Dating with a “Father Complex”

Let's talk about it.

Hi there,

I recently received a DM with a question I’ve been asked over and over: “Do you have any advice for dating women who have a father complex?”

I answered: I’d love for you to reconsider the question.

Labeling a woman as having a “father complex” reduces her to a caricature. It turns her history into a pathology you believe you must manage, rather than a human story you’re invited to understand. We all carry relational wounds — yours included.

The question is not whether someone has baggage, but how they hold it. It’s about how they’re working through it — and how you relate to your own.

Photo by Priscilla Du Preez 🇨🇦 on Unsplash

Let’s talk about the woman you’re dating with the “father complex.” Yes, perhaps she has experienced abandonment, inconsistency, emotional volatility, or a lack of secure attachment in early life. But is that not true for many of us, in one form or another? Do we not all carry ghosts of our childhoods into the intimacy of our adult relationships?

What’s more: To assume a woman —or anyone — has a “father complex” suggests that her responses to love, trust, and closeness are abnormal, when in truth, they are often the result of deeply adaptive strategies developed in environments where emotional safety was unpredictable.

What would it mean, instead, to ask a different question?

Let’s get into it.