Anonymous wrote:Have you always been this good or was there a learning curve? I'm wondering if you had to work and invest time into becoming a great, involved partner and dad or if it just came naturally.
Oh wow another good question. No there actually was a big learning curve in many ways. I got married young, at 25, and I was pretty immature in a variety of ways. For one, I wasn’t comfortable with myself sexually and I think I relied too much on alcohol or THC to be comfortable enough to have sex. At the beginning of our relationship I wasn’t very forward thinking, and didn’t have a big plan in place for the future in terms of kids, a house, choosing a place to live, saving money, etc. Luckily for me my wife was very organized at this time and due to a rough childhood with family and financial issues she was very attuned to that stuff. She basically created the life plan which we are living today, and she had that all planned out in our late 20s, which I am very thankful for.
I think the conflict piece was already in place because I’ve always been good at controlling my emotions and not overreacting and we never really had big fights or arguments.
The being a father part did take work. I felt like with babies I just didn’t know how to stop the crying when our kid was colicky and that really made me frustrated and felt like I wasn’t a good parent. The same thing happened with my son when he was 2-3. He was very difficult, always upset about something and I would get so frustrated. There were a lot of moments when I felt very much less than. It took a lot of time and practice and trial and error for me to find myself as a father and to come at these difficult situations from a place of love and humility.
Also the worrying about health piece with the kids needed some work. When I felt like I perhaps made the wrong decision about taking kids to the doctor or not, or maybe I did something to get them sick, that would cause me a lot of anxiety. But I have worked to get that under control and it is.