Grieving the Father You Never Had

One of the most difficult things about becoming a father is that it can force us to revisit our relationship with our own dad.

Sometimes that relationship was loving and supportive.

Sometimes it was complicated.

Sometimes it was absent altogether.

What many men discover is that they are not only grieving the father they lost.

They are sometimes also grieving the father they wished they had.

The father who would have understood.

The father who would have known what to say.

The father who would have taught them how to navigate life.

The father who would have shown up consistently.

The father who would have been proud.

The difficulty is that this father often exists only in our imagination.

Or worse, he may have existed only in someone else's imagination.

A version of a man built from stories, assumptions, and selective memories.

A man who was described as wise, strong, dependable, or successful.

Or who described himself that way.

So the person we end up measuring ourselves against is often not the man himself, but the man everyone believed he was.

He never gets things wrong.

He never loses his temper.

He never lets anyone down.

He never struggles.

He never disappoints.

He becomes an ideal rather than a person.

Then something unexpected happens.

We become fathers ourselves.

And without realising it, we start trying to become that imagined man.

The perfect father.

The father who never existed.

The problem is that real people can never compete with imagined ones.

The imagined father carries no responsibilities.

Makes no mistakes.

Faces no difficult choices.

Lives no ordinary days.

He exists outside reality.

We do not.

As a result, many men find themselves judging their real lives against a standard that was never achievable in the first place.

Not because they are failing.

But because they are comparing themselves to a fantasy.

Perhaps part of becoming a father is recognising that the goal was never to become the father you wished you had.

Perhaps the goal is to become the father your child actually needs.

A real father.

A human father.

One who gets things wrong sometimes.

One who learns.

One who apologises.

One who shows up.

One who keeps trying.

Not perfect.

Present.

You.