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My Father Forced Me To Date
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Hello, this is Olivia. She’s 17 now, and a year ago, her father tried to force her into dating a boy. How could something like this happen in the 21st century? Listen to her story and find out. Her father was a businessman, and he usually spent most of his time either doing his job or thinking about it. He wasn’t a bad father, just…a busy one. He was passionate about his job, which allowed his family to live comfortably and to have everything they needed or wanted.
Olivia’s father was quite old-school in his views on family roles, so his mother was a classic housewife, who’s only job was to keep their house in order and cook their meals. In fact, she didn’t really need to do that, because they were always able to afford hired help, but her mother insisted. And her father was happy with that, because everything was, as he used to say, “as it should be”.
Olivia was, of course, extremely grateful to him for everything that he did, and understood that they wouldn’t be able to live as well without him. So of course, she always tried to give something back, by helping her mother for example. She also wanted to become successful in her own right, like by being a good student, rather than just be a lazy person who lives off her parents’ money.
Her father had a friend who was in the same line of business as he was, and while they weren’t openly competing, it was clear that there was an unspoken rivalry between them.
Her dad didn’t like that, and wanted to somehow unite both businesses, but it proved to be a difficult task, because his friend didn’t really want to work together. So her father had an “ingenious” idea: if Olivia married his friend’s son, Stanley, then all of them would become one big family, and Stanley could become the boss for both companies and unite them. The whole thing sounded insane, especially the fact that her father assumed that she couldn’t one day become a businesswoman herself simply because she was a girl.
Instead, he would constantly talk about how wonderful Stanley was – he was an athlete, a straight A student, with a great sense of humor.
It was extremely awkward – and for Stanley, too. He was a great guy, but she wasn’t interested in him, and he wasn’t interested in her. In a way, they understood each other because they both didn’t like each other in that way.
After he tried to bring them together a few times and failed, she thought he would calm down, but no. He was a businessman, and he didn’t like to accept failure, so he started to talk about it with her mom, so that she would try to persuade her that it was a good idea.
She tried to explain to them that it just didn’t work like that – it wasn’t just that she didn’t want to date Stanley, he wasn’t too keen on the idea either. Besides, Olivia didn’t even know what his father thought about all of it, or whether he noticed it at all.
During the summer, her dad prepared his final plan. He bought them all tickets for a holiday at a prestigious resort, and then he was like “oh, a lot of work has piled up, but we can’t waste the ticket, so let’s invite Stanley instead!”
He probably thought that a resort would create a romantic situation, and they would suddenly fall in love, like in romantic comedies. By now Olivia was fed up with it all, and she decided to talk with Stanley. He said he didn’t even want to go to the resort and he had recently found a girlfriend, so all of it was just weird.
All of this sounds very bizarre and even insane, right? Well, her dad had always been a bit eccentric, but this – this was just crazy!
Stanley said that if she was bothered by it, he could talk with his father and tell him what was happening. She wasn’t sure that she wanted to ruin her dad’s friendship that could yet lead to the partnership he wanted, so she said no, let’s not do that just yet.
Instead, she told her dad that she didn’t want to go to a resort and that she would rather spend her summer working. She explained to him that she wanted to become successful, and she was ready to work for it. She wanted to prove to him that he didn’t need this partnership or Stanley to make his business more successful, because she would work hard to help him herself in the future, and getting a job now would be the first step towards that.
He was furious. He accused her of trying to ruin everything, and that his plans would make them richer than ever. At that point Olivia gave up on trying to persuade her father round to her point of view, and she exclaimed angrily: “I’m not a tool for your business, I’m a person!”
They went to the resort, and she started working. Olivia no longer cares if her parents continue to act that way. If she needs to work while studying at university, she’s confident that she’ll be able to do it. It’s better to live by your own rules and have a hard life than be someone else’s tool for making money.
