Mother Hunger: How Adult Daughters Can Understand and Heal from Lost Nurturance, Protection, and Guidance

by Kelly McDaniel

article titled “Sometimes You Make Your Rapist Breakfast: Inside the Controversial—and Often Confusing—‘Tending Instinct’ of Women,” she writes: You can only push a man off you so many times. You can only say “not now, no thanks, I don’t want to” so many ways. I, too, have had sex I didn’t want because sex was the least bad option. Sex was a known variable. Think of it as a harm reduction tactic. Fighting and screaming and kicking and yelling at a man? Unknown outcomes. Would he hit me back? Would he let me go? Would I fight and lose? If I lost, would he have sex with me anyway, only more violently?16 Korbel captures the essence of the appeasing response. Appeasing behavior may be less risky than fighting or running. So we can understand how surrendering to unwanted sexual aggression is about survival—a resourceful, preconscious harm-reduction tactic. As children, many of us learn to appease our mother as a harm-reduction tactic.

Sometimes you make your rapisy breakfast