Why We Choose Father-Like Men

2024 Author: James Gerald | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 14:00

Psychologists say that most women, on a subconscious level, compare their chosen one with their father and, sometimes even without wanting to, choose the one who reminds them of their dad.

You can deliberately look for a person who is not like your father, but your choice will still fall on a man who will have some common features with him. What is the reason for such female selectivity?

123RF / kzenon

The daughter of my friend, who just recently turned 12, once told her mother: "I will never marry!" To the surprised question of her mother, the girl replied: "Because I will never find a man who looks like my dad."

After a friend told me about this entertaining conversation, I thought: we all know perfectly well that girls choose men who remind them of their father, but why is this happening? What makes you look closely at each boyfriend, trying to find in him the features that the most important man in your life possesses? Why, even if, due to some circumstances, we desperately want to meet someone who would not at all look like our father, we still fall in love with his "reflection"?

Of course, this does not always happen: there are often cases when, tired of the weakness of their own dad, women choose strong, self-confident, sometimes even cruel men.

However, quite often the daughters of weak-willed fathers create families with men similar to them: having understood from a young fingernails that the head of the family can be commanded, such a girl will subconsciously look for a submissive spouse.

So, why do we pay attention to those men in whose actions, appearance and character we see the reflection of their father?

123RF / Silvain Robin

Behavior model

Our family is a school of human relations, but more importantly, it is a school that teaches what the relationship between a man and a woman should be. We look at the father and mother and see what and how should happen in a normal married couple. It would never occur to us to think that the most important people may have something abnormal. Of course, now we are not talking about those families where physical violence is used and where the relationship comes to naught, ending in divorce. We are talking about complete families: mom, dad, children. And each of them has its own rules and principles. In one, an imperious man completely subordinates a woman to his will and she bows her head obediently; in another, the husband, on the contrary, agrees in everything with his wife, who twirls him as he wants.

The daughter looks at the relationship between mom and dad and decides: this is right, it should be. It is not surprising that, becoming an adult, she, on a subconscious level, will look for a man with whom it is possible to build the same model of relationship.

Father for the unborn child

A good relationship with a father as a child is wonderful, but, as paradoxical as it may sound, sometimes they can play a cruel joke with us. If dad has become a real ideal for his daughter: he is strong, and brave, and caring, and knows how to listen, and will help in any situation, then she will look for such a man, a future father to her children, afterwards. “My child should receive all that father's love that I received in childhood,” such a woman thinks, and “sews off” one boyfriend after another. In none of them does she see what would remind her of the image of the best father in the world. Unfortunately, such a search can drag on for many years.

123RF / BlueOrange Studio

Dot i

Psychologists say that even a conflicted relationship with a father can make a girl fall in love with someone who reminds her of her dad. It would seem that all this is rather strange: in theory, women should run away from those who are similar to their despotic and incomprehensible parents, but in this case everything is much more interesting.

Unresolved conflicts with fathers, which we think were left in childhood, actually haunt us throughout our lives.

It is not surprising that we stop our choice on someone who seems to us like the main opponent of our childhood, and constantly prove something to him: either our right to freedom and independence, or the need for a more explicit manifestation of love and affection.

Attempt number two

If in the girl's life the father appeared only sporadically: he worked a lot, often went on business trips, or even divorced his mother when the child was still too young, then for quite understandable reasons it is the paternal love that the grown-up girl will miss so much.

Often, the fairer sex turns their attention to men who are much older than them, in part because they want to make up for the lack of communication with their dad. They may not be aware of this, but the need to have a mature, consisted man nearby is often conditioned only by the desire to feel like a little protected girl.