Fatherless Child (Dealing With Daddy Issues)
If you’ve followed this blog for a minute or just know me personally, you already know I have issues with my father. He and my mother divorced at some point during my childhood and, being a military man, he just stayed in California where he was stationed at the time. I’ve always said the divorce didn’t bother me much. Due to his career choice, my father was never in the house anyway; so what difference would an official split have on my already severed home life? But as the years have gone on, I realize that that was just the lie I told myself to make myself feel better.
Like many other fatherless children I buried the pain and all the unaddressed emotions. I tucked them in the recesses of my psyche and let them fester in a mental folder labeled “To Deal With Later.” Needless to say that’s unhealthy. If these issues are not dealt with you it’s virtually impossible to have a healthy relationship—romantic, plutonic or familial. Parents are our blueprints. We either spend our whole life trying to be just like them or the complete opposite. Whichever side of the coin you land on, the person you become usually relates somehow or other back to mommy and daddy.
Today, I am a 32-year-old workaholic with clear goals, dreams and aspirations. I credit my drive and determination to my mother, but my father may have unknowingly played a role as well. See, I suffer from tunnel vision. When I set a task for myself, nothing else matters until that mission is completed. While most people admire this trait, it’s oftentimes been the downfall of many of my relationships. All work and no play, makes pretty girls feel neglected and eventually pushed away.
Taking a moment to reflect, perhaps I use work as my shield. Something I can control and use to keep people at a distance. Barely into my tenth year of life, two of the male figures in my young life abandoned me. My father left by choice. My grandfather left by death. I was left alone. Solitude is all a fatherless child can trust. Although I have three siblings, our decade-plus age gap basically made me a only child that played more father figure than brother to them. I’m sure they too have daddy issues of their own, but we each carry that cross differently.
In my case, it was/is anger. A while back, pre-NWSO, I wrote a poem called “Two Words For My Father.” The first was Fuck, and the second was You. It may seem juvenile, but the combination of those seven letters perfectly encapsulated every single emotion I had towards this man that had brought me into this world only to disappear. I hated him and I would feel this uncontrollable rage fill up every time he would catch me on the phone. All I would do is curse his name during the months that would pass between each call, but whenever I heard his voice on the phone I’d revert back to childhood. All the things I wanted to man up and say would never find their way out of my lungs and through the telephone wire. I would just fake uncomfortable conversation and pray for the moment I could hang up the line I return to my life without him.
If you READ THIS, you know that I finally confronted my father and am still on the long journey to healing and removing 32 years worth of emotional scars. Surprisingly, the man is trying to make up for past mistakes and I have to do my part to meet him halfway. Although I’m more open to his calls now, I still find myself falling back into my familiar role of distance. But baby steps are better than no forward progress at all.
There’s no quick fix to daddy issues and sometimes a father can actually be in their child’s life and still cause emotional damage. Trust me, I’ve met plenty of women (and men) that fell into that category. I believe that subconsciously women tend to look for men like their father and men look for women that remind them of their mother. Whether you agree with that statement or not, the fact remains that this cycle won’t end any time soon if we continue to be a culture that spawns more “baby daddies” and “baby mamas” than fathers and mothers.
Who else suffers from daddy issues? How do you deal with them? Have you ever confronted your father? Do you feel that our interaction with our parents can have lifelong effects on our romantic relationships? If you come from a happy home, have you ever dated someone that had daddy issues? How did those issues effect your relationship? Do you believe that it’s impossible to have a healthy romantic relationship if you haven’t dealt with unresolved issues with your parents? Do men and women subconsciously date people like their parents?
Speak your piece…
BONUS: THE INSPIRATION
I was actually inspired to write this post after watching the below episode of The Game, which I recently realized was a pretty good show. In this episode Malik finally meets his estranged father, punk ass Chauncey. I really related to the experience and sense of emptiness watching the story unfold so I figured I’d share it with all the fatherless children out there. If you’re at work, you probably can’t watch it now, but be sure to check it out over the weekend or when you get home. FYI: Part 3 is the crux of my message and that’s only a two minute clip.
—NWSO
I feel that this is such an important issue and I’m glad you’ve given it this much light.
“Fatherless Child (Dealing With Daddy Issues)”