How your father treats you is the 'blueprint' for your future relationships with men

[Alan C.]

How to limit the daddy damage: How your father treats you is the 'blueprint' for your future relationships with men

 

For most women, our father is our primary experience of a man, and attachment to our earliest care-givers has a powerful effect on our later relationships.

We learn to regard ourselves the way our father or mother regards us. If you’re lucky enough to have a good father-daughter bond, it can help you work out the pattern for healthy future relationships with men.

‘It’s a blueprint,’ psychotherapist Jane Haynes, co-author of Doctors Dissected, says. ‘You think: “I won’t put myself into an abusive position because I know what it feels like to be in a good relationship.”’

Feeling heard and affirmed by your father is a gift for later life, she explains.

‘Little girls need to believe their fathers think that they are lovely, just as little girls think their fathers are fantastic.’

Therapists call this ‘erotic feedback’, she says. It has nothing to do with sexual touch, but rather the way a child feels that she/he is valued, cherished and, above all, experiences their body as a good thing.

‘It’s about the sense in which the child feels the father’s gaze with a kind of passion. He has an intense interest in their littleness, so that the child feels big, feels valued, part of the world,’ says Haynes.

‘But if you feel you have to earn a father’s admiration, that’s very different from unconditional love.’

There are many ways to be a family. We all know single parents and same-sex couples who do a brilliant job.

Many people grow up without fathers and lead rich, full lives. But if your father is present in your early life, he provides a male standard and opportunities to practise communication with the opposite sex.

According to psychologist Lawrence J Cohen, co-author of The Art of Roughhousing, ‘Both boys and girls need loving physical contact with their fathers and in [play fighting] the participants get the endorphin rush that you experience with a sport, as well as the oxytocin or “cuddle chemical” rush that you get from a hug or an embrace.’

‘If you’ve had a father who was tender, engaged with you as a child and understood your boundaries, that has to be a resource in your life,’ says Haynes.

But if you grow up with a remote or absent father, or one who is not able to communicate easily, it can affect self-esteem.

And inevitably the quality of that early relationship can impact a daughter’s ability to trust and relate to men later in her life.

Daughters who grew up with an emotionally unavailable dad may desire intimacy but find it hard to trust, be on guard, or even feel obliged to become a surrogate caretaker to their lover (replaying a role from childhood).

. . .

According to a 2012 study by Professor Ronald Rohner of the University of Connecticut, which examined the cases of more than 10,000 sons and daughters, a cold or distant father can damage a child for decades.

Rejection in childhood has the most ‘strong and consistent effect on personality and development,’ says Rohner.

Indeed, research shows that well-fathered daughters are less likely to be clinically depressed or have eating disorders, drop out of college or get pregnant as teenagers.

As adults, they are also more likely to be successful in higher-paying, more demanding jobs and wait longer to get married and have children, largely because they are focused on achieving their educational goals first.

In one study, undergraduate women who did not have a good relationship with their father were found to have lower than normal cortisol levels, often making them oversensitive and over-reactive when confronted with stress.

‘To feel that your father found you irritating is discrediting,’ says Haynes. ‘We all want someone to be interested in us. Before you can get a sense of your own identity and importance, there has to be that period of interest.’

Research shows that women tend to be drawn to partners who are similar to their fathers.

As adults, it can be easy to fall into repetitive patterns, replaying some of that earlier confusion and ambivalence experienced in childhood.

Believing we can help another person is a way of coping.

‘If we can try to rescue the other person, or blame ourselves for their behaviour, it can be oddly empowering – even give us the illusion of control,’ explains Haynes.

Many of us insist we are choosing partners who are the exact opposite of our father, but we are still basing decisions about our romantic life on the relationship (or non-relationship) we experienced with him.

 

[dsayers]

Um... where is the mother? It's weird because the article talks about regarding ourselves the way our parents regard us, but says nothing of a female's approach/reaction to a man the way our parents do. This requires the mother. What if daddy starts drinking and mommy holds him accountable? Up to and including removing herself and her defenseless children from the drunk's life? Certainly these behaviors would be of more value than the drinking itself.

 

This is after the fact. What about before? That man is only your daddy because your mommy chose to reproduce with him. There's nothing that you can attribute to one parent that the other doesn't also get credit for, for this very reason. This is very important to understand because we cannot raise the standard of parenting on the whole if we don't hold all responsible parties properly accountable.

[Matthew Ed Moran]

I agree with Dsayers, it's amazing to me how peopel can talk about "daddy damage" as if fathers are just these islands that no one can reach, they just drop from the sky and you're stuck with them, and all you can do is limit the damage when you get older. I really am annoyed at the entire article in how their is no consideration of the male point of view. Some men are just "dominating" and if you're a girl with a bad daddy, you're not even choosing them, they're choosing you (she literally said something like this, among many overtones and examples where she was avoiding responsibility about her life).

 

What is even creepier to me is how these women have no concept of how they might be preying on men. You say you find depressed men attractive? Well that's pretty sick, since anyone with basic courtesy knows depressed people are not healthy enough to enter a relationship. And the woman who tended to fall in love with gay men.. How the fuck do you let that happen more than once, and try to pretend you aren't a dysfunctional and manipulative person who has no respect for boundaries in relationships? Might we at least acknowledge how these damaged women aren't just victims of daddy damage, but that they are also using and manipulating men to ignore thinking about their own trauma?

 

Sorry if this post was more ranting than useful, but I am so sick of women not be able to understand what responsibility is. "I didn't know how to be non sexual" "I was claimed by men" "I suppose my dad was distant" (can't even admit it when it's basically the subject of the article) "But he was fascinating, just as I find other sad people to be, and he did his best" She sounds like she has the emotional maturity of a 12 year old.. And she's 45? Yuck 

 

I'd rather we not focus on childhood trauma at all if we're only going to bring it up to confuse things and excuse women. I'd rather women just get more of a grip and take responsibility for how their trauma might actually hurt other people besides themselves if they ignore it, and that they  have responsibility for their actions whether they had damaged daddies or not.

[utopian]

Alan, I feel the need to express my gratitude towards you and the research you do. It seems every time I see an interesting, relevant and helpful article pop up, it's you posting it. You are a true seeker of truth, voluntarily reporting on topics which can help us all.

 

 

 

Secondly, I am very much currently shocked to see how much the article you have posted seems to describe the woman I am currently with. I want to repost all the points, but I might end up reposting the entire article. It has seemed somewhat obvious to me from the way her father treats her that he is very distant, and she continues to fight for a father that will never love her how she should be loved. There are noticeable obvious effects on her, and I have been looking for ways to help her understand herself and get better. Perhaps it is a statement of my own dysfunction that I choose to be with this woman who would raise so many red flags among others here, but I do so knowingly and willingly. I have a need for this woman to be with me. Your article helps me understand this woman, my relationship and role with her, and how I can help her realize completely what a wonderful person she is. 

 

 

From deep in my heart do I thank you for this. If you have any other material related to this, and how my girlfriend and I can develop ourselves, I would love to see it. 

[Kevin Beal]

We learn to regard ourselves the way our father or mother regards us. If you’re lucky enough to have a good father-daughter bond, it can help you work out the pattern for healthy future relationships with men.

I wonder if there is any research into whether or not this is actually a causal factor or not. I guess the test case would be with strong bonds between parents who are together versus separated. If they still have healthy relationships when their parents don't model that in their own romantic relationships, then her statements may be proven, but anecdotally this does not seem to be the case. Rather, it appears that it's the parents' relationship that determines this, not the parent-child relationship.

 

‘Little girls need to believe their fathers think that they are lovely, just as little girls think their fathers are fantastic.’

 

Therapists call this ‘erotic feedback’, she says. It has nothing to do with sexual touch, but rather the way a child feels that she/he is valued, cherished and, above all, experiences their body as a good thing.

 

‘It’s about the sense in which the child feels the father’s gaze with a kind of passion. He has an intense interest in their littleness, so that the child feels big, feels valued, part of the world,’ says Haynes.

 

‘But if you feel you have to earn a father’s admiration, that’s very different from unconditional love.’

This sounds a little too Freudian for me. How would any of this translate into healthy romantic relationships? I have people who have held me in high regard, who have made me feel valued and part of the world,... I guess (not sure what that really means). But none of that adds to my competency as a lover, a negotiator, having healthy expectations specifically around romantic relationships, or anything like that.

 

And I love this line:

I was always “claimed” by men as opposed to choosing men and I didn’t know how to be nonsexual with them.

What the hell is she talking about?! This is some of the worst hypoagency I've ever seen.

 

She's totally right about the importance of fathers. I'm just nitpicking.