Daughters who did not receive love: what are their emotional relationships like?

Many of those daughters who did not receive love in childhood live their suffering in silence in adulthood.. Neglect, abandonment, narcissistic parents… There are several dynamics and realities capable of leaving permanent wounds in the child’s psychological fabric. All these early emotional injuries usually have their later impact on the couple.

As we already know, fatherhood and motherhood are often far from perfect, it is true. So much so, that more than one could give their testimony to demonstrate that A mother’s affection can sometimes be conditional. Also, a father’s respect for his children is not always so exemplary. However, in this particular case, we are interested in understanding a fact that usually arouses a lot of interest.

What are the relationships like in those women who suffered deprivation from their family during childhood? How do they live, feel and manage love in adulthood? Let’s delve into it below.

Emotional challenges that define daughters who did not receive love

There is a very unique baggage that many unloved daughters carry and that accompanies them into adulthood.. When they look in the rearview mirror of their own life, what they almost always see is a past full of disappointments, deep voids and sharp rejections that left wounds that have not yet healed. People create our life stories based on previous experiences.

When those models that we draw on start from a childhood of emotional coldness, lack of love or even psychological abuse, it is common to integrate distorted and even wrong schemes. For example, Many of these daughters who did not receive love in their childhood may accept abusive behavior on the part of their partners as valid.

They do it because it’s the only thing they’ve ever known. They accept contempt, blackmail and even emotional manipulation because that is what they had from early on. It is not easy to open our eyes to these realities. It is not easy to understand that authentic love does not work that way and that we should all aspire to something better. Let’s discuss more features.

Insecure attachment in daughters who did not receive love

Peg Streep is an American author who has been studying the reality of those women who were not loved by their mothers in childhood for more than 20 years. in his book Daughter Detox He explains something interesting to us. According to her, These daughters are defined by developing an insecure attachmentThat is, during childhood they never knew what to expect from their parents, especially the maternal figure.

Insecurity, the constant contradiction in which attention is sometimes received, indifference and sometimes criticism and contempt can cause some of these three patterns of behavior to develop in the relational sphere in adulthood. They are the following:

Anxious-preoccupied affective behavior. Defined by experiencing insecurity, as well as anxiety constantly in the emotional relationship, feeling afraid of abandonment and deception, that at the very least they will suffer betrayal.Dismissive-avoidant. In this case, the woman does not want to establish solid relationships, she avoids them because she prefers to maintain her independence, have control over her life and thus, avoid suffering.Fearful-avoidant. In this type of relationship, daughters who did not receive love in childhood become adults who want to have a partner and enjoy intimacy. However, they feel insecure, they fear experiencing the same pain as in childhood and they do not hesitate to disappear or cut off the relationship from one day to the next.

In a study that examined how adult attachment styles are expressed in daily life, anxiously attached people reported greater negative affect and less positive affect, as well as greater fear of losing control in daily life. Both anxious and avoidant participants perceived themselves negatively and were less confident in their coping abilities. Besides, Individuals with an anxious or avoidant style reported feeling less cared for by others than those with a secure attachment.

The research also found that People with anxious attachment had Hyperactivating tendencies, such as increased negative affect, stress, and perceived social rejection. In contrast, individuals with an avoidant attachment had deactivating tendencies, such as decreased positive states and decreased desire to be with others when alone.

Highly avoidant people have negative opinions about their romantic partners, seeing themselves as unworthy of the love and support of others. (Bartholomew, 1990). Avoidant people strive to create and maintain independence, control, and autonomy in their relationships. This is so because they believe that seeking psychological or emotional proximity with romantic partners is not possible. These beliefs motivate the avoidant to employ distancing coping strategies. in which they defensively suppress negative thoughts and emotions to promote independence.

Mental models and intimacy

Of the three insecure attachment styles previously mentioned, anxious-preoccupied is the most dramatic. Women with this attachment need an intimate relationship to feel validated. They respond so quickly to any perceived threat that being with them can be emotionally exhausting.

The other two types of insecure attachment, dismissive-avoidant and fearful-avoidant, make the road to romance and intimacy bumpy in different ways. Women with the dismissive style don’t really want dyadic intimacy; They need to stay independent and in control. While the fearful want intimacy, but are very insecure and fear emotional pain.

Heartbreak in childhood causes ideas to be integrated that are not true

Spending the first decades of life in the wake of emotional lack, maternal and paternal narcissism, criticism or abandonment causes daughters who did not receive love to have distorted ideas about relationships. On average, they are usually the following:

Love is a transaction. You have to suffer to receive affection, even if they are crumbs. Sometimes abuse, contempt, and manipulation are even normalized. Emotions and needs must be hidden. If something hurts you or disappoints you, you should keep that emotion to yourself. Likewise, one’s own needs, what one wants is not important. It matters what the other wants.Love must be sought wherever it is. The unloved daughter lacks a sense of belonging to a family of origin. That lack, that dislocation and lack of roots leads her to look for a simile of affection where she is her and with whom she is she. Hence, she runs the risk of devolving into relationships of dependency.

Questions to ask yourself if you were an unloved girl

If you were an unloved girl, you may have gravitated for a long time around people who, far from loving you as you want and need, neglected you in a way that no one deserves. And what you deserve is more than respect and authentic love. You need, first of all, to repair and even build the fabric of self-love and your self-esteem.

Therefore, in these situations it is good to ask ourselves the following questions, questions that should invite us to deep reflection:

Do I really need to have a partner to be happy?Does what I expect my partners to offer me have anything to do with the shortcomings I had in childhood? What has been, on average, the reason why I tend to fail in love? What have I learned from those experiences?What is love to me? Is this idea I have healthy, has it benefited me so far? What vision do I have of myself? Is there something I should attend to or resolve to feel better? Have I done it so far?If I think about my childhood, what emotions come to me? Sadness, anger, disappointment, fear…? How do these unhealed emotions and issues affect my relationships?

To conclude, there are many people who lived traumatic childhoods. However, the figure of daughters not loved by their mothers, for example, is a topic that is frequently observed. We do not hesitate to request expert help in these situations if we consider it so.

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