Q: For the past few years, I find that I (without meaning to) always look to those older than me as mother or father figures. My friends have no trouble making friends with older people but I really just cannot help lowering myself to them because I’m trying to make them a mother/father figure. I even picture my parents’ dads in particular as my dad. I was wondering if this is simply my personality, or has to do with my childhood. About four or five years ago, my father left my brother and mother and myself for another woman, and refused to pay child support for my brother and I and even try to get in contact with us. Eventually he starting paying some child support, but not nearly enough. I have always felt extremely betrayed by his actions, and they were a very very traumatizing thing for me at the time. Now, his betrayal and wanting to get into our lives again feels routine, and I feel I will never have a “normal” relationship with him again (which is fine by me.) About my mother - when she first had to start working when I was about seven or eight it hurt me badly, but eventually became a “housewife” again. Then after my father left, she had to start working all of the time, and now works almost every single day full time and I never see her. I blame my father for her depression. Do any of these things have something subconsciously to do with me feeling the need to find parents in other people? Thanks so much if you can help answer this.
A: It makes sense to me that you might be searching to replace something you lost. You were only 12 when your Dad left and life changed dramatically. Many things you thought were true about your family and especially about your relationship with your Dad were thrown open to question. For many kids, when a parent abandons his family like this, it’s like a death. It leaves a big hole inside that lots of kids then try repeatedly to fill.
The good news is that you are not trying to fill it with one abusive, abandoning boyfriend after another in an effort to understand the “bad dad”. Unfortunately, some kids do exactly that. Instead, you are trying to replace the “good father”. There’s nothing wrong with that — as long as you don’t turn these sarrogate fathers into lovers. You need to keep it straight that father love (mentoring, caring, unconditional loving from someone older and wiser) is different from lover love (interdependence, passionate involvement, sex, love between equals).
If your gradfather is willing to take the father role with you, and you like and respect him, that’s great. If the father of one of your friends is willing to “adopt” you and treat you like one of his daughters, that can work too. Some kids also turn to their spiritual father as the source of father love and comfort. It’s a basic need to feel parented. Please don’t feel embarrassed about it. Just find a way to fill that need that is healthy.
I wish you well.
Dr. Marie
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