To the men in my family

Thank you, for making me even more scared to find my significant other. I learned from you what I should avoid from a man. The hard way, unfortunately.

There’s a saying that dad is a daughter’s first love. Doesn’t work with me. Not that I hate my dad or something. He’s not physically abusive, as well. As much as I respect and tolerate him, I never want to have someone like him as my lifetime partner. It may make me feel worthless to not be heard and appreciated. Thanks to him, I learned that I had to avoid men who didn’t listen, men who always wanted everything to revolve around them, men who looked religious but didn’t bother to think what their words could mean to other.

I had a lot of people, all girls, telling me they want to have an older brother. To feel safe and protected, especially with the dose of cute and reliable older brothers shown on social media. My brother is fine with me. But the way he behaves to his wife… It was something that was never shown in the house, was never predicted. I don’t know if our parent’s upbringing had something to do with that, but probably. He hold too much to himself that couldn’t be expressed to us, and now that he’s the head of the household, he probably thought he had the power and authority of everything. Thanks to him, I learned that I had to avoid men who always feel inferior, always think they’re the victim, always think that they suffered the most. I also learned that you won’t even know someone’s real personality well, even if you’ve spent a long time with them. That’s the scary part. My heart goes to my sister-in-law…

Of course, I don’t want to blame on them all the time. For the time being, I’ll just learn to live with them while taking notes to not letting that happen to my future family, if I had any. I’ll also focus to fix myself, because I feel like I could see some of their traits in myself, which I hate. But I’m still scared.