FATHER VOID

Every newborn baby needs the love of a mother and of a father, and later—for meaning in life and the enjoyment of life—needs to learn to love herself and to have a personal relationship with the Creator.

If the father is missing from that equation—due to death, divorce, workaholism, separation, or just an inability to love correctly—then logically certain developments of personality will be altered unless father substitutes can make up for it.

In a girl baby, she will still identify sexually with mother usually, from ages two to six (85% of our basic personalities are formed by age six). But the girl will crave male attention because of the void. So if father substitutes are not found (other male relatives or friends who spend time with her, or even coaches or Sunday School teachers), she will be more likely to crave male approval more than other girls when she enters the teen years and up. She will be more likely to be tempted to give sex for love (or for any male who pretends to love her), even though it is not sex she usually wants at all.

She will be more likely to have codependency issues that break her “PEOPLE PICKER”—so she will be more likely to marry an abuser or a loser because her “BLINDERS” are on. The healthier a woman is, and the less she needs a husband, the more likely it is she will pick a good one. The more needy a woman is, the more she will blind herself to grab what she can, even feeling often like she does not even deserve better.

A baby boy with a father-void will also tend to identify sexually with his mother from two to six if no male substitutes are around to identify with. He too will crave his absent father’s attention, and thus the attention of boys and men later in life. He will learn to walk and talk and think like Mom, who may be a wonderful woman. But this creates in due time a “woman” trapped in a man’s body. He will be more likely later in life to become homosexual. He probably does not actually want sex with other men, although this could develop into an addiction in some. But he will use sex to get male attention if necessary. Developing non-sexual, deep and healthy friendships with other males later in life can significantly decrease this urge to use sex to get male attention.

King David, three thousand years ago (in Psalm 68) said that God loves to take lonely widows and orphans and place them in new families. What an awesome thought. I often tell my father-deprived clients that they DO NOT NEED THEIR SPERM DONOR. There are eight billion people out there on planet earth and your genetic father is JUST ONE OF THEM. But you do need the love of males and females who know the real you, so go build your own support group—your own new “family.”

Jesus’ disciples criticized Jesus for fellowshipping with his friends one time, while Jesus’ mother and brothers were waiting outside, talking to each other outside the house. Jesus replied to his disciples that his friends WERE HIS FATHER AND MOTHER AND SISTER AND BROTHER. They were his emotional family. His physical family was important to him also. He was very close to his Mother, Mary. But his friend, Mary Magdalene, was the last to see him when he died, and the first to see him when he arose from the dead. She truly was his “sister and mother.”

PAUL MEIER, M.D

Author of over eighty books,

Founder of the national chain of Meier Clinics, BUT MOST IMPORTANTLY, a lover of my sisters and brothers.