Man or woman, no matter how much we may try to downplay or minimize the role, we all need to feel the love of a father. This is not meant to slight the love of a mother because her love is incomparable, but I believe that the father’s role in our lives may in some ways have a more direct impact on how we grow up to have other relationships.
A father is the first person that chooses you in your life. There is never a doubt of the maternity of a baby because a mother physically carries it—it can’t be denied because she gave birth. But the father has the unique choice to acknowledge that the child is his, verbally and by action, before a test is given. I believe this is what gives the dynamics of the relationship with the father a different perspective. Whether you have ever thought of it this way or not, if your father is in your life, was in your life, or has ever acknowledged you without proof, then this is the first earthly example you have of a man choosing you because he wanted you, not because he couldn’t deny you.
This is vital in the foundation of how you view relationships, whether you are male or female. As a female, a standard (even if you are unaware) has been set for the way you will relate with men and how they should treat you. As a male, it plants the seed of responsibility and leadership in your female relationships. Because you chose her, you love and accept her out of free will, not obligation. This is a direct example of God’s role as a Father. He chooses to acknowledge us as His children and He loved us before He saw the proof that we would come to be His. In Romans 5:8, the Word states that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. This is His public acknowledgement that He has chosen to be our Father, not out of obligation, but simply because He loves us. What a powerful example of relationships.
So what happens if you didn’t have an earthly father to choose you? I believe it manifests in different ways in different people, but I wholeheartedly believe that it will manifest somehow. In a man, maybe it rises up when they find it a bit easier to deny their own child or how they negatively treat the women in their lives. On the other hand, they may choose to use it as an example of what not to do. He may become the protector of his mother, treating every woman the way she should be treated because he refuses to be like his father. For a woman, it may subconsciously affect her trust in men or cause her to be bitter towards men without realizing the cause. She may seek to find the acknowledgement and acceptance she never received from her father, in any man she can find to fill the void.
I was the latter.
The realization of the effects of my father’s rejection were probably first recognized at church one Sunday. My cousin was preaching a sermon about his daughter and his experience with meeting her prom date for the first time. He stated that he wanted to “lay hands, um excuse me, eyes” on the young man that would be taking out his baby girl. He needed to look him in the eyes and let him know he would need to climb many a mountain and swim some pretty deep seas to even get close to making the kind of impact in his daughter’s life that he had. This young man needed to know, and hear firsthand that this was his daughter and that he was the leading man in her life. This is a role my cousin (her father) had earned, and not one he was willing to give up very easily. The man had to prove himself worthy enough to even apply, much less be considered for a starting position.
As I listened to him, I began to tear up. It spoke to a void that I never knew I had. I never had a man that made sure any other man who sought my affections was worthy of my attention. My father rejected me at fifteen (I will discuss this a bit in detail in a later chapter) and so because I had no consistent male to take that place, I began to allow anyone to apply. I didn’t know there should be a standard. I didn’t know that I shouldn’t and didn’t have to waste time kissing all these frogs, because one day my prince would come. How can someone learn unless there is someone willing to teach? I have a host of older cousins and uncles who could’ve stepped in if necessary, but I didn’t know what I needed so I never asked.
The love and affection I should have gotten from my daddy, I desperately sought in men. And when they couldn’t live up to that role or fulfill the hole I had, I would move on to the next one. I didn’t understand why they couldn’t be what I needed them to be, so once I drained them (as we talked about in Chapter 2), I would move on to my next victim, I mean relationship.
Up until recently I would tell people that I never had a father in my life. But that’s a lie. I did have a father until about the age of 15. He wasn’t much in the way that I now know what fatherhood is, but he was mine. Because I was his only daughter, I thought that made me special, and for a while I believed without a doubt that I was. So the devastation was all the more real when the one man that was supposed to love and cherish and protect me, the only man that couldn’t have a hidden agenda in loving me because his own blood ran through my veins, told me he didn’t want me anymore.
This pain was too much for a teenager to bear, so I suppressed it. Being a certified counselor as an occupation, I now know that the human brain can bury hurt, pain, and even entire events in an attempt to protect itself. So that’s what I did. I began to believe the lie I told myself for so long: I never had a father. His death forced me to face the truth. This realization allows me to feel empathy for the women who believe having a piece of a man, or even sharing one, is better than not having one at all. If you would have asked me in those crucial years of discovering who I was, would I have preferred my daddy to have been there even half-heartedly, I wouldn’t have hesitated to tell you ‘yes’.
If you have been in this situation, or you are still in this situation...there is healing available...
Excerpt from ©NOT Another Singles Book by La Vonia R. Tryon
Available on Smashwords.com
Paperback release early 2012
