My Relationship with my Dad

In a previous post, I wrote a bit about my Mom. Now I’d like to talk about my Dad.

He was born, Francois Deleon de La Grange but everyone either called him DeLeon or Red (for his red hair). He met Mom when he was on leave from the navy, and they immediately fell in love. Dad, apparently (according to Mom), took some taming. Mom told and re-told dramatic stories of how she almost ended their relationship because of his womanizing.

Dad with his grandmother.

At the time they met, Dad was a bit of a hellion (even Dad said so). He was a weightlifter and very muscular. He had always been a “scrapper,” as Dad termed it. A bit cocky, he never backed away from a fight. That all changed when he hurt his back toward the end of his time in the military. He became less confrontational and—perhaps in Mom’s eyes—less of a man.

I’ll write more about their relationship with each other and with their children in future posts, but here’s a highlight: my parents did not have a smooth relationship. Mom was a drama queen who could go into a rage at the slightest provocation (and we never knew what the trigger would be.) Dad was passive…the calm, level-headed, peace maker, always running after Mom when she’d pretend to be leaving him.

Dad’s explanation of why she treated him so badly? He told me that after he had hurt his back, he became a different man than what Mom thought she had married. Here she thought she had married a hellion (or at least a stallion) just like her. Instead, she ended up with a Caspar Milquetoast (in her opinion). Mom, of course, never saw his calmness as strength. Whether true or not, Dad’s assertion makes sense. Mom had always been attracted to danger, even to violence.

So thus began a relationship that spawned 6 children together and 1 from Mom’s previous marriage (who Dad adopted). I and each of my siblings reacted to their relationship in different ways. But, in time, almost all of us constantly felt sorry for Dad for the way Mom treated him. At times, we even tried to protect him. It shouldn’t be a surprise, then, that many of us developed co-dependent relationships later on.  

Speaking of later on…I will be back with another installment in a few days.

In the meantime, here’s some thoughts to ponder:

If you’re a woman, how did your childhood relationship with your father influence you?

Was your father dominant or passive and how did this impact you?

Why do you think you chose this father for this lifetime? What were you supposed to learn from him?