Stop bitching, man, and get over it.
“You know, it was just typical daddy issues. Nothing else, really.”
The statement above was my friend’s (“Jim”) response to a question I asked regarding a woman (“Jane”) he’d recently cut ties with. Despite her quite distinguished ass-to-waist ratio, he’d grown tired of her flakiness, her (relative) youth — He’s 31. She’s 23. — and her emotional instability. The response came when I asked him if he ever figured out why she was so prone to random (and public) bouts of strange behavior. (Example: At a get together several months ago, she got upset with Jim and decided to leave and sit in his car with the windows open for the rest of the night. The low temperature that night was 37.)
Apparently, she didn’t have the best relationship with her father, and this combined with the fact that the last couple guys she dated were also in their 30′s was all the proof he needed that she just had serious daddy issues.
While I didn’t dispute my friend’s claim, hearing this woman’s obviously faulty behavior being dismissed as “daddy issues” made something click inside of me, something that had been festering for years now and finally needed to come out:
“Daddy issues” are f*cking bullshit
Think about it. Think about how every single dating and relationship-related thing that could possibly be wrong with a woman always seems to come back to her father.
If a woman seeks approval from men it’s because she didn’t get enough from her father.
If a woman only dates older men it’s because she’s searching for a father figure.
If a woman’s only attracted to distant and emotionally unavailable men, she’s trying to replicate the relationship she had with her father.
If a woman dates players and man hoes it’s because her father was the same way.
If a woman’s extremely and unnecessarily hard on men it’s because she’s a daddy’s girl.
If a woman’s promiscuous it’s because she either didn’t give enough love from her father or had an inappropriate relationship with him.
If a woman can’t properly gauge a man’s character it’s because her father didn’t teach her how.
If a woman’s too sexually naive she was babied by her father.
If a woman f*cks an illegal alien it’s because her dad got abducted by a UFO
Point? If every single woman on the planet has some form of daddy issues — and, if what everybody seems to say is correct, they do — then daddy issues don’t actually exist!
I mean, there’s a reason why there’s no such thing as “human issues” or “10 toe issues” or “two nipple issues.” An “issue” is no longer an issue if everyone has some form of the same f*cking issue. At that point it’s just…normal — no one on Earth has a perfect relationship with their father — and this normalcy means that this “issue” can no longer stand as an excuse for effed up behavior.
Jane’s relationship with her father didn’t make her a f*cking weirdo. No, the fact that she was f*cking weird made her a f*cking weirdo. Daddy issues didn’t cause your ex-girlfriend to break-up with you because she just couldn’t be with a guy who “liked her too much.” No, she couldn’t be with a guy who liked her too much because she was an asshole and an emotional nincompoop. A woman only attracted to much older men isn’t trying to “replace” her dad. She just a lazy f*ck who tries to explain her lazy f*ckness by saying that she’s too mature for men her age.
Seriously, a grown woman (or man) blaming odd dating and relationship behavior on daddy issues is like a black man getting fired from the Cheesecake Factory and blaming slavery. Sure, maybe your life might have been a tad different if your great-great-great grandmother wasn’t massa Jackson’s favorite nighttime foot warmer, but you got fired today because they caught your creepy ass eating the tomatoes out of the shrimp and bacon club sandwiches.
This isn’t meant to minimize the importance of a father in a young woman’s life and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Dads matter and shit. But, using daddy issues as a universal excuse, distinction, and diagnosis subtly absolves accountability, making all dads equal scapegoats for shitty behavior.
You know, I’m not a dad yet, but I might be one day. If this day comes, there’s a 50/50 chance that my child will be a daughter, and I will do everything in my power to protect, love, and educate this girl. But, if she decides to cite a hug I didn’t give her in 2018 as the reason why she can’t find love in 2038, I’ll have one message for her: F*ck you
—The Champ
***If you get a minute, check out Do ‘Good Men’ Think Too Much? — a review of “Your Degrees Won’t Keep You Warm at Night” by Andrew Ladd at The Good Men Project***
