Fatherless Women Part 1

Hi, I'm Dr. Jameca Cooper, and today we're going to talk specifically about fatherless women. First of all, I want to talk about why that is. As a psychotherapist, a psychologist, I've been in practice almost 20 years. I've seen a lot of things, heard a lot of things, But I will say that one of the things that I see quite frequently in therapy are women who would be described as fatherless. So what is a fatherless woman? A woman that definitely we know that we all have biological fathers, but this could be a woman who has a father that maybe he lives in a different state, maybe he lives in a different country, maybe he doesn't see his child very much, um, during childhood and adolescence. It could be a father that was incarcerated. It could be a father that was not available for reasons such as mental health issues. Again, maybe struggling with the mental illness. Could be a father that was struggling with substance abuse or drug abuse and could not be available for that reason. Could be a father that was remarried and had another family that he had to attend to. Could be a father that was in the house and worked a lot. Could be a father that did none of those things and was working a normal job in the house but really had no physical, social, or emotional contact with the child. So all of these things could make you a fatherless woman. So one of the things that I see from my patients in therapy, women that are fatherless, are big things that I see pop up in their life. But these are themes, I guess you would call them themes, or behaviors that keep popping up in their lives over and over again as it relates to their background of being fatherless. One of those is an attraction to unavailable men. So first, what is an unavailable man? A man that is not physically available for various reasons. Maybe he's married, maybe he lives somewhere else, maybe he just doesn't want to be physically present. Or it could be a man that is emotionally unavailable, so someone that may be there with you all the time but emotionally you really get nothing from this person. He doesn't really fill your cup up. He doesn't give you anything that makes you feel good about yourself. He's not complimentary, he's not nurturing, he's not supportive. This will be a person that is emotionally unavailable. So how does this play out? Sometimes when I'm working with young women in therapy, they're engaging in behavior such as, let's say, calling or texting their friend, partner, boyfriend every day, multiple times a day, and they might not get a call or a text back for 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 days. Um, but for a woman that has the background of being a fatherless woman, she might not see that behavior as being unavailable. She might see this person as being busy. She might see this person as being, oh, he's just doing blah blah blah, he's really into his business. But any woman, especially a woman of my age, knows that if a man wants to be with you, in a relationship with you, he'll make time. However, whenever he has to do that, but he will make time to reach out to you. He will definitely make time to respond to you. So if you're calling and texting, that's one of those things that's a foundation baseline that has to exist. But for women who are fatherless women, they don't see those behaviors that are not reciprocated as signs that the person is unavailable. But to a person like me who's a psychologist, I can easily see it, of course, because I'm on the outside looking in. But first, let me add this part. As a woman, of course, at my age, I've been through it all. I've of course been in relationships with people that have been emotionally and physically unavailable. So you don't have to be a fatherless woman to be in a relationship and still have those types of behaviors. Um, with age and maturity, you learn and you grow and you realize that those things are not acceptable, so you tend to do better and make better choices. But for fatherless women, they tend to have themes of not being able to see the signs of being in a relationship with a person, a partner, or a man that is emotionally or physically unavailable. That's one thing that tends to be their blind spot because it is normal for them based on their relationship with their father. So based on their relationship with their father who has been unavailable, they don't see the signs, they don't see this as problematic, but it is. So this is one of the signs. I will talk about more of these themes or behaviors from fatherless women in later videos, so make sure you subscribe. Hope you learned something about fatherless women. I'm Dr. Jameca Cooper.