lovingly wipes his brow and inserts a lampin under his shirt to absorb sweat, who spoon-feeds him and bathes him long after he has learned to do so himself, who provides him with a yaya, who becomes the surrogate in her brief absences, who demands calls or text messages from him several times a day, and who refuses to send him away for vacation or for studies because she might die of loneliness but masks it as concern for his safety.

But there is good news: even if the mother refuses to let her eternal boy go, he may save himself by completely disengaging and moving somewhere far from her reaches.

There is that cliché, “A boy can only grow up once he breaks his mother’s heart,” that may have been coined precisely for this situation. But for this to be consummated, once the son disengages, the mother, in her devastation, must acknowledge the offense and the hurt. There is an anecdote on how one stubborn mother tried desperately to cling to his son. He intentionally committed indiscretions to cut her apron strings and in one confrontation blurted out to her, “I keep trying to break your heart but you keep forgiving me!”

So mothers, let go! Give up the mother-son drama and help make this world a better place by doing this singular, divine act of thoroughly and unconditionally letting go.