Early Deprivation: Can A Woman Rebel Against Men If She Had An Abusive Father?

In general, a woman could spend a lot of time talking about how bad men are. She might even talk about how the society that she lives in not only oppresses women but is run by controlling men.

This can mean that most, if not all, of her friends have the same view as her. If this is the case, when they get together, they can typically talk about the same things, validating each other in the process.

One Are

She might be single, or she could be with a man, but if she is with a man, he could be a man who is very easy-going and has a strong need for approval. Along with this, he could also talk about how bad men are and come across as though he is ashamed of being a man.

If so, he is not going to have a strong connection with his masculinity, and he is likely to be used to being walked over. In fact, it might be normal for her to walk over him and treat him like a second-class citizen.

A high tolerance for abuse

Assuming that this is what takes place, he might just tolerate what is going on, with part of him even feeling comfortable with it. What this can show is that he was abused by his own mother and, as a result, feels ashamed of himself and is in a disembodied and disconnected state.

And, even though she is fighting men and is against oppressive systems, she can rationalise how she treats him. In her eyes, as he is a man, he can simply deserve to be treated badly; that’s if she even thinks about how she treats him.

A Pattern

There is a chance that she has had a number of relationships where she has treated men in this way. When she does humiliate a man and watches him suffer, she can feel good about herself and as though she is getting her own back for what men are doing and have done to women over the years.

Due to how she sees things, if it were pointed out that he has turned into what she says she is against, she could dismiss what she hears. She will then be doing the right thing, and that will be the end of it.

The Next Stage

Now, regardless of whether she is in a relationship like this or has been in the past, there may come a time when she ends up taking a step back and reflecting on her behaviour. During this time, she might think about how, over the years, she has met men who were not controlling and had no interest in oppressing women.

What she can wonder is why she has such a strong hate and disgust toward men and anything that represents the masculine. This doesn’t mean that this part of her won’t be as strong as it was, though; it's just that there will be another part of her that is not caught up in it.  

A Closer Look

As strange as this is likely to be, it can show that she is unconsciously projecting the father that she had into men and the masculine element. Additionally, to this deeper part of her, society and some of the systems in place can also symbolically represent men.

Therefore, it will seem as though she is fighting men, but she will really be fighting her father. At this point, she might wonder why she would be fighting her father.

Going Deeper

If she were to think about what her early years were like, she might not be able to remember a great deal, or she could say that her father wasn’t abusive. However, irrespective of whether she can’t remember much or says that he treated her well, this may have been a stage of her life when she was greatly deprived and deeply wounded.

From a very young age, her father might have been emotionally unavailable and out of reach, controlling, and verbally and even physically abusive. As for her mother, she might have been just as emotionally unavailable and out of reach and a beaten-down woman, who did very little to stop his behaviour.

A Brutal Time

This would have caused her to miss out on the attunement, mirroring, care, affection, protection and support that she needed to grow and develop in the right way. Feeling ignored, rejected, fearful, terrified, powerless, abandoned and as though she was going to be annihilated would have been normal.

To handle what happened, and it keep it together and function, she would have had to lose touch with her embodied, connected, and fully feeling true self. In its place would have been the creation of a disembodied, connected and not fully feeling false self.

It’s over

But, although her mother and father couldn’t provide her with what she needed, as most likely, they had also been greatly deprived and deeply wounded as children, she would have lived in the hope that, if she struggled, they would love her. This struggle would have served as a secondary defence, as it would have aided in repression and allowed her to release tension.

This stage of her life will now be over, of course, but a big part of her will still be trying to receive what she missed out on, as it has no sense of time and is blind. Thanks to this, it won’t be able to see that, no matter what she does to a man or men or what system she can destroy, it won’t allow her to receive what she missed out on, or to change how she feels deep down.

Moving Forward

For her to no longer look for the love that she missed out on, no longer need to punish men, and reconnect to herself, she will have beliefs to question, pain to face and process, and unmet developmental needs to experience. This will take courage, support, patience and persistence.

Awareness

If a woman can relate to this and she is ready to change her life, she may need to reach out for external support. This is something that can be provided with the assistance of a therapist or healer. 

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Oliver JR Cooper
http://www.oliverjrcooper.co.uk