Therapist Reveals Why Some Women Get Treated Like 'Princesses' — And Others Don't
Most women who are treated "like princesses" are loving people who give love to husbands who then love them back.
LookStudio | Shutterstock A lot of women believe that “all men are jerks,” which is as inaccurate as when men think that “all women are selfish” or any other broad generalization. When people believe in these monolithic constructs, it only means that they have experienced someone of the other gender treating them or a parent poorly.
In this case, it would be a father treating their mother badly or directly treating them badly. Sometimes it is either an attachment figure treating her badly, so a woman with a mean mother will pick men who treat her badly. This is not because she experienced poor treatment by a male caregiver, but because she learned to distrust love in general, and her love objects happen to be male.
After a childhood experience where they are treated poorly, these girls (and boys, but we are talking about women in this post) are very attuned to stories about partners behaving badly, and gravitate toward friends who have a similar worldview, so they end up with lots of “evidence” that their view is correct.
This is called confirmation bias and is a well-known phenomenon in psychology. (Like how people with substance abuse issues tell me that “everyone parties like I do”; this is true in the circles they run in but not overall.)
Women who have felt drawn to difficult or selfish male partners are usually flummoxed and angry by evidence that there are women in the world who get “treated like princesses” by their boyfriends or husbands.
This doesn’t fit with their worldview, so it leads to a lot of uncomfortable cognitive dissonance (which occurs when you are forced to hold two competing ideas in your mind at the same time).
To reduce this dissonance, they conclude that the women who get treated well are somehow bad, to stay in their comfort zone of thinking of the world as comprised of good guys and bad guys. They call these women “spoiled” or “selfish” and ally more with the men who “selflessly” give to these “unappreciative” women.
Nicoleta Ionescu | Shutterstock
This is a way that they can continue to think of the world in the black-and-white terms that they were taught at home: there is one martyr and one selfish person in all relationships.
Of course, the reality is that most women who are treated “like princesses” are loving people who give love to husbands who then love them back.
Generally speaking, it is more common to post on social media that your husband sent you flowers than that you had a quickie, but in my experience, women who get treated well are treating their husbands well.
If women with trust issues and a victim/perpetrator ideology observe women being treated well, they are likely to believe that the woman is somehow exploiting the man. They are unlikely to believe the simplest explanation, which is that this is a happy couple where both partners are looking out for one another.
There are situations where a man has a preoccupied attachment and treats a woman far better than she treats him. But these are far less common than the more usual situations where partners treat one another well. After all, the majority of people are securely attached, which research shows leads to happy, mutually supportive relationships.
wavebreakmedia | Shutterstock
So how can you find a man who treats you like a princess, especially if this has eluded you in the past?
Overall, the easiest way to find a man who treats you “like a princess” is to be confident in yourself and believe that you deserve to be happy, which is difficult if you were raised to think the opposite.
Therapy can help you develop self-love and recognize how your self-esteem issues have impacted your prior choices in partners. From a more confident and self-aware place, you can start dating people who are healthier and happier, and who show right from the start that they can take care of you.
Once in a relationship with a kind and loving person, you will likely need to work on being open and vulnerable. Many women do everything in their relationships but fail to be intimate, either emotionally or otherwise.
If you find yourself over-functioning and keeping a guard up, this doesn’t make a man feel loving and close. He may feel that you are martyring yourself or mothering him, but not opening up in a way that makes him want to take care of you. And relationships may not even get off the ground in the first place.
If this post spoke to you, it would be a good one to bring up with your therapist or do some journaling about it. The idea of women getting “spoiled” by male partners is a real trigger to women who don’t believe they ever have the possibility of getting into a loving, mutual relationship themselves. But we all deserve to find someone who spoils and cares for us!
Dr. Samantha Rodman Whiten, aka Dr. Psych Mom, is a clinical psychologist in private practice and the founder of DrPsychMom. She works with adults and couples in her group practice Best Life Behavioral Health.