DADDY ISSUES (The Black Pearl)

I'm the single mother of five daughters - yep, FIVE. All girls - ages 15, 13, 9, 8, and 3. One major concern I've had for my girls is what kind of men would they choose to allow in their lives once they were of the age to start dating. I really worried about my oldest daughter because she had always been a "Daddy's Girl" and before she went to live with her father in Italy recently - her relationship with her father was heart-breaking, to say the least. He would rarely call or write and when he did call, he would fill her head and heart with promises that were never manifested. I was left to pick up the pieces of her broken heart and to try to explain the best that I could that love was not about saying but doing. It's not what a person tells you - but what they show you that counts. True love produces action. Even God Himself proved His love for us by sending His Only Son, Jesus Christ, to die for us. That's love. But how could I explain this to her? I was Mom, a woman...a daughter wanting her father, just as she was. After countless arguments with her father on how he should be there for her and how he was hurting her and how he would be acountable for his treatment of her, I finally "got it" when he told me that no matter how he treated her - she would always forgive him because he was "DAD". And I had to admit that he was right. After holding my daughter and trying to console her after another disappointment from dear old dad, the minute he would call - her tears would be replaced by smiles and it was all as if it never were. So I determined right then and there that their relationship was what it was - THEIR relationship. And I would no longer argue with my ex-husband but would rather support my daughter in her decision to continue her relationship with her father and I would encourage her and be her shoulder and ear when things didn't quite turn out how she hoped. I knew my role and although at times it took all I had not to want to rip him a new one for how he was setting his daughter up for failure in her future relationships - I held my peace and let her grow. But it got me to thinking about my own "daddy issues" and how they affected the relationships I found myself in over the years.

I never knew my biological father and according to my mother, he never knew of me. I was first told that he had died while I was still very young. When I got older, my mother decided to tell me that he was not dead and asked how I felt about it. I told her that I wished he were dead because now I had so many questions: Did I have brothers and sisters? Would he have wanted me? How different would my life had been had he been a part of it? I felt this emptiness from not knowing who the other half of my biological and genetic make-up was. I felt incomplete.

The man I call Dad now is and has been a father to me in every sense of the word. He raised my brother and I as if we were his own and never made a difference between us. He wasn't very involved with us but he was there. I grew up in a home of domestic violence but it wasn't my dad hitting my mother but rather I witnessed my mother hitting my dad, stabbing at him with a knife, calling him vicious names and degrading him as a man and as a person. I hated it. I didn't realize until I started writing this blog that this was the reason why most of the men I found myself attracted to were what society would call the "undesireables", the underdogs. I was to be there champion and let them know that they were loveable despite what others said of them. In other words, in my adult life - I was now attempting to stand up for my father in a way I couldn't when I was a little girl. I would find myself playing the martyr in most of my relationships and sacrificing my needs and wants for this man who just needed someone to believe in him, love him, protect him.

Wow.

I also found myself attracted to aggressive, dominate, controlling men. I come from a family of very strong women - true "Sapphires" in every sense of the word. Watching how my mother degraded my father for so many years - I was determined to have a man who was a man and who would keep me in my place should I try to step out of it. I wanted a man who could "tame" me. What I got instead were men who would do everything possible to break me and in some cases, they came very close to succeeding...but that's another blog. Men who came into my life who were kind - I saw as weak. When I threw a temper tantrum and they allowed me to get away with it - I quickly became bored and started looking for someone with a stronger hand. Someone who would demand that I respect the man in them. It's only as I've matured that I've realized that my father wasn't weak - he displayed a strength that very few men can claim to possess. He saw past my mother's anger to her pain and he loved her IN SPITE OF. Not once did I see my father lift a hand to my mother. Not once. And now I realize how much it took for him to deal with that and to remain with her and with us. It's now what I look for - someone who is willing to look past my anger, my insecurities, my trust issues, my 'daddy issues' and to love me in spite of me.