by Meg Meeker
Brad did it right. Did he make a lot of mistakes? Sure. He made tons of them, but that didn’t really matter because he did the big stuff right. Today he has a terrific relationship with both Theresa and Helen. But that didn’t come easily. What did he do right?
He initiated restoration with his daughter. He moved in, not content to sit by and watch her grow darker and more embittered by the day. He gave himself back to Theresa. He figured out what Theresa needed, and he did it for her. He allowed himself to see the world from her perspective. Was she a bad kid who hated the world and everything in it? Well, he said, it sure appeared that way. But he knew deep down that she wasn’t. She was a very sad little girl who repeatedly got pushed aside.
I watched Helen and Theresa get so entrenched in passionate anger and frustration that at times they couldn’t speak. Their feelings literally overwhelmed and incapacitated them at times. Brad, on the other hand, while he loved both of these women, seemed to look at the whole picture from a broader perspective. His vantage point was: “Now, today, what can I do? What should I do next to smooth things over?” He stood back from his wife and daughter, made a practical plan (with the help of a good counselor), and then, day after day, argument after argument, he stuck to it. He was pragmatic, he was determined, and he pursued his goal with masculine grit. He did things right not just for himself, but also for the two women he loved. And, because of how he handled a terrible situation, everyone won. He saved his relationship first with his daughter, then with his wife.
Keep Your Family Together
I have observed relationships between fathers and daughters, husbands and wives, and mothers and daughters for more than twenty years. I have poked and prodded patients; I have listened and learned about ailments mental and physical; I have given antidepressants and on occasion have even asked people to leave my office. When I graduated from medical school in the early 1980s, I took an oath to stay committed to ensuring the health of my patients.
Medicine has made enormous scientific advancements that allow me to see inside my patients’ bodies so clearly that it’s like looking at a drawing in a textbook. I can give medicines that calm kids down, cure some cancers, and extend the lives of kids who have HIV.
But all the tricks in my medicine bag cannot ensure that my patients will live a successful life. I can usually keep them alive to adulthood, but then many collapse. Daughters become confused by cold boyfriends. They enter relationships unable to trust men—or trust them too much. Many young men are terrified to marry because of what they have seen—or not seen—at home growing up.
Fathers, you can make the difference. And one huge way you can make a difference is by keeping your family together. The most common cause of unhappiness and despair, what crushes the spirit of children more often than anything else, is divorce. Divorce is really the central problem that has created a generation of young adults who are at higher risk for chaotic relationships, sexually transmitted diseases, and confusion about life’s purpose. But that’s where fathers who stay engaged with their families can make all the difference.
But suppose it’s too late. Suppose you are already divorced. If that’s the case, move forward, and use all the grit you have to reshape and improve your relationship with your daughter. If you haven’t been front and center in her life, commit to it now.
Think about it this way: if you lost your job, would you give up working? Of course you wouldn’t. You couldn’t afford to. You can’t afford to lose your daughter either. If you’ve lost your relationship with her, devote yourself to retrieving it. You can do it. Masculinity embraces difficulty as another problem to solve. I know that many men lose hope in their relationships with women, because women confuse them. I have watched this occur over and over. But this is exactly why men—life’s pragmatists—must be encouraged to stand back from the complexities of relationships and simplify life. Prudence often requires waiting. It requires the masculinity of strength, self-control, and the grit to stay involved. Ranting quiets itself. Anger burns out. Hearts break, and then return to life. People mature. And if you are the rock your daughter can cling to, she can overcome every challenge of growing up.
Alex and Mary had three daughters. Mary experienced serious, and worsening, postpartum depression after the birth of each child. Alex didn’t handle Mary’s depression very well, he admitted, and frequently worried that she might not recover after each episode. She would lie in bed for days, crying, unable to come out of her room. He hired help for her. He took days off from work. He did whatever he could to keep the family going. They both did. In fact, by the time their girls entered high school, their relationship felt solid again. Mary never experienced any more major depressive episodes after her third pregnancy.
When their daughter Ada turned fifteen, Alex noted that she began wearing darker clothes. Ada was the youngest of the three girls; Ellie was seventeen and Alyssa was twenty. Ada switched friends at school. She attended an art school for talented musicians and was an outstanding flutist. But she began to ignore her friends and began dating a seventeen-year-old high school dropout who occasionally worked pickup jobs.
Alex was stunned. Within six months, Ada had gone from a concert-level flutist who enjoyed being at home with her parents in the evening to a girl who refused to play her flute, study, or stay home when she was told. Alex scaled back his hours at work and spent more time with Ada. He picked her up from school occasionally and took her to lunch. He took her to movies. He checked on her at night (to make sure she was still in bed). Once he took her to Chicago for the weekend.
All of this wasn’t hard for him, he said, because he genuinely loved Ada. He felt sorry for her. They had had a good (though not extraordinarily close) relationship up until that time. Alex and Mary felt guilty that they had somehow failed her as parents. Mary feared that her postpartum depression had maimed Ada emotionally.
When Ada was sixteen and a half, she ran away. Alex was devastated. He hired a private detective to find her. Ada had stolen money from her parents, gotten on a bus and then a train, and had found her way to San Diego, far from her home in the Midwest.
Alex left for San Diego to bring Ada home. He found her working behind a cash register at a convenience store attached to a gas station. For a while he just watched her interact with the customers. Suddenly, they locked glances. He waited until she had a break, then they went outside. Ada screamed at her father through her long, charcoal-black hair. She refused to come home. She had found a “friend” with whom she shared an apartment. (Alex later found out that her “friend” was a divorced thirty-year-old man.) For three days Alex reasoned with her, cried, and pleaded with her to come home. Ada refused. “If you force me home,” she said, “I’ll just run away again.”
Alex came home without Ada. His heart was broken. He felt he had failed as a father, though he didn’t know how, and he couldn’t understand why Ada hated him and her mother so much. All she would say is that she had wanted to leave. One year to the day—a year without letters or phone calls—Alex returned to San Diego. He found Ada working part-time at a car wash. She looked ill and numb. Again, for three days he cajoled, pleaded, and cried. She refused to budge. Even though she had been kicked out of her apartment and separated from her roommate (for reasons she refused to divulge), she preferred shelters to her home with Alex and Mary.
Another year passed. On Ada’s eighteenth birthday, Alex—feeling like his heart had been ripped from his chest—returned to San Diego. This time he found her living on the streets. He barely recognized her, and feared she had become a prostitute. She denied it, and he believed her, though he assumed she must be taking and dealing drugs. After three more days, Ada still wouldn’t leave with him. He gave her new clothes and returned home.
This pattern continued until Ada reached her early twenties. Alex wrote her letters, but never sent them, as she didn’t have an address. He saved money for her in a savings account. He told no one about this, fearing they would think him a fool
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But he loved her and he wouldn’t stop. Ada had sliced his heart into thousands of pieces but he was determined to love her. He couldn’t change her but he could love her.
One October day, his cell phone rang while he was at a board meeting for a local bank. “Daddy?” came Ada’s voice. Alex couldn’t speak. His brain became hot.
“Daddy, are you there? Please talk.” She began to sob.
“Ada, where are you?” he finally choked out.
“I’m in Grand Rapids at the train station. Daddy. . .” She began to cry and could no longer speak.
“Don’t move. Ada, don’t move. Please,” he pleaded.
Alex excused himself from the meeting and raced down the highway to get Ada. When he saw her, she was emaciated and she had shaved her head bald. She wasn’t dirty, but she looked very old. He ran to her, grabbed her, and engulfed her in his arms. He could feel her body tremble as she sobbed. He walked her to his car and drove home. They sat silently. But slowly things got better.
Ada stayed home, got a job at a local gas station, and at twenty-three, finished high school and began taking some local college courses. She even began playing her flute again.
At first, Alex told me, he was so relieved that his elation kept him company. Then, he said, something terrible began to happen. Anger churned inside him. He was disgusted with Ada. The healthier she became, the more he disliked her. He had nightmares of fighting her physically. When he found her arguing with Mary, Alex wanted to choke her.
He was confused and threw himself harder into his work. He never showed his anger to Mary or Ada. He kept it inside, and the worry ate at him. Sometimes, he said, his anger was so intense he feared he might hurt someone.
But he didn’t. Alex kept his cool, even as every day became a struggle just to get out of bed, go to work, and keep it all together. The toughest times, he said, were at home. He would see Ada, and he could hardly bear it. Some days she was nice. Some days she flew off the handle. She never said she was sorry. She blamed her behavior on drugs. She said she had started taking drugs in high school and they had made her into another person.
Ada matured, moved out of the house, and eventually got married. She never finished college, but her revived musical skill landed her a job with an orchestra, and she blossomed.
As a young married adult, Ada now lives a couple of hours away from her parents. She calls Alex weekly on his cell phone. She talks to her mother too—but not like she talks to Alex. She asks his advice, tells him she loves him, asks him to visit, and is hurt if he can’t. No one ever figured out why Ada did what she did. There was no understanding it; it just happened. But it was only Alex’s tenacity and grit that brought her back—even as he suffered silent rages—until she put her life back together. Alex and Mary are still married, and after years of trial, happily so.
Alex’s behavior reminded me of five lines from Tennyson’s poem “Ulysses”:We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven; that which we are, we are;
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.
In saving Ada and his marriage, did medicine, psychotherapy, faith, and friends help Alex? Yes, they all helped in part. But ultimately, Alex restored his family because he refused to relinquish his daughter. He determined how to help her and then he steeled his will to do it, because that’s what strong fathers do.
Chapter Seven
Be the Man You Want Her to Marry
Get ready. One day you and your daughter will be standing at the back of a church, temple, or garden. Your arms will be linked. You will be looking down the aisle, past rows of people, at a very nervous young man.
Your daughter’s arm shivers against yours.
You whisper to her, “It’s not too late, you know.”
“I know, Dad. I’m okay.”
You swallow hard and wonder, How did my little girl get here so fast?
Here’s another sobering thought: the man you see at the other end of the aisle will undoubtedly be a reflection of you—be that good or bad. It’s the way it is: women are drawn to what they know.
That prospect might terrify you. If you have had a tumultuous relationship with your daughter, if it’s been filled with cold distances, intense arguments, or chronic misunderstandings, you might well worry. But keep reading—because from a daughter’s perspective, it’s never too late for the two of you to improve your relationship, to break the terrible cycle, to change for the better.
Back to this tuxedo-clad fellow. If you could pick his personality, what would he be like? You would want a young man totally committed and faithful to your daughter. You would want him to be hardworking, compassionate, honest, and courageous. You would want a man who will protect your daughter. You would want a man of integrity.
Before your daughter marries, you need to be that man. You need to ask yourself: Do I live my life as a father with integrity? Am I honest? Do I work hard for her and my family? Am I loving and protective of my wife and daughter? These are very tough questions, but if you want a healthy marriage for your daughter, this is where it begins. A healthy marriage is based on respect. You want to have your daughter’s respect, and if you model integrity, you will—and you will teach her to expect it in her future husband. Choosing a spouse is the one of the most important of life’s decisions. Careers don’t bear children, fill you with exuberance, or bring you soup in bed. Spouses do. And you are the man who will teach your daughter about men.
See It, Do It, Teach It
Allow me to let you in on a frightening secret about physicians. While we are in residency training to be specialists, we work horrific hours. A typical week includes eighty to ninety hours of work in the hospital, often more. Under pressure, we learn to do procedures quickly.
We are taught: “See one, do one, teach one.” It can be anything from placing an IV to doing a lumbar puncture to intubating a comatose patient. Once we are shown how to do a procedure, we are expected to do it, and to teach another physician-in-training how to do it.
For your daughter to know what a good man looks like, she has to know one. She has to see a model of masculinity in you. And what does that mean? It means you need to be a man of integrity—a man who inspires trust and respect, a leader. It means that you need to live with honesty, you need to live your life committed to your family, and you need to be willing to sacrifice for them.
Honesty is more than telling the truth. It means not keeping secrets. Not only does secrecy isolate people from each other, but when you’re hiding something, it’s rarely good. It’s usually something about which you are embarrassed or ashamed. It is a weakness.
Believe it or not, deceit has risen dramatically among kids. According to one recent study, 76 percent of public high school students (out of a survey of 18,000 students at 61 schools) admitted to cheating on exams.1 The same study, “Smart and Good High Schools” by Thomas Lickona, Ph.D. and Matthew Davidson, Ph.D., cites data showing a steady increase in cheating over the last few decades. In 1969, for instance, 34 percent of students admitted to using a cheat sheet during a test. In 1989, that number rose to 68 percent. One student wrote that students have to cheat because if they don’t, they’ll lose to kids who do. But excuses don’t matter. What matters is the erosion of integrity in kids.
Honesty sits at the heart of integrity, and we have done a bad job of teaching honesty to young people. I see this in my practice, especially with kids who become drug users. It’s a process. They start keeping secrets from their parents, telling lies, sneaking peeks at pornography (especially on the Internet), dabbling in alcohol (maybe from dad’s liquor cabinet), and then trying out marijuana with friends “just to see what it’s like.” Marijuana is a “gateway drug,” leading to harder drug use, including cocaine or methamphetamines. I don’t need to tell parents about what drug use can do to kids.
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arents know intuitively that one bad decision can lead to another; small problems left uncorrected can become big ones. We adults understand this progression. Yet all too many parents are too distracted, confused, or intimidated by politically correct moral relativism to clarify right and wrong behavior for their kids. So many kids opt for lying and cheating because it’s easy and appears—on the surface—to make them more successful.
Don’t let this happen in your home. Stop it before it happens. If it has already happened, confront it and implement a plan to reverse it.
And as you confront secrecy and dishonesty, you need to be a model of integrity and strength, of honesty and openness. You need to be a leader for your family. Your wife and daughter need a strong man, not a weak one. And a strong man knows that nothing good ever comes from secrets; nothing good comes from isolating yourself from your wife and daughter; nothing good comes from giving in to temptations to lie, or abuse alcohol, or view pornography.
I know you are bombarded constantly with sexual imagery. I have a husband and a son, and I know the temptations they face. Sexualized advertising has done tremendous harm to young girls and women. But that harm multiplies threefold for men. Sexual imagery grabs your attention in a way that it doesn’t for most women. It’s not that women aren’t interested in sex, but visual stimulation is very different for men than it is for women.
Every day, you are seduced. On your laptop at the office or the television screen in your hotel room, women of all shapes and sizes lure you into secrecy. And the problem is, secrecy may feel innocuous and titillating at first, but the patterns established can be devastating. Pornography crushes your masculinity, but seems as though it enhances it. It lies to you repeatedly, pulling you into deeper isolation, deeper weakness.
It’s up to you to be strong, to realize that your family needs you back. Your daughter, your son, and your wife need you to live without the secrets—about pornography or anything else. Truth heals, and truth sits at the core of integrity.