Posted by:
forestpal
(
)
Date: February 21, 2011 04:22AM
My poor little girls had to go through the ordeal of being left out of the daddy-daughter activities, since their father ABANDONED them. The other divorced fathers would go to the party. One year, my daughters invited their grandpa, who happened to be in town at the time. The other years, we would go for a girls' night out, on that night, to their favorite restaurant, shopping, or to a movie of their choice. They would still feel bad when everyone else was making plans, and talking about it.
My own father and I were very close, without the interference of the church. we behaved more like pupil and teacher (he was a teacher by profession) than lovey-dovey daddy and daughter. I respected him too much to tickle him under the chin or cuddle with him on the dance floor. He was my hero, not my boyfriend. We used to ride our bicycles over to the neighborhood tennis courts, where he taught me to play tennis. He taught me how to swim and surf at the beach, and he would take me skiing and hiking, when I was barely able to walk. He was my world.
A dance with music isn't the best place for conversation, IMO, and of course little girls would feel awkward in a fake-romantic situation with a non-romantic partner. My father and I used to talk for hours, and I loved to drive out to the country with him to get fruit, just the two of us. But I did not want to spend two hours with him at a dance, and I know I wouldn't have been able to carry on a normal conversation in that situation. When I got older, Daddy talked to me about business, economics, science, politics, books, movies, everything. He was a brainiac and an athlete, and didn't even know how to dance, or flirt. We just weren't the type of people to role play, and to be ordered about and told what to do together. Knowing he was uncomfortable made me even more uncomfortable, and instead of getting dressed up and trying to dance with each other, we just did what whatever we wanted to do that night. Good grief! We never called it "date night."
Ha-ha, when the Mormon cult mandated the "Family Home Evening" program, my parents just laughed at it! They said, "We spend almost every evening together, as it is...so should we limit it to just Monday, now? Must we talk about only the church, and not about other things, such as homework?" My parents, even though we were from a GA family, even though he had been a bishop and she was the RS president, refused to bring a structured church program into their home.
The cult just doesn't leave people alone, to just be themselves. I don't like the way it interferes in marriages, either.
Edited 4 time(s). Last edit at 02/21/2011 04:41AM by forestpal.