“Mother, I Am Only a Product of Your Excitement”: How Extended Families Poison the Wellspring of Marriage

> “Mother, I beg you, leave my home. After all, I am only a product of your excitement between you and my father.”

— A son’s bitter truth, shouted not in hatred, but in desperate liberation.

Introduction: The Third Body in the Marriage Bed

In the anatomy of most failed marriages, the cause is rarely infidelity. It is rarely poverty. It is rarely irreconcilable differences. It is often something quieter, closer, more dangerous—family. Not the nuclear one, but the extended one. And of these, none has been more consistently destructive than the mothers of the spouses, particularly the mothers of the husband and the mothers of the wife.

They do not arrive with guns. They come in with casseroles, prayers, and expectations. They whisper rather than shout. But they occupy space in the mind, corrupt loyalty, and pull invisible strings until two lovers become two strangers… and the marriage collapses under the weight of expectations that were never theirs to carry.

I. “Mother, I Am Only a Product of Your Excitement”: A Son’s Cry for Autonomy

What drives a man to say to the woman who birthed him, “Mother, I am only a product of your excitement”?

It is not rebellion.

It is not cruelty.

It is revelation.

It is the moment he realizes that he owes her life, not allegiance. That her role was creation, not occupation. That her duty ended with raising him, not running his household.

It is the painful moment when the man looks around his home—his sanctuary—and sees not a wife’s embrace but his mother’s echo in every argument, every judgment, every cold night.

> “You gave me life, yes. But you no longer get to script it. I am not your second husband. This is not your home. You may have birthed me, but you cannot be both mother and mistress of my emotions.”

II. The Tyranny of the Matriarch: When Mothers Refuse to Let Go

There is something tragic about a mother who cannot transition from giver of life to witness of it. Many mothers weaponize love into guilt. They don’t want to see their sons grow; they want to see them grateful—forever chained to the umbilical cord of emotional obligation.

“After all I’ve done for you, she’s the one you choose?”

“She’s changed you. You used to be my boy.”

“In this house I still have a say.”

These aren’t words of love. They are the battle cries of insecure mothers afraid of being irrelevant.

In that fear, they undermine, accuse, and manipulate their sons into prioritizing loyalty over intimacy.

The son becomes torn: a man in his wife’s bed, but a child in his mother’s heart.

And that contradiction is unbearable.

III. The Poisoned Well: When Mothers of Wives Become Marriage Auditors

If a man’s mother can be possessive, a woman’s mother can be entitled. She believes she raised a princess, and any man who marries her owes her proof that he is worthy.

Her interference is rarely loud. It is slow, persistent erosion.

Daily phone calls: “Has he given you money this week?”

Backhanded counsel: “Men should never be trusted. I know—I married your father.”

Constant comparisons: “Look at your cousin’s husband. That one built a house in the first year.”

Soon, the wife begins to see her husband through the disapproving eyes of her mother.

She stops being present.

She begins policing.

She turns their home into a courtroom where her husband must defend himself against unspoken charges.

IV. When Marriage Becomes a Spectator Sport

Extended families treat marriage like community theatre. Everyone wants a front row seat, everyone has a script, and no one respects the privacy of the actors.

Aunties ask about sex life during funerals.

Cousins expect financial support as a sign of loyalty.

Uncles threaten to “go to elders” if their niece is “not being treated like a queen.”

What began as a bond of two individuals becomes a covenant held hostage by the opinions of outsiders who neither lie in that bed nor pay those bills.

> Marriage cannot thrive in a stadium. It needs a sanctuary.

V. Boundaries Are Not Betrayals

The commandment in Genesis is clear: “A man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife.”

It does not say “consult with them weekly.”

It does not say “build an extension for them.”

It says leave.

Leaving is not betrayal. It is preservation.

A marriage without boundaries becomes a battlefield for loyalty—a place where the man is forced to choose between the woman who bore him and the woman he loves.

And sometimes, for peace to return, for sanity to reign, for the covenant to be salvaged, one must look into the teary eyes of the very woman who birthed him and say:

> “Mother, I am only a product of your excitement between you and father. But this home is not your theatre. Please leave.”

VI. The Tragedy of Good Intentions

To be fair, many mothers do not enter marriages with the intent to destroy. They enter with memories.

Memories of their own pain.

Memories of their own regrets.

Memories of what they wish they had received.

So they project, advise, intrude… and in doing so, they crush the very thing they hoped to protect.

But good intentions, when not restrained, can become emotional colonization.

And what colonizers always forget is this:

Even love becomes toxic when it ignores borders.

Conclusion: Exorcising the Ghosts of Our Mothers and Fathers

Every couple must, at some point, exorcise the ghosts of their upbringing—not with disrespect, but with discipline. Not with rebellion, but with resolve.

If your marriage is a house, your mother cannot live in the master bedroom.

If your union is a journey, your family cannot control the steering wheel.

And if your love is to survive, it must learn to shut the door—not in hate, but in self-preservation.

To all the sons and daughters torn between love and liberation, know this:

You owe your parents gratitude, not governance.

You owe your spouse sanctuary, not shared sovereignty.

And you owe yourself the right to peace, even if it means saying words that break hearts in order to save your own.

> “Mother, I am only a product of your excitement… but this marriage is the product of my choice. Please… leave.”

Isaac Christopher Lubogo

A son, a husband, a voice of liberation.