by Meg Meeker
Amber, now twenty-six, told me a story about her father that beautifully illustrates the point. When Amber was fifteen, she remembers awakening in the middle of the night to her parents screaming. “My mom and dad rarely argued,” she told me, “and I couldn’t understand what they were arguing about. But Mom was angrier than my father. Apparently she had found out something he was doing. She was crying and raging.
“My mom had been sick for a year with a lymphoma, and then from the chemotherapy and radiation she needed to cure it. I felt so badly for her. We all tried hard to help her. My younger sister and I cooked. And we kept quiet in the afternoons while she tried to nap.
“My dad was wonderful too. He tried to help as much as he could but his work was a bit overwhelming. Plus”—she became teary as she continued—“he was having a hard time accepting my mom’s illness. He loved her so much. I think he was terrified about what would happen if she died.”
Amber’s emotions were intense, and as she continued, she spoke louder and faster.
“Anyway, that night they were arguing, and I got out of bed and went downstairs. She must have found my dad at his computer and she freaked. I assume he was looking at something, writing to someone, I’m not sure. I didn’t really want to know—this was my dad.”
Amber quieted and her tone softened. “Over the next few months they cried a lot and argued off and on. They didn’t tell me or my sister exactly what was going on at the time but finally my father sat all of us down one day and did something I’ll never forget. My sister and I were on the couch facing my father and my mother—who was bald from her chemotherapy and radiation. He did all the talking.
“ ‘Girls,’ he said, ‘you know that Mom and I have been having some problems.’ When he said these words I felt like I was going to vomit. I was sure he was going to tell us they were getting a divorce.
“He had a hard time talking. We waited. I became incredibly nervous. Finally he said, ‘Here’s the problem. Me. I haven’t done a very good job handling Mom’s illness. I’m really sorry for you girls and for your mom. I don’t expect you to understand, and Mom and I aren’t going to give you details because that’s between her and me. Anyway, I’ve made some terrible mistakes. I’m taking our desktop out of the house. Since we all share it, this means that you’ll have to tell your friends no more e-mails or IMs.’ Then he looked at us, clearly worried about what we would say.
“ ‘That’s it?’ I asked him. ‘You and Mom aren’t getting a divorce?’
“ ‘No, Amber, no divorce. Mom needs us: you, your sister, and me. This is really, really hard right now but we’ve got to do the best we can to stick together. I know how hard this is for you too.’
“That was it,” she said, still obviously surprised at how little he explained. “He sat there, sad and quiet. We all stared at each other. After a little while my sister and I went up to our room totally confused about what was going on but relieved that they weren’t getting a divorce.
“I wish I could say everything after that was fine. Now it is, but for about the next year, my folks really struggled. Mom got better and they began talking more.
“After eavesdropping on their conversations, my sister and I figured out what was going on. Apparently my dad got into a relationship with some other woman on the Internet. It didn’t go on terribly long and I don’t know if he even met her. I think I know when all of it started. Anyway, I’m sure one thing led to another and he got into other stuff too.”
Clearly, Amber didn’t want to say the word pornography because no one wants to connect their own dad with sex.
“But here’s the cool part,” she said. “After that day, I heard my mom and dad talk about having no secrets from each other. And as best as I can tell, they never did again. The computer hit the bin, and over the past few years they have become happy again.”
Amber communicated her pride in her parents, particularly in her father, as we finished our conversation. Without making excuses for him, she realized that the electronic, unreal world of the Internet seduced him when he was weak from grieving. He tried to keep this unreal life secret because he knew it was wrong. In the process, his family began to crumble around him.
“But,” Amber said, “he got it. He realized that it didn’t work. It all got exposed and it was at that point that my dad started to turn things around. And you can’t believe how good it feels that he did.” Amber isn’t married yet, but she has a serious boyfriend whom she very well might marry. What do you suppose she will expect from him? Will she close her eyes to secretive behavior—or will she expect him to rid any secrecy from his own life, as her father did? Because Amber’s father had the courage to face his hidden life and change it, she will expect the same from other men, or think less of them. Amber’s father not only changed his own life, but he also changed hers, drawing them much closer together. Her father probably never realized it when he made his announcement from the couch, but his decision had an enormous impact on Amber’s future and on her future happiness.
The Internet can be a friend because it can enable you to work from home, on vacation, wherever. But it can also be your biggest nightmare. Treat it fearfully. Pornography is so addictive to men and young boys that it snakes its way into your life without warning. It is more addictive than alcohol, easier to access than drugs, but equally destructive to men, wives, and children as either of these two. Dr. Lickona writes, “Pornography can fry your conscience and you won’t even notice.” Men of integrity notice everything, particularly things that threaten their welfare and the welfare of those around them. If you let your daughter and son know that pornography is a struggle for every man and boy, and show them that it can be dealt with and avoided, you will give them unmatched power to confront the hard things in life. And I can guarantee that you improve your chances that your daughter will insist on the same in her future spouse.
Every father wants a son-in-law who has nothing to hide and whose relationship with his daughter will be founded on truth. All secrets hurt. So talk to your wife about this. Make an agreement to have no secrets between you. Practice this. Then watch what happens to your daughter. If you live a life without secrets, she probably will too. If you expect her to hide nothing, she is much more likely to come clean about drinking and other dangerous behavior. But if she finds out that you (or her mom) are living with serious secrets—and kids almost always find out—she will likely do the same.
If you have to go solo on your commitment to “no secrecy,” do it. Lead. Face your weaknesses and find ways to avoid temptations. If your weakness is alcohol, give up drinking with your friends and spend more time sober with your family. If your weakness is women, set rules to protect yourself. Billy Graham (even he, a spiritual giant of our age) felt tempted by other women, so he always took a male friend with him when he traveled so that he would never be alone with a woman. His rule might not be yours. You decide. How much is your daughter worth to you? If you hide things, so will her husband. You need to put your family first. And that means before your career as well.
Concerning lying, talk about the importance of truth to your daughter. Teach her to expect it from others and help her to be savvy at recognizing it in others. (She will have plenty of opportunity at school.) Tell her that you and she cannot have a meaningful relationship if lying sits anywhere inside it. Why? Because even if you or she lie “just a little on occasion,” then trust breaks down between you. Let your daughter know that you want a relationship with her based on trust; that alone will draw her closer to you.
You also need to take a hard look at your own thinking, speech, and behavior. This is tough, but you must do it. Your daughter watches you all the time, and the truth is, if you’re lying about something, she may not know the details, but you can be certain that she knows something’s up. Daughters are like that. My husband and I were friends with another couple for many years. I’ll call them Bob and Hilary. They visited our home frequently, spent weekends with us, and so on. They
were fun to be around and we laughed a lot together. They seemed very happy in their marriage. One day my husband received a phone call from Bob. Bob was beside himself with anger and grief. He found out after twenty-two years of marriage that his wife had been having a pretty serious affair for five years. We were shocked. Unfortunately, my husband and I were discussing this in the kitchen one night. Two of our daughters, then aged ten and twelve, overheard us. They walked into the conversation and we had to tell them, flat out, what had happened. I will never forget what our oldest daughter said: “Mom, Dad, that doesn’t surprise me one bit. Something about Aunt Hilary always bothered me. She was kind of creepy.”
As easily as she entered the conversation, she exited. She “knew” something all along. Don’t think you can hide secrets. Older kids have a way of knowing or finding out.
Good Men Are Hard to Find
Men with integrity stay truthful. But finding an honest man can be hard in today’s moral climate. Think about the statistic that 76 percent of public high schoolers have cheated on exams. If your daughter goes to a typical public school, chances are the boy she’s dating is a cheater and a liar. (And the odds are also high, higher than 40 percent, that he’s had sex and will lie to you about that.) Well, you say, if he’s just cheating on exams, that’s not so bad; she’s not going to marry him anyway. Maybe. But she is starting to establish patterns of dating and communicating with men, and if she learns to expect that boyfriends naturally lie, and that she has to accept that, her standards will be lower than you want them to be.
Six years ago one of my former patients, Alicia, went to the West Coast to a very prestigious university. She graduated with honors and took an excellent job with a marketing firm, following in her father’s steps, in New England. While living there, she met a man, Jack, who was five years older. She fell madly in love with him. They dated for six months and she wanted him to meet her father, so she and Jack went home for a long weekend. While they were there, her father and Jack talked casually and both seemed cordial, but weren’t connecting the way Alicia had hoped. On the third day of the visit, Jack announced that he had to leave early because a family problem had come up. So he left and a few days later rejoined Alicia in New England.
After the visit, Jack and Alicia decided to move in together. He wanted to let go of his apartment, and Alicia was thrilled because she felt marriage was imminent. So Jack moved into her apartment. The next three months were happy and smooth. He worked as a lawyer or a paralegal, she really couldn’t understand which, she said. Apparently he had gone to law school but didn’t pass the bar exam and was going to retry in the future. In the meantime, he worked at the firm and held other jobs here and there to supplement their income. Finally, he asked her to marry him and she was elated. She called home to tell her folks and they received the news poorly. She called her best friend and her response was similar. In fact, her dad drove to her apartment for the weekend after she told him.
“Alicia,” her father said that weekend, “you can’t marry Jack. Something’s not right. I don’t trust him.” While her father couldn’t put his finger on exactly what was wrong, he said what he felt. Alicia became so upset with her father that she asked him to leave her apartment. After all, she said, she was a fully mature twenty-five-year-old woman. If she had to choose between her husband and her dad, she would choose her husband.
They planned the wedding and her relationship with her father was cool at best. He continued, respectfully, asking her not to marry Jack. But the wedding was imminent. She had sent out beautiful wedding invitations to four hundred guests. She had had pictures taken. She had paid the band and the caterer. The bill for the floral arrangements alone was $8,500.
Two weeks before the wedding, Alicia received an anonymous phone call. She didn’t recognize the voice on the other end. Jack was watching television in the living room. The person on the phone was a woman who said Alicia was making a big mistake and should get out of the relationship right away. Alicia couldn’t speak. The woman only said that she, Alicia, wasn’t “the only one.” Alicia hung up the phone and didn’t know what to do. At first she blamed her father for putting someone up to the call. But then she realized that her father would never have anyone call and lie to her. Surely, she thought, the anonymous caller was lying about the other women. She couldn’t call her best friend, because they had grown apart. She didn’t want to call her father, because she felt humiliated. So the next day, feeling sick to her stomach, Alicia called a private investigator. Within twenty-four hours, the private investigator found out that Jack had four other names. He had three wives, had never been to law school, and was currently working as a runner at a law firm. He had two children, both by different women, and there was a warrant out for his arrest in another state for embezzling money from a law firm. Somewhere along the way, he had had documents forged claiming that he had a degree from a very respected law school and that he had passed the bar exam.
There was only one place for Alicia to turn. She made the phone call. “Dad,” she cried quietly. “Can you come up right away? I mean, can you come up tonight?”
“Sure, honey, but what in the world’s wrong? Are you sick? Do you need money? Did someone hurt you?” He was startled.
Alicia’s father jumped in the car and drove to her apartment to find her standing outside. She was shaking. She wouldn’t go inside because Jack was there. When she saw her father, she did what every girl in trouble who has a good relationship with her father does. She began to sob. She had held it all together, and the minute she saw him get out of the car she fell apart. He hugged her and she shook for the next five minutes, barely able to speak.
“It’s Jack, Dad. You were right. He’s a creep and a crook.” She handed him the investigator’s report.
“Well, there’s only one thing to do now.”
“What?”
“Go confront Jack with this. Kick him out. Call the police. Do whatever we need to do to get him as far away from you as we can.”
“Dad, no! No! What if he shoots us or something?” She felt out of her mind with fear.
“Look, honey. I’m going to deal with him. Do you want to come with me, or should I go in alone?” he insisted.
The two went in to see Jack. No one got shot. Alicia’s dad stayed with her for the next few days and changed the locks on her doors. After he felt that she was safe, he went home.
“The amazing thing was,” Alicia told me one year later, “that he never ever rubbed it in my face. He never said ‘I told you so,’ or anything like that. He just came and helped me take care of things. It was devastating. But I have to tell you I was scared. Do you know what it’s like to live with someone that closely and never have a clue that they have another whole life—or two or three?”
But here’s the best part about what she said that day. “You know, even while my dad was warning me during that time, something really bothered me about Jack: he was so different from my dad. Of course I didn’t want to tell anyone. I mean, he talked differently and I caught him in a few white lies. My dad never did that. My father was quiet and honest. It never dawned on me that I couldn’t trust him, but I wasn’t ever quite sure whether or not I could trust Jack. I thought, how can I live with that? In my mind, everything Jack did, I compared against my dad. I knew, I knew, deep in my heart that I could never marry someone so different from my dad, but I don’t know, I guess I was just totally blinded by infatuation. How could I have been so stupid?”
I wonder if Alicia realizes that the man she is currently dating is very much like her father.
Alicia’s story is extraordinary to me, not just as her doctor, but as a mother of grown daughters. This is one sharp young woman. She is confident, highly respected at work, and has a lot of integrity. So what went wrong? She was blinded by love and, more important, she failed to listen to her father.
Jack’s deceit nearly ruined her life. Lying hurts. Hiding things hurts. People’s lives are better if they live wit
h honesty and integrity. And if you live that way in your work and in your life, your daughter will benefit.
People Come First
Men, of course, are trained from the day they enter school to be career-oriented, and most men measure their career success and even their happiness in terms of money. We all like to believe that having more will make us happier. So many men think in terms of gain: material things: career advancement, a bigger bank account, a prettier wife. But the constant pursuit of more never leads to happiness; it only leads to dissatisfaction with what we have.
When we realize that we don’t need more, then we can relax and be happy. Contentment comes with being satisfied with who we are and what we have today. A man who lives his life with integrity will have that sense of contentment and freedom. His example will teach his daughter an important lesson about life’s priorities. But if you don’t reconcile your wants and desires with honesty, integrity, and humility, your daughter won’t either—and nor will the man she chooses to marry.
Do you want your daughter to marry a man who believes that the life he has with her is not enough? His feelings might be disguised as driven perfectionism, but it will mean that he will always be looking for more. He will start looking away from her, their children, and their home life in order to find fulfillment. He will hurt your daughter. As a father, you don’t want to put your daughter second to a search for more. But if she sees you constantly striving for more—and I mean beyond working hard and doing a good job—she will expect that the pursuit of more is necessary to have a better life. If you teach her, by example, that happiness requires a bigger house, a higher salary, more cars, a boat, and expensive vacations, she will marry a man who constantly leaves home to do the same. People who are dissatisfied with their material possessions can become dissatisfied with who they are—and who other people are. After your driven son-in-law gets the other stuff he wants, he might want more from a wife: perhaps a smarter, quieter, more assertive, or more attractive wife. It doesn’t matter what he looks for in another woman, because it could be anything.