When a child is given time, attention, direction, physical nurturing, and all other needs are attended she feels loved and held in warm personal regard. Ever-present adoration and attention are essential to knowing she is worthy and has intrinsic value. On the other hand, when a family system is noxious and devoid of adequate nurturance, a child cannot developmentally evolve into a fully formed adult. A relational template emerges in which the capacity to integrate dependency and power is impaired.

In my case, due to chronic child abuse and neglect, a position of ascendency over another became a deeply embedded relational imprint. I remained a little girl in a woman's body, plagued by co-dependent patterns.

Self-help author Melody Beattie describes co-dependency as,"self-defeating, learned behaviors or character defects that result in a diminished capacity to initiate or to participate in loving relationships."

The futility of co-dependent maneuvering and fixating on another as my source of salvation inevitably took a toll. Over time these co-dependent patterns morphed into process addictions, meaning that regardless of negative consequences, the compulsive pursuit of a mood-altered state was sought through specific behaviors.

For me, love addiction was the designated drug of choice. It was my primary defense against the pain of neglect and abuse. That being the case, pathological power-submissive dynamics permeated my amorous escapades.

Love addicts always remember that little hit of intermittent love received from their major caregivers and how it temporarily alleviated the agony of not feeling loved or cared for. Indeed, my brain never forgot the feeling of relief from those sporadic experiences of what seemed to be positive regard. It fueled my decision to grow up and find someone who would make me feel loved and cared for. I was convinced that would be the panacea to all life's troubles.

This assignment of power to another as my salvation set in motion a cycle of degradation and torment. The terror of being alone coupled with persistent fears of abandonment compelled me to bond too quickly, cling like a barnacle to avoidant men, and tolerate abuse. With blind obedience, I regarded my discomfort as irrelevant and my sexual boundaries obsolete.

My insatiable yet disallowed dependency needs made me a malleable supply. Plagued by an attachment style fueled by an omnipresent feeling of incompleteness without another to latch onto, I shape-shifted into whoever and whatever was necessary to procure vestiges of illusory intimacy.

Attachment injuries and internalized self-loathing made me the perfect compliment for those who rejected intimacy. Men who wouldn't and couldn't allow me in, who seduced and withheld, who were indifferent and entitled, who came and went as they pleased, aroused my interest. They were familiar and compelling. Subconsciously I was intent on mastering my relational traumas by attaining what I always longed for from the unattainable.

Of course, growing up in a misogynist household in which notions of male dominance were upheld further enforced subordination. Through manipulation, violence, exclusion from decision making and economic deprivation, I incurred the shame of objectification.

Trained from childhood to anticipate the needs of others, I bought into the misconception that any possibility of satisfying my dependency needs meant bolstering men's egos while ensuring they were shielded from my insatiable longings. Over time, fostering another's power at my own expense became an ethos I lived by.

As clinical psychologist and author Harriet Lerner attests, this destructive relational prescription is fairly common amongst women.

"Even intellectually liberated women feel frightened and guilty about 'hurting' others, especially men, when fully exercising their capacity for independent thinking and action. In reality, women who do begin to define more clearly the terms of their own lives are frequently accused of diminishing men, hurting children or in some way being destructive to others."

Indeed, integrating power and dependency is a massive conundrum in a system of social organization in which descent and succession are typically traced through the male line and in which the family and culture are still largely ruled by men. Within this patriarchal ideology, men are defined as dominants, and females are defined as subordinates. Naturally, this credo impacts sexual and interpersonal conditioning.

For a dominant group to maintain its position, it must control the subordinate group by diminishing its power. Oppression is complete when the subordinate group buys into the dominant group's values.

For example, men treat women as sexual objects, and women treat themselves as sexual objects. Men are obsessed with women's bodies, and women are obsessed with their own bodies. Men believe they have to have sex, and women are taught to believe men have to have sex. Compliance with these values contributes to characterizing feminine desirability as passive, submissive, and willing to defer to masculine strength.

The ostensible end game is that going along with these tenets allows for connection.

Needless to say, the glamorizing of romantic dysfunction in media is eternal. Everywhere I turned, my grandiose stilted ideas of love were culturally sanctioned. Reminders of the irresistible rapture of carnal desire equating love to a euphoric fix were ubiquitous.

It wasn't until I started therapy with a caring and competent male therapist and explored female-centered teachings that I came to understand that a woman's right to possess power, to act on ambitions, and to be held in high esteem and loved by men, derives directly from a relationship with a father who values the feminine.

This sort of responsible, loving father encourages his daughter to develop skills and cultivate talents. He teaches her about overarching values, ethics, and cultural mores. He prepares his daughter to enter the world as a place to be known and lived in whilst boldly demonstrating taking necessary risks and firm stances. This fosters in the daughter the necessary autonomy for effective living.

These fortunate daughters learn to honor their own internal masculine nature and, accordingly, are confident in their ability to achieve harmonious acceptance with men. They are assured that their creative ambitions and intrinsic feminine nature are accepted and valued.

Men are their allies.

In Women and Their Fathers: The Sexual and Romantic Impact of the First Man in Your Life Victoria Secunda wrote, "A well-fathered daughter will seek in her partnerships men who mirror the devoted father of childhood, avoiding partnerships that denigrate or compromise her. Having experienced the real thing when she was very young- having been taught self-reliance, she settles for no less when she is an adult."

This was not my experience.

When I began examining how the relationships with the men in my family influenced my sense of self, I faced how my inherent right to have power, be ambitious, make money, and have a successful relationship with a man was usurped by my toxic dynamics with my father. This dark revelation shed light on my brokenness.

The negative involvement with my father deeply wounded my sense of self. Being a daughter of a misogynistic father meant being punished for being sexually powerful and emotionally and intellectually astute. It meant carrying the stigma as the rejected 'fallen woman' and bearing the degradation and marginalization as a debased whore.

Undoing the myth of dependency necessitated dismantling an indoctrination in which my female worth was equated with deference, chastity, and compliance. This process involved adjusting to a relational paradigm inclusive of self-love and power. It consisted of ceasing the pursuit of avoidant narcissistic men and putting my energy into cultivating a meaningful and fulfilling relationship with myself.

To be expected, my strenuous journey of self-reclamation and discovery was prolonged, painful, and circuitous, but ultimately life-changing. In my quest to love myself and to cultivate the capacity to truly love another, these salient guidelines and tools stand out;

• Do the family of origin work.
• Dispel the myth of female inferiority.
• Start saying 'NO' to roles you don't really want to fill, even if it means loss.
• Dispel the myth of romantic love. No one will rescue you from life. Only inner work can lead to transformation.
• Acknowledge spirituality by challenging delusion, denial, and separateness.
• Become grounded in truth without judgment or blame.
• Know when to stay and when to leave.
• See the person, not the fantasy.
• Seek appropriate levels of self-disclosure.
• Honesty is mandatory; it engenders trust.
• Measure compatibility.
• See if you can relax and have fun together.
• See if you can count on this person.

It takes abundant self-realization and soulfulness to make the commitment to love and be loved. Paradoxically, it requires maturing to the point of being able to accept the fact of our ultimate aloneness. When we are frightened of it, when we try to deny it, we tend to overburden our relationships with an unhealthy dependence that stifles and suffocates. We do not embrace, we cling, and love cannot breathe that way.

When I was no longer driven by traumatic enactments of abuse and victimization, communion was finally characterized by compassion, conscious commitment, and mutual generosity. By honoring myself and my loneliness, defined by psychiatrist and analyst Frieda Fromm-Reichman as the want of intimacy, the basic psychological need for a connection could be responsibly attained from a place of power, acumen, and discernment. For me personally, there is no greater gift than that.