The Father-Daughter Thing...

It was recently pointed out to me by Adrian that I am all but a little girl deep down inside.

I need constant strokes, I need to be to be praised and if I don't get either of these things, I quickly gravitate towards a sharp decline.

It all stems from the relationship I had with my father as a little girl.

I was studious and rather serious little girl who loved to escape into a land of make-believe. Short in the self-confidence stakes, I made up for it by working hard at school in a desperate attempt to make my Dad proud of me.

My Dad. He was to me the most wonderful man that could possibly have ever walked the earth. Everything he said was somehow gilded with brilliance, I adored him. It seemed my raison d'etre was to make him proud of me or perhaps in retrospect, to hear him tell me how proud of me he was.

There's a line in the film Dirty Dancing where Baby talks about every girl wanting to meet a man who made her feel as special as her Dad did. For me that was never going to be possible because no man would ever do that. He was the most unique and special of men; he was my Dad.

Of course it wasn't until I got into my thirties that I realised that cracking a half-way decent gag would get you through most trials in life. Being studious was rather hard-going compared to piling on the lip gloss and propelling yourself into the middle of the room as the life-and-soul...

But some things stay with you. The need to impress, the need to have someone pat you on the head and tell you how brilliant, how creative, how funny you are.

In my marriages I was never made to feel that special because it became a competition all to quickly. I was projecting myself as the capable independent woman, they were busy at being the alpha male. I was screaming "look at me! See how capable and fabulous I am! Love me more because of it!" Not what your typical alpha male is hoping for; it's hard to bring anything to the table that a would-be Superwoman might be even vaguely interested in.

See how this happens? The little shy girl who only wanted her daddy's attention became so driven that she managed to become the one thing men don't want if they are absolutely honest; a woman who doesn't "need" them.

In many ways I have to thank him, my Dad. How else would I have coped all these years?

Bizarrely my Mum worries herself to sleep at night that life will eventually get the better of me unless a man steps in to save the day. She seriously underestimates the effect a constant desire for paternal approval has on a girl in the long-term.

Today I see my Dad for who he is; a man with faults like the rest of us, but a rather remarkable person all the same.

He is older, greyer and he tires easily, but that never stops him from loading his petrol-driven lawnmower into the back of his car on the hottest of days and driving round to cut my rather substantial lawn. He asks with remarkable regularity how my business is performing, have I "got much on"? And my son looks at him with the same adoring gaze that I had all those years ago.

You can't beat the father-daughter thing; it's unbreakable.