Understanding Daddy Issues: The Girl With the Eternally Broken Heart

Anonymous

Understanding Daddy Issues: The Girl With the Eternally Broken Heart


They say a father is a girl's first love. Dad is supposed to be safe. He is supposed to be the man in a girl's life who doesn't want her for her body but loves her for HER. He is supposed to teach his daughter what a man is, and how a man should treat a woman. (How he treats her mother is a shining example.) He is supposed to take care of her, make her feel safe and protected. He teaches her that love is about two people respecting and caring for each other, and accepting each other as they are.


Dad is supposed to teach his daughter that when she is at the point in her life where she wants love, she can find someone who loves her for her, wants to please her, and respect her, and that in return for this love, she can love that man back safely because he treats her with love and respect and kindness. But sometimes, sadly, this doesn't happen. This is how we find the girl with the eternally broken heart.


Understanding Daddy Issues: The Girl With the Eternally Broken Heart


The girl with the eternally broken heart has a broken relationship with her father. A girl's relationship with her dad is so important for her self-esteem. He teaches her what men are, and how men will act towards her, and this is a pattern she will learn, internalized to a very deep level. Therefore, when the father-daughter relationship is broken from a young age, the daughter has an emotional void, and will probably suffer as a result. Now, this may seem like a bunch of psychology jumbo. Some people don't believe in this stuff. But I do, very strongly, as someone who has suffered herself. I also would add that your dad and mom not being together does NOT automatically mean that you will suffer, because I know plenty of girls with divorced parents who do not suffer from daddy issues, and my parents. It's really most directly about the girl's relationship with her father.

Sometimes Dad is completely absent from the girl's life. This is something I cannot relate to personally, but I can imagine how it hurts. And other times, like my story, Dad is present physically, but abusive, either physically, mentally, sexually, emotionally, verbally, or a combination of the above, and/or neglectful. This is the pain I know.

Growing up with an abusive father is a horrible kind of pain. No matter what type of treatment he gives you, he has a special place in your heart. He means a lot to you, and what he thinks of you really matters. When the one man who is supposed to love you genuinely, and not sexually, makes you feel worthless, the effect is truly devastating. If the one man who is supposed to authentically love you doesn't think you deserve his love, how can any other man, especially when other men, who are not related to you, will also think of you in a sexual way?

This may sound very hokey-pokey and weird. Your relationship with your dad is not supposed to be sexual. But when the man who is supposed to give you pure love can't, you feel like nobody will. You feel completely and utterly unworthy.

I am no child anymore, and I have been controlled, manipulated, my own words against me, put down, compared to everyone around me, talked to like dirt, yelled at, labeled and named terrible things, for years, by my own father. i always tried so hard to please him in my life choices, where I go in life. Anything good I do he takes for granted, but he always brings up and points out where I "fall short." Never once in my life has he told me that I deserve to be loved for who I am. In fact, he tells me that men just want to use me, that marriage is BS, that love is a sham.

People tell me it's preoposterous how he talks, it makes no sense how he acts, I should know that he is the problem. But when YOU are the one facing it your entire life, the emotional pain is unbelievably strong. You feel like you are always trying, with all your might, for him to tell you he loves you, that you are special, that you deserve love. But that warmth never comes. He is always icy and at best neutral, unless he's attacking you, then the heat comes out.

I've faced these cruelties many times as an adult, yet every time my father puts me down, I feel like there has been a knife placed in my heart. I cry, and I think: "Even my own father puts me down. I feel like dirt. I am very low. I have to fight so hard for his love and warmth and I never get it. I don't know what warmth is. I've never received it, this is all I am worth."

It may sound silly on paper, but the emotional current runs VERY deep.

And then come the men. For years now, no matter how much I try not to, how much I fight it, I am perpetually attracted to bad men.

Bad means lack of kindness and warmth. Emotional unavailaibility of some kind (I know I never dated or hooked up with a taken guy,) hot and cold, the ones who play games, push you away. It's always the same man in different clothing. Sometimes he is just distant, but at other times he is outright cruel and abusive. I've been put down, abused, degraded, controlled, more times than one. Each time I say I will change, that I will find a nice man. But I don't. I am always trying to find a nice man. I thought my last boyfriend was nice, but he was extremely cruel and abusive. He broke me the worst. I am at the point where I feel I cannot love again. Yet even still, the pain I feel from my father's abuse kills me a thousand times more.

When a girl is used to being put down, it becomes normal to her. When her boyfriend puts her down, it doesn't hurt as much as when her father does it. After all, unlike her father, at least her boyfriend is warm sometimes. At least he wants her, even if it's mostly sexual. At least he calls her and gives her attention, even sometimes. At least he chose her over other girls. And with these fractions of specialness, even though he doesn't cherish or respect her, she feels more wanted than she does when she is not with a man. For when she is not with a man, all she has is her father, who makes her feel awful. Or, in some cases, she has nobody. She can't get this need filled by a woman.


When she does not have a man in her life besides her father, or her father is gone, she feels utterly empty and alone. And then she seeks out bits of attention, even if it isn't another boyfriend, at least another single guy to flirt with for a while. Maybe an ex, or a past flame. SOMEONE, just to make her feel a little bit less wanted and alone. She feels utterly unloved by men when she is alone, and it is a completely horrible feeling. Often she will also seek out older men, but not necessarily and not always. In seeking out an older man, she is looking for fatherly love that she lacks in her own heart. Other alternative possibilities (or combinations) are controlling men, and domineering men. She is looking to feel taken care of by a man, not like an equal partner, because she feels so empty, walking around every day without that protected feeling from dad, and she lacks it in her heart.


She is completely starved for the male love, because even an abusive boyfriend gives it to her sometimes but when he is gone she has NOTHING. She stays with men whose approval she has to fight for, because this phenomenon is familiar to her, just like dad. But with each boyfriend, each new man, no matter how familiar and repetitive this pattern is, she feels like maybe this time she can win, maybe this time he will love her.


Each new unloving man she attracts is a new opportunity to win, to conquer his love. She thinks that each new guy is a chance to start over, to be the perfect girl and find that love. She fails to see the bigger picture, the pattern of unavailability. She rationalizes each man as new. This one is different than the last, and this one will love her, and will be different than the others, even if he really is pretty much the same, and will probably treat her the same as the others. Until one day, after too many of them, she just cracks completely, and hopefully realizes she has to change. But even then, the scars are deep, and these attraction patterns are VERY deep-rooted as well. She can be completely aware of her patterns, but the emotional drive is so long that she will do it again, and again. Her feelings completely take over when she meets man who pulls that "trigger" in her, that need to prove herself and win his love. These girls may not be pleasers in other areas of their life, but when it comes to men, they are sucked in, every time, unless they fight themselves VERY hard, but that warm, familiar feeling is hard to beat.


We may criticize this girl. We may call her a doormat. We may call her weak, stupid, vulnerable, naive, pathetic, desperate, broken, victim, dependent, needy, clingy, slut, whore, crazy, psycho, you name it. However, when a girl needs this attention so badly, when she has such a black hole in her broken heart that she is just STARVING for some male love and validation, she is in a very bad and sad dark place. She is hurting very badly, and even if she is pitiful, she is in immense pain. I can tell you that myself. One thing I do NOT condone is a woman who throws herself at married or taken men from these issues, because there are PLENTY of unattached guys, and taking someone else's man is NOT cool.

Now, a dad whose daughter has daddy issues is not always evil. Abuse is NOT ok, but abusers are generally very sick, psychologically ill people. Often they have personality disorders, which means that they are functional in society but highly dysfunctional and destructive in close relationships. Remember that a lot of abuse happens behind closed doors. Regardless of whether the dad has a real psychological problem and did not truly intend to hurt, but did anyway, his daughter will still suffer the same. Even if she knows he has a problem, if he is hurting her, it is very hard to just accept and live with. True acceptance and forgiveness requires a sense of emotional martyrdom which is very hard to do when one is constantly faced with the hurt. Moving away or putting a distance between the dauther and the father may help keep the relationship calmer if it is a destructive or harmful one.

What these girls have to do, is truly learn to accept and internalize that it is not HER fault that dad couldn't love her or be there for her. The girl has to learn on her own, that she is worth loving, that she doesn't have to fight for someone's love who will never give it, both with her father and with men in her life that she wants to date, or be in a relationship with, or marry. The cycle can be very vicious. Sometimes she really wants to change, yet the attraction to these men is so strong, and the need to prove herself so great. Sometimes she will find that she is ONLY attracted to unhealthy, unstable men. And even by early adulthood, the wounds have already formed, and if she has had a chain of these men, she has a lot of work ahead of her.

I ask you on behalf of a hurting, broken girl to read, become aware, and understand. Not all of you may agree with my post. You may call me a drama queen, crazy, or a plethora of other things. But it's okay. Today I had to come clean somewhere, dump some of my pain and suffering into a clean outlet, because I am hurting a lot in my heart. I am taking care of myself, I am not in any physical danger. But my heart is hurting, badly.

As a broken girl, I ask all the fathers out there to remind your daughters how you love them. You have no idea how much it means. Trust me when I say that you don't want your daughters to end up like me in love one day.

Thank you for listening.


Understanding Daddy Issues: The Girl With the Eternally Broken Heart
50 Opinion