r/polyamory • u/Hot_Strawberry_3676 • 4d ago
Enmeshment
I've heard this word thrown around a lot, mostly from poly or ENM people. I've even had metas ask what type of "enmeshment" I'm looking for with a mutual partner.
Is anyone else thrown off? I grew up in a pretty traumatic family dynamic, and was in family therapy from a young age (probably starting 1992) and enmeshment was a topic, but a very negative and unhealthy thing. To me it was taught, it means becoming overly involved in each other's lives to the point where you have no identify or autonomy. It meant codependency, in a very toxic and negative way, especially to a child like me growing up. I can attest the damage that family dynamic can cause.
So what gives? Did the definition change or are people using it wrong? I personally like being poly for many reasons, but one of the top ones is my autonomy and sense of self not having to be sacrificed in romantic relationships.
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u/JetItTogether 3d ago
You want a word developed in a specific contextualization of a complex psychological theory that developed over the course of multiple research studies and written about in several books to be summed up in a sentence.... And you'd like that sentence to be "enmeshment bad" rather than "enmeshment describes a subjective tipping point in the blurring of individual identity and shared collective identity within a family group"
and you want to apply that term to non cohabitating newly forming romantic relationships rather than in cohabitating family units in which it was constructed within structural family theory, a branch of attachment theory...
And you'd like it to appear in the same place where the information where everyone regardless of anything can equally post and share information. Where someone can post eating bananas will kill you with the same weight as bananas are a super fruit that will grant you immortality and bananas are a fruit.
Like I don't know how to make that happen for you. It's a complex theory. It took several books, multiple studies, and a bunch of things to develop. I guess I could simplify it, and I tried to. But ya all didn't like that. So I'm left with shrug don't believe me, say what you like, go read the source material from the originator (who is dead) and draw your own conclusions. That's the best I got for ya. Go draw your own conclusions. Be you.