Victoria Beckham finally said it out loud. On Tuesday, in her first television interview since Brooklyn’s scathing public statement, she described the past year as “difficult” and vowed that she would “always protect her children.”
The Internet immediately chose sides. Camp Victoria says Brooklyn is the ungrateful son who allowed his new wife to rewrite their family. Camp Brooklyn says Victoria is a controlling mother who can’t let her son grow up. Camp Nicola has its own subreddit.
Everyone is looking for a villain. There is no one.
I am a couples therapist. I work with families that look very bright on the outside and very chaotic on the inside. What I see in the Beckham story is not pop drama. It’s one of the most common and most painful patterns that I sit with every Tuesday. And almost no one calls it correctly.
The bull and what hides underneath
When Victoria says she will “always protect her children,” pay attention to that word. protects. This is not a media line. This is part of her doing her job.
In my world, we call this part “the bull.” Taurus is relentless. He pursues, he defends, he controls the narrative, he picks up the phone, he conducts the interview. Taurus is part of a parent who will never let go because letting go feels like death.
Beneath the bull is something much smaller and more delicate. A mother who is afraid of losing her child. The woman who asks, the only two questions our nervous system asks of anyone we love, Are you there for me? Can I still get enough of you?
When a child grows up, falls in love, and forms a new primary bond with a partner, the original family system falls into disarray. This is biology, not bad behavior. We are bound from cradle to grave to need our connected personalities, and a threat to those connections is a threat to survival.
So my mom follows up. My father protects. The adult son, who is doing the same thing he is biologically supposed to do (building his own life with his wife), begins to feel a constant disappointment to the people who raised him. He can’t get it right. So he pulls away.
It’s even harder. He withdraws more. She’s giving an interview. Issues a statement. And around him he goes.
This is not a feud. This is an episode of panic in designer clothing.
Why doesn’t “just talk about it” work here
This is the part that gossip always misses.
When families like this come to my office, they want to file a lawsuit. Wedding. Guest list. The dress. Who posted what on Instagram. Who said what to which reporter? They believe, honestly, that if they could get the facts straight, the pain would go away.
I call it the bucket of doing what and when. Events are not the issue. the road How people feel about each other under events is the issue. It’s much easier to argue about a seating chart than to say, “I feel terrible because you don’t love me anymore.”
These are the clinical details that I want you to sit with, because it’s the thing I see in the room that the audience never sees. The withdrawn adult child, who everyone assumes is “fine” because he posted a smiling picture, is often drowning in a combination of two elements of shame. One hundred percent shame. I’m bad. I’m disappointed. I keep failing with people who love me.
When the human nervous system is filled with this much shame, the limbic system takes over. The limbic brain is basically the naked mole rat. He can’t really see or hear. It just senses a threat, and rushes.
So when she extends her hand, full of love, pain, and protective energy, the son does not receive it as love. He receives it as evidence that he has failed again. And he shuts up. Or issue a statement.
If you’re the one communicating or keeping quiet, this is the moment to discover your relationship pattern before you blame yourself for either side of it.
There are no bad guys. never.
The Internet wants narcissists, golden children and toxic mothers. Cosmo agrees with you. Your group chat agrees with you. The entire conclusion agrees with you.
Eating this content is like eating M&Ms for dinner. Delicious. short. Then you feel like trash and nothing heals.
Everyone enters therapy as a world-renowned expert on what’s wrong with their family member. If I held a global conference on what’s wrong with your son or mother, I would book you as a keynote speaker. We are obsessed with the story of the other. The story of the other never leads to growth.
So this is the angle that no one will give you on the timeline. Victoria’s fierce protectiveness and Brooklyn’s fierce distance are not opposites. They are the same currency. They both have a panicked nervous system trying to survive the unbearable feeling that they might lose each other.
If they were sitting on my couch, I wouldn’t let them explain their side. The more one explains, the more the other retreats. I like to slow them down because of the feeling underneath the content. I would like to ask Victoria, before you protect, what are you afraid of? I would ask Brooklyn, before he withdraws, what he thinks of himself in his mother’s eyes?
This is the core of what we do in the science behind marriage counseling in San Francisco with families just like this. This is also why half-communication patterns, vague public messages, and interrupted communication have such a strong impact between estranged family members, in the same way that the science behind breadcrumbs explains why one mysterious message from someone you love can ruin your entire week.
The line I want you to screen capture
Disconnecting is a feature, not a bug. This is not evidence of family disintegration. It’s proof that two people mean a lot to each other, and that their nervous systems can’t handle the thought of losing the bond. Victoria and Brooklyn don’t fight because they don’t like each other. They fight because they do it, and no one taught them what to do with that much love when they start to feel insecure.
Poor little devils. both of them.
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Empathi Founder Figs O’Sullivan is a couples therapist and relationship expert on Stars and Silicon Valley, founder of Empathi, and built the platform for Figlet, an AI-powered relationship coach trained in his clinical work.
