I’m a divorce survivor. I’ve survived countless fatherless Father’s days, single-parent-budget Christmas’, and the occasional Happy Birthday card filled with empty “I love you”‘s. As an adult in my mid 20′s, I look around at the relationships that other fatherless women my age are in. The setting changes, but the plot is essentially the same; emotionally distant husband/boyfriend says ‘I need you baby’, but is somehow out of the picture most of the time. Someone else is more important. He’s just selfish. Sounds like Dad.
So was Freud right? Is there really such thing as the Electra Complex, or at least something very close? Daddy was a big strong man with a deep voice who loved meat and chopping wood. The daughter will obviously end up marrying a Firefighter. Or, daddy was a creative artist who ate tofu and rode his bike everywhere to help save the environment, so girl marries a musician. Or daddy was a quiet watchmaker who enjoyed reading the newspaper and conquering that weeks sudoku puzzle, so girl marries a web developer. Does psychosexual development really involve an underlined sexual attraction to the father figure?
Maybe it’s a little less…uh…gross than that. Maybe it’s observed behavior, like a blueprint. Perhaps a girl grows up observing how a man should be. To a little girl, her daddy is the most obvious blueprint. He is strong and watches sports, like every man should. Or he is emotional and loving, like all men should be. Or he is intelligent and political, like all men should try to be, so obviously I’m going to find a man who is just like him. A girl uses dad as a foundation, or a blueprint, and then sets out to find her life partner.
So what does a girl do when she has no blueprint? How do you build a house without knowing where you’re building it, what materials you want to use, how many rooms, etc. I’ll tell you how; with your eyes closed, and it usually ends up being a giant mess. Instead of a good blueprint, she gets the Standard Issued blueprint, the kind they pretty much give to everyone who doesn’t have one. She gets the medias concept of ‘man’. He’s tall dark and handsome, and has a lot of money and can afford to give you really nice things. He listens to all the ‘good’ music, and may or may not have rims on his car. He has a bit of a rough exterior, but being with him makes all of my friends really jealous. He doesn’t seem to have much respect for women, and he’s really good at making me feel stupid, but he’s really funny and all of my friends are jealous of our reality tv-like romance…
Will she break up with him eventually? Of course. Will she blame herself? Of course. Will she set right back out with the same rink-a-dink-handmade-linkin-log-embarassment of a blueprint, searching for Mr.Right to fill a void that daddy left behind? Absolutely. It will be a neverending cycle of disappointment and self-abuse until she finds the right blueprint.
How does a girl with no solid father figure find a blueprint? Who does a young fatherless girl look at and say to herself “There is a good man who is good enough to be part of my life”. Whom can she then model all of her subsequent suitors after?
That is a very difficult question to answer without generalizing, as every girls life is filled with different people with very different spirits. The closest I can come up with is my personal story. I grew up with no real blueprint. I kissed a lot of frogs who, instead of turning into my Prince Charming, ended up just staring at me wide eyed going, “Ribbit…” After too many braindead frogs, I decided it was me, not them. I did a lot of self-blaming that rapidly turned into self-abuse. Taking a step back and spending more time with my family helped to turn things around. I realized that I actually DO have a blueprint, it only took him a few years to catch up with me. My little brother has spent his life around women, and (accidently) seems to understand us. He’s extremely creative like my mother, and intelligent which then causes him to be very witty. He tends to know a little bit about everything, and a whole lot about a few things. He is very opinionated, and hates stereotypes. He has a really good concept of right and wrong, and knows exactly what to say when I ask him “do these pants make me look like a hippo?” I realized that those are all characteristics that I want in a life partner. My blueprint ended up being my little brother, which only makes me love and respect him that much more.
I’m currently in a very committed relationship with a man who is extremely intelligent, makes me laugh until i can’t breathe correctly, and has spent most of his life surrounded by women. He loves computers and social issues as much as my brother does, so you can guess they’ve become friends. I finally found a frog to kiss me back!
So many fatherless girls end up on the streets searching for love and attention, in terrible relationships with men who don’t care about them, or simply lonely. I feel like a bit of a success story, in that regard. I only wish that more women could stop settling for the douche bag who constantly checks out other girls. The guy whose novelty wears off pretty quickly because his character is at face value. The guy who constantly reminds you that your blueprint is totally broken, and you need another one PRONTO. Girls like me need to realize that they are not, and never were, the problem.
