An honest account

Its 5:46am, on a somewhat, cold and murky Saturday morning, I’m sitting down listening to the morning birds chirping as the waves venture through that crisp morning air, watching as the dew of the night before settles into its beautifully forlorn setting and the highlight of my day so far has been the hour and a half sleep I managed to get in before being abruptly woken up.

I’m here to write about relationships and how having that ‘bundle of joy’ in your life can bring your, one time blissful life, to that crashing moment of realization.

Can a relationship cope?

A study dated back to 2011 has concluded that around 90% of all unmarried couples will end their once harmonious journey due to the strains a child can have on their relationship here in the UK. Equally damning are the revelations that 42% of marriages will take a hit due to the same fact.

Now why is this?

Things change and they change drastically. As much as many fathers feel that they are ready and prepared for the eventuality of living their life as the third wheel and ready to take a back seat to affection and love, we just aren’t really that ready at all. Maybe its something built into our psyche maybe its just a primitive glazed outlook on what the future holds but fathers find it very hard to cope with these changes. The one main cause of a relationship break down actually has no bearing on a relationship at all but boils down to the inundating of outsourced information and an exchange of societies ideology bearing down on us.

Now I’m not here to throw down the gauntlet and point the blame at fathers, as there are always two sides to this story and I will get to that.

Lets look at some of these issues now shall we and first we will look at Society.

One main issue, is also the strain that society puts on the fundamental outlines of what a father should be and who they are as a collective, contrary to popular belief, we aren’t some uneducated rabble of
Men pining for the once elated freedoms of boyhood but are more accustomed and likened, by our own merit, to a cohort of gentleman, a group determined to be the strong figure in a family and to be that pillar of emotion. It has long been an opinion of many people in society that fathers are somewhat incompetent at their new roles, even when being a shining example of what a ’daddy’ should be. We are no longer that nineteenth century man depicted by the movies, of a somewhat niche market, of the man who held his child ’only the once’ and handed her over to the nanny or the mother for love and attention or the man who would be there for domination and control but we are now a group of men who have grown to be the men our mothers always wanted us to be, to be the ones to keep a family safe, to hold their child in their arms with a warm embrace and to love unconditionally. This is how things have differed. Society has not changed with the evolution of a father but has stayed stagnant, in the notion that a long time degraded the definition of a father for as long as I can remember.

We aren’t a rabble but a band of brothers.

Recently this can be seen based on a curious remark made by a mothers group, on a social media outlet, of how fathers just talk about ‘Boobs and sport’, derogatory, yes, sexist, a huge resounding yes, but this is the foundation of what society has given fathers to bounce back from, like the rising phoenix from a tragic beginning and some of us actually manage to make it out alive and manage to use this to our relationship’s advantage.

Now like I said earlier, it isn’t always one sided and mothers can just as easily take the brunt of the blame.

I can feel the uproar ready to emerge but this is a fact on all matters to do with the heart and emotions, a psychological imprint on all things worldly but all things have two sides of the story, the journey may take different avenues, the journey may seem extreme from one side to the other, but fundamentally all things can be seen as 50/50 on all outcomes.

But I’m not here to serve notice to our counterparts but give my words of wisdom to the fathers out there.

And how can we venture clear of this ?

• Communication is key – sit down with your partner and get things out in the open sometimes it can also be healthy to have a ‘heated debate’ to exercise all those demons.
• If things are too ‘hot in the kitchen’, pick yourself up and go for a walk … sometimes that 10 minutes away can really sooth the situation and put things in to perspective.
• Do not criticize each others feelings and actions, sit down and converse about what’s ‘got your goat’.
• Approval, appreciation and affection can go a long way and publicly can go even further. Try maybe sending a cute message on social media or leave your partner a note that could put a smile on their face.
• Money is the Bain of all evil.. Do not try to control it or force it on your partner, take an equal approach to all finances in and around the family.
• Emotional degradation can be seen as the Jekyll and Hyde of the emotion world.. See what you’re doing take a step back and take a deep breathe.
• Intimacy is a huge part of any relationship and can be the beginning or the end of one. Try find the time to be close with one another, don’t make excuses because ultimately things will go stale and be the cutting point for most partners.

We as society also need to change our old fashioned ideals and retrace the outline of what it really means to be a father and means to be felled like the old. Lets start on a fresh campaign to change the way in which we want to be seen or heard. It is ultimately a very big goal and not one that can be achieved through one man alone with one little blog.

So take heed my band of brothers, our time is now, our time is not beyond our touch, lets unite these camps and conquer the world.

To answer my question of can a relationship cope.. Yes it can and yes it will.. Things take time and it all takes work

I try to live day to day with the ideology of ‘if you’re going to conquer it, conquer it all’ this can be promoted through my ideas and how I deal with every day emotions and occurrences, I’m still trying to conquer my demons but I will and my relationship will be much better for it too.

Leave a comment and let me know what you think