My relationship with my father is not a great one. There is resentment on both sides, but mine is tempered somewhat by the fact that I do genuinely love him. Dad has always looked at me like I'm a bit of an alien. He just doesn't understand me at all. This is probably because he doesn't know me at all, because he has never really taken the time to take a look that is anything other than superficial.
From what I can gather, he thinks that I am argumentative (which I can be, if I really believe in something), headstrong (also, yes, but not necessarily in a bad way), snobbish (I concede that I can be, but not in the way that he thinks I am), and altogether mystifying.
When I told him I was moving to Dublin, his first reaction was to ask why. I told him that I wanted to travel, to see the world, that I had fallen in love with the place and wanted to live there. He looked at me as if I had two heads and informed me that really, what I should be doing, was leaving all my travelling and adventure until I was older, like his age, the way he had done. He had never left Australia, bar a brief honeymoon with my stepmum to Hawaii, up until a few years ago. The fact that he couldn't get his head around the idea that someone might be able to feel a connection to a place, that someone my age might want to live overseas before settling down into the minutiae of life in general, caused me to judge him, again. Judgement is something I cast on my father all too regularly, and it makes me feel like an awful person, but I can't fathom someone being that narrow minded and self-absorbed.
Compare this to my stepdad's reaction, which was to do everything he could to encourage my dream. He had left Ireland when he was the same age as me, and had never looked back. He understood my wander lust, and understood why I needed to do it. He didn't even think to question it, because he knew that it was simply unavoidable.
My dad has been asking me since I was about twenty five years old why I don't have a boyfriend (this commenced about a year after I ended a two year relationship with the King of Emotional Fuckwittery, apparently being single for a year is akin to a death sentence). He seems to take some sort of pleasure in telling me that unless I settle down soon noone will have me, that I will be too set in my ways and unable to attract anyone.
I would be able to accept this, based upon the fact that my dad has never left the small town he grew up in, a place where it is highly unusual to be single at my age. I could also acknowledge that he probably says these things to me because he worries that I will be alone and sad, and that he hates being alone and doesn't want me to suffer the same fate. I could accept these things and allow his constant barbs about me 'needing to find a man' and snorts of derision whenever I mention the possibility that one day I might be married with kids, if it were not for the fact that he is the last person on earth who should be giving anyone relationship advice, ever!
My mum and dad got married far too young, as is customary in my home town. And they should never have been married. They share none of the same values. The only similarity I can see between the two of them is that they are both ridiculous dreamers, whose dreams are completely unrealistic and unattainable. Even if their dreams had been attainable, they never would have got there together, because they are both incapable of moving forward, and have no skills with which to achieve their goals, or identify elements that are somewhat unrealistic and act accordingly. I say this from a distance, and with the benefit of hindsight, but their marriage was a disaster and the thinly veiled contempt that they still seem to harbour for each other twenty five years on is evidence of this.
My dad's second marriage was to a fabulous woman who had four sons. She was the sole reason my brother and I resumed regular contact with our father, and she basically took us on as her own children. She has faults, as everyone does, but she is a good mother and she loved my father with everything that she had. But my dad is incredibly hard to live with, and I know this from living with him for the final two years of my university degree, a time I spent largely holed up in the university library or at my emotionally incompetent boyfriend's home, just to escape the overwhelming sense of being stifled in my own home. My stepmum implored my dad to take steps to save their marriage, to attend counselling with her, to talk about the fact that she felt trapped and sad. He refused. He claimed that he 'couldn't change,' and implied that she shouldn't need him to, that she had known what she was getting herself into. This enraged me, but my rage was pointless. My stepmum left just before I finished my degree, leaving me alone with the mess. I don't blame her for this. Their relationship is still in an odd state of flux even now, five years on, but I find it best not to think about it.
Based upon his disastrous attempts at being in adult relationships, I feel resentment every time my dad judges me for not being in a relationship, and so very rarely discuss anything of this nature with him. I feel angry that he can't look at all of my other achievements in life, even just the fact that I am generally a nice, well-liked person, and just feel some sense of pride. The fact that he is so fixated on this one area of my life, and that he feels that I am not worthy unless I find a boyfriend, can leave me feeling slightly worthless. The negative voice I mentioned in my last post about Mr. A? When it occurs, it generally takes the form of my dad telling me that I am hopeless and can't possibly succeed in keeping a man. And sometimes I feel like it's a bit of a self-fulfilling prophecy.
It took me a long time to accept that I can be happy and have a wonderful life without a boyfriend, and everytime I see my dad I am sent straight back into that negative place where not having a boyfriend is viewed as some sort of indictment on me as an individual. Not as an indication that maybe I have just made certain choices in life that have led me to this place, and an acknowledgment that there is more to life than marriage and babies.
My dad makes me feel like Charlotte Lucas in Pride & Prejudice, a dried up spinster who should settle for any old creep who throws their lechery in my direction. But I refuse to settle. There, I've said it. I'll only marry a man who I love, who I am attracted to, who I engage with on an intellectual and emotional level, and, above all, one who shares my values. I will never marry a Collins just for the sake of appearances. I would rather die alone and be feasted upon by my menagerie of pets for a few days before being discovered.
What I think I need, to combat this issue with my father, is a beard, but one for a heterosexual woman. A man that I can take back to my home town whenever I am compelled to visit there out of duty. A handsome, intelligent man who can hold his own against my father and behave like he is utterly, and endlessly in love with me. I would even take the ruse so far as to pretend that we were actually married (elopement, of course, to avoid the mess of actually having to have a fake wedding), and bring along gorgeous children who were purportedly ours. Of course, a real boyfriend would be ideal, but this seems like an unlikely prospect, and I probably wouldn't want to introduce a real boyfriend to my father too soon, it might scare him off if he realised what a crackpot family I come from.
So, if anyone out there knows a nice man who would be willing to participate in this entirely platonic endeavour to get my father off my back, please send them my way. Because I don't know how much more of this negative talk and derision I can take before I explode and go on a major feminist rant to a man who has not the slightest clue about the point of feminism or female empowerment more generally.
Wondering who it is that I actually take after,
B. J. Barnes
From what I can gather, he thinks that I am argumentative (which I can be, if I really believe in something), headstrong (also, yes, but not necessarily in a bad way), snobbish (I concede that I can be, but not in the way that he thinks I am), and altogether mystifying.
When I told him I was moving to Dublin, his first reaction was to ask why. I told him that I wanted to travel, to see the world, that I had fallen in love with the place and wanted to live there. He looked at me as if I had two heads and informed me that really, what I should be doing, was leaving all my travelling and adventure until I was older, like his age, the way he had done. He had never left Australia, bar a brief honeymoon with my stepmum to Hawaii, up until a few years ago. The fact that he couldn't get his head around the idea that someone might be able to feel a connection to a place, that someone my age might want to live overseas before settling down into the minutiae of life in general, caused me to judge him, again. Judgement is something I cast on my father all too regularly, and it makes me feel like an awful person, but I can't fathom someone being that narrow minded and self-absorbed.
Compare this to my stepdad's reaction, which was to do everything he could to encourage my dream. He had left Ireland when he was the same age as me, and had never looked back. He understood my wander lust, and understood why I needed to do it. He didn't even think to question it, because he knew that it was simply unavoidable.
My dad has been asking me since I was about twenty five years old why I don't have a boyfriend (this commenced about a year after I ended a two year relationship with the King of Emotional Fuckwittery, apparently being single for a year is akin to a death sentence). He seems to take some sort of pleasure in telling me that unless I settle down soon noone will have me, that I will be too set in my ways and unable to attract anyone.
I would be able to accept this, based upon the fact that my dad has never left the small town he grew up in, a place where it is highly unusual to be single at my age. I could also acknowledge that he probably says these things to me because he worries that I will be alone and sad, and that he hates being alone and doesn't want me to suffer the same fate. I could accept these things and allow his constant barbs about me 'needing to find a man' and snorts of derision whenever I mention the possibility that one day I might be married with kids, if it were not for the fact that he is the last person on earth who should be giving anyone relationship advice, ever!
My mum and dad got married far too young, as is customary in my home town. And they should never have been married. They share none of the same values. The only similarity I can see between the two of them is that they are both ridiculous dreamers, whose dreams are completely unrealistic and unattainable. Even if their dreams had been attainable, they never would have got there together, because they are both incapable of moving forward, and have no skills with which to achieve their goals, or identify elements that are somewhat unrealistic and act accordingly. I say this from a distance, and with the benefit of hindsight, but their marriage was a disaster and the thinly veiled contempt that they still seem to harbour for each other twenty five years on is evidence of this.
My dad's second marriage was to a fabulous woman who had four sons. She was the sole reason my brother and I resumed regular contact with our father, and she basically took us on as her own children. She has faults, as everyone does, but she is a good mother and she loved my father with everything that she had. But my dad is incredibly hard to live with, and I know this from living with him for the final two years of my university degree, a time I spent largely holed up in the university library or at my emotionally incompetent boyfriend's home, just to escape the overwhelming sense of being stifled in my own home. My stepmum implored my dad to take steps to save their marriage, to attend counselling with her, to talk about the fact that she felt trapped and sad. He refused. He claimed that he 'couldn't change,' and implied that she shouldn't need him to, that she had known what she was getting herself into. This enraged me, but my rage was pointless. My stepmum left just before I finished my degree, leaving me alone with the mess. I don't blame her for this. Their relationship is still in an odd state of flux even now, five years on, but I find it best not to think about it.
Based upon his disastrous attempts at being in adult relationships, I feel resentment every time my dad judges me for not being in a relationship, and so very rarely discuss anything of this nature with him. I feel angry that he can't look at all of my other achievements in life, even just the fact that I am generally a nice, well-liked person, and just feel some sense of pride. The fact that he is so fixated on this one area of my life, and that he feels that I am not worthy unless I find a boyfriend, can leave me feeling slightly worthless. The negative voice I mentioned in my last post about Mr. A? When it occurs, it generally takes the form of my dad telling me that I am hopeless and can't possibly succeed in keeping a man. And sometimes I feel like it's a bit of a self-fulfilling prophecy.
It took me a long time to accept that I can be happy and have a wonderful life without a boyfriend, and everytime I see my dad I am sent straight back into that negative place where not having a boyfriend is viewed as some sort of indictment on me as an individual. Not as an indication that maybe I have just made certain choices in life that have led me to this place, and an acknowledgment that there is more to life than marriage and babies.
My dad makes me feel like Charlotte Lucas in Pride & Prejudice, a dried up spinster who should settle for any old creep who throws their lechery in my direction. But I refuse to settle. There, I've said it. I'll only marry a man who I love, who I am attracted to, who I engage with on an intellectual and emotional level, and, above all, one who shares my values. I will never marry a Collins just for the sake of appearances. I would rather die alone and be feasted upon by my menagerie of pets for a few days before being discovered.
What I think I need, to combat this issue with my father, is a beard, but one for a heterosexual woman. A man that I can take back to my home town whenever I am compelled to visit there out of duty. A handsome, intelligent man who can hold his own against my father and behave like he is utterly, and endlessly in love with me. I would even take the ruse so far as to pretend that we were actually married (elopement, of course, to avoid the mess of actually having to have a fake wedding), and bring along gorgeous children who were purportedly ours. Of course, a real boyfriend would be ideal, but this seems like an unlikely prospect, and I probably wouldn't want to introduce a real boyfriend to my father too soon, it might scare him off if he realised what a crackpot family I come from.
So, if anyone out there knows a nice man who would be willing to participate in this entirely platonic endeavour to get my father off my back, please send them my way. Because I don't know how much more of this negative talk and derision I can take before I explode and go on a major feminist rant to a man who has not the slightest clue about the point of feminism or female empowerment more generally.
Wondering who it is that I actually take after,
B. J. Barnes
