As an assignment for a Fathers and Daughters Class, I had to read the book Wounded Woman. This is a discussion of my impressions after the reading.
I had a very difficult time writing this paper. While I found the text, Wounded Woman, Healing the Father-Daughter Relationship, extremely interesting, it was very hard for me to apply the concepts to my relationship with my father. I had a very good relationship with him and do not feel that I was “wounded” in any way. The only related concept that I could identify with, after much introspection, was that of daughters who had “too positive” of a relationship with their father.
In the text, Leonard described the impact, on adult life, that too good of a relationship with the father has on a woman as she is growing up, and after she has reached adulthood. By idealizing their father these women can compromise their man-woman relationships, professional progress, and ability to realize that they can make valuable contributions to society. By accepting the negative side of her father, a woman can begin to transform the relationship with her father to one that is reality based. She can then begin to accept the relationship on a human to human level instead of a “god” to human level.
All little girls love their daddies, and think that he is the most wonderful thing on this Earth. Yet some daughters suffer extreme anguish associated with the father-daughter relationship. For those women I feel true sympathy and compassion. Some of them have faced terrible ordeals at the hand of their fathers, or have been abandoned by him at a time when they needed him most. I, however, do not happen to be one of these women. If anything my father was too good to me, and loved me too much. So much so that he spoiled me. It is for this reason that I identified strongly with the sub-concept of “too positive” relationship with the father.
Daughters who have had “too positive” a relation to their father have still another aspect of the father to redeem. If the relation to the father is too positive, the daughters are likely to be bound to the father by over-idealizing him and by allowing their own inner father strength to remain projected outward on the father. Quite often their relationships to men are constricted because no man can match the father. In this case they are bound to the father in a similar way to women who are bound to an imaginary “ghost lover.” (Often idealized relation to the father is built up unconsciously when the father is missing.) The too positive relationship to the father can cut them off from a real relationship to men and quite often from their own professional potentialities. Because the outer father is seen so idealistically, they can’t see the value of their own contribution to the world. To redeem the father in themselves, they need to acknowledge his negative side. The need to experience their father as human and not as an idealized figure in order to internalize the father principle in themselves. (Leonard, 159)
This concept, or sub-concept, speaks to me about my relationship with my father, and the men that I have been involved throughout my adult life. My father was not a “god,” but I respected him immensely. My father taught me many valuable life lessons. Lessons of honesty, integrity, decency, ethics, and respect. Respect for my family, my Native American ancestors, the Creator, and Mother Earth and all her children. But most of all my father taught me to have respect for myself. Sometimes these lessons were hard learned, but that was only because I was stubborn, and a “maverick daughter.” He always wanted me to be the best that I could be, and never compromise on the things that I felt strongly about. We would argue about many things, but never in a bitter or unforgiving way. It was he who suggested that I become an attorney, because I liked to argue so much.
In my relationships with boys, as I grew into my teens, I always looked for those that were like my father, and of course I would never find them. I was never satisfied with any of the choices that I made in my relationships. Probably because I truly believed that there were no “good” men left, at least none that I could find. However, I was wrong and this was pointed out to me over and over throughout the years by my family and friends, especially after I reached adulthood.
After my first marriage failed, I again began my quest for the guy “just like” my dad. Unfortunately, I wasted a lot of precious living time searching for this mythical creature. After a string of unsuccessful relationships, which terminated primarily because I lost interest, I was forced to take a hard look at myself. After contemplating the alternatives, I decided to give up my search completely, and vowed to myself that I would live a solitary life. That’s when I found the man I am married to now. He is nothing at all like my father, save one exception and that he that he is as devoted to me as my father was to my mother.
When my husband, Tom, and I got married, it was very important for me that my dad like him, and at first he did. But after awhile things and circumstances changed and my father no longer seemed to approve of my choice. I don’t think it was because they didn’t get along, but rather my constant, and blatant, efforts to recreate my husband into someone, or something, that he could not be, an emotional mirror image of my father.
My husband, of course, resisted, and I soon became disillusioned with the marriage. We began to fight regularly, and vehemently. This went on for several years, and then my father died. I was devastated, and lost but my idolization of my dad continued. I would talk about my father constantly as if he were some sort of ethereal being, and the example of the “perfect” man. I sometimes referred to his as the last “good” man on the Earth. Obviously, there are many reasons why this was not healthy for my marriage. My husband and I continued to fight bitterly, and at one point we came to blows. That was a low point in both our lives. Neither of us ever thought that we would slide that far into the depths of anger. It was a wake-up call for both of us, especially me.
After that I sought counseling. I began to seriously reassess my relationship with my husband, the relationship with my father, and the memories that I had of my him. Gradually, I began to open myself up to the realization that my father was “only” a man, not the “god” I had once imagined. I allowed myself to look at him, and see him, with the eyes of truth until I could finally accept the reality and lay aside the myth. My father will always be a “great” man in my eyes, and a tremendous driving force in my life. But he was “just” a man, and that was, and is, O.K.
It has taken me many years, five to be exact, to accept and revel in the fact that my father, and John Wayne, was human. But I’m glad that he, they, were. It makes all those stories and life lessons he shared with me so much more meaningful and sacred to me. I am also glad that my husband has hung in there all these years. He has remained constant and supportive when I was at my level worst. And when I was scattered he helped put all the pieces back into place. There have been times he has voiced his opinions to me and times when he has remained silent. But he has always remained. No matter what turmoil or catastrophe we faced, he never lost sight of who he was and who was important to him. Me! My father would have been proud.
If someone were to ask me today if am I still searching for a man “just like” my father, I would have to say no, because I’ve found him. I have finally realized my husband is “just like” my father in the way that I need it the most. Unconditional Love.
Works Cited
Leonard, Linda Schierse, The Wounded Woman, Healing the Father-Daughter Relationship,
Boston & London, Shambhala Publications, Inc. (1982)
Share
Save
Follow Me