Chodorow argues, unlike Freud who focuses on genital differences, that the nature of the complex is the cause of the above difference. Boys attachment to the mother is so intense that it is a threat that must be repressed. Since the girl's attachment to her father is less intense and non-exclusive, it is less of a threat and the triangle therefore can remain an ongoing part of her psychic world. So the masculine personality is based on repression of affect, denial of relational needs and connection which prepares the boy for life in the working world. For girls, however, the secondary nature of men continues into womanhood.
Women are more important emotionally for men than men are for women.
Women have intimate relationships with other women throughout their lives, unlike men with other men. Chodorow describes studies that show that men fall in love emotionally while women fall in love rationally. Women who are more economically dependent on men, must make sensible calculations in love and marriage which they mask with romanticism. This goes back to the distant but idealized father. Their relationship with their father prepares them for the relationship they will have in marriage.