Emotional Dependence Quotes

“Fear (...) that has no relation to capabilities or even to reality is epidemic among women today. Fear of being independent (that could mean we'd end up alone and uncared for); fear of being dependent (that could mean we'd be swallowed by some dominating "other"); fear of being competent and good at what we do (that could mean we'd have to keep on being good at what we do); fear of being incompetent (that could mean we'd have to keep on feeling shlumpy, depressed, and second class).
(...)
Phobia has so thoroughly infiltrated the feminine experience it is like a secret plague. It has been built up over long years by social conditioning and is all the more insidious for being so thoroughly acculturated we do not even recognize what has happened to us.
Women will not become free until they stop being afraid. We will not begin to experience real change in our lives, real emancipation, until we begin the process - almost a de-brainwashing - of working through the anxieties that prevent us from feeling competent and whole.”
― Colette Dowling, The Cinderella Complex: Women's Hidden Fear of Independence

“Studies show that girls - especially smarter ones - have severe problems in the area of self-confidence.
They consistently underestimate their own ability. When asked how they think they'll do on different tasks - whether the tasks are untried or ones they've encountered before - they give lower estimates than boys do, and in general underestimate their actual performance as well. One study even showed that the brighter the girl, the less expectations she has of being successful at intellectual tasks. (...)
Low self-confidence is the plague of many girls, and it leads to a host of related problems. Girls are highly suggestible and tend to change their minds about perceptual judgments if someone disagrees with them. They set lower standards for themselves. While boys are challenged by difficult tasks, girls try to avoid them. (...) Given her felt incompetence, it's not surprising that the little girl would hotfoot it to the nearest Other and cling for dear life. (...) As we can see, the problems of excessive dependence follow female children right into adulthood.”
― Colette Dowling, The Cinderella Complex: Women's Hidden Fear of Independence

“(...) performance anxiety [in the worplace] is connected to other, more general fears which have to do with feeling inadequate and defenseless in the world: the fear of retaliation from someone with whom one disagrees; the fear of being critisized for doing something wrong; the fear of saying "no"; the fear of stating one's needs clearly and directly, without manipulating. These are the kinds of fears that affect women in particular, because we were brought up to believe that taking care of ourselves, asserting ourselves, is unfeminine. We wish (...) to feel attractive to men: non-threatening, sweet, "feminine". This wish crimps the joy and productiveness with which women could be leading their lives.”
― Colette Dowling, The Cinderella Complex: Women's Hidden Fear of Independence

“Because of the way society sets them up, women never again experience the need to develop independence - until some crisis in later life explodes their complacency, showing them how sadly helpless and undeveloped they've allowed themselves to be.”
― Colette Dowling, The Cinderella Complex: Women's Hidden Fear of Independence

“Women retain their dependence needs long past the developmental point at which those needs are normal and healthy. Unbeknownst to others - and worse, unbeknownst to ourselves - we carry dependency within us like some autoimmune disease. We carry it with us from kindergarten through college and graduate school, into our careers, and into the convenient "arrangement" of our marriages. (...) Much of the time - for many of us, all of the time - our unwillingness to stand on our own two feet goes unnoticed because it's expected. Women are relational creatures. They nurture and need. This, we have been told for many, many years, is nature.
And although it cripples us, we have to let it go unquestioned.”
― Colette Dowling, The Cinderella Complex: Women's Hidden Fear of Independence

“Given our socialization into dependency, women are also poor risk takers. (...) We avoid new situations, job changes, moves to different parts of the country. Women are afraid that if they should make a mistake, or do "the wrong thing", they'll be punished.
Women are less confident than men in their ability to make judgments, and in relationships will often hand over the decision-making duties to their mates, a situation which only ensures that they will become less confident in their powers of judgment as time goes by.
Most shockingly of all, women are less likely than men to fulfill their intellectual potential. (...) In fact, as women proceed into adulthood, they get lower and lower scores on "total intelligence", owing to the fact that they tend to use their intelligence less and less the longer they're away from school.
Other studies show that the intellect's ability to function may actually be impaired by dependent personality traits. (...)
Confidence and self-esteem are primary issues in women's difficulties with achievement. Lack of confidence leads us into the dark waters of envy. (...) envy must be recognized, seen, and fully comprehended; it can too easily be used as a cover-up for something that is far mroe crucial to women's independence - our own inner feelings of incompetence. These must be dealt with - directly - if we are ever to achieve confidence and strength.”
― Colette Dowling, The Cinderella Complex: Women's Hidden Fear of Independence

“Much of what is considered "good" in little girls is considered downright repulsive in little boys. Physical timidity or hypercautiousness, being quietly "well behaved", and depending on others for help and support are thought to be natural - if not outright charming - in girls. Boys, however, are actively discouraged from the dependent forms of relating, which are considered "sissyish" in male children.”
― Colette Dowling, The Cinderella Complex: Women's Hidden Fear of Independence

“Other victims of neurotic dependency are battered wives. The fact that they are so often financially dependent upon the men who beat them makes for a vicious kind of entrapment. It's emotional dependency, though that puts a double lock on the trap. "There's a kind of panic that many women have about being able to make it in any way other than being dependent on their husbands (...) They've been taught their whole lives that they can't. It's a conditioning process."
In situations in which they have no effect on their environments, animals begin to give up. (...) the same thing happens to humans. Stay long enough in a situation in which you feel you have no control, and you will simply stop responding. It's called learned helplessness. (...) Having been "shaped" to believe there is nothing she can do about the situation, the battered wife goes on being battered.Only after she begins to disengage from her belief in her own helplessness can she break out of the vicious cycle of dependency and its brutal effect on her life.”
― Colette Dowling, The Cinderella Complex: Women's Hidden Fear of Independence

“Women need to do more. We need to find out what it is we're afraid of, and go beyond.”
― Colette Dowling, The Cinderella Complex: Women's Hidden Fear of Independence

“One strong idea being put forth these days (...) is that women should above all be given choice. (...) But this "right to choose" whether or not we provide for ourselves has contributed mightily to the female achievement gap. Because they have the social option to stay home, women can - and often do - back off from assuming responsibility for themselves. (...) There is something wrong with this. (...) We want so desperately to believe that we do not have to be responsible for our own welfare.”
― Colette Dowling, The Cinderella Complex: Women's Hidden Fear of Independence

“Because of a profound, deep-seated doubt in their own competence, which begins in early childhood, girls become convinced that they must have protection if they are going to survive. This belief is bred into women by misguided social expectations (...)
Girls are trained very differently than boys. The training leads to their becoming adults who stay stuck in jobs beneath their capabilities.
It leads them to feel intimidated by the men they marry, and to defer to them in the hope of being protected.
It even leads (...) to the crippling of women's intellectual abilities.
Long praised by teachers for being diligent and dutiful in school, we who rely on dutifulness to get us by in the professional world son find ourselves being treated as if we were not quite grown up. (...) Not to be taken seriously. And (...) easily exploitable.
(...) The way girls are socialized continues to predetermine an agonizing conflict over the psychological independence that's necessary if women are ever to spring free and take their place in the sun.”
― Colette Dowling, The Cinderella Complex: Women's Hidden Fear of Independence

“My father came first," says a Missouri painter who consistently faces a work slump whenever she commits herself to submitting paintings for a show. "My mother was defined by him. If she behaved well he would love her, buy her presents, and take care of her - she was a queen. He did take care of her. She behaved, she ran the house. He bought her presents all the time."
"Was she smart?" I asked.
"I don't know," the woman replied. "I think she may have been, once. She stopped thinking."
One reason Mother remains shadowy is that she was intimidated by the forceful, vivid personality of her husband. The peacemaker, a kind of half-person who chooses to tag along safely behind her husband, Mother is protected from the more abrasive aspects of life in the world. Huge fights, open power struggles - these were not characteristic of the girl's relationship with her elusive mother. (...) Mother was there (...). But she was also not there.
(...) Father is active; Mother is passive. Father is able to rely on himself; Mother is helpless and dependent.”
― Colette Dowling, The Cinderella Complex: Women's Hidden Fear of Independence