6 Signs of a Truly Unforgettable Father

 

Every time I hear someone say what a great dad they have, something lights up within me.

My ears perk up. I grab my hot beverage. I pull my seat closer.

Because good dads are few and far between, they are as rare as camel’s milk.

Don’t believe me?

Numbers don’t lie, so here we go:

In the U.S, nine out of 36 Million fathers don’t live with all of their minor children most or all the time.

Several million more see their kids at least once a week.

Women head five out of six single-parent households.

Half of U.S. children will spend at least two years living in a one-parent home.

Some will never or barely know their fathers.

These stories are everywhere. And it didn’t start now.

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But first, a little backstory.

I live in a neighborhood with old people — some pretty cool folks in their seventies and eighties.

We never have parties because the hood is dead silent by eight pm. Crickets.

But don’t feel sorry for me. Living here is a big blessing.

On those days when we come together and share boring things like a cheese platter, I get to absorb the dripping of their wisdom.

Recently, I noticed something:

People in their seventies weave the same tales of abandonment and dysfunctional dads as boys in their teens.

The daddy atrocities conducted then continue to hover like shadows in the present day.

It bothers me — a lot.

It makes me lie awake at night at times.

As the mother of a teenage boy being raised by his stepdad, you can (hopefully) see why:

• He is a boy who will one day be a father. (We hope)
• He is a boy who has lived through the vagaries of divorce, so I wonder how this will impact him as he steps into the big, masculine boots of fatherhood.
• No matter what anyone says, being raised by a stepdad is not the same as being raised by a biological dad. The bond is different. It’s there. But it’s… different.

 

But there’s more.

All four of his male friends no longer have their dads.

I mean, they exist, but they’re absent from their lives.

One dad suddenly turned gay and left. The other two left when the boys were two, and the other dad, well, I have no idea what the story is.

…

Do you now see why I light up when I hear good dad stories?

Of all my friends whose dads are still alive, only a handful can hold up their father’s names with pride.

Here’s what’s interesting, though: In a sea of men, these women can’t seem to find someone to settle down with because they have high standards.

Hint: Standards that their fathers established.

We had a talk the other day where they laid out their dads’ characters and what makes each one such a cool, phenomenal man.

Let’s talk about these types of fathers.

…

He helps people build their self-esteem even when it means others do better than him.

Years ago, a friend told me his father always said,

“I made it without any financial support, so don’t expect me to support you.”

I was floored.

This was a man of means — a person who had established a chain of high-end stores with his bare hands- dirt-under-the-fingernails sorta resilience.

You’d think he, of all people, would be the first to support his own, knowing how steep the climb is. Right?

Nope.

He somehow believed that if he could build something from scratch, his son could do the same.

Look, I try not to poke my nose in other people’s affairs — sometimes without fail — so I zipped it and sat silently with my truth floating at the back of my mind.

I firmly believed that it wasn’t that the old man wanted his son to work extra harder; it was that he was selfish.

He was never given anything growing up. He had earned everything through sweat and tears, so he wasn’t going to part with a dime — even if it meant being selfish to his own flesh and blood.

You’ll be surprised at how many men and women are selfish with their children. This is more so if they never had any cushioning or support growing up.

It’s very easy to assume that every person who brings up a child into the world will give them everything they need to succeed because they have an idea of how difficult life can get.

This is why men who hoist their kids up, mow the path and add brick after brick to move their lives upward take accolades for being among the world’s best dads.

Go, dads!

…

He builds other people’s self-worth, keeping them from second-guessing themselves.

One of the girls said what makes her dad phenomenal is how he reinforces her self-worth time and time again.

Usually, society relegates the role of building daughters’ characters to mothers.

But this man has happily stepped into those shoes, and I can see why it hits her differently.

There’s something ultra-special that happens when a man reinforces his daughter’s worth that doesn’t happen when her mother does it.

When the world is busy planting seeds of ludicrous fears that make people second-guess themselves for the rest of their lives, we need dads who are relentless at positive affirmation.

…

He never makes you feel bad when you react when he wrongs you.

If you’re a millennial kid like myself, the way you knew your parents felt guilty for something they did to you was through subtle actions — like sweet-talking you or giving you small presents.

These parents would have to bleed first before they could acknowledge they were at fault.

The worst part?

There was no room to say how you felt about what they did to you.

Many parents, especially the older generation, suffer from a major ego crisis.

But Sal’s dad is a different kind of fish.

He never once made her feel bad for the way she reacted whenever he did something bad to her. He never once made her feel bad after expressing herself.

A lot of people do this, and it’s a form of emotional control. They wrong you and then proceed to gaslight you into feeling bad for reacting to their actions.

Sal’s father is a seventy-year-old guy with pretty healthy self-esteem, which is why he has always accepted feedback from his children. Way to go!

…

He steps up and handles what needs handling, however messy.

Ella’s parent’s marriage dissolved because of her dad’s trauma.

It wasn’t his fault.

He was a man crumbling beneath the weight of a very big secret and growing up at the wrong time in history.

Being abused as a child messed him up big time, leaving him never feeling worthy of receiving or giving love.

The worst part?

He grew up at a time when therapy was not common. It was reserved for drug addicts in society.

There was so much shame when a man exhibited weakness at the time.

So, what did Jeremy do?

He swept it under the carpet, numbing himself with the bottle.

Fast forward to ten years later. Enter Ella’s stepdad.

He was a grab-the-bull-by-the-horn sort of guy.

Ella says of him:

Never the dude to let any issues fester like manure, he would take my siblings and me for long walks to untangle whatever mess was going on in our lives. We learned not to run from problems. He taught us that growth and pain are joined at the hip.

So now? I’m ever ready to jump through any hoops to get what I want — painful or not.

If that’s not a bad-ass dad, I don’t know who is. He understood the meaning and importance of a father.

The point?

Brave men step up and handle what needs handling.

…

Photo by Diana Polekhina on Unsplash

He says, “That’s it. I’m fixing this, no matter what.”

Imagine how sexy is a man who wipes the sweat off his face, rolls his sleeves up, and says,

“That’s it. I’m fixing this, no matter what.”

It doesn’t matter how he looks or what he does; this is the character that women find attractive because you can trust and depend on him.

He doesn’t blow hot and cold.

A lot of women — myself included have said they want a man who can fix broken appliances in the house.

I don’t care what the feminists say, but I’m not about to break my hip, climbing up the ladder to replace the bulb.

I did all that (and more) when I was single.

Not anymore. That’s my hubby’s job.

But we’re not here to discuss bulbs so let’s keep going.

What I’m not sure many women give consideration to is the fact that “fixing broken things” is more a metaphor than anything.

So many men are experts at fixing broken tools but fail miserably at fixing the things that matter.

Things that matter can be:

Stepping up when his sixteen-year-old daughter starts veering off the morality path instead of leaving it to his wife.

Working on his personality flaws — like drinking or laziness because he knows his children mostly end up becoming a replica of him.

Valuing and honoring his wife because he understands that his marriage mirrors his children’s marriages.

…

Photo by Jordan Whitfield on Unsplash

…

He burns with purpose.

You know what else makes a freaking awesome dad? And I dare add a sexy one at that?

Purpose.

Not to his woman but to that thing that gets him up early.

This isn’t a piece about marriage, but I’m going somewhere. Stay with me.

I’ve known acquaintances who married guys who spent their days sitting and doing nothing. The women eventually had enough and ditched them.

What most people overlook about a man with no purpose is that it’s not so much how it affects his relationship with his woman but how it affects his relationship with himself.

A man without purpose lacks passion, focus, and direction. He lacks power.

Look around. Do you know what makes all male archetypes attractive?

Purpose.

A dude who comes home tired at the end of the day because he has been out doing stuff — bonus points if he makes some moolah from it — commands the kind of respect that a do-nothing-all-day-dude ever can.

A lazy man is attractive to no one.

Mate, good luck finding someone to start a family with. You’ll never even get the chance to raise your kids.

And what can we say to a lazy man other than wish him a good life with his cats?

…

“A father is the man who realizes that a life spent in the service of his children is the creation of a legacy so vast that it can be deeply drawn from for generations to come.”
― Craig D. Lounsbrough

…

What my friends said packed a punch for me.

So I’ve made it my mission to teach my son these values. I hope you can do the same with yours.

Beyond that, we’ll just cross our fingers and pray they become the type of fathers whose names will never leave their children’s lips.

 

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This post was previously published on medium.com.

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