Alex Steed gets that not every father has given his children a reason to celebrate.
It has been pretty great to see all of the love for dads on social media. Yes, these various “Days” are essentially inventions of the greeting card industry, but I don’t know that it is a bad thing to have a day of recognition for those meaningful people in our lives.
Or maybe I am biased because this is my first year as a father.
That said, I saw a Tweet that reflected to me the other side of this celebratory day:
Its author told me that as a bartender, he sees many more of these folks than anyone else on Fathers Day.
In some ways, particularly with the proliferation of social media, Fathers Day can be something of a trigger for those who have had less than ideal (or absolutely devastating) relationships with their fathers. Dad was a drunk, he was abusive, he left altogether, and now here is a day where positive Tweets and status updates shove what feels like an alien and out-of-touch reality into your digital existence.
And so this one this one is for y’all (unless, of course, you are sober and in that case I am sure that bourbon can be substituted with another guilty pleasure):
I was eventually afforded the great fortune of having the opportunity to get close with my father. He was never all that great at being a dad, really, but he was a good guy and when he got sick, I was able to take care of him until he died. I got to know him as a person—to better understand his strengths and his weaknesses—and to understand him in that context. I understand that the ability to do this is unattainable for many, and so I do not take this luxury for granted.
And now I am a father, and I try to learn from my own dad’s successes and failures. I work to value the experiences of my friends who weren’t afforded the aforementioned luxury, and to work all of this into my own aspiration to be a solid father. With the help of my wife and communities of dads who are also working to be better, stronger, and more emotionally available than our own fathers seemed able to be, I work every day to achieve this goal.
So again, if you’ve got a good one, call him up, buy him a drink, and tell him that you love him. If you have one of those shitty ones, you are most certainly not alone. Treat yourself today; you certainly deserve it.
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Originally published on Bourbon Portland Beer and Politics
Wow Linda, stalking your child on the internet yet saying you never want to see her again, calling her names, and saying she “lied” about your family all make you sound like you infact are a Narcisissistic Personality!! Why not focus your attention on healing yourself instead to following your daughter around the internet to control and harass her!
I am in an awkward position because I am a victim of an emotionally neglectful, narcissistic, verbally abusive mother and my father is controlled by her and her enabler. I do not hate him or think that he is a bad father, but I had to cut ties with him when he took her side over mine.
Hi Samantha,
As you know, narcissism is a deceptive disorder that is so insidious it can completely alter a healthy person’s perceptions of reality. Have you shared your knowledge of narcissism with your father? Perhaps, an intervention is needed with family to enlighten him.
I do not have NPD. Not my diagnosis at all, a figment of this sick girl’s imagination. Her father is a good man that she kicked to the curb. She is a spoiled, arrogant jerk who has lied repeatedly about her family life with us. I never want to see her again…the feeling is mutual.
My father, although a god guy, was never present in my life until I was married and in my forties. Going through my divorce set me on a path to seek answers to my life’s hurdles. Out of that came a book about how to save your marriage in the 11th hour. Out of that research came an understanding of why my father did the things he did. People are not beings of free will, as many will suggest. Many people are victims of their own pasts and try as they may, cannot break free from it. But it is… Read more »
I forgot to mention what motivated me to write this post. In my research, I learned about the “victim Triangle”. It has been the single most powerful piece of information I’ve found. It explains so much about the forces that motivate us all and that knowledge can help us understand why people do what they do. I strongly urge everyone to learn about this relationship dynamic to help you put your fists down.
Hovering just below the surface “Dads aren’t all they are cracked up to be”, well at least Time magazine (AFAIK) didn’t have their annual “Fathers don’t deserve a day of their own article”.
Can we just ONCE say thank you to Dads and leave it at that, Why do some just want to denigrate.
I went to cnn.com and if I didn’t know that it was fathers day, I sure wouldn’t have known from their site. Not a single headline about Fathers day. On Mothers day though, the entire front page was about it.
Here at The Good Men Project, we have tried to represent fathers as they are. None are perfect. The vast majority do an amazing job. Some are shit. Some are shit and still give their kids good lives. Some are good and do a few shit things. Life is complicated and so are fathers. Our objective was to honor fatherhood in every way possible. On Mother’s Day we allowed men to talk about their mothers in their reality too. Good and bad. Feel free to read my story about my dad, and how following his intuition helped me avoid serious… Read more »
I think the original poster’s point has more to do with the fact that you would NEVER see the MSM doing anything other than praising moms on the lead-up to Mother’s Day, but that oftentimes the best treatment from the MSM men can expect for Father’s Day is to be ignored, and the worst is denigration. I think it would have been a bit more tactful to save the “Sometimes, dads suck” op-ed for a month or two. Occasionally, honesty and tact are mutually exclusive. It would have been nice for the GMP to have been more uniformly supportive of… Read more »
Please see my response to the original post.
I meant for this post to be one of function. I spent the day with a friend whose father was physically abusive (and remains so against his wife), and I saw how much the day brought my friend down. After writing it, literally a dozen people got in touch to say, “Thanks for doing this, as I always feel really fucked up on Fathers Day and don’t know how to handle it.” They usually feel alone. In the search terms for the original post, there are another dozen that lead in which all indicate a similar reality. “What to do… Read more »