Dear RoseQ,

From infancy to adulthood, “parents” are the first point of touch for children. To children, they are our role models, sometimes heroes, but most importantly, our nurturer. From “parents”, children learn how to act, how to speak and their roles in the family and society. How a parent might view their children is completely up for debate, but it is a certain fact that parents have certain expectations of their children and since children are quite perceptive, they unconsciously would try to meet those expectations, even if they don’t know why.

Your grief seem to lie in your father’s teachings. Since young, you’ve been told a version of ‘children are to be seen, but not heard.’ Even when all you’ve wanted to do was share good news, your father was dismissive, though understandable, but still isolating all the same. And it seem that your love languages lean toward words of affirmation and quality time so it was all the more cutting for the young you. At the same time, you were taught that ‘traditional’ women had a place at home, but not really anywhere else and that didn’t really sit well with you later on. But that was what you were exposed to and that scene of the the traditional man and the traditional woman was ‘normal’ in your eyes as a child.

Your first contact with men began with your father and your father passed on the image of a man who had little time for his family, only smiling and laughing during the holidays, but even then. He passed on the image of a man who worked outside the house, but took little responsibility for household work for man and woman had different roles. He passed on the image of a man who was emotionally distant from his family. That was your first image of men and that was your ‘normal’, but it didn’t sit well with you. Yet it was also an expectation from your father.

Many children try very hard to please their nurturer by trying to meet their expectations, but if the expectations clash with the child’s expectations for themselves, there will be tension on how the child look at the world and their place in it. And that tension usually act up in their relationships in some way.

Your anger seem to begin with your father’s expectations for you, as a girl, to your expectations for yourselves. As your father’s daughter, you wish to fulfilled his expectation for you because you wish for his approval, but to do so would go against who you are as a person. You want to be enough, but you also question whether you are enough. So you get angry at men because, according to your father’s teachings, men have authority and power while women should be supporting them without complaining of equal standing in an intimate relationship. So maybe you feel hopeless, or that you have little say in who or what you are. You don’t feel in control.

But here’s the thing, when you feel angry at men for simply being men, you are giving them the agency to dictate your feelings about them. You are giving them the power to tell you that you should be angry at them for being men, for their existence means that you have little value outside of the house, especially in an intimate setting. That anger will show itself in some way and your partners will feel it. Even if on the surface everything might seem fine, the undercurrent of tension is real and they will feel it in the minuscule way you interact with them. Humans have very good instinct, pity not many trust themselves enough to trust their instinct. But anger is very tiring to feel from someone you have affection for. If you can’t handle anger from your partner, could they handle yours at them? Though whether your partner is mature enough to actually work with you on your anger issue is another matter.

If you are angry, it’s fine to be angry at your father, after all, he was the one to teach you that you matter more in the house doing housework than outside, but when you get angry at every other men, you give them the agency to decide what you feel about them rather than you choosing for yourselves how you feel about every individual men you might meet in your lifetime. You haven’t met them nor do you know much about them yet you have already decided you don’t really like them because they are men. And because you don’t want to be disappointed, but also have not release your bleak expectations of men, you might choose partners that will fulfilled your expectations because it’s easier to be disappointed in something you know well, that you know will happen, then expect something better from your partner. It’s a bleak cycle.

So be angry at your father. It might have been his father teaching him such expectations that he pushed such expectations on you, but whether he considered such expectations were for your sake or his, is up for debate. Of course, he’s human, but so are you. And if your human self is angry at him, then be angry at him.

But you will have to release the expectation that your father will change, he will only change when he feels that he should. He is who he is and it is his decision as it is your decision right now to be who you are. Certainly, your father has his expectations of you, but in the end, he is not you and unless you decide to give him control over your life, you will be the one to decide how your life will go. Don’t expect him to think himself wrong in the matter of raising you, he did what he was taught from your grandfather and that’s that. You can’t expect more than he is willing to give. You’ll have to accept that he is how he is right now and go from there.

Also, go find someone whom you can talk about all this. Find someone who will listen and objectively list all the things you’ve said, but it’s not about giving advice. It’s about you looking at the matter at the heart of it and to start from there. You are angry and disappointed and hurt. Find someplace safe to let it all out, to let yourself feel and acknowledge those emotions. Don’t rationalized your feelings and don’t let the fact that he’s your father or he’s your ex to keep you from feeling anger or disappointment or something along those lines. Emotions will suck when it suck, but there’s the hope of feeling the other side once your emotions stop sucking.

Every children inherit something from their childhood environments, the good and bad, though it would seem that the bad is more memorable. You have yours and you have your thoughts and feelings about it, but in the end, you have the choice of agency over your actions.

Have hope. With every search, it will be a long journey so let yourself be human and accept that others are human and you’ll find people out there who will choose to be human with you.

Good luck.