Father Daughter Relationship
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Fathers are very important in the psychological development
of daughters. Fathers act as role models and provide guidance for future relationships. Fathers are the first men that daughters every love. Fathers teach wheat men are and what sort of treatment daughters can expect from them. They give the first inkling of what the world of men expects from women.
However much fathers want to protect their daughter, make them happy and enjoy them many are very uncertain about how they should behave with their daughters.
It is very important for fathers to be mindful of their parenting style and for this reason it can be very helpful to understand the different patterns that can emerge even in the most well intentioned father. Recognizing and understand these patterns fathers are better equipped to identify and avoid patterns that may have a negative effect on them and their daughters. Some of these patterns are detailed below:
Pampering father/spoiled daughter
Some fathers love their daughter so much that want her to have the best of everything. He ensures that his daughter doesn’t have to do anything
for herself that he can do for her. These fathers treat their daughters as princesses who must be protected from everything and everyone – the inevitable difficulties and obstacles we all have to face – and for whom the fairytale is always going to end happily.
However real life, of course, isn’t like that and the adult daughter feels resentful that she cannot always get what she wants. Even worse is that she has learned to be helpless to persuade men to get her what she wants rather than fighting her own battles. Usually she learns the hard way that this does not always happen.
Unfortunately this well meaning father leaves his daughter unable and unwilling to do things for herself making her adult life difficult. She may be drawn and attracted to insecure men who feel threatened by self reliant capable women and need a woman who will be dependent on them.
Mentor father/companion daughter
A mentor father can be positive or negative. A good mentor knows their protegees must move beyond their guidance; bad mentors want control over them forever.
Companion daughters can be clever and successful, but the fathers usually want them to be successful only in the ways they taught them, which is often restrictive. If the daughter rebels, the father feels rejected and their relationship may be lost.
Anguished father/angry daughter
When a father is absent or abusive in some way or perhaps he isn’t there at the time their daughter wanted or needed him their daughter may have a childhood which causes her to feel angry with their father.
As an adult she may still feel anger and despair with her father.
She may deal with these feelings avoiding contact with her father, or she may want
to see him – hoping that he will somehow recognize and redress his past failings - then be hostile when she does see him and her hopes are dashed.
Her father, now growing older, feels rejected but doesn’t know how to cope. 
If the feelings are not discussed he may even be mystified by her hostility. He will want to get closer to his daughter but doesn’t know how.
Lost father/yearning daughter
In this situation the daughter has been abandoned by her father either through death or perhaps he has deserted the family, not being around in the first place or he may take no notice of her. In this instance the father figure is emotionally and probably physically absent. As a result the daughter is desperate for contact with a father figure and idealizes him.
When she is older no man can ever measure up to her dream of her father.
She may look for male partners who are father figures and much older and more secure than she is. Alternative she may believe that all men are likely to leave her, and can therefore never be trusted. In playing out this pattern she may subconsciously choose men who fear commitment and intimacy, or who are likely to abandon a relationship once it threatens to become serious.
Abuse father/victim daughter
A father who consistently treats his daughter as though she exists for his gratification is abusing her, not physically or sexually, but clearly putting his own needs above the well being of his daughter. The daughter is likely to grow up angry without really knowing how to express it; she will often find it difficult to place trust in people, and may enter into abusive partnerships in the future.




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