Loving Him Without Losing You (4 page)

No matter how you lose yourself in your relationships with men, change is possible. Throughout this book you will experience changes in your beliefs about women and men, in your understanding of what a relationship is sup- posed to be, and in your self-image. All these changes will add up to the most profound change of all—you will no longer be a Disappearing Woman who gives up parts of herself because of her desire to be with a man.

3

Why Women Tend to Lose Themselves in Relationships

T
HE
C
U LTURAL
, B
IOL OGICAL
,
AND

P
SY CHOL OGICAL
I
NFL UENCES

Women are taught to enhance other people at the expense of the self; men are taught to bolster the self, often at the expense of others.

It’s hard to get it all in balance.

H
ARRIET
L
ERNER
, P
H
.D.,

T
HE
D
ANCE OF
I
NTIMACY

Why are women so much more likely to lose themselves in relationships than men? Are we genetically and emotionally weaker, more dependent, and less able to maintain our separate identities? Or is it because men are cut off from their emotions and less capable of true intimacy? The answer is far more complicated than these generalizations imply. Part of the answer lies in our cultural conditioning, part on biological factors, and still another part is based on psychological factors.

Cultural Conditioning

There are many cultural reasons why women are more susceptible to losing themselves in relationships than men. In this section I will focus on the most prevalent. Most of these influences exist in every culture throughout the world, among every race, religion, and socioeconomic segment of the world’s population.

25

Girls Are Trained to Be Dependent, Boys to Be Independent

Even today families still tend to push boys toward independence far more than they do girls. Both in early childhood and in early adolescence boys are encouraged to be more independent in their thinking and in their actions and to be less dependent on their families than are girls. Parents still tend to com- fort girls more than boys when they are frightened or injured, and boys are given greater freedom at an earlier age than girls are.

Girls Are Raised to Be Protected, Boys to Be Strong

Having a sense of competence means believing that we can make things happen for ourselves in the world, that we can master our environments. Unfortunately, the expectations that parents and our culture have for boys lead to far greater feelings of competence than the traditional expectations of girls. Parents often expect less of their female children and tend to place more demands on little boys, expecting them to be more responsible and to take more risks. This sends a subtle yet powerful message that girls are less com- petent. Moreover, the traditional “sugar and spice” view of girls—the idea that girls need to be protected and “done for” rather than learning to do for themselves—promotes feelings of insecurity and incompetence.

Girls Are Raised to Be Compliant

Parents continue to raise girls to be more passive and compliant than boys, and research shows that girls are far more likely to placate to keep the peace. While most boys are aggressive about getting their individual needs met, girls are raised to smooth things over in relationships rather than stand up for their own wishes and needs. They are much more likely to sacrifice their own needs if they think that doing so will benefit the relationship and to back down, apologize, or take the blame whenever there is a disagreement.

Girls are far more likely than boys to give in to what their date wants to do, have sex even if they aren’t ready, and give up their social life to sit home waiting for him to call.

This is due in part to the fact that during adolescence girls experience a tremendous amount of social pressure to put aside their authentic selves and to display only a small portion of who they truly are. It is often in their ado- lescence when girls first come to realize that males have most of the power and when many come to believe that their only power comes from becoming submissive to male needs.

Girls Learn Helplessness

Girls and women are frequently the victims of inequality, prejudice, misog- yny, and violence in our society, and socialization often supports this role. While boys are encouraged to fight back when others violate them, girls are encouraged to do nothing. The helplessness a girl learns in childhood is often carried over into adulthood, so that passivity may seem to be the only way to handle problems.

While girls and women are far more likely to be physically and sexually violated in our society, it is boys, not girls, who are most often encouraged to develop the skills with which to fight back. Boys’ will to fight back is nurtured by their parents and the culture; girls are often robbed of their will to fight back (if they ever develop it). Girls are taught that it is “unladylike” to fight back and that they do not have the right to say no, especially to adults— messages that have a lasting effect. Even when women equip themselves with self-defense skills, it is still difficult for many to put these skills to use when needed because they lack the gut conviction that it is okay to stand up for and protect themselves.

In addition, if a girl was raised in a home where her mother was emo- tionally or physically abused by her husband or boyfriend, she may conclude that being a woman is synonymous with being a victim.

While boys also grow up in abusive households, because it is socially unacceptable for males to be seen as victims, generally speaking, male chil- dren tend to identify with the aggressor and to emulate the behavior of the abusive person rather than become victims themselves.

Girls Are Taught the Illusion of Inherent Inferiority

Unfortunately, even in these “enlightened times,” men are still seen as inher- ently superior to women. In spite of the fact that we now expect men to be more emotional, “male” traits such as rationality, independence, and leader- ship ability are the traits most valued in our culture, whereas “female” traits such as emotionality, sensitivity, and cooperativeness are valued less.

Instead of men becoming more respectful of women, there is an alarm- ing trend among many young men to devalue and denigrate women, as evidenced by the blatant way they refer to them as “bitches” and the way they treat them as sex objects and targets for their anger.

Women Look to a Man for Completion

Women, far more than men, tend to look to love to make themselves feel com- plete. It’s not that women have any innate inclination toward searching for

completion through love (as opposed to money, status, politics, or religion), it’s that for women love is the most culturally sanctioned and encouraged form.

The idea that women need men to validate them is pervasive in our cul- ture. One only need listen to popular music or read popular literature to find examples. In addition, biographies and autobiographies of famous women exalt those women who surrendered their identities, if not their very lives, to love.

Women who remain single past a certain age (usually thirty) are still viewed as “less than” those who are married and often seriously begin to believe that there is something wrong with them.

Women Buy Into the Romance and Fantasy Syndrome

Another factor contributing to the “Disappearing Woman” syndrome is that girls and women tend to get caught up in romance and romantic fantasy much more than boys and men, and this in itself encourages girls and women to lose themselves to the experience and the relationship.

Girls are raised to be in love with love. From the earliest age, many girls are still given the message that their life won’t really begin until they meet that special man who will sweep them off their feet and transform their life. Even the smallest of girls still play “wedding,” dressing up as a bride, walking down the aisle with a make-believe groom. When was the last time you saw a little boy playing “wedding” or dressing up as a groom?

Girls are given far more permission to fantasize than are boys, particu- larly when it comes to romantic fantasy. Boys have traditionally been given more permission to have sexual fantasies than are girls, who are encouraged to sublimate their sexual fantasies into more acceptable “romantic” ones.

Women Are Addicted to Male Approval

Women are taught from an early age that it is their duty to attract and please men and that their very survival is contingent on it. Because of this, by the time the average girl reaches adolescence, she is addicted to male approval. She primps, worries about her weight, wears uncomfortable clothes and crip- pling shoes, and waits patiently for the remark, look of approval, or telephone call that will inform her that she is worth something.

No amount of intelligence or feminist consciousness can completely obliterate the average woman’s need for male approval, nor does the need for it get magically whisked away just because a woman reaches an intellectual understanding of it and decides she isn’t going to “live like this anymore.”

Even the most self-sufficient, successful, and intelligent women still fall prey to the need for it.

Several women I interviewed for the book spoke about their need for male approval, including Janice, thirty-three, a successful real estate broker.

“I hate to admit this, but nothing, absolutely nothing, makes me feel bet- ter about myself than when a man compliments me about my appearance. It’s even better than the rush I get when I sell a house! Isn’t that pathetic?”

Diane, a forty-two-year-old college professor, told me a similar story. “I’ve reached a point in my life where I take my intelligence and academic accomplishments for granted. But even when I was younger I never felt attractive enough to men. I’ve always paid a great deal of attention to my appearance and quite a lot of my paycheck as well. It’s always been far too important to me. But when a man finds me attractive, it makes it all worth- while. I suddenly feel validated and acceptable. I’m sorry to say that nothing else gives me that same feeling.”

Women Are Trusting

With their less competitive natures and their stronger ability to share feelings, women have far less difficulty trusting others than men do. Women instinc- tively know that trust nurtures closeness and that distrust undermines it. However, some women trust too much and are easily impressed, duped, and deceived.

Biological Reasons for Disappearing

In addition to cultural conditioning, there are also biological differences between men and women that contribute to women losing themselves in rela- tionships. Some of these include:

• Males are, in fact, “less emotional” than females by nature.
  

  Many researchers believe that testosterone, the human sex and aggression hormone, is a major factor in cutting boys off from emotional development. By late adolescence, boys’ testosterone levels are as much as twenty times that of girls.
  

  In addition, according to Michael Gurian, author of
  A Fine Young Man,
  the male brain is wired to function much more mechanically than emotion- ally, to prefer action to ongoing intimate connection, and to display physical and social aggression toward others. This often prevents men from becoming as emotionally intimate with others and consequently from losing themselves in romantic relationships.
  

  Gurian also claims that the female brain is better able to process emotive data, while the male brain is hardwired to be better at spatial relationships than emotional ones. There are many examples of this wiring, but one of the most important is that the corpus callosum, the bundle of nerves that connects the right and left hemispheres of the brain, is larger in the female brain. Because of this difference, women are better able to process emotional infor- mation that needs to cross between hemispheres to be processed and com- municated.
  

• It’s harder for men to talk about their feelings because of the way their brains are constructed.
  

  While it is common knowledge that men don’t access or verbally express their feelings as well as women, most people attribute this to cultural condi- tioning alone. But another factor at play is that from early on, the female brain is generally superior in terms of basic verbal ability.
  

  According to Anne Moir and David Jessel, the authors of
  Brain Sex,
  women have a more efficient brain organization for speech, which is located in the front of the left hemisphere, while the same function in male brains is found both in the front and back—a less efficient distribution.
  

  All through life, female verbal abilities, especially about emotive content, are on average superior to male verbal abilities. It has been observed during neural imaging scans that the male brain is less active and there is less cross talk between hemispheres, which, in turn, creates less verbal expression.
  

  Testosterone also affects boys’ ability to communicate emotionally. While some boys are readily able to put their feelings into words at age nine, by the time they reach sixteen many are less able to do so. While we can attribute some of this to the fact that boys are discouraged from being emotional as they grow older, the primary reason is that the amount of testosterone surg- ing through the body and brain throughout adolescence causes adaptations in boys’ emotional systems that cut down the emphasis on feelings in their speech.
  

• Men are more independent than women.
  

  The way the male brain is structured, combined with higher levels of testosterone, propels boys and men toward independence-seeking activity. According to Anne Moir and David Jessel, both boys and girls whose moth- ers had taken extra male hormones during pregnancy were found to be more self-sufficient, self-assured, independent, and individualistic on a standard personality questionnaire. Those whose mothers had taken female hormones were more reliant on others.
  

• Men do not need to be emotionally connected to a woman, nor even sexu- ally attracted to her, to have intercourse.
  

  Even though the biological drive to reproduce is very strong, men must be sexually aroused in order to have intercourse. For this reason, the human brain is wired to make it possible, through the use of fantasy, for men to become sexually aroused even when they are not attracted to a woman or don’t have enough energy for intercourse.
  

  Conversely, for the average woman to become sexually involved she must lower her defenses and allow herself to become vulnerable. Most men are capa- ble of having sex with someone without going through this process. Spurred on by their hormones, men can more easily have sex while their emotional walls are still up, so they usually don’t have the problem of losing themselves. Not only does the average woman need to become vulnerable to have sex,
  

  she also continues to open up each time she repeats the act with someone. The closer she becomes physically, the more involved she is emotionally. This is partly due to the fact that, contraception notwithstanding, with every act of sexual intercourse, a woman may be facing a potential new life.
  

  Even those men who lower their emotional walls and fall in love tend to bounce back from lovemaking easier and faster and are able to maintain their separate identity better than women. We seldom see a man so lovesick that he can’t do his work, so preoccupied with his lover that he talks about her all the time with his friends.
  

• Boys and men are less likely to use pain as a bonding agent.
  

  Testosterone propels boys and men toward quick tension release, not only in the sex act but even in their response to physical pain. A boy is far less likely to cry when he is hurt, especially one who has reached puberty. Not only has the acculturation process taken hold by then (“big boys don’t cry”), but also boys and men are hardwired to release tension quickly rather than engaging in an activity such as crying, which not only prolongs the release of tension (as compared to a quick curse or a physical act), but also extends the involvement of others (if a boy starts to cry, people come around to talk and help). While this involvement would no doubt benefit him emotionally, it is not hardwired into his system, as it is in girls and women.
  

  A girl, on the other hand, tends to want to get help in releasing her stress and uses the stress as a way of creating emotional connectedness. Women tend to see their partners as potential givers of comfort when they are upset. When the comfort is not forthcoming, many are disappointed but continue to try to get it. This is what traps many women—their false hope that someday they’ll get the comfort they need from their partner.
  

• Women are literally more sensitive than men.
  

  The female brain is organized to respond more sensitively to all sensory stimuli, including tactile sensitivity. In a sample of young adults, women showed “overwhelmingly” greater sensitivity to pressure on the skin on every part of their bodies.
  

  The Psychological Reasons
  

  In addition to cultural conditioning and biological hardwiring, there are also psychological factors that contribute to women’s tendency to lose themselves in relationships. While psychology
  is
  biology to a great extent, it is also greatly influenced by environment and warrants its own category.
  

  The most significant psychological factor has been discovered by some fairly recent research on female psychology. Within the emerging body of literature on differences between women and men, several studies, including those of Gilligan and Miller, suggest that women value connectedness and relationship more than men do. In her study, Harvard professor Carol Gilligan dramatically demonstrated that in making moral decisions women value maintaining connections with others and not hurting others more than men, who base their moral decisions more on general principles. These find- ings were consistent with those found by Jean Baher Miller:
  

  “Women’s sense of self becomes very much organized around being able to maintain affiliations and relationships. Eventually for many women the threat of disruption of connection is perceived not just as loss of a relation- ship but as something closer to a total loss of self.”
  

  It is no wonder that most women will do nearly anything to maintain a relationship, including going along with things she doesn’t believe in. To do otherwise is to risk the loss of connection, the very core of what makes her who she is.
  

  Women Have Thinner Boundaries Than Men
  

  Women also tend to have what Ernest Hartman, M.D., the author of
  Bound- aries in the Mind,
  calls thinner boundaries than men. This is especially significant when it comes to personal relationships. Thin interpersonal bound- aries cause a person to become involved in relationships rapidly and deeply and at times to lose one’s sense of self in a relationship. Conversely, having thick boundaries implies not becoming overinvolved, being careful, and not becoming involved with anyone rapidly.
  

  According to the results of Hartmann’s boundary questionnaire, there are clear-cut differences between men and women in boundary scores. “Overall,
  

  women scored significantly thinner than men—thinner by about twenty points, or 8 percent of the overall score.”
  

  Although women scored thinner on almost all categories of boundaries, the differences in scores were especially pronounced on the first eight cate- gories, what Hartmann referred to as the “Personal Total,” describing personal experiences, feelings, sensitivities, and preferences.
  

  Judith Bevis, a member of Hartmann’s boundary research group, con- ducted a study in 1986 on groups of evening students at an urban university. Her most prominent finding was that the women in the study tended to value certain aspects of thin boundaries, such as interpersonal connectedness, and to feel comfortable with them, whereas they found certain aspects of thick boundaries, such as autonomy, to be uncomfortable. The men in the sample tended toward the opposite viewpoints, considering autonomy and self-suffi- ciency as comfortable but merging or connectedness as less comfortable or less desirable.
  

  How a Woman’s Childhood History Contributes to the Disappearing Woman Syndrome
  

  A number of psychological influences contribute to the Disappearing Woman syndrome:
  

  • an insufficient bonding experience with the primary caretaker, partic- ularly the mother;
    

  • the long-term absence of one or both parents;
    

  • the loss of a parent either through death or divorce;
    

  • an insufficient, inappropriate, or negative relationship with the father;
    

  • parental neglect;
    

  • emotional, physical, or sexual abuse;
    

  • poor parental modeling (misogyny, domestic violence);
    

  • rejection or ridicule from parents, siblings, or peers.
    

    Any of these factors can cause an adult woman to feel insecure and inad- equate in her relationships and to look to her male partners for the kinds of caring, support, and direction she did not receive from her parents. This makes her more vulnerable and dependent than she might otherwise be. And a history of having been emotionally or physically neglected or abandoned as a child or an adolescent can cause a woman to fear abandonment and cling to her partners even when she is not getting her needs met or is being mis- treated. Having a history that includes any form of abuse also predisposes
    

    women to become attracted to men who are domineering and/or abusive and to allow the men in their lives to dictate their behavior.
    

    Although males also suffer from such problems as childhood deprivation and abuse, females react to these experiences in a decidedly different way than males do, internalizing their anger versus acting it out, and building up different types of defenses against their pain. This in turn leads to different types of psychological problems, as we shall now explore.
    

    Anger in versus Anger Out
    

    When a boy or a man is hurt by another person, either physically or emo- tionally, he will tend to lash out at that individual, either verbally or physically. “You hurt me so I’ll hurt you.” When a girl or a woman is hurt, however, it is not so simple. By the time they have gone through the acculturation process, most women have long since given up the natural instinct to retaliate directly. (Some researchers believe that females are also biologically wired to avoid anger and to instead work toward peaceful solutions.) Instead, most women immediately shift into either the
    diplomat mode
    —asking themselves, “Did he mean to hurt me?”; the
    victim mode
    —when they try to elicit sympathy from the person who hurt them; or the
    self-blame mode,
    asking themselves, “What did I do to make him hurt me?” Instead of the simple and direct, “You hurt me so I’ll hurt you back,” girls and women tend to think, “You hurt me so I must have done something to deserve it.”
    

    While boys and men tend to act out their anger, girls and women inter- nalize their anger and tend to become self-effacing or even self-destructive. (This phenomenon further explains why male victims of childhood sexual abuse tend to become abusers themselves, while female victims tend to con- tinue to be victimized or mistreated during their lifetimes.)
    

    If something goes wrong in his environment, a boy or a man tends to look outside himself first for the cause of the problem. This tendency is partly based on a male’s biological tendency to take action (versus introspection) and partly on the male’s ego, which encourages him to blame others versus tak- ing responsibility for his actions.
    

    Conversely, if something goes wrong in her environment, a girl or a woman will tend to look inside herself first for the cause of the problem. Most women are far more inclined to blame themselves for a problem than to blame someone else.
    

    How does this “anger in, anger out” difference relate to a woman losing herself in her relationships? Because a woman is more inclined to question and blame herself when there is a conflict with another, she is more inclined to give in during an argument or to become confused as to exactly what her
    

    role was in the conflict. This, coupled with her need to keep the peace, will encourage her to compromise and sacrifice in relationships when she shouldn’t, which, in turn, causes her to lose herself.
    

    Because women tend to turn their anger inward and blame themselves for problems in their relationships, they tend to become depressed and their self- esteem is lowered. This, in turn, causes them to become more dependent and less willing to risk rejection or abandonment if they were to stand up for them- selves by asserting their will, their opinions, or their needs.
    

    Men often defend themselves against hurt by putting up a wall of non- chalant indifference. This appearance of independence often adds to a woman’s fear of rejection, causing her to want to reach out to achieve com- fort and reconciliation. Giving in, taking the blame, and thus losing herself more in the relationship seems to be a small price to pay for the acceptance and love of her partner.
    

    While both extremes—anger in and anger out—create potential prob- lems, this doesn’t mean that either sex is wrong in the way they deal with their anger. But each could benefit from observing what the other sex does. Most men could benefit from learning to contain their anger more instead of auto- matically striking back, and could use the rather female ability to empathize with others and seek diplomatic resolutions to problems. Many women, on the other hand, could benefit from acknowledging their anger and giving themselves permission to act it out in constructive ways instead of automat- ically talking themselves out of it, blaming themselves, or allowing a man to blame them. Instead of always giving in to keep the peace, it would be far healthier for most women to stand up for their needs, their opinions, and their beliefs.
    

    False Selves and Fragile Egos
    

    We all learned as children to hide our real feelings and our real selves in our attempt to fit into society and to protect ourselves from the slings and arrows of others. We construct false selves in our attempt to appear more confident, more knowledgeable, and more independent than we actually are. But men and women tend to construct different types of facades.
    

    The male ego is actually more delicate than the female ego, yet men are expected to be the stronger sex nevertheless. Most men are forced to sub- merge their weaknesses and vulnerability and hide them behind a mask of confidence, independence, and even bravado. A man’s self-esteem is usually measured by how strong and confident he appears—the way he holds himself, the way he walks. While in some cultures this is more pronounced than in oth- ers, nearly every society requires boys and men to take on this facade in order
    

    to be accepted by others. (One only needs to be reminded of how “sensitive” boys are treated in our culture to realize this is true. At the very least they are called “effeminate” and at the worst they are beaten up and called “queers” and “faggots,” whether they are actually gay or not.)
    

    Often the less self-esteem a man has, the more pronounced his mask of bravado is. For example, many boys and men from ghettos have mastered the “gangsta” facade to compensate for their feelings of inadequacy caused by growing up in poverty, often without the love and guidance of a male father figure, and to armor themselves to face the constant threat of violence.
    

    By reading
    Reviving Ophelia
    by Mary Pipher, many of you learned about the drop in self-esteem that young girls experience during middle-school years and soon after. But further research has suggested that in many cir- cumstances, adolescent boys experience a
    worse
    self-esteem drop than girls do. In an independent study of nine thousand eighth-grade boys and girls con- ducted by Valerie E. Lee of the University of Michigan, it was concluded that in many academic categories where self-esteem might be measurable (engagement in school activities, study habits, grades), girls were doing bet- ter than boys. This study is consistent with similar research on eighth-graders and twelfth-graders by the U.S. Department of Education.
    

    To relieve bad feelings about her self-image, a girl will often forgo self- assertion in real life and substitute the superficial “feeling good” that comes from clinging. Whereas boys tend to hide their feelings of inadequacy with an
    inflated
    sense of self, girls tend to produce what is called the
    deflated false self
    —deflated because the bad self-image reflects weakness and insecurity, and false because it is based on a fantasy. This fantasy, that people will pro- vide support for clinging behavior, is then projected on the external world. The girl feels she will only feel good and actually “loved” when she is pas- sive, compliant, and submissive to the person to whom she clings for emo- tional support.
    

    To the deflated false self, “proof ” of being loved is essential for feeling good. Therefore, by denial and rationalizations, a girl learns to successfully stave off the withdrawing or rejecting behavior of the people she loves. For example, if her boyfriend verbally attacks her, an adolescent girl will tend to rationalize, “He’s attacking me because he’s upset about his grades, not because he really feels this way about me.”
    

    Instead of standing up for herself and letting her boyfriend know she doesn’t want to be talked to that way (and risking rejection), many girls will quietly take the attack, tell herself it really didn’t bother her, and then be extra loving to her boyfriend, convinced that if she is patient and loving it will all blow over.
    

    The Need for Separation and Individuation
    

    Another psychologically based reason why women tend to lose themselves in relationships more than men is that, as many experts believe, the separation- individuation phase is more difficult for girls.
    

    In an article in the
    New Yorker
    about successful businesswomen, Harvard professor Carol Gilligan suggested that “relationships, and particularly issues of dependency, are experienced differently by women and men.” She argued that “males tend to have difficulty with relationships, while females tend to have problems with individuation.”
    

    Individuation is (1) the process of recognizing that one is becoming a unique, individual self, separate from one’s parents and other authority figures, and (2) the process of developing that self. C. G. Jung spoke of indi- viduation as the goal of psychic development, of allowing the unique individual personality to unfold. One of the reasons that has been cited for girls having difficulty individuating is that since girls are the same gender as their primary parent—their mother—they do not develop a full sense of their difference and separateness from her, and this extends to other relationships. Conversely, since boys are the opposite sex from their mother, they develop a strong sense of themselves as separate from others.
    

    A child cannot find her own identity unless she frees herself first from her parents and other authority figures. We see this occurring in adolescence, when both boys and girls begin to question the values of their parents, school, and peers and begin to rebel against their parents and all other authority fig- ures. This is a positive step toward achieving a full, adult identity.
    

    However, boys are given much more latitude in this process than girls are. Parents tend to give male children later curfews than female children of the same age and to allow boys to attend more functions that are considered “risky,” such as rock concerts, weekend trips, and spring break vacations. And boys are expected to act out, even to get into trouble. The old adage “boys will be boys” implies that it is within the boy’s nature to act out and rebel, while girls are expected to conform to society’s values.
    

    Girls are often encouraged to remain enmeshed with and dependent on their families. While there certainly are some parents who become too en- meshed with their male children as well, causing them to remain dependent on them, far more tend to hold on to their female children, discouraging them from becoming independent, leaving home, and starting a life of their own.
    

    What Losing a Father Does to Girls
    

    Still another reason why girls may have a more difficult time individuating is that so many girls grow up without a father. Due to our high rate of divorce,
    

    many children, boys as well as girls, are having to grow up fatherless, but girls seem to be affected in different ways than boys.
    

    According to Victoria Secunda in her book
    Women and Their Fathers,
    while it is true that boys living with single mothers tend to be more aggres- sive and have more behavioral problems in and out of school, some authori- ties believe that divorce is actually more harmful to girls. This is primarily because girls, raised to be more emotionally invested in relationships than boys, seem to suffer more from the loss of their father. In addition, not hav- ing a father can cause a girl to become and to remain far too dependent and enmeshed with her mother and can interfere with the natural individuation process necessary for true independence.
    

    Perhaps the most important role a father plays in the lives of his children is that of helping his offspring develop a sense of their own competence and independence outside the powerful intimacy of the mother/child relation- ship. By providing an alternative to the mother’s point of view, style, and tem- perament, he helps his children to separate from her emotionally.
    

    The father is usually the most “significant other” in his child’s life and, as such, helps his child learn about comings and goings, transitions, and sep- arations. The child learns, through her father’s in-and-out schedule, how to develop a mental image of something longed for and trusted, though not always actually present.
    

    Because a child is accustomed to separations from the father, she often turns to him for help in differentiating herself from her mother. When the “ter- rible twos” arrive, a time when the child actively begins separating from her mother, the father is pursued by the child as the parent who is already seen as separate, novel, interesting, and a source of adventure.
    

    When a father is not around to help a girl in the individuation process from her mother, some girls become overly dependent on their mothers. This is especially true when a mother, left alone with her child to deal with her own feelings of loss and abandonment, looks to her child for emotional support, making her into a confidante or even a parent.
    

    The Differences between Male and Female Identities
    

    For a person to develop a sense of herself as a unique individual she must first learn who she is separate from others.
    

    Traditionally, while adolescent boys are encouraged to identify and sharpen their skills, clarify their interests and objectives, make important choices, and prepare for the future, adolescent girls are encouraged to focus on being attractive, fitting in, getting along with others, and being popular. In
    

    other words, males are encouraged to ask, “What are my needs and how can I fulfill them?” while females are encouraged to ask, “What are the needs of others and how can I fulfill them?” Similarly, women are not supposed to ask, “What is it I desire” but to ask, “Am I desirable?”