Fathers and their Truths and their Love and their Realities

Recently, I had a discussion with a good friend of mine about some of the recent blog posts written by fathers to their daughters about today’s ridiculous standards of beauty and about the importance of being a strong partner in a relationship, a woman who holds her partner to a high standard of respect and love.  My two favorites are by Dr. Kelly Flanagan:

Words From a Father to His Daughter (From the Makeup Aisle)

A Daddy’s Letter to His Little Girl (About Her Future Husband)

If you have a chance, I strongly recommend reading these posts. I don’t care if you’re male or female, young or old, have daughters or not. They’re exceptional. They speak volumes not only about the pain and worries and insecurities so many of us women have felt at one time or another in our lives but also about the character of the man who wrote the posts.  My heart swells when I think about him and other men who can so deeply grasp and sympathize with these issues and who go to such directed efforts to help their daughters see beyond these influences, to reinforce to girls that they are intrinsically and unambiguously worthy of love.

My dad teaching me the importance of a classy chapeau.

I’m not going to go into the details of these and other posts.  You can read them for yourselves.  The question my friend and I pondered – my friend is the father of two daughters – is whether this and other male authors of such posts live and internalize the “male side” of these articulated beliefs.  I’m curious if they are representative of the men they would want their daughters to love and value.

It’s not for me to judge, even if they aren’t. But it’s just something I wonder about.

For instance, in the first post above, Dr. Flanagan encourages his daughter not to focus on her external beauty but rather to seek her value in her internal beauty and sense of self. He tells his daughter, “The world wants you to take your clothes off. Please keep them on.” I love what he and other dad-authors say about being strong and choosing your dream and not being worried about the exterior over the interior. 

But I did wonder, in the back of my mind, if the authors themselves are influenced by and attracted to a woman’s exterior, by flawless skin and youthful appearance, as much as any other men. I wonder if, beneath the higher thinking they demonstrate, they also see a stunningly attractive female “as a pretty face and a body to enjoy.” Do they actively seek out images of “hot” women, naked or otherwise? Do they find some small disappointment in how the faces and bodies of the women in their lives compare to the world’s standards of perfection?

The second post delivers an equally powerful message about what Dr. Flanagan will and will not consider important in the man his daughter chooses to be with.  I love, love, love, adore, value, worship (add your own verbs here) this message:  “Little One, it is not, has never been, and never will be your job to ‘keep him interested.’” I reread that statement a number of times, tears welling up in my eyes. This one hit home. It hit home hard.

Do you know how many men make it seem like it’s our job to keep them interested?  Not all men, most assuredly, but so very many.  Sorry… about to go on a rant… but I’ll reign myself in.  Suffice it to say that I fell a little in love with Dr. Flanagan with that one statement.

Again, Dr. Flanagan isn’t alone in posting these sentiments; he just happens to have articulated them in a way that was powerful for me. But other fathers are stating the same thing out in the webiverse, urging their daughters to stand strong as equal partners, to accept nothing less than complete respect and true adoration from the men they choose.

Which makes me curious about their relationships with women in their lives. Do they take responsibility for helping sustain the interest between themselves and their partners? Do they work hard to keep their love and desire alive? Or do they sometimes get complacent?  Do a few of them move beyond complacency toward allowing themselves to be open to emotional influence from another woman rather than deal with the challenge of facing an issue with their partner?

As I stated above, it’s not for me to judge. I’m not curious about these things with a focus on learning negative things or pointing fingers. I absolutely would not denigrate what these men say or downplay the importance and validity of their messages if they themselves were imperfect. They fact is, we’re all imperfect. Also, the relationships between these men and their wives or girlfriends is none of my business… for all I know, they might in fact be the role models we all want for the boys who someday will woo and win the hearts of our little girls.

I love what these men have to say (especially Dr. Flanagan... I think I'll start a fan club... or a Flan club... but no, that sounds like a foodie thing... nevermind). I value it more than I can express. It sings to me and reinforces my faith in people. Their words give me confidence in the world in which my children are growing up.

I’m just curious, that’s all.

Feeling Replaceable

I love my friends intensely. Fiercely. So you can imagine the depth of my concern when I received this online comment from a good friend of mine: “Today, I hurt so much. Today, I feel tremendously replaceable.”

How do you respond to that? Well, I’ll tell you how I did… I sought her out and made her tell me what happened. She was reluctant. The last thing someone wants to do is recount the events that would make her feel less than appreciated, less than special. But in this case, I wasn’t taking no for an answer. When she was finished, and when we had re-established firmly the fact that she is unique and precious and wonderful, she gave me permission to share this with you. Why? I’ll tell you at the end. (Stories are best when you reveal the moral last!)

My friend is single.  Let’s start there.  She’s wonderful and smart and beautiful.  She simply hasn’t found the right man yet... but I’m getting ahead of myself.

So my friend – let’s call her Jill, because that’s nothing close to her real name (as far as you know) – recently started to feel a little crushy on a guy she’s known for a long time.  As luck would have it, this man started to show interest in her at about the same time. Voilá!  Romance begins. 

Because Jill and this guy both hang out with many of the same people, often in group situations, the guy suggested that they keep their budding relationship quiet for a bit.  He made the cogent argument that they needed to determine on their own, with no friendly interference, if their relationship really had long term potential before “coming out” to their friends. This way, if things worked out, they’d know it was because of the relationship, not because of pressure from the group. Similarly, if things didn’t work out, no one – either of them, anyone in the group – would feel awkward about the situation.

No matter what the arrangement was, Jill was beside herself.  She was happy.  She clearly thought things were going well.  If I had to guess, I’d say she was falling hard for the guy.  She never said it in so many words, but to me, from the outside listening to her, it was obvious.

So this went on for a few weeks, when Jill started to notice a slight change in this guy’s demeanor. It was slight, yes, but Jill’s a perceptive woman. Still, he gave no direct indication that his interest was waning. In fact, Jill gave him several “outs” which were never acknowledged or taken. Then, in recent days, Jill noticed this guy paying the slightest bit more attention to another friend of theirs. A hint of it. A whisper of it. Nothing anyone from outside would notice. Nothing anyone else on the inside seemed to notice.  Anyone but Jill.

Jill thought about bringing this up with this guy, but she didn’t want to seem jealous when they’d barely started dating. That’s all sorts of uncomfortable, right? So instead, she took a circuitous route that you may question… she went to the other woman.

Now, before you get crazy, Jill did NOT let on to the other woman that she (Jill) and this guy had anything special going on. Instead, she lightly mentioned to this friend that she’d noticed the guy paying a little bit more attention to her (the friend), kind of in that wink-wink-nudge-nudge way that friends will do. I’m sure you can guess what happened next… the friend was beside herself excited to confide in Jill that she and this guy had decided to start quietly dating to test the waters, to see if their interest in each other was something worth pursuing further.

You know the rest of the rationale.  And I’m sure that by now you, like I, can completely grasp what Jill meant when she said she felt “replaceable.”  After all, the guy set things up with this other woman the exact same way he set them up with Jill – things he said to her, things they shared, ways and times they spent time together, including some details I can’t share here at risk of revealing to a select few who Jill is. Identical.

Is Jill going to say anything further to her friend, the other woman in this situation?  She considered it, more to protect her friend than anything.  But she also doesn’t feel it’s her place to presume that this guy will treat her friend with the same disrespect as he showed her.  It’s a crap shoot, really. 

And of course Jill is going to end things with the guy. That part is tough because she considered him a close friend for many years prior to this. Now she wonders if they can continue to be friends at all, since he lied to her and betrayed her trust.

So what is the moral of this story?  There are several, but these are the points I want to drive home with you:

1. Trust your gut.  Yes, sometimes your gut will be wrong, of course. Sometimes you may come across like a crazy person.  But listen to it.  Even a little.
2. Be direct and be honest.  Jill gave this guy many opportunities to be direct and honest with her if he felt he wanted to revert to “just” friendship or felt interest in someone else.  She would have been hurt, but she would have felt respected by his honesty, and their friendship could have recovered. Now, this guy likely will lose a friend, and by being dishonest he augmented Jill’s pain tremendously.
3. Trust people.  Just because this happened to Jill, it doesn’t mean that all men are dishonest or that relationships are fraught with disaster.  This happened to Jill.  Not to everyone.
4. Most important of all:  YOU are not replaceable.  Jill is not.  You are not.  You are unique in all the world.  If someone you desire doesn’t recognize all the special qualities you have or feel the same way about you, or if someone you care about betrays your trust, it doesn’t diminish you one iota.  It simply says something about that person. You continue to be wonderful, amazing you.   

This still leaves us with Jill’s dilemma. Does she go back to her friend (the woman) and let her know the full story related to the guy in this situation, or does she leave it to fate?  Any thoughts?

Best. Date. Ever.

If you’re an adult who has ever been on a date in your life, you can probably think of one date that stands out above the others as “the best date ever.” Perhaps it was a special moment – first “I love you “ or marriage proposal – with the man or woman you love most in the world. Maybe it was a first date that held amazing promise; maybe it was an experience that proved the other person really “got” you and clearly had listened and learned about what mattered to you.

Tonight, I want to share my best date ever. Because it made me feel special. Because it warmed my heart then and it warms my heart even today, 23 years (ugh!) and innumerable dates later. And I hope experiencing it in your imagination gives you a smile.

I don’t remember the day of the week on which my best date ever happened. I do know that it was late in the summer between my junior and senior year of high school, and it was a warm, sunny day.

It was already an odd day, because I was joyfully spending the day cleaning my room. There are two points that are strange about that. First, I was cleaning my room. I was not an instinctively neat child, so the fact that I was cleaning my room of my own accord – and doing so quite happily – was just odd. Really odd. Second, and you likely have to be from the northeast to understand this, I was happily cleaning my upstairs bedroom during a warm summer day. You see, in the northeast, central air conditioning is not the norm, and as most of us know, heat rises. As in, into upstairs rooms. I think I may have had one of our very few, very precious window air conditioning units in my bedroom, but even so, spending time upstairs on a hot summer day in the northeast is not something that is considered desirable.

So there I was, happily cleaning the bugs out of my ceiling light (no joke), when my mom yelled up that a friend had stopped by and was coming upstairs.  I turned to see my friend B walk into my room. 

Let me give you quick insight into B.  B was a year younger than I, and not someone I hung out with a ton, but definitely someone I counted as a friend.  He and I were in chorus and drama together – gotta love a boy who likes to sing and can get into the whole drama thing – and we spent time in similar circles. Not that I had a circle. But that’s for another post someday.  The short is that while we were friends, he wasn’t someone who typically came to my house, so I was pleasantly surprised to see him, and a bit bewildered.

B and I chatted for a short bit, and then he asked me to take a drive with him, which I accepted quite happily.

We drove up into the hills in our medium-sized town, and he eventually turned onto an unpaved driveway that led to an open hilltop which was clearly being prepped for major construction.  On that day it was still grassy and open and pastoral.  The day, as I said, was sunny and warm, but not hot, so the setting was simply lovely.

B opened up the back of his truck and asked me to sit on the open back gate, which I did.  I don’t recall what we talked about, but I remember that while we chatted, he wove me a crown of white flowers and gently placed it on my head. If you’re a woman, have you ever had a man make you a crown of flowers? It was so unexpected, so completely sweet… it is an understatement to say that it made me feel immensely special.

No, this is not me.
Photo thanks to theflowerdrum.blogspot.com.

But that’s not all. After he did that, he sang Elton John’s “Your Song” to me. Are you familiar with this song? Because if not, here it is:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mTa8U0Wa0q8

You know the bit in “The Grinch Who Stole Christmas” where the Grinch’s heart grew three sizes? That’s how my heart felt. All the clichés were alive that afternoon. My heart swelled. My heart sang. I felt like I might cry and I felt like I could fly.

When the song was finished… well, I don’t remember if he kissed me. I don’t remember if we talked any more. I just know that after a bit, B drove me home, and I didn’t see him again until school started. We never “went out” and we never had another date. I don’t know if he wanted to be more than friends after that or if it was an impulse on a lovely afternoon.

I’ve fallen in love a couple of times in the many years since that day. I’ve had some truly incredible dates and experiences. And I’ve been fortunate to have been made to feel honestly, deeply loved. And… there is something about that late summer afternoon before my senior year of high school still stands out as the most precious “date” of my entire life, the time that touched my heart in a way that I don’t think will ever be equaled.

How about you? Is there a date or experience that stands out above the rest?

Man Series, Part 1: Ode to Gay Men

This month officially is Women’s History Month, so it seems a strange time to do a two-part series on men.  However, I feel compelled this month to express how a few very special men helped this little lady learn to have faith in the male species.

Let me start at the very beginning (I hear it's a very good place to start)… When I was a young girl, my parents had “the talk” with me – several of them, in fact, oh joy – that many parents have with their budding young daughters who are about to embark on their first romantic encounters.  My mom and stepdad filled me in on the ins and outs, as it were, of male-female interactions, both the clinical aspects – in waaay too much depth, thank you very much – and the more nuanced, interpersonal interactions. Many of these discussions focused on how teenage boys “want just one thing” from girls. Some of you may recall this post, and now you know what prompted it.

The result of all of this was that by the time I approached adulthood, I was fairly certain that men had a very limited capacity for love. Lust? Yes. Desire? Absolutely. Possessiveness? For sure. But love? Not really. I was convinced that what approximated love in men was really a combination of desire and possessiveness that aligned nicely with women’s longing to love and be loved.

Let me explain my thinking back then... Man wants woman, woman wants man. Check. Man desires woman, woman desires man. Check. Woman’s broad focus and driving force is love and an instinctive yearning to adore one man, thus making a relationship and marriage palatable and even desirable. Man’s broad focus and driving force is lust and possession, thus making a relationship and marriage palatable… maybe not ideal, but the best way to get what they want based on what women want. Check…?

In my head, at that time, I figured that men essentially went along with this whole “love” and “marriage” thing because it allowed them access to their end goal – consistent access to sex with less drama and challenge than they’d deal with by pursuing their real, but less realistic, dream of fleeting physical encounters with woman after woman after woman.  I had it in my head that it was sort of a male conspiracy. They knew the truth about one another, but they veiled it for us ladies and put it into our terms when interacting with us: "I love you." In other words, I gave men a lot of credit for their ability to be highly manipulative. You men may thank me for that another time.

Don’t get me wrong. The men I dated during and after college were wonderful. Kind. Respectful. Loving. I didn’t doubt that they cared for me. I simply doubted, at that time, their capacity for love and adoration. I didn’t hold it against them, though, because I figured they couldn’t be expected to go against their nature.

My breakthrough came in the mid 1990s, just after an argument a heated discussion at work about whether or not being gay was a choice. This is a topic that is very dear to my heart. Many of my close friends, a few of whom I’ve known since my earliest childhood, are gay. I’ve watched several of them struggle with acknowledging this aspect of themselves to themselves, in some cases well into adulthood. I remember years ago when one friend of mine almost formally “informed” me that her roommate was more than a roommate; she was blushing and trembling and had a look on her face of such wariness… and while I didn’t say it at the time, part of me was incredibly angry at the world for creating a situation where she had to worry that I might reject her as a friend for simply being herself, mad at the world for creating a situation where she felt she had to make a formal announcement to me about the gender of her partner. As if that should matter.

But I digress.  So we had this argument discussion at work, and I went home and stewed for a while and came up with fantastic come-backs to things said to me hours earlier. Don’t you hate that, when your wit and sarcasm take a few hours to catch up?  Again, I digress. I remember suddenly coming up short as a thought came into my head about something that I, myself, had said. My adversary coworker had implied, several times, that “gay” was all about sex. Nothing about love. Just a choice about a sexual encounter. I had argued back that many gay couples and lesbian couples remain in committed relationships for years or for a lifetime.

Do you get where I’m going with this?  You see, when I made that argument, it flew in the face of my notions about men. If men stayed in committed relationships and marriages with women solely because it was what women expected, then why in heaven would men, in the world as I believed it to be, have committed relationships with other men, who shared those same innate lust-desire-possession drives but a limited capacity for actual love?  If my assumptions about men’s feelings held true, it didn't stand to reason that gay men would feel obligated to commit to one another or to put on the whole “I love you” act. 

But in reality, rather than shun or devalue commitment, they muddle through the typical range of challenges in their relationships to try to make them work and they fight for the right to marry their partners. And they do this amid so much hatred that is flung at them at times by those who feel they have some right to judge. How many straight couples would be able to find the will and the love to stay together under such circumstances? 

That was my breakthrough moment, my friends. I remember it very clearly. It was one of those rare times in life when you have a real, all-at-once revelation. It took me some time to get through it all in my head, but the long and short is that because of gay men who share committed relationships, I regained my faith in men in general. Because of them, I decided to give men the credit that they deserve for their capacity to love. And from what I’ve seen since I had this revelation, that capacity is immense.

I pay attention now in a whole new way to the men in my life. I don’t observe through a veil of distrust. I think I’m kinder to and more appreciative of men than I once was. And I’ve gotten so much joy in return. So thank you to the gay men in my life. This one is for you.