When I was a senior in high school, I had a life-altering experience. My father, whose been married to my mother for around 25 years, cheated on my mother. I am no longer afraid to tell people that fact simply because that experienced turned both my and my father’s life around.

My father had felt inadequate and as if he was no longer the subject of admiration from his wife. In an effort to feel loved, my father found a woman who did admire him. Little did my father know that it was not my mother who no longer admired him, it was himself. He no longer liked the man he had become. My mother still admired and loved him but she had gotten comfortable enough in the relationship to feel as if he knew that she admired him and she quit telling him. He needed reassurance that he was good enough but it never came.

However, the fact of the matter is: a cheating man is inadequate. He did something wrong for horrible reasons. My father had no self-esteem. He was subject to his failures, and not his accomplishments. It is human nature to pay more attention to the flaws in oneself and not the things that are truly great about you. I believe this is so because inadequacy is innately unacceptable. People, as a whole, are focused on inadequacy because all inadequacy is a fault, and by nature of being a person, we seek to remedy these faults. This fact made me realize something: all faults can be remedied. There is nothing outside of anybody’s ability. If I feel as if I am performing badly, it is entirely within my power to change my performance. There has never been an adversity that cannot be overcome and those who make a habit out of overcoming these adversities are those who truly succeed.


My father soon after came to the same realization. He was a man who was in need of work. My father had to come to terms with his inadequacy and ultimately, overcome it. He was not a man deserving of my mother but he was not going to allow it to remain that way. He worked through his problems and won the woman of his dreams back. He succeeded in a seemingly impossible task: winning back the heart of a woman whose heart has been crushed.