What Is Daddy Issues? May You Have Daddy Issues?
Unhealthy relationships with their fathers during childhood and insecure attachment are at the root of the problems underlying most women’s inability to establish happy and long-term relationships and their unhappiness as a vicious circle in every relationship. In this article, we will explore what are daddy issues.
What is Daddy Issues?
Some women ask, “Why can’t I have a happy relationship?” There may be different answers to the question, but many women in this situation have one common cause: “daddy issues”. There is no concrete scientific definition of this problem, but there is a tight link between a woman’s intimacy problems with men and her relationship with her father. This situation, which is called daddy issues in psychology, is also defined as the “father complex”. The father complex, first proposed by Freud and later discussed by Carl Jung, describes neuroses that result from the individual’s weak relationship with his father.
In Freud’s psychoanalytic theory, the appearance of the Oedipus complex in the girl, which can be summarized as the boy’s admiration for the mother and seeing his father as a rival, in other words. His admiration for the father and seeing the mother as a rival, Jung also calls the Electra complex. Father issues can be seen in both men and women, but in the context of personal relationships, it is a popular expression that often describes women who had unhealthy relationships with their fathers during childhood, who constantly needed love, protection and approval, but who were also rebellious, prefer older men.
A WOMAN’S RELATIONSHIP WITH FATHER IN CHILDHOOD AFFECTS SELECTION OF PARTNERS IN ADULT
Every girl has 3 fathers; “biological father”, “fantasy father” loaded with features that are not in biological father but desired to be, “symbolic father” representing power and might. As children, we are all weak and in need of protection. The world is full of dangers, and our omniscient and all-powerful fantasy and symbolic father protects us from danger and all negativity. Every girl dreams of marrying someone like her father. She idealizes her father, the first man she knows, and grows up thinking that all men will be like her father. When she becomes an adult, she finds a defect in every man according to her idealized father and breaks off the relationship, and she thinks that a man like I’m looking for doesn’t come into my life. All this happens unconsciously, and a woman is unlikely to have a healthy relationship without getting rid of her father’s idealized fantasy.
The secure bond that women in this situation establish with their fathers when they are children makes them strong and successful individuals in life, but when this bond cannot be established and secure attachment is not realized, they cannot be happy in their relationships because they seek a strong and powerful man like their idealized fantasy father or symbolic father. On the other hand, women who do not have such a father, longing for a father and need to be protected and taken care of lead them to behave like a little girl.
A woman who does not have a father who takes responsibility, makes decisions on her behalf, who is firm and certain, who removes her problems. Who is angry with anyone who hurts her, who protects her, who is proud of her and loves her as she is, would like to have such a wife. However, the power of anyone who will take on this role later on will not be able to satisfy this longing. Because in adult relationships, we have a tendency to repeat the disappointments and traumatic aspects of our childhood lives.
Women who have experienced emotionally and/or physically inadequate fatherhood either choose a disappointing partner like their father as a father figure to fill this void, or they manipulate their relationship dynamics in such a way that this person disappoints them. This situation is called “the compulsion to repeat itself of the past” and it is like a kind of cursed “destiny” that haunts the person and the past is re-enacted many times, the roles and theme remain the same even though the time, place and actors change.
FATHER’S MATTERS CREATE PROBLEMS IN COUPLE RELATIONS
We need parents who make us feel good and loved from the beginning of life. If this parenting duty is neglected, we grow up with various mental damages. Damage begins when our inner voice tells us that we are not good, worthy, and unlovable, which is the first critical attack on our self-confidence. We unconsciously generalize our relationships with our parents, the primary sources of our childhood experiences, the seeds of our adult behavior, and we repeat the behavior patterns we have developed accordingly throughout our lives.
Because there are 3 basic objects in a person’s life, namely “original significant others”; mother, father and siblings. In fact, the “copy important others” in our lives here and now are derivatives, copies of these basic objects. Therefore, a girl who is ignored, rejected, abandoned, abused or disliked by her father seeks a father figure to meet the needs that she has been deprived of for the rest of her life. However, the desire to try to win the love of another man to compensate for the father’s love and his inner belief that men cannot be trusted creates a constant conflict, negatively directing his feelings and behaviors. The result is mental confusion, bad relationships, and disappointment.
GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS OF WOMEN WITH FATHER PROBLEMS
Women who want to make up for the emotional lack created by their fathers often act at two extremes; they tend to either become dependent on a man or, on the contrary, to be with or avoid intimate relationships, fear of marriage or casual relationships. The common characteristics of women with father issues are as follows:
1. They prefer older men.
In accordance with the unconscious father figure, they form relationships with confident older men who can fill the void in their lives and meet their need for trust and approval. But as in a father-daughter relationship, this pairing can introduce an imbalance of power.
2. They become extremely sticky.
This is because of their unfulfilled need for care and love. They try to spend every moment with their partners, and when they are together, they want closeness by touching, kissing, hugging, like a little girl. However, they face the risk that too much intimacy will quickly bring separation.
3. They are very jealous, they do not know how to share.
Due to the fear of abandonment, they doubt their partner’s love and, thinking of the possibility of being cheated on, they keep him under constant control and follow him like a detective. However, because they choke their partners too much, they bring their fears to them, such as a self-born prophecy, and they are deceived or abandoned by their partners.
4. They always want to attract attention and be in the spotlight.
Because of their insatiable desire for attention and male attention, they often want to be the person of choice. But this desire turns into a demand and a compulsion over time. They try to be the center of attention with their baby talk and demeanor or their whims.
5. They are daring about sex.
They see sexy men as a way of bonding with them.
6. They find married men who belong to another woman attractive.
Because they were deprived of their father’s love, care and affection as children, they feel as if they lost their father to their mother. Married, middle-aged and old men always look for their fathers, compare them with their fathers, or, worst of all, they think their love feelings are real and sincere, and they compete with the other woman, either openly or secretly.
FATHER PROBLEMS ARE NOT SOLVED
Daddy issues are like a two-way street for women, either they continue to be frustrated by bad relationships or they go in the direction of avoiding intimate relationships to protect themselves. The real issue is that they are unaware of this path they take and cannot see other paths. A process of psychotherapy that helps them understand the root cause of their feelings and behaviors can help change the effects of their past experiences on their current thought patterns and help them resolve daddy issues that are preventing them from forming happy relationships. The awareness and insight that psychotherapy will give heals the soul. The person learns to make more correct choices, can stop unconsciously repeating the past, and can establish a healthy and happy relationship in which he and his partner are not a “copy object” but an “original subject”.
I hope you enjoyed what we wrote about daddy issues. If you also have this problem and it helped us to solve it, we are happy.
