How Do You Become A good Father When All The Father Figures In Your Life Are Falling?

I was nine or ten when my mother got married again. He was a teacher—a teacher in the same school I was attending. I don’t know but something about my mother marrying again made me very happy. I saw him around and called him “Dad” something I’d never said while growing up. I didn’t see my father. It was always my mother doing everything for me. Then a man came into our life, filling the gap that had been there since I was a baby. I loved to see them both. When I went out to play and came to see them sitting together and talking, it made me feel like I belong to a system that’s whole in itself. A father. A mother. A child. A family. 

But for some strange reason, this man didn’t want me to call him Dad. In the presence of my mother, he pretended it was ok to be called such but whenever my mother wasn’t around, he warned me not to call him dad; “Call me Sir. I’m your teacher and not your father. I didn’t give birth to you.” It killed the flame in me somehow but his presence in our lives made me feel whole so I didn’t complain. I got the drill so when mom wasn’t there, I called him Sir. In the evening when she was around, I referred to him as a dad. I said that undertone. As if I didn’t want it to come out. I called him dad in my nose.

They started having issues. Some nights they will fight while I was asleep. They would shout at each other and the noise would wake me up. Immediately I woke up, mom would stop talking. She would stop fighting back but my Sir would continue fighting. Shouting and calling my mother names. It became a norm. It affected my emotions and the happiness I once had when he came around. So I would wake up and pretend I was still sleeping so mom could fight back. It was about the money he wasn’t leaving behind. Mom: “You wake up and leave the house without leaving anything but you come back home and expect a banquet—a table in front of your enemies. You think I pluck money from trees? Where do you send your monthly salary? You live in a house I rented. What do you do with your money?” My Sir: “How much should I give you before you know I’m giving you money? Should I bring all my salary to you before you know? You’re ungrateful—very ungrateful. I will leave you so you live your life alone.”

It would be back and forth all night. When I think I’d had enough, I would get up so mom would shut up.

He would see me in school and bring his anger on me—innocent me. If I were in his class, he would have beaten me for no sin committed. Thank God I wasn’t. But their marriage couldn’t withstand the storm. I was there when the end arrived. The fight was intense. For once mom didn’t care about my presence. She fought back. She spoke back. She insulted back. She rushed into the room and things started flying out. His things. His bags. His books. His shoes. The black one he held in high esteem. Mom threw them and he caught them in the sky. Things held in high esteem don’t have to fall on the ground. Mom barked, “Go where you came from. What benefit have you brought into my life? I’m the one taking care of you. Sex? I would get it from a dog if I want to.”

He stooped down and started picking his things. Mom held my hand and pulled me inside. That was the last time I saw him in our house. He was a Junior high school teacher so when I was entering JHS mom changed my school and that was the last time I saw him. The end of an era. Mom never married again so I never had a father figure in my life from that stage. 

My mother’s elder sister, aunt Jane. She was in Kumasi. That woman and her husband loved me to bits so every vacation I went to spend it with them. I loved being with them because they were a whole family—mom, dad, two children—Adzo and Kobee. Kobee was my age mate so we clicked. He would tell me about his school and the little girl he was crushing on and I would tell him the same thing. His father would take us out. We would go to the beach. We would go shopping. We would go to various interesting places. Whenever my vacation was over, he would take me to the shop and buy me new things and give me money. He was the reason I always felt the vacuum of a father in my life. When I was there, I looked at him and told myself, “I would grow up one day and be like Kobee’s father. I would make my wife happy and my kids fulfilled. His life was my dream. 

From JSS one until I completed JSS, my mom didn’t allow me to visit aunt Jane during vacation. It was after I’d completed JSS that I went to visit them. The house didn’t look the same. It was like a mouth missing a tooth. The father wasn’t there and his absence could be felt right when you enter the door. I asked Kobee in whispers, “Where’s dad?” He whispered back, “He left. He and mom are no longer married.” I was shocked. I asked him, “What happened?” He said, “They were always fighting. One day dad went out and never came again. I asked mom and she said they were no longer married.” 

It brought back the memories of the last fight between my mom and the Sir. The shoes in the sky. I cried. Not physical tears. Tears internal. I thought about all the good days. The shopping. The beach. The interesting places. I said to myself. “It’s never going to be the same again.” When I came back to my mom and never had the desire to visit them again. The man I loved was gone. The future me. The man I was learning from. Learning how to be a good father and a husband was no longer there. It looked to me that father figures disappear easily.

I was in SHS two when the school chaplain once preached about a family. He made a statement that got me very worried. Scared actually. He said, “When boys grow in a home that doesn’t have a father figure, they grow up to become what they themself didn’t experience. They can’t be fathers when they themselves didn’t experience what fatherhood is like. That’s why we have a lot of women who know what it takes to be mothers but men who don’t know how to be fathers. When a house breaks down, mothers continue to be mothers so their daughters can learn. How about the boys? How would they learn?”

This statement took me back to my childhood and I started getting scared. I thought about the father I didn’t have. The sir who came and later disappeared. Aunt Jane’s husband. These men meant a lot to me, especially Aunt Jane’s husband. I was learning a lot from him until he too disappeared. I’ve completed SHS and am at the university currently. I still think of that statement our chaplain made that day. I don’t want to grow up and become an absent father. What I’d gone through, I would never want any of my children to go through the same thing. I don’t want to be absent and I don’t want to marry a woman I will always fight with. 

So when I had my first girlfriend, I tried as much as possible not to have the manifestations of my past in the relationship. To me, it was an arena to study who I will be when I become a husband. I worshipped that girl. I gave her my all—not necessarily money but I invested my time, my care, and everything into it but it turned out that she wanted someone with money who could take care of her needs. I wasn’t that man so she left. The next girlfriend I had was always fighting with me. She said I was too soft. “Be a man,” She would scream. “Stand on your feet and dictate the pace.” That wasn’t my intention. To dictate paces. I only want to love. I only want to practice what it takes to be a good husband. She walked out eventually because she couldn’t stand a soft man.

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I was failing at being a husband even before I started. It worried me. I have a girlfriend now. We’ve been together for over a year. I would love to keep her to the end. She’s soft. She comes from a broken home just like me. Our stories have a connection point. I think our brokenness should make us find healing in ourselves in this relationship. But no. She doesn’t trust men. She looks at my truth and calls it a lie because she looks at them through the filter from her past. I’ve been trying for the past year to help her heal but she bleeds continually. She had cheated on me thrice with men she never trusted. I thought it was about the money so I forgave her. But weeks ago, I read a conversation between her and a lecturer. The lecturer slept with her and now ignoring her. When I asked about it she confessed.

I’m walking away. It looks like I can’t use relationship turfs to learn to be a good man and a good husband. This one breaks me to pieces because there’s a beautiful connection between us. I want to continue to help but the way she easily opens her legs scares me. 

I’m not here to ask how to keep a woman and I’m not here to ask how to make a bad woman better. I’m here to ask how and where I can learn to be a good husband to my future wife. I want to know how to learn to be a good father to my kids. The father who never disappears like the men in my life did. I’ve read books and I’ve watched movies. I’ve googled and read articles but I think I need more than just these to become who I want to be. Fathers, how did you learn to be good at it or it takes only grace just as my friend told me the other time?