This is a serious question, mostly addressed to the adult women among us but also to anyone else who has a stake in the matter.
What did your father do for you/not do for you, that you needed?
Context: I have recently become a father to a daughter, with a mother whose father was not around when she was growing up. I won’t bore you all with the details but our daughter is here now and I am realising that I’m the only one in our little family who has really had a father before. But I have never been a girl. And I know that as a boy, my relationships with my mother and father were massively influential and powerful but at the same time radically different to each other. People say that daughters and fathers have a unique relationship too.
Question: What was your father to you? What matters the most when it comes to a father making his daughter loved, safe, confident and free? To live a good life as an adult?
I’d like this to be a mature, personal and real discussion about daughters and fathers, rather than a political thing, so I humbly ask to please speak from the heart and not the head on this one :)
Thank you
P.S Apologies if this question is badly written or conceived; I haven’t been getting enough sleep! It is what it is!
As someone who has trouble with his emotions, I can tell you that for me it has nothing to do with being macho or manly, it is about depression. My depression stems from childhood trauma and abuse, but it doesn’t really matter the source of the depression if it is crushing the ability to feel out of you.
I mean, I don’t think it’s that he’s not feeling things, my mom definitely heard him crying at night and stuff. He just does his best to hide it from us.
I know what you mean though about depression shutting you down, and I don’t doubt there’s plenty of trauma in his past so it’s probably just a bit of everything.
I hope you’re well <3