Big Dad Energy
I’ve always had what people now like to call dad energy, though for most of my life I didn’t have the words for it. All I knew was that certain people treated me like the guy who drives the getaway car, even when I didn’t realize a heist was happening. I was the one who said let’s just start, let’s just go, let’s just figure it out, and then later, inevitably, I was also the one pulling out the card at the end of the night while everyone else did an interpretive dance with their wallets. I’m really tall and pretty big, which didn’t help—when you take up this much physical space in a room, people tend to assume you’ve also got the psychological square footage to back it up. Sometimes I did, sometimes I didn’t, but either way the expectation hung there, like a coat I didn’t remember putting on. It wasn’t something I asked for, and it wasn’t something anyone explained. It was just a subtle vibe that floated around me like a WiFi signal you never signed up for.
The weird thing about vibes is you don’t get to opt out. You can’t exactly announce at a party, “For the record, I am not the responsible one, please direct all emergencies elsewhere.” People don’t work that way. So I tried to make transparency my survival strategy. Say what I meant, do what I said, and try not to overcomplicate the mystery. But the invisible current was always there. Dad energy was like background music you don’t notice until you walk out of the room and realize the silence feels strange. And sometimes it made life complicated. You never really know if someone is talking to you because they like you, or because you seem like the guy who will make sure the check gets paid, or because standing next to you feels like standing next to a bouncer who also knows how to cook breakfast.
And then, eventually, I actually became a dad. Suddenly the metaphor got legs. What had been this vague aura, a set of expectations I never agreed to, clicked into alignment with reality. It was like being handed the script after improvising your whole life. After doing dad things to others, now I am a dad on my own rights. Now when people say I have Big Dad Energy, I nod, because yes, I do. I have the diaper bags, the midnight rocking, the emotional labor of answering a thousand small questions and shooting photos all the time. I also have the corny jokes, the too sincere advice, the quiet pride when I see my kid doing literally anything, including breathing. Everything shifted. The role that used to feel like an accident of physics and personality became something I actually wanted to lean into.
The world responded. Certain women, for instance, are drawn to this. Not in a strange or transactional way, but like how a cat finds the one person in the room who swears they’re not a cat person. They sense the dad energy, the steadiness, and they relax. Some women don’t read this energy as romantic at all. To them it’s just background noise that only gets noticed when it stops. For others it shifts by the day. One moment it feels steady and comforting, the next it’s overbearing. And that’s fine. I’m not writing this to figure women out or to pretend I ever could. I’m just noticing how the same presence can land completely differently, and how the unpredictability of that is almost the point.
It’s so funny and also kind of beautiful, the way people will just generously assume the best of you when you radiate something protective and solid. Suddenly the tall guy who always looked like he could carry the heavy box is also presumed to be patient, decent, trustworthy. Sometimes they’re wrong- I’ve been impatient in checkout lines, I’ve been distracted and careless, but the presumption itself is a bliss. It makes me want to rise to it, even on days when I don’t feel like a capital-D Dad at all.
What’s even better is that this energy has softened the way I see other people too. There’s a generosity built into it, an understanding that everyone is wobbling their way through life, improvising roles they never auditioned for, carrying invisible vibes they can’t quite explain. If my big dad energy can make a room feel safer, or a night feel easier, or a conversation feel like it belongs to both of us, then that’s not a burden, it’s a gift.
I used to think this whole thing was a cosmic joke at my expense, that I got cast as the dad in a drama I didn’t audition for. Now I think maybe it was always supposed to be this way, not because I’m especially wise or good, but because energy is just another word for love that got stuck in traffic. And if I can carry some of that, in my tall, clumsy, fumbling way, then I’m happy to keep paying the check, keep being the steady one, keep wobbling forward into whatever comes next. Because at the end of the night, when all the wallets have gone missing and the room starts to thin out, someone has to stand up, smile, and say: I’ve got this.
And honestly, I don’t mind that it’s me.
