Skip to main content

Would You Let You Date Your Daughter?


I wasn’t always such a nice guy. There was a season of my life where I would lie and manipulate to get what I wanted. I was calculating and exact; like a master of deception I knew what to do, what to say, and how to say it. I would promise to call – and wouldn’t. I said I really cared - but I didn’t. I’d act excited the next morning – but I wasn’t. Shamefully women represented for me a means to an end and as soon as the mission was complete, the victory achieved, and the thrill gone – so where they. 

I wish I could admit that this behavior happened during a time when games and dishonor could be blamed on youthful self-centeredness – but that too would be a lie. The fact of the matter, this narcissism occurred not so long ago when I knew better and had a very important reason to act so – I was a father to a daughter. 

As I think back at my actions in those days I am appalled at the hypocrisy. Here I was, this father to a beautiful little girl, engaging in a lifestyle that I would have been mortified for her to discover. Wasn’t I was supposed to be living in a way that showed her what real manhood was? Wouldn’t she be getting her queues on how boys should treat her from the way I treated women? If that was so, the rate I was going she’d be pregnant or on a stripper pole by her 19th birthday.

**

The first few years following the divorce I was easily able to separate fatherhood from singlehood. Because my children were far too young to ever grasp concepts like character and decency I could live one way while they weren’t looking and live another when they were. I hid my disgrace behind their naivety and naptimes. But as they got older and our communication evolved from monologue to dialogue, that little voice we all have started getting louder. Now that we were having discussions around topics that would be the foundation for how they would come to view life, no longer would my conscience allow me get away with living a double standard. 

**

If there is a litmus test or a barometer for how well fathers are doing it’s the question:

“Would I let me date my daughter?”

When a man stops to think how he responds to that question it leaves no room for excuses and justifications. We can’t wiggle out of it, use the worn out excuse “you don’t understand”, or sweep it under the rug. All we have to do is replace ourselves and our behaviors and how we see things with that kid who keeps texting and calling. All the sudden those private corners of our life we don’t show anyone but tell ourselves “they’re no big deal!” become really big deals! 

  • Would you let that boy treat her the way you treat your wife? 
  • Would you let him date her if he was addicted to pornography? 
  • Would you bless their relationship if he had a gambling habit? Stole from his company? Took drugs? 
  • Would you let him hang around if he did what you do when no one’s looking? 

Far too many parents, moms included, view life on a case-by-case basis? We allow way too much subjectivity and leave more open to interpretation than we should. It seems almost every wrong deed we perform can be argued away with circumstance.  But when it comes to our children, especially a father and his daughter, we have no tolerance for circumstances, understanding, or forgiveness Yet we have an explanation for that affair on our wives and why we belittle, demean, and abuse them while we wouldn’t, and shouldn’t accept that behavior when its levied against our little girls. 

We hid our disgrace behind our arrogance 

But as men and fathers we can’t live like that. We can’t disrespect and dishonor our wives but expect him to treat her like a princess. We have a responsibility, in fact a duty, to live in such a way that our daughters will know which boys to get involved with and which to stay away from. Through our actions, how we talk to her mother, how we treat her grandparents, what kind of father we are to her brothers and sisters, and how we treat the people around us she will learn to respect others, us, and most importantly herself. And in my case, by watching how I live she will learn to distinguish sincere interest and appreciation in a boy from someone who only sees her as a means. 

The way I see it, if every daughter wants to marry someone like her daddy, from now on I plan to live the life of someone I’d want her to. 

Originally published in 2013

Labels:

Popular posts from this blog

Sins of the Father

Our fathers sinned, and are no more; it is we who have borne their iniquities . Lamentations 5:7 “Dad? Am I a good person?”  “I think so, I know so, yes.”  “Will – will that help me when things get really rough?”  “It’ll help.”  “That’s not good enough, Dad.”  “Good is no guarantee for your body. It’s mainly peace of mind --- “But sometimes, Dad, aren’t you so scared that even --- “---the mind isn’t peaceful?” His father nodded, his face uneasy.  “Dad’, said Will, his voice uneasy. “Are you a good person?”  “To you and your mother, yes, I try. But no man’s a hero to himself. I’ve lived with me a lifetime. I know everything worth knowing about myself---” “And, adding it up…?   “The sum? As they come and go, and I mostly sit very still and tight, yes, I’m all right.”  “Then Dad,” asked Will, ‘why aren’t you happy?”  “The front lawn…let’s see… at one thirty in the morning…is no place to start a philosophical…”  “I just wanted to k...
Read more

The Mirage of Long Distance Love

Many years ago, in another life long before the Queen, I met a woman during a business conference. She was blessed with hazel eyes that could bring any man to his knees. Introduced through a mutual colleague, we got to know each other between breakout sessions and cocktail hours.  We stayed in touch and what started as two professional thirty something’s enjoying time as schedules permitted grew into a 300-mile long-distance relationship. Ignited by those first days in Memphis, our relationship was now fueled on long phone conversations and short weekend visits. From the beginning, things felt right. Divorced only six months, I already had a few failed ‘relationships’ in my rearview mirror, but this one, I believed, was different. She always said - and I always did -  the right things. We were made for each other, and both knew something more than coincidence had happened.     Everything seemed perfect when together. The conversation easy, the passion intense. I...
Read more

The Biology of A Daddy

A recent and passionate email from a reader reminded me of the enormous confusion that exists, predominately among men, about the definition of ‘daddy’. The email, too long for reciting here, is from a father, living in the US, who has two children abroad. He and the mother met in the states. Soon she became pregnant and not long after, for reasons unknown, moved back to her native country, only to discover after touching down that she was pregnant with their second child. Unsurprisingly, the relationship didn’t last, and the children have remained with her, on another continent, ever since. The father still resides here in the US. According to the email, he visits the children when he can but hasn’t seen them in two years.  This father’s anger, however, isn’t that he’s missing out on their childhood. It isn’t that he’s riddled with guilt a world away or that he doesn’t have the slightest knowledge of who his children really are. His frustration is far more involved, but ultimately...
Read more