Early Deprivation: Can A Man Act Like A Father Figure In A Relationship If He Experienced Early Deprivation?

If a man is currently in an intimate relationship with a woman, he could find that he spends a lot of time giving but very little time receiving. Due to this, he can often feel weighed down and drained by her needs.

And, no matter what he does for or gives her, she might often criticise him and act like he doesn’t give much. Thanks to this, there can be times when he is filled with anger and resentment.

Missing out

If he were to think about the needs that she meets, he can find that there are moments when she listens to what he has to say and they have sex, but that’s about it. Then again, she might seldom listen to what he has to say, and they might rarely have sex.

The reason for this is that she could largely be caught up with her own issues and be out of reach emotionally a lot of the time. If he ever talks about his own challenges or how he feels, she could typically be indifferent and even shame him.

Another part

He will then be understanding and supportive, but he will rarely receive her understanding and support. Based on what is going on, it will generally be as though her needs and feelings matter, but his needs and feelings don’t and are an inconvenience.

Therefore, she will have the right to have challenges, needs and feelings, but he won’t. The only right he will have is to receive crumbs from her, while she is entitled to his time, energy and resources.

Exte
al Support

If he were to talk to a trusted friend about this, they could say that he is more like her father than her boyfriend. They could then say that his relationship is out of balance, and unless this changes, he will continue to be diminished.

After this, they might notice that this is not the first time that he has been in a relationship like this. They might see that in his last relationship, and perhaps others, he was with a woman who was just consumed by her own needs and unable to be there for him.

The First

Assuming that this is the case, he can wonder why he continually ends up with women who are like this and why he can't just meet a woman who can be there for him. If he were to look back on how he behaves when he first starts dating a woman, he can see that he becomes very focused on her and acts like he is a needless being who is always settled and doesn’t have any challenges of his own.

As a result of this, the woman might be somewhat attentive in the beginning and meet certain needs, but as time passes, she becomes less responsive, and he meets more of her needs and ends up having very little energy. As a result of this, he can wonder why he doesn’t fully show up when he is dating a woman or as time passes and plays a role instead.

What’s going on?

If he were able to go back in time and observe what his early years were like, he might gradually understand why he ends up with women who are like this and behaves in his way. The reason for this is that this may have been a stage of his life when his mother was emotionally unavailable and out of reach.

Along with this, she might have often been in a bad way emotionally, making it hard for her to handle life. Consequently, he would have missed out on the attunement, care, affection, validation and support that he needed, and he would have had to adapt to her needs.

The outcome

He would then have been greatly deprived and deeply wounded and acted more like her parent than her son. Therefore, a stage of his life when he needed to receive was a stage when he received very little emotionally and had to give a lot.

The connection that he had to his feelings and needs, so his embodied true self, would have gradually been lost and replaced by an outer-directed and disembodied false self. And as he was egocentric, he would have come to believe that his needs and feelings were bad, and that he was worthless and unlovable.

It wasn’t personal

What is also likely to have played a part in how he adapted is that when he expressed certain needs and how he felt, his mother might have ignored, rejected, and even abandoned him. She would have sent him the message that she wasn’t there for him; he was there for her.

Still, he would have lived in the hope that, by becoming who she wanted and behaving how she wanted, she would be there for him. This wouldn’t have worked, not because there was anything wrong with him, but she was probably developmentally stunted and unable to love him.

A Replay

Still, as helpless and hopeless as he was, this hope would have served as a secondary defence that made it easier for him to keep it together and function. Of course, many years will have passed since that stage of his life, but he will still be unconsciously trying to receive his mother’s love.

When he meets a woman, she will, to his unconscious, represent his mother, and he will then behave as he did as a boy, hoping that this time it will be different. This part of him has no sense of time and is blind, which is why it won’t see that, as this stage of his life is over and another woman is not his mother, it is too late for him to receive this love.

Moving Forward

For him to no longer struggle for the love that he missed out on and can never receive, reconnect to his connected true self and feel comfortable with his needs and feelings, there will be a number of steps for him to take. There will be beliefs for him to question, pain to face and process, and unmet developmental needs to experience.

This will take courage, support, patience and persistence.

Awareness

If a man can relate to this and he is ready to change his life, he may need to reach out for exte
al support. This is something that can be provided with the assistance of a therapist or healer.