I never had the chance to say goodbye to my father. One day he was at our house, sick and lying on the couch. I was told to let him sleep and not disturb him.
And the next moment my mother woke me up in the middle of the night to say my father had died.
I did not go to his funeral. I was only 6 years old and not invited. They said I was too young to go.
I did not get therapy. Kids didn’t get therapy for their grief back in those days.
So I grew up dreaming about my father. He was a great jazz pianist, so I imagined him up in heaven playing a grand piano, with a bunch of angels with long hair playing golden harps around him.
My father was a born entertainer. So I knew without a doubt, that all those angels up in heaven were loving his music.
After my father died, my life wasn’t that great. I spent most of my time studying hard in school and trying to make my mother happy. My mother wasn’t happy, and I was severely depressed.
She worked full time and gave my sister and me a lot of chores. She was quick to anger and took it out on me because I was the oldest, and a people pleaser.
Then I grew up
I wanted to marry a man exactly like my father. He would be handsome, well-dressed, a great provider, and musical. Years after his death I still longed to replace him.
Yet the man I married wasn’t like my father at all in personality. But he had the same name. And he was the same height too.
My marriage failed and soon I fell for someone else with my father’s name, who was a musician like my father. Yet he wasn’t like my father at all either. That connection went completely nowhere.
I started to realize that my father’s death had created an emptiness in me, and my childhood wounds had never healed. So I continued to make poor decisions in relationships.
I had a father complex. It’s caused by a poor relationship with the father. And even though I remember my father fondly, he abandoned me through death and I suffered with the loss.
The loss of a parent and depression in children
A study of 216 children ages 7–17 showed a higher rate of depression in children who lost a parent before they were 12 years old. Children who lost their parents had a higher amount of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. (PTSD).
Studies also show that the loss of a father has a huge effect on his daughter’s self-esteem. Women who lost their fathers were more likely to have low self-worth.
And low self-esteem in a relationship can cause huge problems. The woman will attract codependent relationships where they do all the giving and they’ll be subconsciously drawn to unavailable men. It will be easier living in fantasy than having a real relationship.
They’ll waste years living in with their father complex, getting attracted to men who remind them of their father in some way. Because deep down inside they are still searching for their Daddy. The Daddy they loved so much and lost.
The sad thing is that no man could ever replace a woman’s father. Yet women waste years trying. And without working through their childhood issues, they may never find a satisfying relationship.
We miss our Dads. It wasn’t fair their life was cut short. But we need to learn that no one will ever replace them.
We need to learn to let go of this fantasy that we will find someone like our fathers and give the right man a chance to love us.
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This post was previously published on MEDIUM.COM.
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From The Good Men Project on Medium
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