How Daddy Issues Show Up In Men

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Fearing a father’s reaction

We generally understand that the more time we spend with any given person the more we come to understand them, the better we get at picking up on their unspoken cues, and the more adept we become at predicting their behavior. The research we reviewed on fathers and sons found this to be true of that relationship, too. Men who had fathers who were heavily involved in their lives from a young age learned to understand their dads’ cues from a young age. That leads to a lifetime of a comfortable relationship with one’s father, where a man can pretty much determine how to behave in a way that lets the relationship run smoothly. Men who had absent or under-involved dads as children can grow up to have a lot of fear and trepidation around interactions with their fathers. They didn’t learn their dad’s cues from a young age, and might now walk on eggshells around them.