so i’ve seen people discuss daddy issues a zillion times. i never see anyone discuss mommy issues. what are those?
(submitted by: Anonymous)
Despite what the “all women are…” crowd says, girls aren’t the same. Daddy issues are well-known, get the spotlight and the headlines, and seem to cause the most obvious damage… yet they form in a multitude of ways and have multiple —sometimes contradictory— effects that few people using the term can comprehend. It’s never as simple or easily described as people would like it to be.
(The fun thing about human psychology is that our brains are so fucking occluded by self-perception that we can derive multiple, conflicting neuroses from a single event or observation. Yay, us! Go Team Broken!)
With girls and Mommy issues, it’s even murkier. So much mom-on-daughter emotional violence plays out glacially, on subterranean levels that only become apparent on a scale of years… what starts out as a lump in your throat that forms when mom yells at a stranger can metastasize into an all-consuming cancer that eats away at your personality until you’re more her than you.
In (very) general, though? Expectations of constant critique in the guise of support, grossly inappropriate competitiveness, absent or deformed homogenous boundaries… it goes on and on. In my observations, being judged and found deficient by your mom hits very different from the same dad-feels. It’s a special kind of tough, experiencing the gendered/sexualized disappointment of your dad, but it’s possibly even scarier when you’re getting the same vibe from mom and you realize the metaphorical call is coming from inside the house.
TL;DR: You don’t need a dick to fuck up a girl. Sometimes you just need to be the dick.