The Madonna/Whore Complex in Men and Women

op why do you think it's diffferend in men and women?

So is it not possible to be both Madonna and whore to the n? I'm trying and wondering if it will be a waste of time and energy to do so. There must be a compartment in his brain that will allow me to be both.. no?

fretless mayhem1 wrote:So is it not possible to be both Madonna and whore to the n? I'm trying and wondering if it will be a waste of time and energy to do so. There must be a compartment in his brain that will allow me to be both.. no?

Perhaps the question to ask yourself is not how you can be both, but why you want to be both. Or either.

Widget wrote:

fretless mayhem1 wrote:So is it not possible to be both Madonna and whore to the n? I'm trying and wondering if it will be a waste of time and energy to do so. There must be a compartment in his brain that will allow me to be both.. no?

Perhaps the question to ask yourself is not how you can be both, but why you want to be both. Or either.

I have a strong need to be both. I don't know why. I'm trying to figure out why.

But looking for safety sounds like settling. Doesn't appear there's heart in the process.
So there's the black and white thinking again.

Wendy, I am not sure what you are reading into my words. I wrote about situations where I found both safety and emotional/physical intimacy with the same person. this was not settling in my mind, quite the opposite. Emotional intimacy involves heart, no? And about "again", I am not a person with a PD, and what are the collection of examples of black and white thinking you would attribute to me?

freyja wrote:Wendy, I am not sure what you are reading into my words.

Miscommunication, I think that I just can not empathize with that situation.
And black and white statement was purely my own frustration

(I think I stick to the translator. My own translations reflect more of me, but they are unkind, which very rarely is my intention)

WendyTorrance wrote:

freyja wrote:Wendy, I am not sure what you are reading into my words.

Miscommunication, I think that I just can not empathize with that situation.
And black and white statement was purely my own frustration

(I think I stick to the translator. My own translations reflect more of me, but they are unkind, which very rarely is my intention)

Thank you, Wendy. I enjoy the posts I have read of yours on psychforums.

reflection wrote:I found this interesting because you talk of violating normal boundaries. My mother when my daddy left use to have me brush her hair for long periods of time, or take the hair brush and run it up and down her back. I would have been too young to give anywhere near an adequate massage. I would complain about doing it because my hand would get tired.

I until now had never thought of that as violating a boundary. Even if it weren't to be considered that it at the very least would have been me meeting HER needs. Something upon thinking about she expected of me often. My daddy on the other hand had a different set of expectations.

I had not thought about it as a way in which we were meeting their needs. This is also a good point.

Widget wrote:When I was a child my mother used to make me brush her hair. I hated doing it, the feel, the smell, but she would insist. I've never given it much thought until you wrote this, but yes, it is a violation of normal boundaries.

I find that very subtle violations like the ones that the three of us describe can only really be identified when they are strictly compared to cultural norms. I find that this is simply unusual in the United States. To demonstrate the difference between cultures, I believe that in Finland it is, traditionally, not unusual for children to sleep in their parents' beds from birth until three or four years of age. Perhaps Wendy can confirm, deny or elaborate upon this. Naturally, in the United States, this would be an extreme boundary violation.

Widget wrote:The more I educate myself about NPD and BPD, the more it is not the differences between the two disorders that are so apparent, but the similarities. The splitting of partners being discussed on this thread is such a good example of that.

This is a very common sentiment.

Widget wrote:I guess the question I really want to know the answer to is, why does this splitting happen, and what aspect of trauma causes it to happen?

I think it starts with the parent's or parents' perception of the child and progresses to the child's perception of self and other. I had parents with extreme perceptions, I internalized their perceptions of me, my perceptions of them, and my perceptions of our relationships, and I used those perceptions as a template for the sorts of perceptions that I should form about others and relationships.

I was just reading about the origins of the knight-in-shining-armor and damsel-in-distress tropes a few days ago, and you've reminded of a beautiful illustration entitled Ruggiero Rescuing Angelica by Gustave Doré that I found while exploring and now feel inclined to share. Doré seems to have had something of an interest in the damsel-in-distress trope, as he also painted Andromeda chained to the rocks before she is rescued by Perseus. I encourage everyone to view his works. I especially love his illustrations for Paradise Lost.

VioletAasA wrote:

serena33 wrote:Very interesting topic, thank you so much for sharing your thoughts.

Over the years I've come to the conclusion that most people are wired to feel deeply connected to partners who regress them. Regression to me is a strange kind of seduction- it involves triggering unmet childhood needs, together with the promise of meeting them. If you've heard the cliche `she married her father' or `he married his mother' this is the kind of thing I'm referring to.

I believe that when children are deeply wounded, they are highly prone to this kind seduction. Its so powerful because the needs of a child are connected with survival. Therefore the promise of having those needs met is so compelling and urgent, it will keep a partner in a relationship long after it is clear that the partner cannot, in fact, meet those needs. Usually its for the same reasons the parent could not- ie they are too similar to the parent.

I totally agree with this and tried to convey the same thing several times, but your explanation is the best that I have seen by now. I call it that we try to replace our parents.

And somehow, somewhwre there, there is the underststanding of our sexual preferences. As we grow up, sex comes in as the additional component, in the whole story, and it may be seen as a way to gain a power, or gain the love (which I think may be my case, not sure), or gain what we want, or discard/humiliate the parent that didn't give us the love that we needed.. In all objectification in sex, i think there is some element of power, as well as sadism/mazohism toward parents. And it is personal experience for each of us.

I don't know if I have this Madonna-whore complex, but I do know that I was attracted to my partners sexually first, and this was my only way to get into relationship. So in a way it is the objectification.

I know that in one relationship I started to develop sexual attraction/need by getting all those words and expressions that I should have got from my father when I was about 5 years old: that I am cute, important, sunshine.... And I realized that he was giving me type of praise that I never got from my own father. So he was triggering my unmet childhood needs, and I was seeing some kind of strange emotional switch in me, which, I now know, was me regressing to a 5 years old. It was thank to a specific circumstances that the regression was so clear.
So how in my brain the meeting those childhood needs gets connected to sexual arousal? I don't really recall any inappropriate moves from my father in that direction.

I'm wondering where the understanding would go if we try to look at a sex as a way to meet our unmet needs. And the question is what those needs really are
It is also the fact that those needs are not my real needs, those are needs of the unhealed child in me, in fact those are needs that in adulthood became wants. But part of me also progressed, and there are some other needs/wants involved that are perhaps more rational. So I guess It takes a lot of introspection to understand what our unmet childhood needs (now wants) are and ho they are in conflict with the current state of our mind.
The trick is in the conflict.

VioletAasA wrote:So how in my brain the meeting those childhood needs gets connected to sexual arousal? I don't really recall any inappropriate moves from my father in that direction.

Do you remember the same boundary violations in childhood that some of us have described? Notice that most of ours were not explicitly sexual boundary violations. I conclude that the reason that these needs are related to sex in adulthood is because we have never learned which sort or degree of intimacy is appropriate and desirable in which relationships, and intimacy is related to sexuality in adulthood. I think that these things can happen whether there is too much or too little intimacy in childhood.