They dream of him being perfect, but they realize that this is impossible. What would be the portrait of an ideal husband and father if it were painted by women? Tells the family psychotherapist Inna Khamitova.
To be a father… to everyone
Ideas about the ideal father are constantly changing. Today, women often think that after the birth of a child, a man should become a kind of understudy for the mother. Which is not surprising: in recent years, the model of marriage is moving away from the patriarchal one. In a modern partnership, spouses share responsibilities approximately equally, and a woman extends these expectations to caring for a child. If the father does not participate equally in the care of the newborn, the mother will experience unpleasant feelings – from bewilderment to disappointment. Fatigue accumulates, followed by resentment: “I do everything. And he’s just playing.” But doesn’t a man see that his wife needs support? Perhaps he simply does not expect that help is needed so urgently that his independent wife now needs it so much: after all, after the birth of a child, a woman regresses to one degree or another, as if she herself becomes a child. And she expects from a man that he will support and patronize her too.
To let me be a mother
Modern couples are good at solving issues of upbringing, educating children, sharing the time they spend with them. But it is still difficult for them to come to terms with the fact that in the first months after the birth of a child there is no time for each other. Not receiving attention, the husband feels abandoned and deceived, he lacks warmth, affection, sex … Women who become mothers late, more than others, unconsciously strive to extend the time of their long-awaited motherhood, to be with their child as long as possible. They want their partner to be more of a father than a lover for a while. There is only one way, becoming parents, not to lose each other: try to find time to be together, every day for half an hour, once a week for half a day. Cultivate important moments from life “before” in life “after”. Be more tolerant towards each other, do not expect from the other (and from yourself) the desired behavior, forgive.
To help the child grow
When children become teenagers and scandals and slamming doors begin, mothers feel that they have lost their love. At this moment, the woman needs someone who can “shout” the teenager, and she says to her father: “Come on, now it’s your turn, he no longer obeys me.” But most importantly, mothers dream that a man will make up for them the love that they have just lost, help them survive the stage when children reject them in order to grow up. Mothers appreciate that fathers spend time with teenagers, share their interests with them, help them spread their wings and find themselves. When a child leaves the family, intimacy often returns to the relationship between the two: as a way to comfort each other, but also because the father had the opportunity to show himself from the (better) side that once attracted a woman, and she now has time for yourself and your passions. So the couple has a chance to continue their story from a new page.