Are "Daddy Issues" the REAL reason your relationships with men fail? Guess AGAIN!

Countless females have called me seeking relationship guidance. They often mention their father left home when they were very young~ and many are firmly convinced their “abandonment issues” are due to this singular fact, but they’re wrong.

Millions of gals have trouble forging and maintaining healthy, loving attachment bonds~ but it’s not because of a dad who left when they were a baby or toddler. Oh, it’s a logical, feasible conclusion alright, but it totally misses the mark. The parent who’s NOT around can’t hurt ya~ but the one who remains most certainly can, and it happens on a daily basis!

When a man leaves behind his flesh and blood, 98% of the time it’s because his life literally depends on him getting away from a relationship he senses will utterly destroy him, if he doesn’t. No man wants to leave his children, unless there are serious personality disorder features within, that are sanctioning that choice. Emotionally healthy men fight rigorously and passionately to take their kids with ‘em if or when they feel the need to leave a spouse.

It’s never a viable option to end one’s relationship, unless a man’s experiencing dramatic psychological and physical effects of being emotionally castrated by a partner who takes her unresolved childhood rage, disappointment and pain out on the nearest, most convenient target~ whether it be a loving husband, or her child.

If you’re still comfortable and wish to gain more insight, please read on.

We deeply bond with our mothers in-utero. She is our first object of attachment, and the center of our entire world. During our development in her womb, we become intimately familiar with the rhythmic sounds of her heartbeat and breathing, which frequently lull us to sleep.

During our months-long gestation period, we learn her voice, the cadence of her speech, and the unique way she enunciates her words. We also co-experience her emotional states. If our mother is anxious, depressed or frightened, we feel those emotions right along with her, through the permeable membrane between us. If she is happy, joyful, content and calm, we feel precisely the same way. Everything Mom feels, we do too! As far as our fetal self is concerned, we are ONE with her. There is no separation between us. We are Her, and She is Us!

Generalized Anxiety Disorder can be acquired by an infant from its mother in-utero, if this was the predominant, recurring emotion she felt while pregnant. A lot of people have no idea why they’ve felt anxious or ill at ease their entire life~ it seems illogical to ‘em, but (thankfully) this issue can be repaired and resolved within a relatively short time, the right type of assistance.

Feel like you’re always waiting for the other shoe to drop~ especially when life’s going really well? This could be due to Womb Anxiety. Environmental factors along with relationship dynamics as we’re growing up, also strongly contribute to this “never feeling relaxed and safe” sensation… but again, this is not difficult to dismantle and heal.

Are you interested in learning more? If so, please continue . . .

When we’re born, we are already in love with our mother! Our adoration for her has been building for 8 - 9 months. If for any reason she is unable to reciprocate our love, it’s a deep shame wound to us as newborns.

The feeling state of shame is, “I’m not good enough or lovable.” This sensation is typically felt in our solar plexus, where it can reside the rest of our life, if we don’t secure competent, professional help to shrink and eradicate it.

Humans can be emotionally derailed within the first hours and days of life outside their mother’s womb. Perhaps Mother has postpartum depression. Maybe we’re born prematurely, and must be separated from her for the first weeks or months of our life. Needless to say, this interruption in the bond we felt with her in-utero, is traumatic for us. Hell, even being put in a lovely nursery to sleep alone after we return home from the hospital, is traumatizing. In my view, this is the real cause of Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS) which I’ve come to think of as, Broken Heart Syndrome.

Many of us survived this period in our development… but has it left any scars on our heart?? Adults tend to think that children are “resilient,” and they can bounce back from virtually anything. While it’s true that kids can survive all kinds of neglect and abuse, the repercussions from early-life struggles send tentacles out into every realm of one’s existence, and painful outcomes resulting from postnatal trauma remain entrenched for a lifetime, unless specialized help is sought to heal core wounding to our sense of Self.

Attachment to a paternal figure doesn’t get firmly established, until an infant is between the ages of 3 - 5. At this point, the child wants the opposite sex parent for their very own, and competes for his or her full attention. Little girls want all of Daddy’s affection, and don’t wish to share him with Mother. Little boys want all of Mommy’s love, and don’t wish to share her with Father. Fear not, this stage of a child’s development is normal, and will be outgrown and resolved.

Dads are more or less on the sidelines, in terms of a child’s early emotional development and dependency on them. The primal attachment bond is always with Mother for the first three years or so of a child’s growth.

We derive our sense of worth and lovability from Mother in the earliest stages of our life. If she is not equipped to securely bond and be emotionally attuned to us, we may doubt our lovability and worth, the rest of our lives. We then seek partners who can help us feel “truly loved” and we want very badly to trust that they do~ yet we’re not able to intuitively discern when it’s genuine care and affection that’s coming our way, or merely love-bombing (a very common seduction trait among borderline personality disordered people).

Females who never got to experience a safe, secure, nourishing affectional bond with their mother, grow up to be anxiously attached as adults. It matters not, how often you reassure these gals you’ll never leave them, they cannot retain nor integrate it. They’re prone to mentally fast-forwarding into the future and imagining you’ll either leave, or die on ‘em.

When these women feel brief episodes of intimate connection with their partners, acting-out behaviors are typically triggered. A deep sense of attachment is anxiety-provoking for one who never had opportunity to experience a safe, secure, ongoing affectional bond with her maternal object.

These females have difficulty bonding fully with their children, particularly if they’re female. Deeply loving someone (anyone) feels like too great a risk to take, when virtually anything could happen to wrench that person away~ and how might one manage to survive a devastating loss such as this??

As a child develops, he or she must navigate essential developmental crossings, in order to grow up with positive self-regard and healthy self-esteem. It’s a vitally important part of one’s maturation process to separate and individuate from their mother, and the first stage happens when we can be mobile on our own. We still need Mother, but we prefer not to, because we are growing our first, most thrilling sense of independence and autonomy. Hence, The (rebellious) Terrible Two’s~ when every parent wants to flush their kid down the toilet!

When a female carries unresolved primal wounds from infancy and early childhood, her unmet maternal needs from that time, are unconsciously foisted onto her child. This mother’s dependence on her infant for a sense of connection, closeness and nourishing interplay is profound, as she’s wanting to surmount her own painful, childhood deficits… or mend the hole in her soul, if you will.

When this early bonding phase begins to change due to a child’s natural, normal stage of development, it can create a battle of wills between mother and child that triggers frequent, unresolvable discord. Sadly, the very same conflictual relational dynamics that existed for many years with the mother’s own mother, are replicated with her child, particularly if it’s female.

Core wounded women tend to have significant difficulty bonding with other females, even when they’re blood-related, due to unresolved primal trauma. A mother and daughter relationship dynamic is no exception. Unhealthy enmeshment between the two is a typical outcome of one’s early maternal deficits. This means, the child cannot develop an autonomous and healthy sense of an Self, separate from her mother. When the mother one day dies, a significant portion of this child dies too. She can feel quite lost in her attempts to confidently navigate the world of adults.

Borderline Personality Disorder is a developmental arrest issue that’s spawned by a young child’s need to disconnect or dissociate from painful emotions around the age of two, in order to survive his or her inescapable anguish. Emotional dissociation typically takes the form of hyper-analyzing every emotion one experiences in the body, which is how millions learned to live in their head, since early childhood.

Emotional development is inevitably halted at this tender age, which undermines the adult child’s capacity for impulse control, healthy boundaries and empathy (not to be confused with sympathy). Sympathy is the ability to feel sorry for another (a crippled person, an injured or sick dog, etc.). Empathy is the capacity to identify with and relate to another’s pain, inner experiences and perspectives. If one has dissociated from his/her own pain, they cannot experience empathy for another’s struggles.

Unresolved/unhealed core trauma negatively impacts all relationship dynamics. The inescapable undercurrent of fear and anxiety surrounding fully attaching to another (which represents a loss of self to Borderlines~ what precious little they have), cannot help but trigger destructive acting-out impulses, which create serious obstacles to harmonious, loving interplay within interpersonal and professional realms.