Father’s are a daughter first love. The first man who shows you by example this is what she can come to expect from someone. These are the lengths someone is willing to go for you. This is exactly how you deserve to be loved and to never tolerate anything less.

Father’s play a vital role in their daughter’s life understanding that when she grows up she’s going to come across people who will disrespect her, who won’t treat her the best, who hurt her and break her heart. But knowing it’ll never be him who does that.

She’ll come home one day crying at 17 over the boy she gave her heart to and all he did was use her. As a father, his heart breaks watching this young woman hurt because of someone else. Wishes and praying she saw herself through his eyes. Because then she’d see herself as truly the most beautiful girl there is.

Father’s teach daughters about self-respect. About self-love. What love really means and that it’s not pain or someone talking down to you. She grows up and while these expectations he has set for her sometimes feel few and far between with men that still act as boys, she knows there is at least one person who consistently loves, respects her and treats her well.

From pulling out her chair to opening her door to never paying in his presence. Respecting her thoughts and her opinions and her goals and ambitions. Believing in her more than anyone else even if he’s the only one to do so.

Giving him her time and attention if he’s busy, she comes first.

Worshipping the ground she walks on and doing everything he possibly can to make her happy and her life better and easier.

Loving her every single day of her life and reminding her that’s what she deserves.

Pushing her to learn and grow and become the best version of herself.

And in return, she adores him more than any man she will ever meet.

How a father treats her becomes the standard for what she expects of others.

She then enters the world of dating and every father is going to say no matter who she ends up with he’ll never be good enough.

But it’s him she’s looking for in all of them. Bits and pieces of someone who reminds her of her father is who she’ll fall for. Because when you have someone who is the greatest person you know, someone who has treated you well your whole life, someone who has defended you and protected you and taken care of you and has loved you unconditionally no matter what you might have done wrong, that’s what you expect of everyone else. But you know how rare it is.

You expect someone’s best. And you learn to walk away when someone doesn’t give that to you.

Because the greatest sign of a respect a daughter can have towards her father is ending up with someone who is half the man he is. Someone she’s proud to introduce to him. Someone who can live in his shadow. Someone, he can give her away to and know she’ll be okay.

Father’s set the standard for what she’ll come to expect and she’ll spend the rest of her life trying to find a man who can love her at that length.

Knowing very well whoever she gives her heart to it’s her father she loved first.