I heard it many times, that as a woman, you end up dating/marrying your father. I’ve always had an opinion about such myths but I held back my sentiments on this one. It was a weird thing to think about-dating my dad ( (shudder) ) and so I thought it was complete rubbish; ‘Cosmo propaganda’ is what I called it.
I was having a deep conversation with a friend about this the other day and she mentioned that some girls, especially those who never grew up with a dad look for men who can completely provide for them in addition to being their lovers. Provide here meaning pay for all their living expenses. ALL. I looked back at the girls who I knew hadn’t grown up with fathers and realised that while this was not entirely true for all their romantic relationships, it was true for all the girls I knew who had such relationships with their men.
As I was walking out of my hotel room that weekend, my attention was grabbed by a guy on his balcony. He was shirtless, smoking a cigarette and having what I guessed to be coffee as he almost insolently signalled with a wave of his hand at the room service to come back later. “That’s definitely the kind of guys I’m attracted to†I thought to myself more or less shamefully. Strong, self absorbed, confident, emotionally unavailable kind of men. “But my father doesn’t smoke off balconies shirtless†I thought remembering the conversation I had had with my friend, “so how is it that I date my ‘father’, please?†My father is a tall, calm, well cultured respectable man. All male, all present in all my life’s achievements, all knowing, all other ways available however…emotionally unavailable!
“Holy Sh*†I had just had a eureka moment.
That was the insight, the deep penetrating truth to the men I picked to be my partners. I was so overwhelmed with this discovery that I stopped dead in my tracks to recollect. I could not believe it.
My father is a great dad. Always has been. Took me to the dentist, replaced all the retainer braces I lost, bought me the coolest roller blades, never missed any big event in my life… However, he’s not the kind of dad who has ever known how to bond with me, if you know what I mean; something I had wanted so much of especially round my teenage years. As a matter of fact, it is so for many of my friends; male or female. Many African fathers from the Michel Jackson, Al Green, and Marvin Gaye era backwards don’t really have a clue how to connect emotionally with their kids.
Now joining the dots I could see exactly what that ‘factor X’ was that I used to tell my friends over and over a guy had to have no matter how attractive, for me to be attracted to him. He could be an introvert or an extrovert, but just the mere fact that he distanced himself emotionally captivated me. That X-factor that I had never labelled had always been “emotionally unavailable.â€
Now of course my first question here would be that, does it mean that all sisters in the same family fall for the same kind of guy? No. You seek out from a relationship those things that are important to YOU as an individual for emotional equilibrium and those which you lacked in your father figure. In other words, instead of looking for the emotionally available guy because your father figure was emotionally unavailable, you look for the exact same thing your father was and try to make what he denied you, Present.
As a huge sceptic of this myth, I am now a full convert. Girls do fall for their fathers; or variants of them.
So, should you now, if you are a girl like me, accept an emotionally available guy and evade all the crap that comes along with the emotionally Unavailable? Or maybe make your father emotionally available instead to change your taste in men?
Figure out your poison.
Yeah, I said it!
Peace and love
Julia Love