I chose to believe that my dad didn’t really have that large of an influence in my life. After all, he left when I was only five years old.

The good news? A really great dad improves a girl’s chance of succeeding at a good relationship.

The bad news? A not so great dad decreases a girl’s chance of succeeding at a good relationship.

Here’s the saddest aspect of this unfortunate reality.

There are plenty of men who love their daughters and treat them like princesses. Men who want the very best for their daughters. They devote their time to them, spoil them and tell them they deserve the very best.

It doesn’t matter.

It only matters if they treat their wife with that same loving devotion.

Children do not go out into the world and duplicate the love their parents made them feel. They duplicate the love they witnessed between their parents.

So a dad who cheats on his wife is setting his daughter up to attract herself to the same type of man.

A dad who is an alcoholic and turns his spouse into the enabler is setting his daughter up to attract herself to the same type of man.

Of course, there are the daughters who have a heightened awareness to their father’s bad behavior. Some are able to steer clear of repeating history since they are determined to. And sadly, others either don’t have the awareness or believe they can avoid duplicating it, yet they still do.

My dad was an alcoholic.

He behaved badly, blamed my mother and then abandoned the family.

I knew from an extremely young age that I did not want to and would not marry a man who abused alcohol. I was the daughter who thought she had awareness. In fact, I did avoid marrying an alcoholic. I thought I had conquered my childhood fears.

Imagine my surprise when I realized that I had married a man who…

Behaved badly, blamed me and then abandoned his family.

Each time my husband did the wrong thing he told it was my fault.

When I begged him to get counseling he walked out while I held my small children’s hands and they cried. He did this three separate times. I know what you are thinking. I am the idiot who let him have the chance to leave me three times. What can I say? That is love.

Even sadder and more telling about our own individual family histories? My husband who has absolutely no history of alcohol abuse, did in fact, abuse alcohol during the years I attempted to voice my concerns and leave him. No one is more distressed than I am that I have repeated not only my history but a footprint that my father put in place that I thought I could avoid.

I simply attracted myself to a different extreme and unpredictable personality rather than an alcoholic.

I still attracted myself to a man who behaved badly, blamed me and then abandoned his family.

What should have happened?

When an individual behaves badly it is up to them to have the awareness and self-responsibility to correct their own behavior.

They should not behave badly and say that their wife made them do it. I remember my dad telling me once that he knew he drank too much, but that my mother shouldn’t have yelled at him. It’s the false reality of a misbehaving individual. To convince themselves that the stable parent, who does not behave badly and yells in fear is the one to blame. And then, like my dad had done several times before, he abandoned our family.

He played the role of victim. The victim who claimed he had to leave the oppressive woman who was yelling at him.

The reality? She had already given a man she loved far too many chances.

And his daughters would be thrown out into the world to try and have the skills to find men who would not behave badly, blame them and abandon them.

(Photo courtesy of Pexels)
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