Hey Ryan! First off I thought your Mother’s Day post was great — it serves to highlight that these days carry great personal meaning to a lot of people, beyond just the typical breakfast in bed and badly-crayoned homemade card.

I’ve drafted lots of responses to your message over the past few hours (the baby is on her 4am wake up right now so I guess this makes this my fourth draft of the night!), and I’ve been struggling to put my finger on my thoughts on Father’s Day as a whole. I guess until I became a dad it was just a day where I bought my own dad some beer and a card, gave him an awkward hug and moved on as quickly as I could. Neither of us seemed to give it any great emotional thought; I guess I was either never taught to, or I didn’t have enough in me each year to push the boat out to something more meaningful. Of course I love my dad, but these types of events feel very transactional and cold in my family, especially when compared with what I witness in my wife’s family.

This year my eldest daughter is three and a half, so probably has more of a notion of what Father’s Day might actually be for the first time. At this moment in time she’ll show me the unadulterated love that one might expect from a three year old, but I guess my feelings on Father’s Day are that to me at least, I just hope my kids don’t end up feeling the same way about the day as I do: a yearly reminder that I have scant emotional connection to their dad. I’ll find it hard to accept the love and gratitude that I know my wife and eldest will show on the day, because it reminds me of the emotional bond that’s missing for me personally.

Thanks for asking me about this; I hadn’t really thought about why I felt so weird about Father’s Day until someone actually asked. That’s one more thing that your post highlighted for me — women and mums are so great at forging these deep, meaningful emotional bonds with each other; I’m very envious of them in fact. I would love to be able to talk on such a level with the other dads that I know, but those kind of connections are so much harder for us to forge, even with someone I’ve known for half my life.