I realize that the way I treat my wife is how my daughters are going to expect a man to treat them, and I am setting a VERY high bar.
This also reminds me of another saying people told me when I first had kids: 'Daughters are life's way of punishing you for being the type of guy you were when you were younger.' Not because daughters are not as cool as sons, but more because you are going to spend your whole life thinking some punk is looking to use her the way you might have used a girl when you were younger. It helps to remember that every girl is someones daughter.
While I was never really the womanizing type...having daughters did make me feel bad for some jokes I told once upon a time. I used to have a chief that had a very cute, very mature looking daughter who was somewhere around 15. A regular past time for some of us was giving the chief a hard time about his daughter, which usually involved some comment that would not be correct in mixed company.
Yeah...there are days I feel bad about that, especially as my wife is trying to convince me she needs to go shopping with my 11-year old to trade in her 'trainers' for some real undergarments.
I'm sorry Chief...I take it all back!
No doubts. Something I hadn't contemplated directly, until now, thank you. :P But, yeah. I used to pass it off that the girls I was with were flawed. I've had to come around and understand women depend on men, for leadership and much else. If we fail... Oh, I've been sweating the notion for half a decade now. Started just with seeing things rightly while looking for a wife, sort of, changing my heading with regards to women... then the daughter thing started seeping in.
ReplyDeleteThough about the shame thing. Nothing teaches like it. Psychic whip lashings. At least you learned something from them.