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content/posts/fatherhood.md

@@ -10,7 +10,7 @@ description = "My daughter is teaching me to love myself, bit by bit."
 
 I've recently noticed that a substantial quantity of my negative thought patterns have changed rather significantly. This is despite a drastic increase in my work stress. I don't believe any choice or life change is a silver bullet for "fixing" your internal world, but I do think that the self-discovery and self-improvement I did prior to having my daughter[^1] has tangibly changed my perspective of the world since her birth, and I do not believe this side effect of fatherhood is unique to me. My primary goal around this post is to discuss how I've previously dealt with negative situations or thought patterns and how a lot of those have seriously minimized or outright vanished now that I'm a father. **Again**, I am not claiming that this is the only reason I've changed; however, this feels like one of the most significant inflection points in my life, and I wasn't expecting that to be the case. At least, not in this manner or to this degree.
 
-As you grow up in a male body[^2], you gain a certain understanding of how fatherhood specifically might affect a person. For me, this started off as a feeling that fatherhood is when your life ends. This is in part related to [The Trauma](#the-trauma):tm:, but AMAB's[^3] are taught from a young age to feel contradictory things about marriage and fatherhood. On one hand, these are the ultimate goal for **all men**. On the other, they are chains that tie you down and are to be avoided. Yet, when there's an older man who hasn't "settled down," it's viewed as a moral failing. "His mother should have raised him differently," or "his father wasn't strict enough with him," for example. Culturally, American content made *"for the guys"* was[^4] a mixture of *"women bad or annoying"* comedy and *"[don't get] chained down by a family"* stories focused on young boys/men in some sort of action world or a man *"in a rut"* because of his *"stupid family."* Around middle school, I started being interested in girls[^5], but still had an aversion to the concept of marriage or fatherhood because of the media I was exposed to. In high school, this hadn't really changed, but I began having an awareness of [The Trauma](#the-trauma):tm: in that I understood the extent to which a bad marriage could compromise the quality of a person’s life. This compounded the aversion I had to these major commitments. Between societal norms and the innate fear I have from [The Trauma](#the-trauma):tm:, locking myself into lifelong contracts did not sound appealing. This made the decision for both marriage, and *eventually* fatherhood, very difficult to work through. Here's a few of the thoughts I had during both decisions:
+As you grow up in a male body[^2], you gain a certain understanding of how fatherhood specifically might affect a person. For me, this started off as a feeling that fatherhood is when your life ends. This is in part related to [The Trauma](#the-trauma):tm:, but AMAB's[^3] are taught from a young age to feel contradictory things about marriage and fatherhood. On one hand, these are the ultimate goal for **all men**. On the other, they are chains that tie you down and are to be avoided. Yet, when there's an older man who hasn't "settled down," it's viewed as a moral failing. "*His mother should have raised him differently*," or "*his father wasn't strict enough with him*," for example. Culturally, American content made *"for the guys"* was[^4] a mixture of *"women bad or annoying"* comedy and *"[don't get] chained down by a family"* stories focused on young boys/men in some sort of action world or a man *"in a rut"* because of his *"stupid family."* Around middle school, I started being interested in girls[^5], but still had an aversion to the concept of marriage or fatherhood because of the media I was exposed to. In high school, this hadn't really changed, but I began having an awareness of [The Trauma](#the-trauma):tm: in that I understood the extent to which a bad marriage could compromise the quality of a person’s life. This compounded the aversion I had to these major commitments. Between societal norms and the innate fear I have from [The Trauma](#the-trauma):tm:, locking myself into lifelong contracts did not sound appealing. This made the decision for both marriage, and *eventually* fatherhood, very difficult to work through. Here's a few of the thoughts I had during both decisions:
 
 1. Do I even want this?
 2. Do I want this because *I* want this or because I was raised to want this by society?