A Father's Love

I would like to write something meaningful about Father’s Day, but I can’t.   Although I have had positive examples in my life of good men, they were not my father so I have no point of reference.  What I can do is to write about how important the role of a father is.  I can do that because to this day I feel a sense of loss that I never had the kind of father I deserved and what deficits that left me when I entered into adulthood.  My father, to all outward appearances, was a good father.  He provided for his family, he disciplined his children, and he lived up to the basic expectations of what a father should be.  I feel I’ve outlined his abuse in past entries, so I won’t repeat that here, instead focusing on what I needed that was not provided. 

The biggest things I needed as a child was love and acceptance, things I never did receive from him.  My father was a flawed and damaged man on so many levels, I’m not sure where his hatred of women began but I received the full force of his animosity.  You could justify some of his attitude toward women on the time frame in which he lived; women as a whole in society were not placed with any value beyond their service to family.  Unfortunately, my father’s disdain for women went far beyond societal norms.  I understood this at even the most basic levels at a very young age.  Women had no value.  It was so bad, I tried to make myself into a boy so that I would be loved and have a sense of self-worth.  I wasn’t confused about my sexuality or gender; I simply wanted to be worth something.

My nickname was “Charlie.”  I was a tomboy, I loved to climb trees and when I played, I played hard.  I was precocious and curious.  When a boy kicked me I kicked him back.  I guess that’s why my girls think I am feisty.  My best friend as a child remembers me this way, “You didn’t take any crap from anyone.  You were very patient, you never were the aggressor but if someone pushed you, you pushed back.  You always knew you would lose in a fight but it didn’t matter.  You fought anyway.  I admired the spirit you had.”  I had an exaggerated sense of justice, so I readily identified when something was not fair or right.  I was able to see this from such a young age so when I saw how women were treated in my family, I knew the only thing to do was to be a boy.  I had no idea it wasn’t going to be that simple. 

I must have been around six or seven years old when I actively tried to become a boy.  It was summer and I was in shorts.  I was sitting in the living room, and I pulled the leg opening of the shorts to one side.  I knew I was missing something that made you a boy.  I thought if I pulled on the labia long enough, it would make a penis.  So I was sitting there pulling on my labia when my mother walked in.  You can surely guess what she thought I was doing!  I wasn’t having any fun; I was trying to be a boy.  I received a hostile glare, a lecture and I figured out pretty quickly pulling on my labia was not going to make me a boy but it would get me into some hot water if I was caught doing it.  I thought if I had a penis, people would love me.  If I only had a penis, I would be accepted.  After all, my brothers were in a place of reverence within the family hierarchy.  The only difference I could tell between us was they had a penis and I did not.  Nearly the entire relationship I had with my father would consist of my fruitless attempts to gain his love and acceptance as a female.  I lost this endeavor up until the day I decided I didn’t need it to be a complete human being.

Not having the love and acceptance from my father manifested into a constant struggle to gain it from the men in my life.  If didn’t matter who the man was, I wanted acceptance from any man.  As I grew into adulthood, I came to equate sex with love and acceptance.  I came to equate sex as power because I could use it to gain love and acceptance.  The more men desired me, the more I felt accepted.  The problem with this was the ability to get a man to desire you, to have sex with you is not empowering.  It is debasing.  I didn’t understand why I felt so used and dirty after I got what I thought I wanted.  It took a long time to understand that many men will take sex any time it is offered, and it doesn’t matter who you are or what you look like.  Men who treat women with this type of usury are not the kind of men who will treat a woman the way I longed for.  I set myself up in a cycle to be minimized.   It was a vicious cycle as I used my sexuality to gain the attention, acceptance, and what I thought was love from a man and it resulted in a type of a high.  I was desirable!  I was beautiful, and men clamored to be with me.  It was a rush to see how many men I could elicit attention from.  I also equated sex with commitment, so when I slept with a man I wanted it to be forever.  Imagine my confusion when I found out it wasn’t.  Thus, the debasement when my expectations did not meet reality.  I went from a high to a low when the phone didn’t ring the next day.

I repeated this over and over with numerous men and I was always and predictably disappointed time and time again.  It fed into depression and anxiety as I wondered why I was never good enough.  I had no sense of myself as a woman, no self-esteem or self-worth at all.  Because I was not loved and accepted by my own father, my only sense of self-worth was mirrored in the men I attracted.  It was not a pretty picture.  For many years, I blamed the men I brought into my life.  There had to be something wrong with them if they did not see the incredible woman I was, and what I had to offer them.  The problem was; I thought I had something to offer.  I didn’t.  How could I offer them anything of myself when I didn’t have myself?  The glass wasn’t even half full, it was bone dry.  Of course, I had a clue I wasn’t there, but I didn’t know how little I valued myself.  Worse, I could not figure out how I kept attracting these men into my life.  I took no responsibility for my own role in all this because I thought I was doing what I was supposed to do.  My father taught me my only value was in what I could provide for a man.  I was their doormat to use at their discretion.  My feelings were irrelevant.  I played my role as a doormat to a standing ovation. 

Through all of this I remained spirited.  This was in distinct contrast to what men thought a doormat should act like, so when men saw I would fight back, they ran.  When they saw I would demand they treat me with more respect (though I had none for myself) they saw this as a threat to their ability to control me.  It took a long time for me to understand why I drove men away as fast as I attracted them.  My spirit wasn’t something I was willing to compromise on, at least not for very long.  I’ve always known I was a lot to handle; a real man doesn’t need to handle me.  A real man just needs to love me, but I thought if I was patient enough, I would find a man who would be able to “handle” me.  I never found that man.  I had to find myself before I could find a man who would simply love me.  A man who loves me has no desire to “handle” me and I found that when someone loves you, acceptance comes with love.  They are not two separate ideations.  I waited almost my whole life to grow into the woman I needed to be in order to attract the love I deserve.  I have to tell you, it was worth the wait. 

Daughters marry men based on the man their father’s model for them.  This is how vital it is to be a good father.  That is how vital it is to have a father in the life of a child, children become what they know.  A daughter will marry the kind of man her father was, for good or bad because that is what she sees a man is.   A son will model his behavior off of the example set by his father because that is what he knows a man to be.  Single moms do an phenomenal job of raising children, and they serve many roles, but they cannot model a father.  That is not to say children from single mothers grow up with severe dysfunctions.  Many grow up modeling the type of person their mother was, what type of human being she was and they embody the value characteristics she displayed.  That is the mark of an amazing woman when she can instill core values into a child without the influence of a male role model.  But to say a father is not a significant part in the life and development of a child encourages and emphasizes the ability of men to abandon their family.  Fathers are every bit as vital to the ideal development of a child as is the mother.  I think we as a society need to expect more from the men in it.  There are some wonderful and impressive men who have set the standards of behavior as a father very high.  We should expect every man to reach that standard instead of excusing them as they pursue other interests after procreation is completed. 

My father did not abandon his family, but he did something just as hurtful.  He didn’t show me the love and acceptance I needed in order to make a good choice in the man I would allow into my life to love me.  Not knowing how to attract love, I used the only tool I had at my disposal, my sexuality.  Yearning for the love of a man contributed to a cycle of debasement I perpetuated.  I can’t blame the men for taking what I so freely offered, I didn’t tell them the terms of the deal.  I lived what I was taught and I had to learn through the pain of repeated rejection this was not the way I wanted to live.  I am an awesome woman with a great deal to offer a partner.  I have always known that.  I had to discover who I was in order to know what I had to offer, and what I expected in return for the gift I am.  Love is not about being able to handle me.  Love is not about what I can do for another person.  Love is absolutely not about sex.  Love is not how much attention one person can give me, nor is about another person validating who I am.  Love is about seeing the person I am and accepting me exactly at face value, flaws, imperfections and all the glorious things that comprise the person I have become.  That is something my father never taught me.