Romantic Deification as a Substitute for Transcendence, and its downstream effect of turning children into moral debtors.

There is a pattern that rarely gets named because it doesn’t fit neatly into our cultural boxes of “abuse,” “codependency,” or “attachment trauma.” It hides behind good intentions. It disguises itself as loyalty, sacrifice, and love.

It begins with a child who learns early that the people meant to protect him cannot be trusted.

Imagine a boy—Freddy Jenkins—whose father uses religion as a weapon and whose mother flees the room when violence erupts. The father claims divine authority. 

The mother claims helplessness. Between them, the child learns something crucial: love is conditional, and safety disappears when it’s needed most.

When Freddy grows up, he rejects his father’s God entirely. This makes sense. Why would anyone want a deity that feels indistinguishable from cruelty? 

He becomes scientific, rational, atheistic. He believes only in what he can see, measure, and personally verify.

But here’s the part we almost never talk about:

Rejecting God does not eliminate the human need for transcendence.

It only forces that need to find a new object.

Humans require something larger than themselves to organize meaning, identity, and purpose. When that organizing center collapses, the psyche does not remain neutral. It replaces it.

For Freddy, that replacement arrives at age twelve in the form of a girl named Susie—the first person who openly likes him, stays, and doesn’t leave when things get hard. What begins as affection quietly becomes orientation. By adulthood, it becomes worship.

They marry young. Freddy believes he loves her. What he actually loves is the way Susie regulates his nervous system, gives him direction, and resolves the chaos left behind by his parents. 

Without God, without self-trust, without a stable inner core, Susie becomes the highest value in his universe.

Not metaphorically. Functionally.

This is romantic deification: when a partner is unconsciously elevated to a god-function—the source of meaning, worth, and moral authority.

From the outside, it looks like devotion. Freddy sacrifices his dreams, abandons his writing, takes practical jobs. He tells himself this is noble. He frames it as love. But what he’s really doing is outsourcing his entire sense of purpose to another human being.

And here’s the problem: no human can survive being someone else’s god.

When children enter the picture, the structure collapses further.

At the birth of Freddy’s first son, Peter, a nurse slips while holding the baby. Freddy later recounts—proudly—that he didn’t care about the infant’s safety. His only concern was Susie. This isn’t love; it’s hierarchy. The child doesn’t yet exist as a person. He exists only as a variable affecting the god-object.

Over time, Freddy becomes inexplicably critical of his children—especially his sons. He projects intent where none exists. He guilt-trips toddlers. He frames their needs as threats. Why?

Because in a deified romantic system, love is scarce and competitive.

Freddy is not operating as a father. He is operating as a rival sibling. 

On a psychological level, he never left childhood. He is still trying to earn approval, still terrified of abandonment, still vigilant for anything that might disrupt his bond with the one person who gives his life meaning.

So the children become obstacles.

When they cry, Freddy tells them they’re upsetting their mother. When they seek comfort, he pushes them away. 

He positions himself as Susie’s sole defender, even though she never asked for this role and doesn’t need it. Over time, a wedge forms—not because the mother rejected her children, but because the father quietly inserted himself between them.

This is where the second part of the pattern emerges: children as moral debtors.

Because Freddy defines himself as a martyr—someone who sacrificed dreams, endured stress, and “protected” Susie—he unconsciously assigns his children a debt. Their existence, their struggles, even their pain are reframed as burdens placed on their mother. Therefore, the children must constantly atone.

They must:

Be quiet

Be grateful

Be easy

Redeem themselves for “all they put her through”

Their suffering doesn’t count, because Freddy didn’t beat them. In his mind, the absence of overt violence equals good parenting. Emotional neglect becomes invisible. Control becomes care.

As the children grow, the consequences surface: addiction, failed relationships, fractured identities. Susie cries. Freddy watches her cry and feels justified. Her pain fuels his crusade. Someone must be responsible.

It’s never him.

Years later, when Martin—the youngest—returns home as an adult, carrying his own devastation (including his daughter being stolen from him by her mother), Freddy offers no real help. No plans. No advocacy. No protection.

But when Martin drinks the last of the milk?

Now there is a problem.

Milk matters because Susie drinks milk. Therefore, milk is symbolic. Its absence represents a failure to protect the god-object. Freddy asks Martin to go buy more—not as a practical errand, but as a ritual of redemption.

When Martin finally names what’s happening, the illusion cracks.

“You treated us like rivals,” he says. “Like we were stealing something from you.”

And that’s the truth.

Romantic deification does not produce love. It produces fear-based loyalty. It turns partners into idols and children into threats. 

It replaces selfhood with service and mistakes submission for virtue.

Most dangerously, it allows a person to feel morally superior while doing profound harm.

This pattern persists precisely because it looks good from the outside. The father is “nice.” The mother is competent. The kids are “troubled.” Responsibility flows downward, never upward.

But once seen, it cannot be unseen.

The antidote is not returning blindly to religion, nor is it doubling down on self-denial disguised as love. 

The antidote is healthy transcendence—a sense of meaning that does not depend on controlling or pleasing another human being.

Love cannot be asked to do the work of God.

And children should never be born into a family owing a debt they did not create.