Hey everybody Fathers day is around the corner and I'm gonna give my own pops a call in a bit and see if I can't take him to dinner. This may sound like we've always been in a good relationship but we haven't, in fact I would I've gotten to know my father and by extension myself more in the last 3 years than I have over the entire course of my life . I'd like to encourage any man out there who desires or craves a relationship with his father or a male mentor he really respects that you just go out there and reach out to him . Building a relationship with my own dad has been one of the greatest accomplishments of my adult life and I healed a broken inner little boy buy pursuing that relationship in my older age , I think every man that CAN do that should but I also know it's not possible for everyone . I just wanted to share my story if nothing else .

I grew up primarily with a Single mother , a few male figures walked in and out of my life when I was younger and eventually my stepfather who I have a disconnected but mutually respectful relationship with .

I didn't meet my real dad until I was 9 , They had a party and everything at the time I was excited as hell about it I'd always wanted to know what it was like to have a dad and my step father had been in in my life for a very limited amount of time plus it's jsut not the same. Now I think about it and the fact that there was a party for me meeting my father is kind of sad. Still my mom had valid reasons and he wasn't in a place to be a good father for much of my life.

Over the course of my teens I might visit my grandmother and maybe see him once or twice a year . I started to resent him, I grew up a pretty intelligent and capable kid largely due to my mom but no matter how I tried I just felt incomplete . If I'm honest I felt like I wasn't good enough to have a father I'd watch as utter pieces of shit bragged about how their dad took them to this or told them to do that and I had no basis of comparison . maybe once or twice a year my dad might take me to the store and buy me stuff or take me to a movie but our relationship was so surface and so the older I got the more I hated him .

That hatred and that anger left a void in me and in some ways I think that void made me strive to achieve things and be a better man than I ever believed my old man to be . I used to fantasize about being a father so that I could have a child and shower them in all the love, encouragement , and pride I felt like I never received from my dad. He'd show up at graduations , sometimes I might see him on my birthdays but through my early 20's I had this void and I sought the desire to fill this void with whatever male mentorship or personal accomplishments, or even love from women that I could because I NEVER felt good enough .

from 24 -25 is where I found TPR and learned to flirt with women and that was great for a while eventually I was working my way through the sidebar and saw this book titled No More Mr. Nice Guy by Robert Glover mentioned .

I had always prided myself on being called a nice guy and found myself utterly disappointed with how abused and mistreated I was After trying my damnedest to be as " nice" as I could to every soul I met . Let me be very clear I wasn't a good person I was a nice person and there is a definite distinction .

I read the book and it proceeded to rip me and my nice guy view of the world to shreds , The book has a million examples but the overview is that "Nice" people don't do things out of the goodness of their heart, they do things for acceptance and a sense of insecurity that they bring nothing of value to relationships besides utility and a desire not to disturb people . It's essentially a guarded existence where you try your best to do what others want in the hopes that someone will tell you you're good enough ....

That sounds familiar right ? The best chapter in the book taught me that the reason I invested so much into being this "nice" golem of a person was because I was seeking a sense of approval , love, and belonging in the rest of humanity that I'd never gotten from my dad. For the first time in my life I made plans to have dinner with my dad instead of letting him call me ( I feel like he owed me because of all the years he'd abandoned me , why should I pursue something he never wanted) .

We arranged to have dinner about 3 nights from that day . We went to a Popeyes or something and there we had the usually bullshit shallow conversations we'd always have " How's work, How's the wife, How's your ex" inane bullshit that didn't matter when really we should be talking about how each other actually are.

We ordered our food and for the next few hours we sat there and had one of the most uncomfortable and fulfilling conversations of my life. I was honest I felt like by not knowing him I never knew myself, an ex once told me it was insane how much some of my fathers mannerisms and temperament were in me even though I spent so little time with him and I was upset that she compared me to him but she was absolutely right , this man was one half of a combination who resulted in me Of course I had features and qualities of him. I let him know how abandoned I felt , how I truly wanted to know him and understand him not just the image of him my mom had fed me since childhood ( and seems to change and be romanticized the older I get in life) . I wanted him to tell me about my grandfather who died when I was just two years old . I feel like I reached a point in my life where I was a seed trying to understand who I was and who I should be growing into but I couldn't even tell you what tree I came from in the first place .

People applaud me for reaching out to him but honestly my dad for the first time opened back up to me and he gave me in those few hours some of what I'd needed to hear and understand for the past 25 years of my life. He told me how much he hated himself for not being there, He told me Grandpa was popular with women and one of the hardest working men he's ever come across in his life, he let me know he much like me had an overactive imagination when he was a child and how much he loved that his son had embraced some of his creativity , and love for music, and a lot more. We finished talking , I gave him a big hug, looked him right in his eyes and for the first time I was able to say to my dad " I love you" with something real behind it" Not just something to say out of convention , tradition, for the first time I wasn't conflicted about saying it, and I feel like that void , that missing piece of myself that I'd needed to actually grow and mature into a man was given to me and from there I've grown and become an actually better person because I now understand much better who I am in a broader picture and now understand who I desire to be .

So I apologize for the massive wall of text but I just wanted to share my own firsthand story as Fathers day arrives of how this boy from a Single Mother household ( and I love my mom dearly ) grew into an incomplete man and how by being given the opportunity to rekindle that relationship with my dad I have become a better man in every way since we've developed a real relationship . In a world that keeps telling us we don't need men or that women can be fathers the way men can I can tell you first hand that is not true and if you desire and can create a relationship with your dad or even just a man who you truly respect and admire I'd press you to do it .

We need our men , we need our fathers, and we need a world where women aren't allowed to be 100% of the moulders and formers of our future . Happy fathers day to all of the fathers out there and thank you for those that fight to be apart of their childrens lives , it may take a while but we are better people with you then we can ever be without you .