Fatherhood Quote by Courtney Love

It lands like a confession and a dare: Courtney Love turns a private survival strategy into a cultural diagnosis, then refuses to tidy it up for anyone’s comfort. The first clause is bluntly transactional: “I surrounded myself with women” isn’t a vibe, it’s a barricade. Love frames girlhood not as sisterhood-by-branding but as refuge from a threat that arrived in the shape of a father. That “horrible psycho father” phrase is doing double duty - vivid shorthand for trauma, and a refusal of polite euphemism. She’s not interested in the tasteful version of pain.

The pivot is where the quote gets prickly, and where her intent sharpens. “Now I’m trying to really appreciate and like men more” reads less like a conversion than an experiment in unlearning. It acknowledges the way personal history can harden into ideology: if one early relationship teaches you men are dangerous, it’s easy for “men” to become a category you only approach through suspicion, irony, or distance. Love doesn’t absolve men; she admits her own pattern.

Context matters: this is Love, a woman who spent decades in a rock ecosystem that fetishized female chaos while rewarding male brutality as “genius.” Her comment quietly reverses the standard script. Instead of asking women to accommodate damaged men, she’s talking about the labor of re-entering trust on her own terms. It’s messy, a little unfair, and very human - which is exactly why it works.