The invisible effects of fathers on their daughters.
My parents split up when I was a baby; my sister and I stayed with my mum, who soon after married my step father (whom I call Dad). I saw my biological father about every 6 weeks, which dwindled over time and when I was about 18 I pretty much cut off contact.
Just writing this brings back a deeply felt sense of guilt, sadness and loss, which has followed me all my life.
Fathers play a critical role in instilling a sense of identity and self worth in their children.
The father wound is the emotional void created by the absence - whether physical, emotional or both - of a father.
I would search out father figures in everyone I met - from friends to boyfriends. I would have intense one-on-one friendships with confident girls and later would go on to have equally intense crushes on unavailable boys who probably barely knew I existed.
I lived in an emotionally intense, internal world, frequently told off for day dreaming by my teachers at school. I would be utterly absorbed with the lives of characters in books - Anne of Green Gables was a world I knew better than my own, and teen fantasy fiction became an obsessive place of retreat from the real world, which I perceived as difficult and inconsistent.
As a teenager I was painfully self conscious; doing well at school but very much in the shadow of my - in my eyes - super bright, confident and gregarious older sister. I struggled to understand who I was and at home I felt like I was the difficult middle child, prone to tears or shouting to my mum when I was told off for some outburst. Being emotional was seen as problematic, something which I internalised: it must be me who's the problem.
Not getting to know my real Dad or forming a real bond with him produced a sense of profound powerlessness, loss and disconnection which played out again and again in my adult life. I couldn't understand why I would keep seeking out emotionally unavailable partners, always searching for the validation and approval I hadn't received from my father.
Our fathers have a unique role to helping us to discover who we are. Having a father who is either disinterested or unable to say to his daughter that she's loved, special, able to do whatever she puts her mind to, is likely to lead to women who don’t feel capable or safe to try new things. The father wound is caused by what the father does NOT provide in terms of proper love and care.
The absence of a father leaves the child without a proper sense of who they are; their identity is blurry, uncertain, fragile. These children are likely to experience abuse and neglect in later life, as they feel unworthy of secure love and care. They are much more likely to fall into relationships with people who hurt or abandon them, echoing the impact of the absent father.
Some signs you have a father wound are:
Seeking out unavailable partners, whether physically or emotionally unavailable;
Fear of abandonment and/or rejection, causing you to either push away or attach to a romantic partner;
Feeling unloveable and misunderstood;
Not being your full emotional self, for fear of upsetting or repelling others;
Dismissing your pain and feeling responsible for others' pain;
Desperately wanting closeness and intimacy but feeling unsafe or 'needy' when you feel them;
Lack of boundaries in relationships or with friends;
Wanting approval and validation from male figures.
If any of this resonates with you and you'd like to explore this father wound and help find your "true", authentic self - then please reach out.
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