Five years ago I felt like a failure as a dad, now I’m sharing with other men how to love their children

‘I was basing my feelings about being a dad on the experience that I’d had’: Marvyn Harrison with
Blake and Ocean. Photograph: Suki Dhanda/The Observer

It was on Father’s Day, five years ago, that Marvyn Harrison sent a heartfelt message to his friends that would change his life for ever. Back then, his son was three and his daughter was six months old. And he couldn’t seem to help feeling constantly like a fake, an impostor. “I felt like I was being fraudulent,” he says.

He was going through the motions of being a loving dad and a supportive husband, without feeling the intense emotional bond with his children he had always expected to feel. Looking back now, he says, “I didn’t understand how to connect deeper.”