As an adult being a father made more sense to me than anything else

Growing up I thought that life was miserable and boring. When I observed the adults especially men in the 1950s. I did not want to be as miserable as they were. This I knew for sure because I knew I likely wouldn't choose to stay alive in a world like that.

However, becoming a father for the first time in 1974 changed all that for me. I never found marriage to be the best thing as in reality as an institution it is always at best a compromise. But, that compromise allowed me to be a father and so I tolerated it for this reason mostly. Otherwise I likely would have never married and had sequential monogamous relationships throughout my life.

So, actually becoming a father was one of the best things that happened to me because I needed to be responsible for someone other than myself because on one level whether I lived or died (at least from 18 to 25) was always at best optional to me.

So, in becoming a father I needed to come in and buckle down and get jobs and start businesses in order to support my family. This made me less self centered and turned me into an actual family man.

But, it's also true that though becoming a family man actually saved my life in many ways, it also is a lonely road as well. I have never thought that meeting other couples for friendship is a fun thing to do. Mainly because getting any 4 people to agree on anything is sort of ridiculous in the first place. And so contemplating this never made sense to me. I have always been a very individualistic and independent thinker, and outside of being a father I'm usually not much of a team player in this sense.

However, I'm very good at succeeding if left to my own devices but I would likely not choose to live anymore if forced to live by working at a factory or large company if I wasn't the president of that company. However, I'm totally suited to being a small business owner just like my forebears going back hundreds of years.

The point here being that for me, becoming a father was the best thing that ever happened to me, being married is okay if it serves being a good father. And starting businesses is enjoyable if you have someone you care about enough to want to financially support them so they can grow up and have their own lives too.

So, for me, at least, owning businesses was completely caused by becoming a father in the first place. Because once you have a child or children then you have to find some way to support them that you can stand so you can survive while raising your children.