What I learned growing up as a fatherless daughter. [20F]

I didn’t grow up with a physically absent father per se, but I did grow up with a father that was abusive and manipulative.

My father was a porn addict that loved to leer at women, rampant cheater, and emotionally turbulent. As young as 5, I remember finding his porn because he was careless about hiding it, and while I’m old enough now (20) to know it’s normal, it did leave a lasting impact on me at that age. I remember feeling this deep burden of digust and realization that my father could lust for anyone but my mom, who was only ever endlessly loyal even when he graduated into full-on cheating.

At the same time, watching my dad cheat openly, leer at women, and still treat me with genuine affection (he shifted between affectionation and anger) taught me a lot about how to deal with men. For the record, I don’t think take my dad to be representative of most men, and my dad just happened to be a unique asshole — but I do believe that his behavior was a biological and social response to the experience of growing up as a man. Let me explain.

My father was characteristically masculine: he’s grew up poor, but had a drive to succeed. He cared a lot about his career progression, being a leader, and had a heroic vision of “rising to the top.” Standard expectations men grow up with. In a way, a lot of affairs was an act of conquest; as an Asian man, the women he feared – loud, beautiful white women – also happened to be the same women he lusted most after. He criticized them for being whorish, but also wanted them because he feared them.

My mother made the mistake of misinterpreting his lust as love. She would blame him for “loving other women” and didn’t understand why she, loyal and equally beautiful, wasn’t worthy of the same attention. What she failed to realize was that my dad didn’t love his affairs either. Instead, his ego was broken, and he wanted more than anything to love himself. To convince himself that he was valuable. And he did it through affairs.

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I think this is a crucial difference I’ve noticed between men and women. Women have the ability to love themselves. We can indulge in self-care and reminders to be kind. My father, and I’m assuming many men, grow up with their worth being conditional to their accomplishments and value. It is uncomfortable for a man to believe that self-love can be inherent or fundamental; it would feel like a white lie.

Unexpectingly, this feeling bleeds into other aspects of their live. It’s common knowledge that men want enthusiasm during sex because they want to feel valued, but the nuance is that if you make yourself too eager to sleep with them or — “showing that you have no standards” — they’re suddenly uninterested. This is because without the chase, sex with you would add nothing to their ego as it felt unearned.

Of course, a lot of men would happily take the offer of free sex anyways. But, long-term, he might move on or get “bored.” Does this mean that there has to be an eteranl chase to keep a man loyal? No, I don’t believe so. But when men call woman “marriage” material, what they mean is that the woman has the ability to create a space for them to feel eternally valued.

If she is feminine and relies on him, his masculinity gets reaffirmed – which is important to the ego. At the same time, if she is loyal and has a “soft” or motherly personality, he feels that even if he loses what affirms his masculinity (his career or his position in society), she remains. This allows him to be emotionally vulnerable around her, and when that vulnerability is exposed, he’s invested a rare kind of currency in the realtionship, one that will keep him attached for longer.