What I Want My Daughter to Know About Women: A Book for Women Written by a Man Who Loved Many

By Bob Mika

What I Want My Daughter to Know about Women by Bob Mika was written from his life's experiences, with his daughter's interests in mind. He wanted to share with her what he has learned from his many relationships, and the meaning of true love.

Bob Mika has always wanted a family, and he spent his entire life looking for that special woman, to have his children and share a life. He has opened his feelings to many women, who in return, left him disappointed. He explains throughout the book what it feels like to be in love, and what are the differences in love and attraction, and why women need to understand that men are not mind readers. What's the purpose of romance is, and why relationships between men and women can be so challenging. He explains how not following your inner self, and later regretting it, can affect your outlook. He talks about your mindset on how you treat others, how the aEURoeaverage man'saEUR biggest problems are with dating, sex, relationships, and marriage. He explains to his daughter the ups and downs of dating, and what to look for in a partner and a relationship, either in herself or her partner. Having that happy feeling of your lifelong dream of becoming a father come true! This story of his life is a captivating story of one man's determination, and his love for his daughter.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Covenant Books, Inc.
• Release date: Aug 5, 2022
• ISBN: 9781644710258

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What I Want My Daughter to Know about Women

A Book for Women Written by a Man Who Loved Many

Bob Mika

ISBN 978-1-64471-024-1 (Paperback)

ISBN 978-1-64471-025-8 (Digital)

Copyright © 2018 Bob Mika

All rights reserved

First Edition

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods without the prior written permission of the publisher. For permission requests, solicit the publisher via the address below.

Covenant Books, Inc.

11661 Hwy 707

Murrells Inlet, SC 29576

www.covenantbooks.com

Introduction

I was fifty-three years old when I was blessed with the birth of my daughter. All my adult life, I have wanted children. She was my first and only child.

She was born while I was married to my fifth wife.

Yes, my fifth wife!

I have been fortunate enough to be married for twenty years and three months, but those years have not all been with the same woman. In addition to my five wives, another twelve women accepted my proposals for marriage. That makes a total of seventeen women who have agreed to spend their lives with me in my sixty-six years on this planet.

I am writing this book so my daughter will know and understand what her father has learned from being married and engaged to seventeen very different and unique women.

All my life, I have been told I was good-looking and very charismatic. I could sell ice cubes to Eskimos! You could say that I used my attributes to my full advantage, both in my personal life and in my professional life.

For eighteen of those years, I lived in California. I started a construction company and development firm that became very successful. I remember going out on a Friday night to a local nightclub, meeting a beautiful woman, dancing with her, and then offering her a glass of wine over some late-night conversation. The conversations usually progressed into the wee hours of the morning.

I would invite her out again to dinner on Saturday night. I would explain that we would be spending the night on my boat off the island of Catalina. I would also explain that there were two bedrooms and two bathrooms onboard the boat. It was merely a dinner date. I would tell her that she could feel completely comfortable with me and that there were no ulterior motives for the evening or the weekend. If she didn’t want to, she didn’t have to.

And I would have honored that.

Except that not once in the many occasions that I made this offer did anyone refuse the invitation to the second date on the boat, and not once during any trip to Catalina did anyone sleep in the other bedroom.

I want my daughter to understand my reasons that I live the way I do. I want her, as she reads this book, to understand my deepest emotions toward women and the respect I have for them, which I think is one of my greatest attractions for them. Any woman who spends time with me knows she will be treated like a queen.

My thirty-seven-year-old niece once asked me, Uncle Bobby, which of the five wives was your favorite?

The quickness of my reply surprised even me. I said, Lisa, my last wife.

Even though our divorce was one of the worst I’ve experienced, it really is true. She wasn’t the great love of my life, but she was indeed my favorite wife. Together we created the loveliest person: our daughter, Mandi. Nothing else that has happened between us is as important as that.

I do not regret my life choices in any way, for I have learned so much and had a great time charting my own path.

Yet for my daughter, I want something much different.

I know I cannot control how she lives her life. If I were to try, it would surely backfire anyway. She’s too much like me! But I feel it best to open my heart and share with her what I’ve learned in the hope that she will find true happiness and a life partner with whom to share life’s joys and sorrows, to grow with, to create a family if she so desires, and to grow old with and share life’s journey.

Both of my sisters are married to the men they lost their virginity to and seem very happy in their marriages. It seems to me they understand what it is I want my daughter to know, how to fall in love and stay in love. But it may be that Mandi’s journey through life will be just a little bit more complex than theirs were.

In that case, I offer what I’ve learned about living a complex, romantic, and adventurous life!

My Background

I was born in Chicago. When I was very young, my parents moved to the suburbs. I have two older sisters, Pattie and Marylyn, and a younger brother, JR. I grew up in a loving home. We lived in a wonderful neighborhood where all the children were allowed to play outside until the streetlights came on or we had to go home for dinner. It was a safe environment in which we lived.

We never wanted for anything. My parents always gave all of us what we needed and what they wanted us to have. Vacations were not out of the country, but they were fantastic, always geared toward us as kids. We had great parents as we were growing up.

My dad, however, was a real product of his time.

He did his best and worked hard for his family. Everything he did was for the betterment of his family. He was very protective of us. He was six feet tall and slim for most of his life. Even with his flaws, he was always there for me. He was my baseball coach. He always bought me what I asked for: a new bike, a go-cart, a rifle—whatever I asked for, I got. I was his favorite child. All of us kids knew that; and I think when we were young, my siblings resented me for that!

My dad worked as a salesman for Motorola Electronics. As I remember it, he was always away on trips to Washington DC. He worked at the Pentagon, selling electronics to the government. Like I said earlier, he worked tirelessly, a trait I learned from him. In his eyes, money was king. The more you had, the more successful you were.

Guess what I tried to do?

Have more money than anyone else.

I soon realized that money was not king for me. Even at the time, it was still true for my dad, though. He was always working hard. I remember he would do taxes for other people at tax time, even though he had a good-paying job. Enough was never quite enough. Both my parents have passed on since then, so I’m not sure, but I believe he had a background in accounting as well as in sales.

In his free time, he would drink and watch TV unless I was asking him to take me somewhere. By the time he died, we were estranged. I didn’t go to his funeral. It was a bad decision; I am truly sorry that I never got a chance to say good-bye to him or make peace with him. That’s one of the only things that I regret in all my life, especially now that I have a daughter. I know I cannot change what happened, which I truly regret.

Like most kids, we were much closer when I was young; and as I grew, I grew away from him. This is something I’m seeing now with my daughter. If I had known then what I know now, I would have put up with the embarrassment of his presence in my teen years. Of course, it’s truly impossible for a teenager to understand something like that.

You just need to learn to live with your decisions and live life the best you can.

My mom was completely different than my dad.

I remember her cooking dinner after we came home from school. She was always there to talk to us and comfort us no matter what the issue. She was our biggest cheerleader. We were very close; and from an early age, I felt very protective of her. She was our cook, house cleaner, driver, and confidante. When any of us had issues, she would be there to help us through the hard times.

When we were young, she would protect me from my dad’s beatings. I was always a bad boy. When he came home from work, I would be beaten. Like I said, he was a product of his times. And I never learned that if I would just stop what I was doing, I would not get beaten. I was young and dumb.

My mom’s dad owned a lumber yard. He was a carpenter from Poland. Even at an early age, I loved working with wood, often making tree houses or ground-based forts. I even made a grotto for my mom’s garden that held a Virgin Mary statue. I grew up Catholic. Mom loved it. I was proud of her pleasure. My mom was the only woman in my life who loved me for who I was and not for who she wanted me to be.

I was an adventurous man from a very young age.

When my older sister was seventeen and going out on dates—I was twelve—she would go out on dates to the roller rink. I would convince my parents to make her take me with her. However, I wasn’t the troublesome little brother you might have expected. Even at that age, I was trying to meet women and girls. I learned how to roller-skate well just so I could skate in competitions. Since I was a very tall young man, I was partnered with a girl three years older than I. She was gorgeous in her short skirt! Even at the age of twelve, I was attracted to women. I was very intelligent but did not have the patience for school. An early age, I was very interested in the opposite sex and the women I could attract.

When I was fifteen, I had a very close friend named Vaughn who went to a different high school. We met while working at a McDonald’s in Arlington Heights, Illinois. He was a year older and had a car his parents bought him. Every weekend we weren’t working, we would go out to the under-twenty-one nightclubs around the area. It was a great time and a great era. The clubs gave younger people someplace to go and meet. There were plenty of women.

Both Vaughn and I were very interested in the girls at these clubs. The girls were all from the area, but almost all of them were from different schools or different towns. The two of us would go out to eat and then go out to the nightclubs. Fortunately, his car had a great backseat! We both could make out with the girls we met each evening.

It seemed so easy. Times were much simpler back then. We’d meet girls on a Friday night who would get in our car and allow us to drive them home. Between the nightclub and where they lived, there always seems to be some place for us to park and make out.

I remember even at that young age that girls were just as interested and curious about sex as we were as boys. But as curious boys, we always wanted to take it a step further. Whether they were more conservative or just afraid of coming across as too easy, it took a very special girl to let you go the distance.

While going to school in the suburbs, I would see the mountains of California in geography class and imagine how wonderful it would be to live with those mountains outside my window. After graduation in 1969, I decided to move to California. I had lived in the Chicago suburbs for eighteen and a half years. California seemed to be heaven on earth. I had the mountains, the beach, and the desert at my fingertips. I didn’t think I would ever leave.

My world came to a crashing halt in 1971 when my mother passed away unexpectedly. I was only twenty years old. It was two weeks after Christmas—January 12, 1971.

My entire family was in LA for Christmas. My parents had moved there for my dad’s new job, and my younger brother lived with them. Both sisters came to LA with their husbands. We celebrated the holidays. Life went on. My mom went for a checkup with her doctor; she got a clean bill of health.

Two days later, after a two-hour-long talk before the two of us called it a night, she went to sleep. At about 6:00 a.m., my dad came into my bedroom and said Mom wasn’t moving.

I ran into their bedroom and found Mom hanging half of her bed—and cold.

Dad was out of it, so I called the police and explained what had happened. They came for the body.

I loved Mom so much. Even though she died when I was twenty and she was fifty-one, I remember feeling as though I lost the love of my life, a woman that I wanted to give a better life to. Since then, I have tried to treat every woman in my life as I would my mom. I always wanted to help them and improve their lives. It didn’t always work out.

After my mom’s death, I found myself estranged from my sisters, brother, and father. Mom was the glue that had held the family together. The rest of us were always at odds with one another. She kept us all together. When she passed, she took the glue with her!

I was always the wild one compared to the others. My life was always unconventional compared to theirs. There was always friction. They all seemed to have normal Midwestern lives. They were married, had children, and seemed quite happy. I, on the other hand, needed to have more: I needed to have it all! What all was, I was never certain of, but I know I wanted it. I started a building and development company and became very successful financially.

Very successful.

I’ve had houses all over the place. Big ones.

One house in Rancho Cucamonga, California, was a house that I built. I took Mandi to see the place when she was ten years old. The people I sold the house to still live there. They allowed me to show her around. She was amazed and asked what I had done alone in the thirteen-thousand-square-foot home, all by myself.

I said, I had a lot of parties.

Many of the houses that I owned, I designed and built myself. I built a house in Steamboat Springs, Colorado, for one of my wives, Diane, based on photographs we took of Victorian-style houses we admired around the area. Other houses were on the boardwalk in Newport Beach or in some of the ritziest neighborhoods of Aspen or in Miami.

I have had numerous Mercedeses, Porches, Rolls-Royces, Ferraris, BMWs, and more.

I have traveled all over the United States on a motorcycle more than once as well as across Canada and up to Alaska. I have been to China, Japan, Australia, New Zealand, Europe, Africa, and the Middle East. I have been to every continent. It’s easier to tell you where I haven’t been than where I have.

You know what? I know one place I’ve never been. I’ve never been to Iceland.

Yet none of those things gave me the feeling that I had accomplished my true goals in life. I have had it all, and lost it all, enough times that I know that things are just that—things! To me, true success means love and family.

With every woman, I shared with her my love of children and my desire to get married and create a family. And yet it’s only been since Mandi’s birth since my dream has come true.

What Is Commitment?

It would be easy to look at a guy like me and judge: What a player! What a womanizer! He must have no respect for women, and he certainly doesn’t care enough about them to commit!

But that couldn’t be further from the truth. I commit too much, too soon!

I remember going to a dinner party with some friends where there were some people who I wasn’t familiar with. As always, the conversation came around to my life. At the time, I had only been married four times.

After many jokes about my marriages, one of the women said, Bob, you having been married four times simply shows that you aren’t afraid of making a commitment to the women you love. You found seventeen women who either married you or said they would. That sounds like you were making a commitment.

It was interesting to hear something like that coming from a woman; and after further discussion, all the women at the party agreed with her.

Commitment is a word I’m very accustomed to using. In contrast, I have many friends who have been dating for seven-plus years without taking on the commitment of marriage. I’m worried about my daughter’s generation too. Will people her age learn to commit to spending the rest of their lives together? Or will they live together forever, never fully promising their lives to each other?

Maybe they will; maybe they won’t. I hope they learn to.

Both parties have to commit. Being cheated on is something I cannot forgive or forget. It means the end of a relationship. Fidelity is very important to me. I never cheated on my wives because of the respect I had for all of them. I am not a religious man, but I believe in God in my own way. Making a commitment is very important to me.

Just like in business, my word was, and is, my honor. I would be on the phone with a subcontractor and discuss the cost of the glass on a high-rise I was building. We might agree on a price of $2.5 million. I would pay him, and he would do the work. Everything was based on our