Life Story: My Daddy Issues And My Sugar Daddies

I remember the image of his disappearing frame vividly. I have had many dreams and nightmares about that image. In the most recurring nightmare, he grows angels’ wings and flies into the horizon.

 I had stood by our window and watched him walk away that evening without a clue that I wouldn’t see him again in decades.

At first when he didn’t come back, my mother panicked. She went to the police who opened an investigation. Then through my father’s siblings and parents, they pieced together the story of how he carefully planned his exit from me and my mother. He was sojourning on the Sahara Desert, Europe bound. He went with two of his brothers, both unmarried.

I really don’t know if my mother was just infuriated or heartbroken, but the mention of my daddy became a taboo in our household. I couldn’t see him, I couldn’t talk about him. A void began to form in my heart, and the older I got, the wider the void became. My mother did well by me, she saw to it that I was comfortable and well educated, and yet for some reason she wasn’t enough. I wanted my Daddy.

I remember my first sugar daddy. He was a timber merchant, thirty years older than me. I was flattered by his attention. He called me beautiful and all other kinds of pretty things. I am not about to write any lies and say I didn’t catch on to his intentions, I knew exactly what I was getting into. He showered me with gifts and money. And in return he took my body, in hotel rooms, in his matrimonial bed, in his friends’ houses. Never mind that he had daughters my age and a wife. He was my zaddy! I didn’t care much for the intercourse as much as I did being close to him, hugging him, kissing him, listening to him talk and watching the look of ecstasy on his face every time  we were intimate. He wasn’t very educated, so when I went to the University, he became insecure and began abusing me. I eventually left him for a lecturer.

No, I did not date the lecturer for grades. I didn’t take any of his classes. I had a relationship with him because I wanted to. He met my criteria, old, distinguished, fun and sexually attractive. He provided emotional security for me. I felt safe with him, he almost filled the void created by my daddy’s absence, but not quite. I liked being with him, he was a gentleman, and we had a good relationship. I loved talking with him, and stealing date nights at a pizza joint with red wine and live music. All was fun until his wife found out, she threatened me with a deity from her hometown.

Now listen, I wasn’t about to die for no man, okay, so I moved on.

On to a Lieutenant Colonel, a banker, a doctor, a businessman…

The youngest person I’ve ever had a relationship with has been eighteen years my senior. And the age difference always dictated a power imbalance, I was always the underdog, at these men’s mercy. But my daddy issues had me looking at that with admiration, I idolized these men in unhealthy ways, and as soon as one ended, I went on the prowl for another.

I craved sex with my sugar daddies. A lot of sex. I believed sex was the only way I could keep them interested in me, enough to not abandon me.

My Lieutenant Colonel left me without reason, and I had a mental breakdown. I was diagnosed with severe anxiety and depression. It was during my treatment sessions that the therapist requested joint sessions with my mother. And it was at these joint sessions that I began to learn about my father, why he’d left and where he was. His journey to Europe failed, so he ended up creating a life in Nigeria, with another woman.

My therapist says I have daddy issues. She thinks in order to deal with my father’s abandonment, my brain recreated a non-existent reality of a perfect man who could be so good to me, who would never leave and always protect me. And with that wiring came my appetite for older men, because they fit the profile my brain created.

I eventually saw my father again at age thirty-two, twenty two years after he went for a ‘walk’ that fateful evening. He is trying, he puts effort into forming a relationship with me. We’ve talked a ton and apologies have been rendered. But really what can he teach me now, what can he give me? I have been sexually involved with men older and more powerful than him. What else is there for me and my daddy?