The quality of children's object relating, with specific relevance to violent fathers, remains complex and ill-defined in the broad literature on domestic violence. This exploration into young adult daughter's relationships with their violent fathers permits a useful glimpse into this complex dynamic. Psychoanalytic research interviews were conducted and revealed that participants' relationships with their abusive fathers were multifaceted and characterised by amplified tension between feelings of love, hate, fear and loss. Defences such as splitting, projective identification, the moral defence and identification with the aggressor were often adopted to prevent loss of the love object. This was found to be necessary for psychological survival and threads of these defences were used creatively in adulthood to retain safer relationships with fathers. The development of healthy regulation of affect appears to have been made more complicated by the domestic violence and the consequent relational trauma. Oscillations between paranoid-schizoid and depressive positions in relation to fathers were evident throughout, with transitions into the depressive position being made possible through forgiveness and memories of benevolence. Romantic adult attachments were significantly influenced by a fear of intimacy in participants and by the use of avoidance strategies linked to the father-daughter relationship in childhood.