Very well written. Thanks for sharing your memories with a wide audience, Danika.

The shadow side of this essay could be named “uninvolved father” issues that explain such naivete — in an adult — about predatory males and predatory opportunists, and such a stunning disinterest in self-preservation. It is a cultural problem, not just an individual or even remotely uncommon problem. (The voice of the father is somehow out of fashion, we don’t listen to it, or there is no one to listen to, or the father has no guts to speak the truth — it is a combination of all those things, in the mildest scenario.) Maybe it is easy to blame a parent for not preparing his daughter for reality, or for a much more complex world than he lived in— but for the fathers of daughters in 2019, your writing is a good reminder at which topic to not zone out, but offer clarity instead.

Your intuition (gut) had to make up for the deficits in your perception and deficits in self-love and helped you to come out of the encounters fairly unharmed. You noticed it. Please cherish it.