Sins Of The Father (Would you let your child date you?)
A cousin of mine once told me of how a young man’s mind and body seems to evolve the closer he gets to the mid-life-crisis-prone age of thirty and I must say I didn’t quite recall our conversation till sometime this week. As my birthday approaches, it recently dawned on me, the many psychological changes I seem to be going through. There are quite a lot of them and I have the intentions of documenting them strictly for the purpose of sharing with age mates and trying to see if we can come up with some kind of pattern and possibly postulate…
Forgive the engineer in me. That isn’t why we are here today. People who follow me on Twitter may have noticed that one of the topics I seem to talk about a lot nowadays is ‘marriage’ and if you’ve been wondering why, well, now you know. But apart from that, thoughts of family and more importantly, parenting have also taken prominent space in my mind lately. It was during one of those sojourns into the deep ends of my mind that I first asked myself this question:
Take a good look at yourself. Would you let your future daughter date the present you?
Easy question. Right? If I know my onions well enough, I’m sure a lot of guys reading this answered ‘No’ to that question. Not all (hopefully), just a lot of us probably had a quick flash back and thought to ourselves, “hell nah!!!”
But I’ll tell you this much; after my initial response to the question, I took some time to further ponder on it. If I someday, hope to make someone’s child my wife, hopefully in a few years time (don’t tell my mother), why would I answer No to that question?
It’s almost like guys who repeatedly state their decision to marry a virgin whenever they are ready for marriage, yet they engage in indiscriminate sexual activities with women they have no plans of getting married to. Did someone say double standards? Well, maybe not quite. But at my age, if I don’t think I’m good enough as a person to give my future daughter to then why on earth should I expect a father to give me the hand of his wonderful daughter in marriage. No matter how much of a bargain one strikes, as long as you don’t use unlawful means to acquire something, it’s only natural to expect a fair value of exchange for your offering.
Again, I took some more time to reflect on my person and how I’d lived my life so far and for me, it was easy to reverse my initial response and justify why I’d allow my future daughter to date the present me (and it had nothing to do with experiencing the bad side so she’d know what not to settle for). But as backup, if I wasn’t able to convince myself and upturn my initial response to the question, I was willing to do a proper audit of me and put in place measures that would help turn things around before I get to the point of marriage.
I understand that some of you reading this may be too young to be thinking about a commitment like marriage but from discussions with friends, I really don’t think it’s too early to look inwards and turn things around.
The rate at which I get invited to weddings nowadays is alarming but I must confess that a lot of times when I get such messages, I try to evaluate the couple and sometimes I get worried. Maybe I’m paranoid or my level of expectation is unrealistic (I’ll blame my parents separation) but I don’t think the decision to get married is one that should be taken lightly.
It may sound easy or even silly but if you’re approaching that age where it’s expected for you to get involved in serious relationships with the possibility of marriage, I think it’s time to be sincere with yourself and answer this one question:
Would you let your future daughter/son date the present you?
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Can I let my daughter date present me? Hell NO
First again!
Ugh! )____
YES! I'd like my son to date the present me.
When I saw this title on twitter I did some serious thinking bout myself. I assessed myself including my background & personal experiences & how they have together shaped my present mindset. I concluded that I WOULD let my future son date the present me… the bigger challenge would be convincing the present me that this would be a risk worth taking.
Just had a flashback and yes! I would definitely let my future son date me.
Oh.. is this going to be one of those days with patterns here? All the women seem to be ok with this… ok.. We'll await the guys…
I was thinking the same. Not sure if it is becuz women r saints or if lots of those posting their comments r just fronting
Personally, if my future son can handle present me then why not
Still flowing with the pattern.. I would definitely let my future son date the present me. Think that would be the best moment of his life. A woman always puts in her all in a relationship so if your are expecting a different pattern den maybe from a girl that wasn't treated right by u GUYS.
To b sincere;I just wnt allow dat to happen. Will want so much 4 him n just dnt d heart being playd wit
My response was a solid YES! a few seconds ago but on a second thought, maybe not. Truth is I'm not all that bad :D but there are areas that need more than a lil 'tweaking'
I know I'd love for my son to marry a woman that loves the way I do but I honestly wouldn't want my daughter to love any man the way I do
Helll No! My son cannot date me….he cant be gay.
My daughter gats wait till I make the paper, cos if she dates me now, it is surulere o.
My future son can date the present me yo! He has nothing to lose really. That'll be 1 of the best things to happen to him :)
*sets aside poorly-thought out incest joke*
Hmmmm…
I would actually let my future daughter date the present me. In fact, the more I think about it, the more convinced I am that I would even encourage her.
lol!!! first thought in my head "that's quite the creepy question"…
Past me; no fuckin way
Present me; hell fuckin yeah
EWU!
The thing about midlife crisis, very true. Getting closer to 30 is a nightmare I wish I could skip over.
Would I let my future daughter date me? Hell yeah! The question should be would she even know what she has if I was standing in front of her? HELL NO!
Women do not know what they want, give them "love" they want money along with it. Give em money, you suddenly become boring or not caring enough.
So if my future daughter is sensible enough which I doubt then yes, else, well too bad.
Liking some parts of ur reply.
as Per me. . . Definitely! buh maybe a less crazier version.
Definitely not!
Kidding. I will.
Maybe… :/
Whether u allow or not, chances are, the person will date who(whom?) he/she wants. ¯..(•͡.̮ •͡ )../¯
*ClearsThroat*
My original answer to this question was yes. Why? I know that I'm a good man. I have flaws and all, but I try. And I would actually encourage my daughter to date a man like me.
However, there's something we're all forgetting. The fact that not everyone is compatible with themselves. Even if I may want to be the type of man any woman would want to be with, that really isn't possible. It's entirely possible that my daughter may be someone who just would not have the strength to handle the kind of person I am. It's entirely possible that she'd be the kind of person that would walk all over me. For instance, I've noticed that I don't find women attractive unless they're slightly dysfunctional. It's troublesome for me, more often than now, but that's the way I am. Would I want my daughter to be dysfunctional? I don't think so.
So, unless we're saying that, ceteris paribus, we would raise our children to be the type of people we would want to date, we can't necessarily say we would want to be the type of person we would want our children to date.
Make sense?
crystal clear. (y)
U can like to start ya own blog eh…amebo!
If my son dates someone like the present me, he might die of either AIDS or hypertension. :|
An indeed tricky question. My answer would be yes because I believe entirely that I'm fairly a good guy. I do, like everyone else, have my shortcomings that I think it will take a lot of patience to get used to, my temper especially.
My temper has at many times led me to make some unpleasant decisions (some were right, some weren't). The question is, given that I may be the kind of man my daughter wants in future, would she be able to stand my temper considering I have a lot of good sides?
No I won't, right now this moment no I will not! I honestly won't give him my heart. This is me at this point I don't know about tomorrow.
Mute mode activated