Should You Find One Just Like Dad?
We hear guys say it all the time: “I want a girl just like the girl who married dear old dad.” Meaning, someone who can cook and pick up their socks, fold their laundry and ask no questions. But, girls, do you want a man just like the man who married dear old mom? And what happens when you get him?
Ally: “My father was a cold, unloving man. I never remember him holding me on his lap or telling me he loved me. He had a nervous breakdown when I was 12. He would often slap me across the face because he said I was thinking bad things about him. He left us when I was about 15. Shortly after high school graduation, I went to visit him to try to establish some sort of relationship. I found him living with a woman with whom, I was later to discover, he had been having an affair for the three years prior to divorcing my mother. I haven’t seen or talked to my father since I was 22 and he has never contacted me
“I met my husband when I was 19. Psychologists would say I was drawn to him because I had unresolved issues with my father. My husband was also cold and unloving but very attractive. When we were dating, he wouldn’t hold my hand, citing that he did not believe in public shows of affection. Unfortunately, he didn’t believe in the private shows of affection, either. Not to say we didn’t have sex. He demanded that we have sex every night, regardless of my feelings. The only reason I believe he didn’t cheat on me was that he was home every night, right after work, with a six pack of beer and the TV.
“As an aside, my ex-husband suffered a nervous breakdown last year. To make this even a little weirder, my ex-husband and my father’s birthdays are the same.”
Megan: “As an adult, looking back, there was nothing fundamentally wrong with my father. He wasn’t a family man, but in the ‘50s and ‘60s, when I was growing up, lots of men weren’t. He made a good living and just wanted to come home at night and read the paper and fall asleep in his favorite chair. But to hear my mother tell it, he was the devil incarnate. Everything that was wrong with her life she blamed on him. Put simply, they were opposite types who never should have gotten married. She wanted someone she could dominate, and he wasn’t the one.
“Growing up, I identified with my mother and made her causes my causes. I saw the way she never got to do the things she wanted to do, take vacations with my father, watch TV with him at night, visit family, etc., etc. So, somewhere in my sick, twisted mind, I decided I would never have a husband like my father. I would marry someone I could totally housebreak, someone who knew I called all the shots.
“Of course I wasn’t thinking any of these things rationally. Who thinks rationally when they’re 18? But it was definitely there in my subconscious. I found a man who had a need to be controlled as strong as my need to control him. What a pair we made. If you can believe it, he was a bookkeeper, but I insisted on paying all the bills and taking care of our finances. I was a sociology major, I knew nothing about it, but I didn’t trust him to do anything right, ever. I had to control every little aspect of our life together. I told him what to wear, even what to order in restaurants. Needless to say, this little adventure in mind-control didn’t work out. I got sick of it. It’s no fun being in charge of everything. It’s exhausting. I married the opposite of my father and found it as unfulfilling as my mother did marrying my father. I’m remarried now, and my new husband wouldn’t let me get away with any of that garbage, and I’m much happier.”
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