Daddy issues aren’t a punchline, they are real and they are really complicated. For many women including myself, they quietly guide aspects of our relationships, our sexuality, our ability to trust and be vulnerable. Daddy issues shape the kind of love we crave, the way we fight, the way we let go, our desire for dominance, our need for submission.
Let’s talk about what happens when a girl’s dad checks out from her early childhood and how that affects her formative years, her view of men, her needs for control, her desperation for acceptance, and the relationship dynamics she often ends up creating.
Because when a father walks away or was never emotionally present in the first place, he doesn’t just leave a hole. He creates a hunger and a desperate need to satiate that hunger.
The Core Wound
Picture a little girl whose father left when she was five. Maybe he cheated, maybe he moved on, maybe he left for cigarettes and never came home. Dad of course has his own reasons, maybe he didn’t want the responsibility of family life, maybe mom was abusive or manipulative. Whatever his reasons, our little 5 year old internalizes that abandonment not just as dad leaving, but as her male figure not choosing her.
That “unchosen” wound becomes the backdrop for her entire emotional landscape. That’s right, the five year old wound is present and guiding decisions two, three or four decades later.
When a father figure is consistently absent or unavailable, it shapes how a girl sees herself, men, and love. That deep craving for approval or validation becomes a silent operating system, running in the background through her teens and twenties—and into her adult relationships.
We don’t realize we’re doing it, we think we’re independent, self-sufficient, flirty, and fun. Underneath all of it lies the ghost of the girl who just wanted daddy to stick around.
Attachment Styles: The Ghosts of Fatherhood Past
When you trace most insecure or chaotic relationship patterns back far enough, what do you find?
Yep. Daddy.
Let’s break down how that early father dynamic impacts a woman’s attachment style:
1. Anxious Attachment
Women with an anxious attachment style often chase love like it’s oxygen. They’re hypersensitive to rejection, over-give in relationships, and fear abandonment. These women often had dads who were hot and cold—sometimes affectionate, often emotionally unavailable or dismissive.
In ENM and cuckolding circles, this style can show up as a need to be constantly chosen again. She might crave reassurance, multiple partners, or attention because one man can’t ever quite fill the black hole left behind. Her erotic life becomes a quest for emotional oxygen.
2. Avoidant Attachment
These are the self-reliant, hyper-independent women who learned not to rely on anyone—because they couldn’t. If her dad was absent or flaky, she probably developed a belief that people don’t stick around, and needing someone is dangerous.
She might be drawn to ENM as a way to protect her heart—keeping men at a distance, emotionally compartmentalized. Cuckolding might appeal to her not for submission, but as a reversal of control: I’ll have what I want, and you’ll watch.
3. Disorganized Attachment
This one’s the trickiest. If her father was abusive, unpredictable, or created fear, she might crave intimacy and also be terrified of it. Her relationships swing from chaos to obsession to withdrawal. Sex can feel both bonding and punishing. The cuckolding dynamic here often plays into emotional release—it’s not just erotic, it’s cathartic.
She might cuckold not as kink, but as a ritual of control over past chaos.
Mom as Emotional Anchor
Now let’s flip to the other side of the coin: mom.
When dad disappears or checks out, it’s almost always mom who picks up the pieces. She becomes the foundation, the rule-maker, the nurturer, the breadwinner and the model of love.
Daughters raised in single-mother households often grow up watching a woman do it all herself. That can lead to deep admiration—but also unrealistic expectations of themselves in relationships. These girls often grow up strong, guarded and deeply suspicious suspicious of men. They learned early that you can’t count on a man.
So as adults, they want pleasure without reliance. Sex without obligation. Love, but only on their terms. They want to be the leader, the chooser, the one who decides who gets in and who watches from the corner. Sound familiar, Kev?
Because when a woman grows up with a mother who appears to her as abandoned by her father, she doesn’t just inherit strength. She inherits fear. Distrust. An unspoken warning to never let a man have too much power over you.
She watches her mother carry the weight of two people. She watches her mother work so hard that she doesn’t even have time to cry, barely holding everything together while secretly feeling like she’s falling apart. She hears the resentment. Feels the silence. Lives inside the aching loneliness and vows to never be in that position.
“Protect yourself at all costs. Don’t trust a man with your heart. Never let yourself depend on anyone but you.”
So what happens? She becomes incredible at protecting herself. She learns to armor up emotionally. She gets good at taking the lead. Softens her edges enough to connect but not enough to relinquish control.
It isn’t because she’s mean or cold. But because control is her shield against the deep wound that she saw in her mother. Abandonment.
Female Dominance as Emotional Protection
Female dominance isn’t always about power trips or kinky thrill. Sometimes dominance is about safety. Sometimes it is about the comfort of controlling the narrative, dictating the rules, owning the relationship dynamic to protect herself.
She controls emotions, not because she lacks them, but because showing them feels like they could be weaponized against her.
She must control sex to enjoy it because giving it freely feels dangerous. It feels like she’s giving away leverage she may need later to survive. She must control love because when love walks out the door, it takes her sense of safety and self-worth with it.
So when she says, “You can’t have me unless I say so,” what she really means is:
“I’ve seen what happens when a man is given unconditional access. I’ve seen what that does to women. And I refuse to be collateral damage.”
This is why so many powerful women today gravitate toward female-led relationships, and sexual dynamics that allow a woman to stay in charge. She’s not just exploring her kink, she is taking honoring the emotional contract that her mother handed her.
When she says no to spontaneous sex or delayed vulnerability, when she keeps her husband locked in chastity, when she watches him worship her while another man ravishes her body, she’s not just being erotic. She’s being safe. She’s saying:
“This body? It’s mine now. You get access if I say so. Not because I’m cruel. I want you to see me as valuable and protect that value at all costs.”
Sexual control becomes a language of boundaries. A method of rewriting the narrative her mother never got to finish. Her mother may have endured being used, betrayed, dismissed, but she won’t. She made a subconscious vow not to.
She holds her body sacred. Not in a prudish, don’t-touch-me way, but in a deeply empowered, this-is-my-altar way. She chooses who gets to worship. She chooses who gets to watch. Her body isn’t a gift. It’s a privilege that is earned, not assumed.
When Female Control Heals the Lineage
There’s something healing about seeing a woman step into dominance consciously. Not to mimic patriarchal power, but to offer a new model entirely.
A daughter who watched her mother suffer because of male abandonment doesn’t just break the cycle by finding a “good man.” She breaks the cycle by taking ownership of her body, her sexuality and her safety. By setting the rules instead of being at the mercy of them.
In the world of modern marriage dynamics, this means:
- She explores lovers not as a woman who’s being used, but as a woman using the world to experience her power.
- She enjoys attention not to fill a void, but because adoration and longing is her strength.
- She keeps her husband in chastity not because he’s unworthy, but because his devotion is part of her healing.
- She chooses who enters her emotionally, sexually, and spiritually—not because she’s closed off, but because she’s free to be selective.
Control isn’t the absence of love. It’s the protection of it. Her love, her trust, her body—are no longer the default offerings. They are gifts, and she’s the gatekeeper.
When women are told to “get over” their daddy issues or “move on” from childhood trauma, what they’re really being told is: Go back to being compliant, soft and unguarded.
The evolved woman does something braver, she integrates the wound and lets it fuel her leadership. She doesn’t apologize for her need for control, she uses it to build something better, something stronger.
She builds relationships on her terms. She dates, loves, fucks, and commands with the full awareness that emotional danger exists but she isn’t helpless like her mom was. She is prepared and she is in charge.
And when a man enters her world, he is not entering the world of a wounded little girl. He is entering the realm of a woman who learned how to turn generational pain into sexual power.
Some find freedom in cuckolding. Finding healing in being adored by a submissive husband while pursuing confident, lovers who make them feel seen and worshiped. She glances knowingly at her husband, the one man she has allowed inside her emotional walls and says, “See? I don’t need you. If you leave, you can be replaced by a bigger, stronger, better man. I am desirable and I will survive if you leave.” Her mantra demands her husband’s submission to her raw sexuality. She denies the bull emotional connection and she denies the husband sexual submission and autonomy over her body. At the end of the day she holds all of the power.
Some of us just don’t want to relive the pain of waiting for a man to give us what we now know we can give ourselves. I need you but only in as much as it serves me, I’ll never be fully vulnerable because that shows weakness.
For the woman with a daddy wound, being worshiped is not just about vanity. It’s about reparation.
When a husband kneels before her, when a boyfriend begs to serve, when a bull makes her the object of primal lust, it touches something deeper than the surface kink. It reaches back to that little girl who once felt abandoned and says:
You’re chosen now. Again. And again. And again.
That’s why modern marriage dynamics often resonate so deeply for women who grew up fatherless. These aren’t just sexual dynamics but rituals of remembrance, and affirmations of female power, and self-reclamation. The woman is no longer waiting to be claimed. She is the one doing the choosing. And she will never, ever be left behind like mom was.
The Men Who Love Us
What about our partners? What about the men who love women with daddy issues? What about the men who aren’t afraid of loving someone whose pain shaped her power and the portrait of her feminine power. Her female energy can be intimidating but loving her can be the sexiest, most transformational experience of their lives.
A submissive husband in a cuckold dynamic learns that the more he honors her emotional story, the stronger their bond becomes. He understands her complexity. He supports her need to feel chosen every single time she walks into a room. He doesn’t get insecure when she craves attention and he becomes the foundation she can fall into after the craving is fed. He knows how raw and rare her emotional vulnerability is and understands that his submission is the price of being allowed a deep connection with this woman.
Her man often finds freedom too because honoring her past means that he becomes part of her healing. Not by fixing her, but by worshiping the goddess she became through it.
Women Are Waking Up To Modern Marriage
Cuckolding. ENM. FLR. These aren’t just trends. They’re symptoms of an evolution. Do you believe in free will or do you believe this is dictated by your predispositions and psychological tendencies?
More women are stepping into their erotic sovereignty. More of us are saying: “I’m not going to stay in a marriage that replicates my childhood pain. I’m going to build one that heals it on my terms.”
We’re not afraid to admit we like power. Or being pursued. Or watching a man we love squirm in chastity as an atonement for allowing him an emotional connection. All while we soak in praise from an endowed lover who know how to handle us sexually. We’re not broken. We’re awakening.
When we stop pretending we’re “over it” and start using those wounds as fuel for conscious relationships, we stop repeating the same painful loops. We stop begging men to validate us. We stop letting that five-year-old girl run our dating lives. We instead, let the powerful woman within us to come out and dominate.
I want to take a moment to thank my therapist for helping me unpack and frame all of this in a way that finally feels honest, grounded, and safe to explore. The way she held space for me to connect the childhood wounds to adult relationship patterns has been nothing short of transformative. Being able to put it into words here, and in my journaling, feels like reclaiming a part of myself I didn’t even know was still hiding.
The moral of the story, daddy issues?
Maybe. But you are the one in charge now.
Evolving The Conversation
- What beliefs about men and relationships did you inherit from your relationship (or lack thereof) with your father?
- Have you ever recognized yourself chasing validation in your adult love life? What did that pattern teach you about your early emotional needs?
- How might cuckolding, ENM, or FLR allow space for healing and reprogramming old attachment patterns for both women and men?
- If you’re in a relationship, how does your partner support—or resist—your need for emotional safety and control?
- What would it look like to reclaim your power sexually, emotionally, and spiritually—even if your inner little girl still wants to be chosen?
