Today is Father’s Day, so Happy Father’s Day to all the men out there who take an ACTIVE role in the lives of their children. The role father’s play in the lives of their children (even adult children) is more valuable than you know.

On that note, I want to speak to the husbands – not about your own fatherhood, but on the relationship that your wife had or has with her father and how it impacts your marriage and relationship. It is so necessary in marriage that you have a very clear understanding of the history of your spouse because that history acts as the “lens” that your spouse looks out of to view the world. A lot of times the things that baffles you about your wife stems from the type of relationship that she has with her father (whether he was present or absent). This impact is even more rooted in the father–daughter relationship than the type of relationship that she has with her mother because it determines how she feels about men, and how to interact and how she feels she should be treated.

There was a study done written in The College Student Journal called The Adjective Check List that measured assertiveness, relational needs, cognitive ego states and negative self image where in addition the participants answered the questionnaire about father-daughter relationships and the familial interactions that impacts the daughters style of life. The questionnaire helped to determine the role the father may have played in shaping familial interactions that affects a daughter’s self appraisal and style of life. In the study, theorists describe a woman’s father as her “first love” regardless of her experience with her father which assumes that the father-daughter relationship has the potential to shape interaction patterns that surface as women enter into adult relationships. The overall study results suggested that a woman’s ongoing relationship with a particular type of father impacts her self-perception and in consequence her style of life.

The study include 6 types of father daughter relationships (the doting father, the distant father, demanding/supporting father, the domineering father, the seductive father, and the absent father) and explains how each type of relationship impacts the self-perception and style of life of the daughter in her present adult life. You may want to read the study (caution: it’s very long). Husbands, you should take time to talk with your wife about her relationship with her father, if you don’t already know. Ask her questions and probe. Depending on the type of relationship she has or had, she may not be able to give you all the answers all at once. Ask her how she feels that relationship impacts her worldview today and how it makes her feel about relationships. Perhaps her father gave her disproportional personal and economic support, while on the surface this would appear good, but his attachment may have caused her to feel the need to have freedom and to grow up. That may translate in your relationship to her not wanting you always around her. (Or just the opposite.)

In any case, find out what her relationship with her father was like and consider those details when you interact with her. Particularly consider this when her reactions to something seem unexplainable to you. See if what she has gone through (good or bad) has any bearing on the present situation.

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