4 signs you have a father wound

Hey mate.

If you’re reading this, I will assume that:

1. You didn’t have a healthy father figure in your life growing up.

2. The father figure you did have was either absent, neglectful, abusive or passive.

3. You struggle to form close connections with other men, choosing to have female friends instead.

4. You feel uncomfortable around “masculine” men.

If I got some of these right, that’s because I’ve been there.

But what’s the problem with the above?

The problem is that the things I just described often result from a deep wound.

A wound that causes a man to feel fear, shame or pain towards men and masculinity.

Not just in others … but also in the healthy aspects of his own masculinity.

This wound can keep a man stuck, lost and lonely in life.

This wound is called the Father Wound.

A father wound is an emotional wound that forms from an absence of love and acceptance from your father in childhood.

Men need their fathers.

We need to feel their emotional support, not just their physical presence.

Most of us didn’t have this, which creates the father wound.

When we have a father wound, we still crave the love, encouragement and direction we didn’t get as a child.

Alongside feeling lost and directionless, the father wound can destroy our relationships by making us needy and codependent.

This was the case with me for most of my life.

My father was cold and intimidating.

I never really felt his love.

I was always afraid of him.

And yet, I couldn’t help but crave his approval.

As an adult, I clung to the hope that my father and I would reconcile.

I put my life on hold as I waited for that conversation.

But this was toxic.

Because the painful truth is, there’s never a guarantee that this will ever happen.

If your father has been distant, emotionally cold or unavailable…

It’s unlikely he’s ever going to change.

He’s already told you countless times that this is who he is.

And putting your life on hold until your father figure comes and saves you will keep you stuck in adolescence.

This is what’s known as a reconciliation fantasy.

Freud said that a man cannot be a man until his father has died.

And Jung elaborated on that by adding that this death can happen symbolically.

Lindsay Gibson, in her book Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents, introduced me to a possibility.

That maybe my father wasn’t the big, strong, intimidating man I always thought he was.

But a wounded boy.

This realisation depedestalised my father almost instantly.

And this allowed me to let my father die symbolically.

I started asking myself the question, “how would I live if my father was dead?”

I made a pact to live that way to the best of my ability.

So, if you feel stuck with a father wound, I say this.

You cannot move on with your life until you let your father go.

To be a man, you must live as if your parents are dead.

Or you will be stuck in this purgatory between childhood and adulthood and remain there forever.

Never actualising your full potential in this lifetime.

There is a child in you who needs his father.

But maybe this cannot be your blood father.

If this is the case, you must walk a new path now.

You need to become the father to yourself you’ve always needed.

When you can confidently say that you don’t need him anymore and indeed mean it without resentment or anger…

You’ll know you’ve moved into a new stage in your life.

With love and courage,

Oliver