You Are Her First Love

Thomas Aquinas regarded love as the root of all other passions - hate, jealousy, and fear - and when I talk to daughters about their fathers, the conversations are almost always emotionally charged.  They adore their fathers or hate them - sometimes they do both simultaneously.  Your daughter yearns to secure your love, and throughout her life she'll need you to prove it.

A daughter identifies easily with her mother, but you are a mystery to her.  you are her first love, so the early years of your relationship with her a crucial.  The love you give her is her starting point.  You have other loves in your life, but she doesn't.  Every man who enters her life will be compared to you;  every relationship she has with a man will be filtered through her relationship with you.  If you have a good relationship, she will choose boyfriends who will treat her well.  If she sees you as open and warm, she'll be confident with other men.  If you are cold and unaffectionate, she'll find it hard to express love in a healthy way.

When your daughter was born, oxygen was forced into her lungs so she could breathe.  So too must love be pressed into her being if she is to grow into an emotionally sound woman.

You will naturally feel love toward your daughter - especially in those first years of life - but that doesn't guarantee she feels loved by you.  Daughters' reactions to  words, actions, and situations are more complex, reflective, and diverse than those of fathers.  She will read a litany of possible meanings into every thing you do.  When you you buy your daughter a bracelet for her birthday, you'll think of it as a straightforward gift.  But she will think of it as fraught with meaning, good or bad.