via Dr. Kelly Flanagan @ drkellyflanagan.com

Dear Little One,

Recently, your mother and I were searching the internet, and Google returned a list of the most popular searches in the world. Perched at the top was “How to keep him interested.” It startled me. I scanned several of the countless articles about how to be sexy, when to bring him a beer versus a sandwich, and the ways to make him feel smart and superior. And I got angry.

Little One, it is not, has never been, and never will be your job to “keep him interested.”

Little One, your only task is to know deeply in your soul — in that unshakable place that isn’t rattled by rejection and loss and ego — that you are worthy of interest. (If you can remember that everyone else is worthy of interest also, the battle of your life will be mostly won. But that is a letter for another day.)

If you can trust your worth in this way, you will be attractive in the most important sense of the word: You will attract a boy who is both capable of interest and who wants to spend his one life investing all his interest in you.

Little One, I want to tell you about the boy who doesn’t need to be kept interested, because he knows you are interesting. I don’t care if he puts his elbows on the table — as long as he puts his eyes on the way your nose scrunches when you smile, and then can’t stop looking.

I don’t care if he can’t play a bit of golf with me — as long as he can play with the children you give him and revel in all the glorious and frustrating ways they are just like you.

I couldn’t care less how he votes — as long as he wakes up every morning and daily elects you to a place of honor in your home and a place of reverence in his heart.

In the end Little One, if you stumble across a man like that, and he and I have nothing else in common, we will have the most important thing in common: you.

Your eternally interested guy,

Daddy