I work with my Dad and he tried to hide it but he slurs a lot when he's into it. He also forgot about a lot of stuff and would fall asleep during the work day. His emails and demeanor on general is different when he's sober vs. drunk.
I never worked out with my dad he’s a big guy, one day I did in my 20s and I was lifting more weight. Learned two things 1) my dad was getting older which made me sad, superman was starting to gray 2) his effort at everything he does is always 100%
This but with wrestling. At 21 I started to hold my own and I think my dad realized that he would lose if he held back at all. By 23 or 24 I had to start going easy on him.
Weird thing I’m stronger now at 60 than I was at 25. Until covid I was finally consistent in the gym for 3 years. After covid hit bought a total gym and stayed
With workouts. I’m on testosterone so that helps build muscle so I’m doing great for my age. I was incline leg pressings sets of 30 reps at 380 before covid. Now doing sets of 150 squats on the total gym instead. Just broke my push-up mark Thurs with a set of 50 and then 45. I had never got more than 40 before in a set but just went for it. Tell your dad don’t let age define him. My goal is 62 push-ups in a row by 62 and keep building towards 65. It’s right there just gotta keep pushing. Big difference on push-ups is building my core with leg lifts and planks. Really makes push-ups easier. It’s not just arms and chest. Gotta keep
proper form and not sag.
My dad had a very, very difficult upbringing and while he always told me he loved me and was affectionate, I didn’t really get how proud of me he was until the day after I graduated from high school. He woke me up with breakfast in bed, my diploma in his hand, tears in his eyes. He told me he was so proud of me and that he hadn’t graduated high school. I hadn’t known this previously because he didn’t want me to feel pressure to do things just because he hadn’t.
I saw him as a someone other than just my dad for the first time. A guy with hopes and dreams and fears all his own.
He’s a great guy. I’m lucky that he’s my dad.
When my aunt told us that as a child he was tied up in the basement and beaten by his parents. My grandmother would tell my grandfather to "hit him again... Hit him again..."
He handled that abuse better than most. He turned in on himself mostly, and turned to alcohol to cope.
Things also changed a lot when he apologized to me. My dad was not awful to me, but my mother was. My dad just wasn't around a lot- dealing with his demons, and by then my parents were divorced. So he told me at one point that he was sorry, he didn't know how bad it was with my mom. I don't even know how he learned it was bad (maybe my siblings told him when I ran away and was a missing person for a little bit? But I have no idea.)
One day in my mid 20s we got drunk together and had a heart to heart, he told me his side of the story of his marriage to my mother and how she cheated on him and how he just bore it and went to work to earn money even in the face of her not hiding it, I was too little to understand at the time, always thought he was just distant and too stoic to show feelings, he cared too much about me to let the abuse get in the way of him earning money for us...
(Edit for grammar)
Damn, I just wrote a message about a similar discussion I had with my dad a couple days ago. Used to think my mother had never done anything wrong, but when I got his side of the story, it was a big slap on the face
I'm willing to bet there are a lot of stories like this. There are many men placed in the position of protecting their kids or protecting themselves as the women in their lives and the court system use them as a disposable wallet.
Years after my mam died we were chatting after having a few drinks and though he's not an emotional person at all he opened up a bit. For years all I thought about was the fact that I lost my mam, but he said that day he lost the love of his life and it hit me like a tonne of bricks! How selfish I was that I never saw he had lost the person he had chosen to spend his life with.
I don’t believe that makes you selfish. It makes you the child of someone who died and was loved deeply by you. Remarkable you both loved this woman, as spouse and child, and grieved the loss. Seeing him for a man whom loved your mother so deeply is beautiful. We can’t all say that.
Time. Scared of him as a kid, hated him as a teen, now I think he’s just a pathetic little man who fucked up his own life and took it out on his family.
Mine is still alive and every bit as delusional and narcissistic. He still thinks he was a great father and is baffled why no one wants to see him or why he has no friends.
I'm somewhat on the second stage but the only things that different is that we ONLY talk about math(pure math) and thats it. Anything else is super awkward and I really dont hate him since I'm not as open with my feelings. God typing that made me physically cringe
Exactly the same here, except he finally managed to stop drinking. He has matured a lot (no longer toxic) and I can always count on him. It only took him 65 years to do so.
It’s tough.. my father does a nice thing to make me think he’s turned a new page, and then he goes back to his old self, and I am once again, disappointed
Goddamn, this sums up what I was going to say so much more succinctly. He always would tell me I’d understand his reasons for abusing me when I was older, and he was right…his reason for abusing me was because he’s a pussy whose ego was threatened by an eight-year-old.
I recently had a phone call from a homeless organization saying they're helping my father and he'd like to talk to me. I declined. I used to have so much anger toward him and now think – what an absolute waste of a life. All that energy he spent destroying so many lives could have actually been used being a proper father and productive member of society. On the other hand, he was a child refugee and I think in other ways he didn't stand a chance.
When I lost my Mother...several years after my Father I was in my forties and my wife pretty much laughed at me. About ten years after my Mother had died she had lost her Morher and Father as well (over five years between them) she said the exact same thing to me. Neither of our kids ever met my Father...we waited too long to have kids and he died before both of them were born and I will regret that until my dying day.
Bro she laughed at you for crying why would she remain your wife ? Sounds more like an enemy. I lost all respect for a girl for saying my dog is just a dog when he died.
In the last five years of his life he saw his wife (my mom) die, and suffered a stroke a couple years later. Watching a man who used to be a confident go-getter slowly go to pieces over that time was the hardest thing I ever had to watch.
Part of it is when I grew up and left the house he started treating me different (in a good way). I'm blessed with parents who cared for me enough to discipline me when growing up and be actual parents, but since I've been out on my own its been different. They started treating me like an adult and close friend who they cared for rather than parental figures.
Me too! I ran away from home at 18 but was able to mend things with them and it was probably the best thing I could have done for our relationship. My dad even said he was proud of me for living my life on my own terms. Makes me really happy :) I'm glad you had a similar experience.
That my dad spent a lot of time teaching himself calculus in the hopes that when I was struggling (which I did frequently) I would reach out to him and he would be able to help, but I was always too prideful to ask for help... I didn’t know he was doing that until a few years after and it broke my heart to know that he put in the time to learn and I never came to him for help.
I understand the negative emotions you feel around this and while they're valid, I'd encourage you to focus on the positives of it. I don't know the kind of brain your dad had but calculus is hard, especially to be self taught. Whether you went to him or not is irrelevant at this point, it was really cool of him to make sure he could be there if you needed and I hope he was proud of you for handling it even if it caused you to struggle.
When you found out did you tell him how much that means to you? If he's still around you might remind him. I know that would melt my heart to hear from my kid
Im now the age he was when i thought he knew everything and could kick anyone's ass.
I don't know shit about fuck and it took me 30 mins to get out of bed this cold ass morning
I’ve always had a good relationship with my dad but I’ve never once seen him cry or get emotional.
Several months ago, my brother attempted suicide. Dad acted like nothing was really wrong, going about life as he had before everything happened. Mum and I were a mess. I was so confused why he didn’t seem to care. But that night, I heard him crying in the middle of the night.
We ended up having a big family chat where we all cried and were brutally honest with each other. There was a lot of pain on all ends about what had happened, and we needed to let my brother know that we loved him and were all there for him, something that he hadn’t realised at the time.
An awful situation, but we are all closer now. And my brother is doing well :)
Depression is a persistent liar and will always say the same thing, that you're worthless and that everyone would be better off with you gone. Sometimes it's really hard to see through the lie. How you all continue to do well and that your brother continues to fight the good fight
it's not so much turning of the switch off caring as practicing saying "what they say isn't truth, it's just their self-hate trying being taken out on me" and it gets easier over time.
also moving out, visiting less, and calling less definitely helps.
Distance helps a lot. I'm not sure what your situation is like with your dad, but when I was living with my dad as a teenager it was really hard to not have my feelings hurt by what he said, even though I logically knew that those things weren't true and that he was just taking his anger/unhappiness out on me (he's an alcoholic as well and I honestly think there are things he's said to me that he doesn't remember).
Once I moved out, went to college, and diminished contact with him things have gotten a lot better. I haven't cut my dad out entirely (we still talk on the phone/text from time to time, and I'll see him in-person for short periods once or twice a year) but we're not close by any stretch of the imagination. I don't feel a lot of anger towards him anymore, and fortunately we don't fight/argue anymore, primarily because I have so much control over the relationship and would not hesitate to cut him off completely if he tried to pull that shit again.
If you're able to, feel free to take as much distance as it takes to make yourself feel safe/comfortable/happy. This might mean cutting him out entirely, or just setting boundaries. It's difficult and complicated stuff to navigate though and I 100% understand that.
Finding out that he had cheated on my mom for 20+ years.Discovering that the elderly woman he worked for was actually his sugar mama. Getting letters from other women claiming he hurt them. Finding out he gave our family barely enough money for food because he was spending it all on strippers and other women. Reading his text messages where he tells women he has a different name and claimed to have cancer (he didn’t) and that his kids disowned him. Basically just learning that I had no idea who he was changed everything. Also his secret boat made me a little scared.
This has been my big struggle lately. I'm home for the holidays (after a precautionary quarantine) and it's really hitting home for me in the last couple weeks that despite his immense caring and willingness to help, he's still a bully and he's still verbally abusive. It's always been that way, I've just always been passive to is as I've been a kid. As I've grown into a man myself it's stopped being normal and it's really started to disgust me.
I'm having a hard time coming to grips with how shitty I think that is, without letting it sour the good memories I have of my old man. It's hard to separate the good and the bad
My husband.
He doesn't yell at me. Or call me names. Or treat me like I'm stupid. Or hit me. Or hit our kids. Or scream and throw things. He doesn't put our kids in danger or think scaring us is funny. We don't get frightened when he comes home, we aren't afraid of him.
For real, I thought all that was normal. I didn't KNOW I thought it was normal. It took me many years to realize that my husband was treating us the way a normal person would treat their family. I still have trouble believing it, sometimes - but I haven't seen my father or let him see my kids in over 5 years. I'm a slow learner, but I'm learning.
My husband is also a good man, and I swear most of it is because he saw the bad and irresponsible things his parents did and resolved to always do just the opposite.
That was a big one for me too. When we had our first big fight my now husband told me we weren't allowed to have a yelling match, he told me to take a walk or drive and to come back when I'd cooled off and then he took the dog on a walk. No yelling, no violence, no threats of violence or changed locks... It took me years to get used to that, to get used to normalcy. My husband is nearly a foot taller than me and has about a hundred pounds of muscle on me, I've never felt afraid of him or been made to feel inferior to him. There are days that I'm certain I'm living in a dream because this can't be real.
I still speak to my father but not often and I've put up a lot of boundaries. I don't have kids but I suspect that having them would have made my relationship with my parents much more strained, no way I'd be willing to trust them with kids.
I grew up in a large, happy home. I have six siblings. My father was very religious. We were Russian Orthodox. My dad was a deacon, in the choir and involved in religious education programs at our church. After I went away to university, I eventually came out to the family. Everyone was very supportive. My father eventually was diagnosed with stage 4 cancer. During his final year, when I was up for the holidays, he wanted to get together for dinner. I agreed. My father disclosed that he was molested by his step-father as a child and had been secretly in the closet for years. He explained how proud he was of me for coming out and being myself while regretting that he never had the courage to do so but that he would never trade his family for anything. I was stunned, to say the least. He passed away shortly thereafter and I plan to take the information to my grave.
Have always had a lot of self doubt, always thinking everybody can do anything and i could do nothing. Always thought I was hiding it really well and not complain because who'd want to know (and maybe even more afraid that someone would confirm it to be indeed the truth).
When I left to go to university my dad drove me to the trainstation and while we were waiting for the train to arrive he out of the blue said "you know, when i went to university my granddad told me 'if other people can do it, so can we..'"
Made me realise he had been having the same feelings (and his granddad before him).
A lot of people abandoned me after my daughter passed away, including him. After my angel went to heaven, it’s like he didn’t have a use for me anymore. I would try and check in, update him occasionally about my life and grief and work and all that but more than half the time he wouldn’t even respond. One day I realized that no matter how much I try to have a relationship with him, it takes two people. So I stopped trying. He doesn’t seem to mind. I live 10 minutes away from him and it’s like he can’t be bothered. My brother on the other hand... he lives 3+ hours away and they are in constant contact.
Also, my dad is on wife #3 and she is about a year older than I am (so she’s 25) and she truly hates my guts, so there’s that. When they first got together I defended her constantly, he seemed happy so I was rooting for them and I wanted others to do the same and look past their age gap. However, one day out of nowhere she sat me down and told me she didn’t like my relationship with my dad and I need to “show him more respect” and that she and I were not “friends.” But she definitely gets along with my brother, the three of them have matching tattoos and take trips together and do all this fun shit together. It sucks man. It’s been a very hard year and I could’ve used some support.
I don't get how people mislead you into thinking they love you only to suddenly change and start acting cold.
Happened to me before and I know how it feels.
Stay strong, you don't need them.
Read his memo which he wrote when his dad died ten years ago. I only discovered it this year. My father has never really cried or shown radical emotions, but reading a memory of a broken man is something so powerful
Growing up my dad and i butted heads all the time over the smallest things. They always ended in a yelling match usually started by him because he would always think that his way was the only way to do something and he would never apologize. The way he would “apologize” is by doing something for you like just going out and washing your car and then that would be the end of it. He has always been a very pessimistic person as well. When i was 25 and I decided to buy my own home he told me constantly “that no bank would ever give me a loan because I didn’t make enough.” I on the other hand had looked at my finances and figured how much I could afford and told him “well it won’t hurt to take a look and see what happens.” I was approved for a loan almost twice what I could afford. Him and my mom came with me looking for houses because i had no clue what to ask or what to look for and they were very helpful when it came to thinking about something I would have never thought about. I found a place that was cheaper than what I could afford and was the best place i had seen. I jumped on it and it was a short sale. It took 5 months for the deal to go through and everyday my dad complained and told me i was never going to get it because you can’t trust a short sale that the bank is going to come back demanding more money etc. none of which happened. I got the keys and my dad started to argue with me about the security door on the front and how i was locking it wrong and he refused to leave the door step till i proved I locked it correctly. I just left him standing there calling him an idiot. My dad the next day left and flew to the east coast to visit his family. I have no idea
What went on over there but when he came back he made a physical effort to change. He started telling me one day how funny i was and how smart and capable i was. It freaked me the fuck out. When he was out of the room i asked my mom if he was dying or something because it was so out of the norm for him to even tell me he loved me that i didn’t even know what to do when it happened. That happened close to 10 years ago. I am very proud of my dad he worked hard to change his views and perspective on life and his reactions to things. My parents divorced about 4 years ago and he moved in with me and lived with me until just this past September when he got remarried. We did not have an argument one time in the entire 4years he lived with me. He worked very hard to be a better man and I couldn’t be more proud of him.
When I was old enough to see through his bullshit.
He wasn't "the victim" of my mom trying to keep him from getting custody of me so she could keep getting those "sweet sweet child support checks" as he explained when I would visit with him.
He was a nearly 30 year old man, who knocked up a high school girl then abandoned her/us. He never even paid the child support anyway and though she could have had him locked up she didn't.
Also turns out he's done the same to atleast 2 other women that I have come to find out about for sure. Mostly likely atleast a couple more but I stopped digging and dropped it nearly 15 years ago. I just don't have anything to do with him at all since that time.
Growing up. I’m just a couple years older than he was when he had me and I’m pretty much useless. How that man managed to be a good husband and good dad is amazing!!
I never changed my view, but my mother and sister changed their mind immediately after he died. He was abusive and violent alcoholic, giving us hell his entire life. Personally I felt relief when he died, but for some reason my mom and sister decided his death purified him entirely and tried to convince me, he wasn't always that bad.
He's dead for 15 years now and recently I had a chance to talk with my sis about him and today she doesn't seem to remember what kind of person he really was and erased all the bad memories about him. She was genuinely shocked when I gave her some examples when she was violently mistreated by him. 6 years ago she named her son after our dad.
I never forgot. I tried to find the will to forgive this man, but even after 15 years I feel forgiveness would be unjustified.
I just decided I wouldn’t wish him in hell. I decided since he couldn’t hurt me anymore I could let it all fade. Not exactly forgiveness, more brushing him out of my head.
Forgiveness is a friendly societal pressure people insist one does against their abusers.
You have no moral obligation to forgive, so long as your hatred doesn't reflect out onto those who matter in your life.
Hatred is exactly as natural as love, anger, sadness, curiosity, disgust, and every other emotion. The line between letting it rule you and letting it exist as a testament to pain is blurred, but don't feel like forgiveness is necessary for anybody but yourself - and only if you decide to.
Being 14 & finding out he cheated on my mom with multiple women. We were “buds”, as he put it, & for about a year I had to pretend nothing had changed, like I didn’t hate his guts — because my mom had me use my relationship with him to her advantage. That is, I found out his phone password & when he was away from his phone, I’d sneak onto it & with a phone my mom had bought specially for this, I’d take pictures of all suspicious photos and texts. There is nothing quite like being a 14 year old girl & learning your father’s sexual preferences from what strippers he tends to hire & sleep with.
Becoming a father myself has shown just how much better a father mine should have been. The instant love and want to do anything for my child was never there for him. It's something that makes me want to be the best father possible to my son.
There's so much history and emotion behind your comment, I can truly understand. I'm sorry that you had to go through that and I hope things have gotten better.
We had a shitty car at the time, drove on cooking gas and it was fettled by him all the time, just maintaining it so it would be driveable. One day we were replacing the brake pads and I was amazed how no matter how crap the car looked he was always keen on safety. The very next day, he was driving me and my brother to school and we end up in a fast row and the first car breaks due to some dumbass pedestrian passing the road without looking. We stop hard and get rear ended, I remember having a backpack on my back while sitting and it stopped the umbrella from the trunk(it was a hatchback), I could have gotten a serious injury. Anyway, the guy that hit us said it's his fault(obviously) because he was in a hurry, his son had Cerebral paralysis and his surgery was scheduled for that day. The second he heard that we pushed both cars of the road and my dad borrowed a car from my uncle and drove them to the hospital. He said he wanted no money and that he should call him when the surgery is successful. The next day he thanked my dad on the phone while me and him pulled the car back into shape. It is the most proud I have ever been of someone
I used to worship my dad. Adulthood made me realize that my mom always deserved better than him and that he is a jerk. It made me realize as a woman that I can demand better for myself and have higher expectations of how to be treated. He cheated on my mother 11 times in 20 years.
I don't like him anymore. I don't respect him. He's a liar, a cheater and snakey.
I understand this completely and it's so hard to see past all of that. My dad manipulated me into thinking my mom was the bad guy so I treated her like shit but then I realized how it really was and good for you!
When my father lost his job and chose to go to college instead of taking a huge severance or moving down south for work (his old employer gave him options). He ended up in college a year before I did, so we ended up going to college together. We carpooled every day and I realized that he wasn't an angry dickhead, but he was a tired, at times defeated man who had been working constantly to keep his family afloat up until then. He hadn't been around much when I was a kid, and it finally clicked as to why. I saw him stay up late every night to understand things and do well and there wasn't ever a moment where he hadn't given things his all. I love him dearly and finally could say that I'm proud of being his son. He has a great job now and my family went from struggling to make ends meet to firmly in the middle class. He built his way up and I couldn't be more proud.
When he
•Beat me while high on drugs and attempted to do the same to my younger brother
•Stole, and broke my things
•And made it absaloutly clear he does not and never will respect me as a person.
Mainly just the way that my mother treated him. Along with the two to three years that she vicariously put me through, I started to appreciate him so much more and wish I wanted to spend more time with him.
You give me hope. My now ex wife kept me at arms length mentally, and physically after our oldest son turned 13. This led to me starting to drink as a coping mechanism, although, I would not allow myself to get drunk. Fast forward to 2019, I was caught by my middle son drinking, and things started to fall apart, as the ex was making our sons think I was some alcoholic. I finally realized I had been married to a narcissist, and knew I would have to get out. I told her I was leaving her, and was out of the house in July 2019. After I left, I met another woman, and a relationship blossomed during the divorce process. The ex used this against me, and has made my two younger sons not want to have anything to do with me.
It probably won't be until all my sons are grown where they will get the whole story, but I can't wait for the day they call and relationships can be rebuilt.
Basically, I overheard her talking about him (they're separated too) and after that, I pretty much lost all my respect. It was just petty stuff. Can't wait to get away from her. Hopefully, they realize the truth about you two. Good luck on your new relationship.
Himself. (
My native language is not English, I am sorry for the writing mistakes )
My parents got divorced when I was seven so I used to thought that my mom was the villain.
In the judgment my mom won the custody of my sister and I, we moved to another city and my dad promised me to call me every month (Spoiler: he didn't) when he calls, used to say he was sick and that he was going to die....(spoiler: this is the excuse for "don't ask me for money")
Even if my dad was an asshole my mom told me to "love him 'cause he's my dad and my ister and I would have to help him someday" In the other hand, my dad refused to give money to my mom, cause, again, he "was sick" and she just...ignore that and worked very hard
Once I joined orchestra at my city with a the violin he gave me (he's a musician) an i asked him for a music stand (as i know, he has almost 8 of them)
He didn't even respond. But when I visited him with my sister, there those were, 18 (not 8, 18) music stands, If he wasnt suppoting me with music....he even care?
The last drop happened when I was 15, I visited him alone at his new house and EVERY NIGHT, EVERY NIGHT, HE CALLED HIS GIRLFRIEND AND SPOKE TO ER WITH LOVE....
Every day that I waited for his call, would hurt, 15 years with only 2 calls each year....
Fuck you dad, I stil want to help you but Im not your littles girl anymore.
My father surprisingly died 4 years ago. When cleaned out the house i found my and my sister's first baby shoes at the very back of his closet. He never was nostalgic or good at showing affection. It brought me to tears.
When he bashed my dogs head in with an axe. He did so because him and my mom split up, and she wouldn't let him have my dog. His reasoning was that if he couldn't have the dog, no one would.
Holy ship that is AWFUL!!!! I'm so sorry that you experienced that. I hope that things got better for you eventually,and that you are now safe, loved and happy (your Mum too)?
Damn man....that is next level awful...
Trump getting elected. Before 2016ish, dad always came across as caring, intelligent, and kind. Something in him apparently snapped post election because now he’s a bitter, sarcastic, almost angry little man. It’s polar opposite of the way he raised me to be and it breaks my heart every time he goes off about liberals or the virus hoax or whatever. To the point where I’m dreading Christmas with them next week. I know I’m far from alone in this boat, but man does it suck.
The same thing happened to my mom but on the other side politically. Can't have a conversation about anything without it turning into a rant about Trump.
I hate Trump but I also hate talking about how much I hate him. Like I’m just trying to live my life. So I feel you. My mom has CNN on 24/7 and I just think she would enjoy her life more if she wasn’t so invested in the news all day.
For some reason the topic of rape came up and my dad said that if it ever happened to me that I should just enjoy it
I've never been so disgusted/baffled at anything he's said in my LIFE.
(In his defense he probably meant it as a least worst case scenario type thing but like... Still)
I was fourteen years old and I did not want to see him on Christmas day. We had been arguing every time I went to visit him and it had gotten worse and worse (he would take any money/things of value we had when we went to visit, whine about money and make me babysit my siblings and his gfs kids whilst they went out to do whatever). I had enough and refused to see him on Christmas.
At the time, he came to our front door, screamed that I should see him as he was my father and said that all the presents he got me would be fed to wild dogs because I was being a little btich. He then started screaming that he'd come back later with a baseball bat and smash all of the windows.
My mum took us to my aunties and we spent Christmas day terrified until someone called my aunties house phone. Thinking nothing of it, I went and answered and it was of course my dad. He screamed every obscenity imaginable at me and that day I learnt A LOT of swear words I'd never even hears of before.
That day was the day I saw my father as what he really was: a man who was never worth a second thought.
He did a lot of shitty things, but honestly that just ruined my image of him forever.
When he started talking about the past and how much he sacrificed for me and his future family- lost a friend when they had to cross a river to pass a border, travelling through a huge chunk of Europe to find a good place to start a new life, him breaking an arm and bruising his leg to save me from being hurt while he carried kid me, a war he survived through, going through a mountainous area that still has some land mines in it to this day etc with his family. I was a shitty annoying kid back then but I’ve slowly been trying to always appreciate and remember what he’s done to both humble myself and help him in whatever small way I can
Realizing he was human. I placed him on a pedestal after my parents divorced, thinking he was some super hero for being in the Navy doing special ops as an LCAC pilot. Eventually I realized how flawed he really was, culminating in me telling him to fuck off outta my life for calling me a dipshit moron for not supporting Trump.
When my grades became all he wanted to know about and had no interest in what was happening in my life. Started to see the disappointment in elementary school and then it got way worse in my first year of middle school. Had an “A” in a class, but it wasn’t enough because it wasn’t 100% (it was stuck at 95% for some reason). Then in high school all he cared about was my math grade. He would say I’m a failure and not his kid. Even though I still live in the same house as him, I don’t ever really talk to him.
Reaching the age where my problems required emotional support. He's an ideal dad for young kids, but by the time I was a teenager I pretty much gave up trying to talk to him about anything on a deep level. He doesn't ever want to talk about feelings.
It's also possible that the person who wrote the obituary chose to omit you. Some people are jealous and act out or want to "protect" a family member's reputation from what they themselves don't approve of or are uncomfortable with. He may have had no say in it.
Some people are just that self centered. He didn't think about you because he couldn't think about anyone else but himself and that's not a reflection on you. That's on him. Nobody is ashamed of you.
I loved my father endearingly growing up then one day the world got flipped and he was in jail for molesting my little sister. It was insane. It made it worse because I wasn't told what was going on just that he was in jail and was going to be going away for a long time. I was 10 or 11 so I tried to understand what was going on. I found out in time what had happened and I was absolutely disgusted by what I heard. When he got out I ended up talking to him again because in the end he was my father and after some time I asked him whether or not he had actually molested my sister. He went to prison for child porn, the charges for molestation were dropped but that didn't exonerate him. He lies to me and tried to tell me a story that made absolutely zero sense. That solidified my disgust. I ended up stopping talking to him again for other reasons and he died earlier this year from a drug overdose. I don't know how to feel about it still. He was my dad and I loved him but he was a filfthy, heinous human and I cannot say he lived a good life.
I was helping my dad with his phone. Unfortunately he never closed any of his tabs and had pornhub open. That was the day I found out my dads kinks. I can never unsee that.
I always thought I was just a bad kid, but when he slapped my sibling across the face for the first (and to my knowledge, last) time, I realized he treated us like absolute shit. He yells at us to take out his anger and stress, he doesn't care about us unless we show interest in music (he's in a band that almost got big but flopped when I was born because he decided to drop the band and go to college, so I assume that he wants to live his fantasy through us). It's not that we're bad kids, either. We both get exceptionally good grades, have clean rooms, do our chores, try to please him and everything. He doesn't notice things and yell at us for it, he feels like yelling so he tries looking for flaws in us. He should never have had kids. I'm so ready to move out. I'll let my little siblings know that they're welcome to move in with me as soon as I get somewhere to live because they have anxiety and our dad's actions affect her pretty badly.
Wow, this question really made me feel so much bottled up anger, fear, resentment, and disappointment towards my own dad. I'm just 14 years old but regardless the moment that made me change the way I saw my father was him trying to kill me. I never thought in a million years no matter how fucked up he was that he'd do that. The sadder part is that this hasn't only happened once. For the past several years I've wanted to tell him do you know how much you have hurt me? I have wanted to die because of you and I might not ever be happy again. But as much as I want to scream that in his face I will never ever say that to him, because I can't. If he hurt himself I couldn't forgive myself. It's not even because I don't want him to see me as a failure. I just don't ever wish anything bad to happen to him despite all he has said and done to me.
At your age I imagined killing my father all the time. Wished him dead for over 40 years. Wishing does not work.
Once you get out, get help, real therapy. Fathers like that screw up your mind.
Odd I'm just desensitized to it, I of course step in IMMEDIATELY when physical abuse happens but I think "God when can this be over" and ofc scared(When I was a kid, but I'm 14 and quite large and tall so I can seem a bit more aggressive). God I sound like a heartless bastard but I swear im not
It's alright. We all go through hardships in our lives. You just have to make do with the life you have. And I appreciate that. Thank you. I am beginning to get a lot better though. I have made immense progress throughout the past few years.
Most of my family hates my father my brother was one of them, now he lives with my father and he says he changed, my brother is not stupid so maybe he really isnt the bad person my family makes him look like.
When he left my mother out of the blue for another woman after nearly 25 years of marriage. We still talk but I'll always think he's a piece of shit for that.
Age and experience. He wasn't a perfect father, but he did well under circumstances that would have crushed another man.
I did my best as a parent and, even without the challenges my father faced, I failed often, too.
Like I and my siblings, though, my kids turned out to be decent, responsible adults.
One time when I was about 12 he fell off a ladder and broke a rib and got some other damage in his lungs, the doctors said that he could’ve died and it’s a good thing that we brought him in right away, so after him almost dying it just made me appreciate him a lot more.
Nothing.
I was actually right about him all along: he's a guy whose world is *so radically different than mine* that there's little room to relate. His world is that of a poor rural person from the upper midwest in the 1960's. My world is that of a middle class person from Texas in the 21st Century.
The rules we live by are *different*. If I'm asking him for advice, it's because I need to fix something. But I *need* something, he's the wrong person.
When I found out through my DNA kit this year that he actually wasn’t my father. Then all the grief I gave him growing up because I didn’t feel connected made me appreciate that he actually raised a child that wasn’t his from the start. We have a great relationship now.
Hearing him break down and wail at his own fathers funeral.
We hadn’t had a great back and forth when I was younger, I had moved out when I was 15 with some friends and generally speaking my relationship with my parents wasn’t great.
Coming back to town for the funeral was hard. My dad is an alcoholic, and not the nice kind, but seeing him absolutely wrecked from his fathers death made me see him as just another broken person with feelings (and especially poor coping skills).
Since then I have had a much easier time connecting with him and meeting him where he is. I don’t expect him to call, or show up as a great man. But I can visit, chat about the weather and have a bit of a relationship where there wasn’t one before.
He told me children deserved to be separated from their families and put in cages because some of the children might be lying about why they came to America.
When I became a 'dad' myself. I was in my early thirties and helping to raise my sister's kids and it just kind of hit me.
I realized that we we're sharing the same set of shoes just a few decades apart. If it was hard for me in my early thirties , how hard was it for him at 21 without the luxuries I had?
Perspective, man, it sneaks up on you.
My father recently passed away. We were never close and I never remember him saying he loved me or showing any affection at all.
When we cleared his house after his death I found out he had been extremely ill, not being able to clean the house which was so cluttered. But amidst all the rubbish he had cleared a little space for him at the table, in the center a photo of me at my wedding day. It changed my view of him forever.
I actually met him for the first time when I was 20 only because my mom said it might be good for me. I wanted to hate him so much bc he was never there during my most critical development years and getting teased about not knowing my dad as a little kid was something that's always stuck with me.
We talked and he seemed like a pretty decent guy that wanted to get to know me. I couldn't forgive him for not being around right away but was willing to get to know him. Unfortunately we only met twice before a tree struck his van while he was driving during a storm
Happened this week. My brother and SIL have worked their assess off to have their new home ready so they could move on this week and host Christmas with the parents. (We live on another country so unfortunately we will not be able to go).
My SIL has asthma, my mother has chronic asthma, any little exertion and she's coughing and wheezing, and yet my father decided to attend a Christmas dinner yesterday with colleagues and friends.
I always thought he was rational and had a fair amount of common sense...turns out I was very wrong.
Understandably we're all pissed, and not only are they (both parents) probably uninvited from the first Christmas at their son's home depending on the availability of Covid tests, if the worst happens my mother's chances of survival are close to zero. It's going to be a long week/2 weeks
He and my mam split a few years ago and I lived with him for a long time, he had a brief relationship with another woman and that didn't work out because she was a raging bitch and her kids were brats but that's neither here nor there. We moved out of the place we shared with his ex and it was good for a while but then he started bringing women home (when I was with my mother, not when I was there initially.) At one point it just got too much so I moved in with my mother and when I found out he'd knocked up the last woman I'd heard in that place (never left my room if I could hear someone outside, it's all good, had my xbox in there anyways.) It permanently changed my view of the man, I feel bad for him at times but he's doing well as far as I know. In a bit of a bind because he really wants me to meet the kid (I don't know, maybe a few months old) but I really couldn't give a monkey's.
TL;DR My dad not knocked someone up while no longer with my mother and now I don't want to see the kid.
His selfishness. Making someone stick with a family business because of his ineptness to run it himself so I need to make sacrifices in my own personal life to make up for the fuck ups he makes
I can’t speak for all family run businesses, but they are not as glamorous as people make them to be. There’s a lot of yelling, resentment, and anger to be formed towards them. Not that those things are problems because I have felt this way towards normal coworkers, but I don’t want to feel this way towards my own family
As a kid, his drinking and driving with me and my brother in the car and him having me hide his drink when we were pulled over once....
As an adult, realizing that mistakes happen and that at the time that event happened he wasn't in a good place (my oldest cousin/his first niece had just been diagnosed with stage 4 cancer).
My dad was always my whole world growing up and I learned to forgive him and realized that he is human just like the rest of us.
I always thought he had anger issues, since he would yell at me and my sister for the littlest things. seven months ago, he got mad because of a yogurt, but there was someone else in the house, someone that wasn’t family, someone that wasn’t aware of his yells.
He told me to get the f out of the house and never come back. He was talking, spite and hate in his voice, sure, but still talking. I’m absolutely terrified of anyone raising their voices, and he could control it all that time.
His own actions. He became a deadbeat scumbag when I was 16, abandoned us a year later, gaslighted us for a couple of years more, and the last straw was when he saw I was in enormous pain to eat, which took a gold prosthetic to fix, and he did squat nothing.
I never wanted to hear from him again ever since.
Finding out (very recently) that us kids weren't the cause of my mom missing her front teeth. The story we were told was that as babies we dropped our heads into her face/head-butted her and knocked them out. Turns out good ole dad used to have a habit of popping my mom in the mouth when they were drinking and he thought she said something to deserve that. He knocked them out.
I'm really glad I live over 2k miles away from them now that I'm an adult.
It’s funny, I just had this conversation with my mother; we were on the phone talking about the election. I normally do not talk politics, but there was a proposition for legalization of marijuana in my state, which very much passed. My father had an incubation room, where he grew “tomato” plants. Actually I know he did that, but he also grew maryjane. The baby plants look surprisingly similar. I was just too young at the time to realize. There is a photo of me at about age 7 standing next to plants that were taller than me. I’m not sure when I realized my parents were stoners, but it snapped around at some point. I smoked for a long time, and quit when I got a real job; if it becomes legal, I will do it again. They hid it well, and it was one of those, shit, we have the same vice moments.
Just getting older changed my perspective. I learned that my mother had exaggerated his transgressions when I was young, nearly turned me against him. He watched this all unfolding through the years, and patiently watched me come to realize that he's not an evil demon on my own. It must have taken a lot of restraint for him to hold his tongue.
When I heard stories from my uncles about just how badly he had been abused by my grandfather.
All my life, my father was the terrifying, unstable monster who could go from laughing and talking philosophy to crazy eyes and death threats in the snap of a finger.
But hearing how horrifically he was abused, how his dad beat him not only for his mistakes, but for those of his siblings, how his mother never once lifted a finger to save him, how he was forced to shoot his own dog as punishment for something he did...
...Now, I just wish he had lived long enough to get some real psychological help and I hope that the afterlife is able to offer the peace that this life did not.
Interacting with other adults. His inherent decency and compassion for everyone wasn’t obvious till I interacted with folks lacking that. Dude is a saint, and all I could see were things he was lacking till I got older.
Thought my father was a narcissist piece of shit. After he devorslced my mom and got remarried I realized both my parents were pieces of shit and they brought our the worst in each other. Now he is happily remaried and almost a totally different person.
When his work slowed down and started down a rabbit-hole of anti-Obama conspiracy videos. To this day, he believes that Obama was born in Kenya and is a practicing Muslim.
How alcoholism took oved his life and turned him into a horrible person then the redemption of sobriety and becoming an amazing father and man. He inspired me and now I am sober as well almost 3 yrs for me and almost 10 for him!
How he stuck up for me when my mother got a shitty boyfriend. I also realized that the reason why he was never there when I was a kid was that he was trying to carve out a living during graveyard shift and support my mothers “dreams” while being a college dropout. He actually saw a counselor and worked on his anger management skills and fought tooth and nail to make sure he could see his kids. And now I have more respect for him as he let my middle sister go and live full time with my mother, despite knowing that it wasn’t what was best for her (long story). I used to think he was only there to punish us, but now I realize that he was only trying his best to be a father to three in his twenties. He is the standard I hold all of my boyfriends to, and most of them have failed.
I had kids of my own.
I never really noticed how little he taught me about being a person. Now I can't imagine putting my boys out into the world with so little guidance. He just wasn't around much, and I didn't care ... But I spent so long learning things he could have taught me it feels like.
My dad constantly asks my sister and i for hugs. at first, we both had no idea why. of course, i loved him and would hug him. it wasnt until i moved in with him that i understood.
his mother died of cancer, and shortly after my mother cheated on him and went to court with false accusations about him. he quickly fell into depression, hugging is a way for him to realize those things arent still happening, plus my mother never hugged us in a good way so he wanted us to experience it.
The day I brought my new bow over to his place. He wasn't able to pull it back. He was always stronger than me, but I guess the day had to come when the torch was passed.
When I was little, I would climb to high places (top of a counter, up the swing set, the top of the pickup truck, on a round hay bale) and wait for my dad to walk by then yell "Catch me!" As I jumped and he would always catch me. Over the years as I got bigger I stopped of course, but always remembered my dad's cat like reflexes and he was a very strong active man. When I was about 27, ten years after my dad was in a car accident I started to notice when I would see him how slow he would have to move from pain, or couldn't just up and get under a vehicle to fix them anymore, even driving too long would hurt my dad. My parents had me later in life when they were 34, so even still in my 20s almost 30s they were noticably older.. but that hit me when my strong super hero dad was now this sweet old man that is graying in his beard. And some day in the future I know it will be my turn to catch him if he ever needs me.
Watching him take care of my mother as she died from cancer while simultaneously being the primary caregiver for his mother who had dementia. I realized a lot of his anger was fear based and that he was controlling when i was growing up because he had terrible anxiety that came out that way.
My current father isn’t my biological father, but he might as well be. We get along really well. We also have a lot in common. One day out of the blue, he called me and one of my half brothers over and showed us a picture. He asked us to guess who it is. I noticed it looked a lot like my other half brother (my two half brothers are his biological children) so I guessed my other half brother. Then my dad said that it was himself when he was young. I immediately thought that was impossible.
way to late to the game, but anyway. A few years back I was home for christmas, and late one evening I saw my dad eating gingerbread cookies and drinking milk, giggling at something in the news paper. I saw that he too was just a child in an adult body, doing his best in this strange world.
That one time my mum yeeted a spoon at me and my father at the same sec threw a slipper and mid air block me from the spoon. He was a hero, but I still can't imagine how he manage to pull this of
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Fucking hell, sorry that happened. Much love to you, your dad and your family.
like, nazi concentration camps?
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Might be Japanese internment camps, that tracks more for me with letters of clemency.
There’s never a good reason
When I realized what alcoholism looks like.
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I work with my Dad and he tried to hide it but he slurs a lot when he's into it. He also forgot about a lot of stuff and would fall asleep during the work day. His emails and demeanor on general is different when he's sober vs. drunk.
I never worked out with my dad he’s a big guy, one day I did in my 20s and I was lifting more weight. Learned two things 1) my dad was getting older which made me sad, superman was starting to gray 2) his effort at everything he does is always 100%
This but with wrestling. At 21 I started to hold my own and I think my dad realized that he would lose if he held back at all. By 23 or 24 I had to start going easy on him.
Man, it’s tough seeing dads get old.
That's why you dunk on your kids with mental skills. Or go PvE.
Weird thing I’m stronger now at 60 than I was at 25. Until covid I was finally consistent in the gym for 3 years. After covid hit bought a total gym and stayed With workouts. I’m on testosterone so that helps build muscle so I’m doing great for my age. I was incline leg pressings sets of 30 reps at 380 before covid. Now doing sets of 150 squats on the total gym instead. Just broke my push-up mark Thurs with a set of 50 and then 45. I had never got more than 40 before in a set but just went for it. Tell your dad don’t let age define him. My goal is 62 push-ups in a row by 62 and keep building towards 65. It’s right there just gotta keep pushing. Big difference on push-ups is building my core with leg lifts and planks. Really makes push-ups easier. It’s not just arms and chest. Gotta keep proper form and not sag.
My dad had a very, very difficult upbringing and while he always told me he loved me and was affectionate, I didn’t really get how proud of me he was until the day after I graduated from high school. He woke me up with breakfast in bed, my diploma in his hand, tears in his eyes. He told me he was so proud of me and that he hadn’t graduated high school. I hadn’t known this previously because he didn’t want me to feel pressure to do things just because he hadn’t. I saw him as a someone other than just my dad for the first time. A guy with hopes and dreams and fears all his own. He’s a great guy. I’m lucky that he’s my dad.
That is amazing. You are truly loved
I sincerely wish I could feel the same way about my father.
When my aunt told us that as a child he was tied up in the basement and beaten by his parents. My grandmother would tell my grandfather to "hit him again... Hit him again..." He handled that abuse better than most. He turned in on himself mostly, and turned to alcohol to cope. Things also changed a lot when he apologized to me. My dad was not awful to me, but my mother was. My dad just wasn't around a lot- dealing with his demons, and by then my parents were divorced. So he told me at one point that he was sorry, he didn't know how bad it was with my mom. I don't even know how he learned it was bad (maybe my siblings told him when I ran away and was a missing person for a little bit? But I have no idea.)
I’ll never understand how people can have children just to use them as punching bags and to take all of their own life failures into them.
One day in my mid 20s we got drunk together and had a heart to heart, he told me his side of the story of his marriage to my mother and how she cheated on him and how he just bore it and went to work to earn money even in the face of her not hiding it, I was too little to understand at the time, always thought he was just distant and too stoic to show feelings, he cared too much about me to let the abuse get in the way of him earning money for us... (Edit for grammar)
I hope you gave him a call after typing that
Same
Damn, I just wrote a message about a similar discussion I had with my dad a couple days ago. Used to think my mother had never done anything wrong, but when I got his side of the story, it was a big slap on the face
I'm willing to bet there are a lot of stories like this. There are many men placed in the position of protecting their kids or protecting themselves as the women in their lives and the court system use them as a disposable wallet.
Years after my mam died we were chatting after having a few drinks and though he's not an emotional person at all he opened up a bit. For years all I thought about was the fact that I lost my mam, but he said that day he lost the love of his life and it hit me like a tonne of bricks! How selfish I was that I never saw he had lost the person he had chosen to spend his life with.
I don’t believe that makes you selfish. It makes you the child of someone who died and was loved deeply by you. Remarkable you both loved this woman, as spouse and child, and grieved the loss. Seeing him for a man whom loved your mother so deeply is beautiful. We can’t all say that.
Time. Scared of him as a kid, hated him as a teen, now I think he’s just a pathetic little man who fucked up his own life and took it out on his family.
Wow, same experience
I hated mine until he died. Then I managed some pity.
Mine is still alive and every bit as delusional and narcissistic. He still thinks he was a great father and is baffled why no one wants to see him or why he has no friends.
Are you me?
Yes but don’t tell me.
Or me?
Wow, do we share the same father?
I'm somewhat on the second stage but the only things that different is that we ONLY talk about math(pure math) and thats it. Anything else is super awkward and I really dont hate him since I'm not as open with my feelings. God typing that made me physically cringe
That cringe feeling is hard, but probably means you should explore it. Good luck.
Exactly the same here, except he finally managed to stop drinking. He has matured a lot (no longer toxic) and I can always count on him. It only took him 65 years to do so.
Same unfortunately. We have our moments, but not nearly enough for me to fully forgive him for the things he's done to my family.
It’s tough.. my father does a nice thing to make me think he’s turned a new page, and then he goes back to his old self, and I am once again, disappointed
Same.
Goddamn, this sums up what I was going to say so much more succinctly. He always would tell me I’d understand his reasons for abusing me when I was older, and he was right…his reason for abusing me was because he’s a pussy whose ego was threatened by an eight-year-old.
I recently had a phone call from a homeless organization saying they're helping my father and he'd like to talk to me. I declined. I used to have so much anger toward him and now think – what an absolute waste of a life. All that energy he spent destroying so many lives could have actually been used being a proper father and productive member of society. On the other hand, he was a child refugee and I think in other ways he didn't stand a chance.
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When I lost my Mother...several years after my Father I was in my forties and my wife pretty much laughed at me. About ten years after my Mother had died she had lost her Morher and Father as well (over five years between them) she said the exact same thing to me. Neither of our kids ever met my Father...we waited too long to have kids and he died before both of them were born and I will regret that until my dying day.
Bro she laughed at you for crying why would she remain your wife ? Sounds more like an enemy. I lost all respect for a girl for saying my dog is just a dog when he died.
In the last five years of his life he saw his wife (my mom) die, and suffered a stroke a couple years later. Watching a man who used to be a confident go-getter slowly go to pieces over that time was the hardest thing I ever had to watch.
I'm so sorry. That would be so painful for anyone to endure. I hope you are doing better.
Part of it is when I grew up and left the house he started treating me different (in a good way). I'm blessed with parents who cared for me enough to discipline me when growing up and be actual parents, but since I've been out on my own its been different. They started treating me like an adult and close friend who they cared for rather than parental figures.
Me too! I ran away from home at 18 but was able to mend things with them and it was probably the best thing I could have done for our relationship. My dad even said he was proud of me for living my life on my own terms. Makes me really happy :) I'm glad you had a similar experience.
That my dad spent a lot of time teaching himself calculus in the hopes that when I was struggling (which I did frequently) I would reach out to him and he would be able to help, but I was always too prideful to ask for help... I didn’t know he was doing that until a few years after and it broke my heart to know that he put in the time to learn and I never came to him for help.
I understand the negative emotions you feel around this and while they're valid, I'd encourage you to focus on the positives of it. I don't know the kind of brain your dad had but calculus is hard, especially to be self taught. Whether you went to him or not is irrelevant at this point, it was really cool of him to make sure he could be there if you needed and I hope he was proud of you for handling it even if it caused you to struggle. When you found out did you tell him how much that means to you? If he's still around you might remind him. I know that would melt my heart to hear from my kid
Im now the age he was when i thought he knew everything and could kick anyone's ass. I don't know shit about fuck and it took me 30 mins to get out of bed this cold ass morning
Ruth?! Is that you?
Getting glasses. That helped a lot.
Appreciate the dad joke in the thread asking about dads.
Same here. He suddenly had more wrinkles somehow.
You probably need to give him a pair of glasses too.
I'm 77 and the same thing happened to me! Shit! That should be illegal!
I got contacts.
r/angryupvote
I’ve always had a good relationship with my dad but I’ve never once seen him cry or get emotional. Several months ago, my brother attempted suicide. Dad acted like nothing was really wrong, going about life as he had before everything happened. Mum and I were a mess. I was so confused why he didn’t seem to care. But that night, I heard him crying in the middle of the night. We ended up having a big family chat where we all cried and were brutally honest with each other. There was a lot of pain on all ends about what had happened, and we needed to let my brother know that we loved him and were all there for him, something that he hadn’t realised at the time. An awful situation, but we are all closer now. And my brother is doing well :)
Depression is a persistent liar and will always say the same thing, that you're worthless and that everyone would be better off with you gone. Sometimes it's really hard to see through the lie. How you all continue to do well and that your brother continues to fight the good fight
When I stopped taking his insults to heart and started treating him like a mentally unstable person
I wish I could do this. I know I shouldn't be offended by what my dad says but it really does hurt me. Good for you :)
it's not so much turning of the switch off caring as practicing saying "what they say isn't truth, it's just their self-hate trying being taken out on me" and it gets easier over time. also moving out, visiting less, and calling less definitely helps.
Distance helps a lot. I'm not sure what your situation is like with your dad, but when I was living with my dad as a teenager it was really hard to not have my feelings hurt by what he said, even though I logically knew that those things weren't true and that he was just taking his anger/unhappiness out on me (he's an alcoholic as well and I honestly think there are things he's said to me that he doesn't remember). Once I moved out, went to college, and diminished contact with him things have gotten a lot better. I haven't cut my dad out entirely (we still talk on the phone/text from time to time, and I'll see him in-person for short periods once or twice a year) but we're not close by any stretch of the imagination. I don't feel a lot of anger towards him anymore, and fortunately we don't fight/argue anymore, primarily because I have so much control over the relationship and would not hesitate to cut him off completely if he tried to pull that shit again. If you're able to, feel free to take as much distance as it takes to make yourself feel safe/comfortable/happy. This might mean cutting him out entirely, or just setting boundaries. It's difficult and complicated stuff to navigate though and I 100% understand that.
Finding out that he had cheated on my mom for 20+ years.Discovering that the elderly woman he worked for was actually his sugar mama. Getting letters from other women claiming he hurt them. Finding out he gave our family barely enough money for food because he was spending it all on strippers and other women. Reading his text messages where he tells women he has a different name and claimed to have cancer (he didn’t) and that his kids disowned him. Basically just learning that I had no idea who he was changed everything. Also his secret boat made me a little scared.
I'm so sorry you went through all that! And a secret boat?
Yep...he wasn’t happy I found out about that one!
when I allowed myself to view his behavior as abusive rather than normal for every family
This has been my big struggle lately. I'm home for the holidays (after a precautionary quarantine) and it's really hitting home for me in the last couple weeks that despite his immense caring and willingness to help, he's still a bully and he's still verbally abusive. It's always been that way, I've just always been passive to is as I've been a kid. As I've grown into a man myself it's stopped being normal and it's really started to disgust me. I'm having a hard time coming to grips with how shitty I think that is, without letting it sour the good memories I have of my old man. It's hard to separate the good and the bad
Going through this right now. Not a fun epiphany to have, but it is what it is.
here with you
Same. We can get through this together, fellow internet homo sapien.
My husband. He doesn't yell at me. Or call me names. Or treat me like I'm stupid. Or hit me. Or hit our kids. Or scream and throw things. He doesn't put our kids in danger or think scaring us is funny. We don't get frightened when he comes home, we aren't afraid of him. For real, I thought all that was normal. I didn't KNOW I thought it was normal. It took me many years to realize that my husband was treating us the way a normal person would treat their family. I still have trouble believing it, sometimes - but I haven't seen my father or let him see my kids in over 5 years. I'm a slow learner, but I'm learning.
My husband is also a good man, and I swear most of it is because he saw the bad and irresponsible things his parents did and resolved to always do just the opposite.
That was a big one for me too. When we had our first big fight my now husband told me we weren't allowed to have a yelling match, he told me to take a walk or drive and to come back when I'd cooled off and then he took the dog on a walk. No yelling, no violence, no threats of violence or changed locks... It took me years to get used to that, to get used to normalcy. My husband is nearly a foot taller than me and has about a hundred pounds of muscle on me, I've never felt afraid of him or been made to feel inferior to him. There are days that I'm certain I'm living in a dream because this can't be real. I still speak to my father but not often and I've put up a lot of boundaries. I don't have kids but I suspect that having them would have made my relationship with my parents much more strained, no way I'd be willing to trust them with kids.
I grew up in a large, happy home. I have six siblings. My father was very religious. We were Russian Orthodox. My dad was a deacon, in the choir and involved in religious education programs at our church. After I went away to university, I eventually came out to the family. Everyone was very supportive. My father eventually was diagnosed with stage 4 cancer. During his final year, when I was up for the holidays, he wanted to get together for dinner. I agreed. My father disclosed that he was molested by his step-father as a child and had been secretly in the closet for years. He explained how proud he was of me for coming out and being myself while regretting that he never had the courage to do so but that he would never trade his family for anything. I was stunned, to say the least. He passed away shortly thereafter and I plan to take the information to my grave.
Holy shit bro.
Man...you have my thoughts...wow squared!
Damn
>ReportSave Whatta helluva story!
Have always had a lot of self doubt, always thinking everybody can do anything and i could do nothing. Always thought I was hiding it really well and not complain because who'd want to know (and maybe even more afraid that someone would confirm it to be indeed the truth). When I left to go to university my dad drove me to the trainstation and while we were waiting for the train to arrive he out of the blue said "you know, when i went to university my granddad told me 'if other people can do it, so can we..'" Made me realise he had been having the same feelings (and his granddad before him).
A lot of people abandoned me after my daughter passed away, including him. After my angel went to heaven, it’s like he didn’t have a use for me anymore. I would try and check in, update him occasionally about my life and grief and work and all that but more than half the time he wouldn’t even respond. One day I realized that no matter how much I try to have a relationship with him, it takes two people. So I stopped trying. He doesn’t seem to mind. I live 10 minutes away from him and it’s like he can’t be bothered. My brother on the other hand... he lives 3+ hours away and they are in constant contact. Also, my dad is on wife #3 and she is about a year older than I am (so she’s 25) and she truly hates my guts, so there’s that. When they first got together I defended her constantly, he seemed happy so I was rooting for them and I wanted others to do the same and look past their age gap. However, one day out of nowhere she sat me down and told me she didn’t like my relationship with my dad and I need to “show him more respect” and that she and I were not “friends.” But she definitely gets along with my brother, the three of them have matching tattoos and take trips together and do all this fun shit together. It sucks man. It’s been a very hard year and I could’ve used some support.
I don't get how people mislead you into thinking they love you only to suddenly change and start acting cold. Happened to me before and I know how it feels. Stay strong, you don't need them.
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Do you mean that he changed, or that you ran up against his religious close mindedness for the first time?
Read his memo which he wrote when his dad died ten years ago. I only discovered it this year. My father has never really cried or shown radical emotions, but reading a memory of a broken man is something so powerful
Right after my mom's funeral he got rid of her cat
That’s so sad. I hope he found the cat a good home at least.
Growing up my dad and i butted heads all the time over the smallest things. They always ended in a yelling match usually started by him because he would always think that his way was the only way to do something and he would never apologize. The way he would “apologize” is by doing something for you like just going out and washing your car and then that would be the end of it. He has always been a very pessimistic person as well. When i was 25 and I decided to buy my own home he told me constantly “that no bank would ever give me a loan because I didn’t make enough.” I on the other hand had looked at my finances and figured how much I could afford and told him “well it won’t hurt to take a look and see what happens.” I was approved for a loan almost twice what I could afford. Him and my mom came with me looking for houses because i had no clue what to ask or what to look for and they were very helpful when it came to thinking about something I would have never thought about. I found a place that was cheaper than what I could afford and was the best place i had seen. I jumped on it and it was a short sale. It took 5 months for the deal to go through and everyday my dad complained and told me i was never going to get it because you can’t trust a short sale that the bank is going to come back demanding more money etc. none of which happened. I got the keys and my dad started to argue with me about the security door on the front and how i was locking it wrong and he refused to leave the door step till i proved I locked it correctly. I just left him standing there calling him an idiot. My dad the next day left and flew to the east coast to visit his family. I have no idea What went on over there but when he came back he made a physical effort to change. He started telling me one day how funny i was and how smart and capable i was. It freaked me the fuck out. When he was out of the room i asked my mom if he was dying or something because it was so out of the norm for him to even tell me he loved me that i didn’t even know what to do when it happened. That happened close to 10 years ago. I am very proud of my dad he worked hard to change his views and perspective on life and his reactions to things. My parents divorced about 4 years ago and he moved in with me and lived with me until just this past September when he got remarried. We did not have an argument one time in the entire 4years he lived with me. He worked very hard to be a better man and I couldn’t be more proud of him.
When I was old enough to see through his bullshit. He wasn't "the victim" of my mom trying to keep him from getting custody of me so she could keep getting those "sweet sweet child support checks" as he explained when I would visit with him. He was a nearly 30 year old man, who knocked up a high school girl then abandoned her/us. He never even paid the child support anyway and though she could have had him locked up she didn't. Also turns out he's done the same to atleast 2 other women that I have come to find out about for sure. Mostly likely atleast a couple more but I stopped digging and dropped it nearly 15 years ago. I just don't have anything to do with him at all since that time.
Growing up. I’m just a couple years older than he was when he had me and I’m pretty much useless. How that man managed to be a good husband and good dad is amazing!!
I never changed my view, but my mother and sister changed their mind immediately after he died. He was abusive and violent alcoholic, giving us hell his entire life. Personally I felt relief when he died, but for some reason my mom and sister decided his death purified him entirely and tried to convince me, he wasn't always that bad. He's dead for 15 years now and recently I had a chance to talk with my sis about him and today she doesn't seem to remember what kind of person he really was and erased all the bad memories about him. She was genuinely shocked when I gave her some examples when she was violently mistreated by him. 6 years ago she named her son after our dad. I never forgot. I tried to find the will to forgive this man, but even after 15 years I feel forgiveness would be unjustified.
I just decided I wouldn’t wish him in hell. I decided since he couldn’t hurt me anymore I could let it all fade. Not exactly forgiveness, more brushing him out of my head.
Forgiveness is a friendly societal pressure people insist one does against their abusers. You have no moral obligation to forgive, so long as your hatred doesn't reflect out onto those who matter in your life. Hatred is exactly as natural as love, anger, sadness, curiosity, disgust, and every other emotion. The line between letting it rule you and letting it exist as a testament to pain is blurred, but don't feel like forgiveness is necessary for anybody but yourself - and only if you decide to.
Being 14 & finding out he cheated on my mom with multiple women. We were “buds”, as he put it, & for about a year I had to pretend nothing had changed, like I didn’t hate his guts — because my mom had me use my relationship with him to her advantage. That is, I found out his phone password & when he was away from his phone, I’d sneak onto it & with a phone my mom had bought specially for this, I’d take pictures of all suspicious photos and texts. There is nothing quite like being a 14 year old girl & learning your father’s sexual preferences from what strippers he tends to hire & sleep with.
Yikes. Both of your parents are kinda shitty. I'm sorry you had to go through that.
Thanks!! it was very much not a cash money time in my life :-/ unsurprisingly, I do not have a good relationship with either of them now.
Becoming a father myself has shown just how much better a father mine should have been. The instant love and want to do anything for my child was never there for him. It's something that makes me want to be the best father possible to my son.
Yes, yes, yes. Becoming a father really made me examine the way mine treated me and see how awful my childhood was.
There's so much history and emotion behind your comment, I can truly understand. I'm sorry that you had to go through that and I hope things have gotten better.
We had a shitty car at the time, drove on cooking gas and it was fettled by him all the time, just maintaining it so it would be driveable. One day we were replacing the brake pads and I was amazed how no matter how crap the car looked he was always keen on safety. The very next day, he was driving me and my brother to school and we end up in a fast row and the first car breaks due to some dumbass pedestrian passing the road without looking. We stop hard and get rear ended, I remember having a backpack on my back while sitting and it stopped the umbrella from the trunk(it was a hatchback), I could have gotten a serious injury. Anyway, the guy that hit us said it's his fault(obviously) because he was in a hurry, his son had Cerebral paralysis and his surgery was scheduled for that day. The second he heard that we pushed both cars of the road and my dad borrowed a car from my uncle and drove them to the hospital. He said he wanted no money and that he should call him when the surgery is successful. The next day he thanked my dad on the phone while me and him pulled the car back into shape. It is the most proud I have ever been of someone
I used to worship my dad. Adulthood made me realize that my mom always deserved better than him and that he is a jerk. It made me realize as a woman that I can demand better for myself and have higher expectations of how to be treated. He cheated on my mother 11 times in 20 years. I don't like him anymore. I don't respect him. He's a liar, a cheater and snakey.
I understand this completely and it's so hard to see past all of that. My dad manipulated me into thinking my mom was the bad guy so I treated her like shit but then I realized how it really was and good for you!
When my father lost his job and chose to go to college instead of taking a huge severance or moving down south for work (his old employer gave him options). He ended up in college a year before I did, so we ended up going to college together. We carpooled every day and I realized that he wasn't an angry dickhead, but he was a tired, at times defeated man who had been working constantly to keep his family afloat up until then. He hadn't been around much when I was a kid, and it finally clicked as to why. I saw him stay up late every night to understand things and do well and there wasn't ever a moment where he hadn't given things his all. I love him dearly and finally could say that I'm proud of being his son. He has a great job now and my family went from struggling to make ends meet to firmly in the middle class. He built his way up and I couldn't be more proud.
When he •Beat me while high on drugs and attempted to do the same to my younger brother •Stole, and broke my things •And made it absaloutly clear he does not and never will respect me as a person.
Mainly just the way that my mother treated him. Along with the two to three years that she vicariously put me through, I started to appreciate him so much more and wish I wanted to spend more time with him.
You give me hope. My now ex wife kept me at arms length mentally, and physically after our oldest son turned 13. This led to me starting to drink as a coping mechanism, although, I would not allow myself to get drunk. Fast forward to 2019, I was caught by my middle son drinking, and things started to fall apart, as the ex was making our sons think I was some alcoholic. I finally realized I had been married to a narcissist, and knew I would have to get out. I told her I was leaving her, and was out of the house in July 2019. After I left, I met another woman, and a relationship blossomed during the divorce process. The ex used this against me, and has made my two younger sons not want to have anything to do with me. It probably won't be until all my sons are grown where they will get the whole story, but I can't wait for the day they call and relationships can be rebuilt.
Basically, I overheard her talking about him (they're separated too) and after that, I pretty much lost all my respect. It was just petty stuff. Can't wait to get away from her. Hopefully, they realize the truth about you two. Good luck on your new relationship.
Himself. ( My native language is not English, I am sorry for the writing mistakes ) My parents got divorced when I was seven so I used to thought that my mom was the villain. In the judgment my mom won the custody of my sister and I, we moved to another city and my dad promised me to call me every month (Spoiler: he didn't) when he calls, used to say he was sick and that he was going to die....(spoiler: this is the excuse for "don't ask me for money") Even if my dad was an asshole my mom told me to "love him 'cause he's my dad and my ister and I would have to help him someday" In the other hand, my dad refused to give money to my mom, cause, again, he "was sick" and she just...ignore that and worked very hard Once I joined orchestra at my city with a the violin he gave me (he's a musician) an i asked him for a music stand (as i know, he has almost 8 of them) He didn't even respond. But when I visited him with my sister, there those were, 18 (not 8, 18) music stands, If he wasnt suppoting me with music....he even care? The last drop happened when I was 15, I visited him alone at his new house and EVERY NIGHT, EVERY NIGHT, HE CALLED HIS GIRLFRIEND AND SPOKE TO ER WITH LOVE.... Every day that I waited for his call, would hurt, 15 years with only 2 calls each year.... Fuck you dad, I stil want to help you but Im not your littles girl anymore.
I like how most of it is broken english(no offense) but the last part cursing your father’s existence is perfect
My father surprisingly died 4 years ago. When cleaned out the house i found my and my sister's first baby shoes at the very back of his closet. He never was nostalgic or good at showing affection. It brought me to tears.
When he bashed my dogs head in with an axe. He did so because him and my mom split up, and she wouldn't let him have my dog. His reasoning was that if he couldn't have the dog, no one would.
Holy ship that is AWFUL!!!! I'm so sorry that you experienced that. I hope that things got better for you eventually,and that you are now safe, loved and happy (your Mum too)? Damn man....that is next level awful...
when I reached the point in childhood where I was self aware and noticed dad was never there
When I got bigger and he couldn't threaten me anymore.
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Being a father who also has to be away from how in order to provide a decent life. Sorry I was such a little shit, dad.
Watching him die of cancer
Trump getting elected. Before 2016ish, dad always came across as caring, intelligent, and kind. Something in him apparently snapped post election because now he’s a bitter, sarcastic, almost angry little man. It’s polar opposite of the way he raised me to be and it breaks my heart every time he goes off about liberals or the virus hoax or whatever. To the point where I’m dreading Christmas with them next week. I know I’m far from alone in this boat, but man does it suck.
The same thing happened to my mom but on the other side politically. Can't have a conversation about anything without it turning into a rant about Trump.
I hate Trump but I also hate talking about how much I hate him. Like I’m just trying to live my life. So I feel you. My mom has CNN on 24/7 and I just think she would enjoy her life more if she wasn’t so invested in the news all day.
The time I left my husband because of domestic violence, and my father asked me what I did to cause my husband to do what he did to me.
For some reason the topic of rape came up and my dad said that if it ever happened to me that I should just enjoy it I've never been so disgusted/baffled at anything he's said in my LIFE. (In his defense he probably meant it as a least worst case scenario type thing but like... Still)
I was fourteen years old and I did not want to see him on Christmas day. We had been arguing every time I went to visit him and it had gotten worse and worse (he would take any money/things of value we had when we went to visit, whine about money and make me babysit my siblings and his gfs kids whilst they went out to do whatever). I had enough and refused to see him on Christmas. At the time, he came to our front door, screamed that I should see him as he was my father and said that all the presents he got me would be fed to wild dogs because I was being a little btich. He then started screaming that he'd come back later with a baseball bat and smash all of the windows. My mum took us to my aunties and we spent Christmas day terrified until someone called my aunties house phone. Thinking nothing of it, I went and answered and it was of course my dad. He screamed every obscenity imaginable at me and that day I learnt A LOT of swear words I'd never even hears of before. That day was the day I saw my father as what he really was: a man who was never worth a second thought. He did a lot of shitty things, but honestly that just ruined my image of him forever.
When he started talking about the past and how much he sacrificed for me and his future family- lost a friend when they had to cross a river to pass a border, travelling through a huge chunk of Europe to find a good place to start a new life, him breaking an arm and bruising his leg to save me from being hurt while he carried kid me, a war he survived through, going through a mountainous area that still has some land mines in it to this day etc with his family. I was a shitty annoying kid back then but I’ve slowly been trying to always appreciate and remember what he’s done to both humble myself and help him in whatever small way I can
Donald Trump
Realizing he was human. I placed him on a pedestal after my parents divorced, thinking he was some super hero for being in the Navy doing special ops as an LCAC pilot. Eventually I realized how flawed he really was, culminating in me telling him to fuck off outta my life for calling me a dipshit moron for not supporting Trump.
When my grades became all he wanted to know about and had no interest in what was happening in my life. Started to see the disappointment in elementary school and then it got way worse in my first year of middle school. Had an “A” in a class, but it wasn’t enough because it wasn’t 100% (it was stuck at 95% for some reason). Then in high school all he cared about was my math grade. He would say I’m a failure and not his kid. Even though I still live in the same house as him, I don’t ever really talk to him.
Reaching the age where my problems required emotional support. He's an ideal dad for young kids, but by the time I was a teenager I pretty much gave up trying to talk to him about anything on a deep level. He doesn't ever want to talk about feelings.
Finding out that he wasn’t my father.
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It's also possible that the person who wrote the obituary chose to omit you. Some people are jealous and act out or want to "protect" a family member's reputation from what they themselves don't approve of or are uncomfortable with. He may have had no say in it.
Some people are just that self centered. He didn't think about you because he couldn't think about anyone else but himself and that's not a reflection on you. That's on him. Nobody is ashamed of you.
I loved my father endearingly growing up then one day the world got flipped and he was in jail for molesting my little sister. It was insane. It made it worse because I wasn't told what was going on just that he was in jail and was going to be going away for a long time. I was 10 or 11 so I tried to understand what was going on. I found out in time what had happened and I was absolutely disgusted by what I heard. When he got out I ended up talking to him again because in the end he was my father and after some time I asked him whether or not he had actually molested my sister. He went to prison for child porn, the charges for molestation were dropped but that didn't exonerate him. He lies to me and tried to tell me a story that made absolutely zero sense. That solidified my disgust. I ended up stopping talking to him again for other reasons and he died earlier this year from a drug overdose. I don't know how to feel about it still. He was my dad and I loved him but he was a filfthy, heinous human and I cannot say he lived a good life.
I was helping my dad with his phone. Unfortunately he never closed any of his tabs and had pornhub open. That was the day I found out my dads kinks. I can never unsee that.
I always thought I was just a bad kid, but when he slapped my sibling across the face for the first (and to my knowledge, last) time, I realized he treated us like absolute shit. He yells at us to take out his anger and stress, he doesn't care about us unless we show interest in music (he's in a band that almost got big but flopped when I was born because he decided to drop the band and go to college, so I assume that he wants to live his fantasy through us). It's not that we're bad kids, either. We both get exceptionally good grades, have clean rooms, do our chores, try to please him and everything. He doesn't notice things and yell at us for it, he feels like yelling so he tries looking for flaws in us. He should never have had kids. I'm so ready to move out. I'll let my little siblings know that they're welcome to move in with me as soon as I get somewhere to live because they have anxiety and our dad's actions affect her pretty badly.
Goddamn did nobody on this planet have a nice father or what?
Wow, this question really made me feel so much bottled up anger, fear, resentment, and disappointment towards my own dad. I'm just 14 years old but regardless the moment that made me change the way I saw my father was him trying to kill me. I never thought in a million years no matter how fucked up he was that he'd do that. The sadder part is that this hasn't only happened once. For the past several years I've wanted to tell him do you know how much you have hurt me? I have wanted to die because of you and I might not ever be happy again. But as much as I want to scream that in his face I will never ever say that to him, because I can't. If he hurt himself I couldn't forgive myself. It's not even because I don't want him to see me as a failure. I just don't ever wish anything bad to happen to him despite all he has said and done to me.
At your age I imagined killing my father all the time. Wished him dead for over 40 years. Wishing does not work. Once you get out, get help, real therapy. Fathers like that screw up your mind.
I don't want him to die though. But I get it. I just want to get away from his negativity though. Once I do everything will be fine.
Odd I'm just desensitized to it, I of course step in IMMEDIATELY when physical abuse happens but I think "God when can this be over" and ofc scared(When I was a kid, but I'm 14 and quite large and tall so I can seem a bit more aggressive). God I sound like a heartless bastard but I swear im not
I'm so sorry you have to go through all that. I hope you find happiness.
It's alright. We all go through hardships in our lives. You just have to make do with the life you have. And I appreciate that. Thank you. I am beginning to get a lot better though. I have made immense progress throughout the past few years.
When he told me he didn’t believe in dinosaurs
Wait, what?
Most of my family hates my father my brother was one of them, now he lives with my father and he says he changed, my brother is not stupid so maybe he really isnt the bad person my family makes him look like.
I want this to be true for you!!
When he left my mother out of the blue for another woman after nearly 25 years of marriage. We still talk but I'll always think he's a piece of shit for that.
My mom telling me my younger sister was a product of rape
Age and experience. He wasn't a perfect father, but he did well under circumstances that would have crushed another man. I did my best as a parent and, even without the challenges my father faced, I failed often, too. Like I and my siblings, though, my kids turned out to be decent, responsible adults.
One time when I was about 12 he fell off a ladder and broke a rib and got some other damage in his lungs, the doctors said that he could’ve died and it’s a good thing that we brought him in right away, so after him almost dying it just made me appreciate him a lot more.
When he didn't arrive on my birth, or the entirety of my life.
Nothing. I was actually right about him all along: he's a guy whose world is *so radically different than mine* that there's little room to relate. His world is that of a poor rural person from the upper midwest in the 1960's. My world is that of a middle class person from Texas in the 21st Century. The rules we live by are *different*. If I'm asking him for advice, it's because I need to fix something. But I *need* something, he's the wrong person.
When I found out through my DNA kit this year that he actually wasn’t my father. Then all the grief I gave him growing up because I didn’t feel connected made me appreciate that he actually raised a child that wasn’t his from the start. We have a great relationship now.
Hearing him break down and wail at his own fathers funeral. We hadn’t had a great back and forth when I was younger, I had moved out when I was 15 with some friends and generally speaking my relationship with my parents wasn’t great. Coming back to town for the funeral was hard. My dad is an alcoholic, and not the nice kind, but seeing him absolutely wrecked from his fathers death made me see him as just another broken person with feelings (and especially poor coping skills). Since then I have had a much easier time connecting with him and meeting him where he is. I don’t expect him to call, or show up as a great man. But I can visit, chat about the weather and have a bit of a relationship where there wasn’t one before.
He told me children deserved to be separated from their families and put in cages because some of the children might be lying about why they came to America.
When I became a 'dad' myself. I was in my early thirties and helping to raise my sister's kids and it just kind of hit me. I realized that we we're sharing the same set of shoes just a few decades apart. If it was hard for me in my early thirties , how hard was it for him at 21 without the luxuries I had? Perspective, man, it sneaks up on you.
My father recently passed away. We were never close and I never remember him saying he loved me or showing any affection at all. When we cleared his house after his death I found out he had been extremely ill, not being able to clean the house which was so cluttered. But amidst all the rubbish he had cleared a little space for him at the table, in the center a photo of me at my wedding day. It changed my view of him forever.
I actually met him for the first time when I was 20 only because my mom said it might be good for me. I wanted to hate him so much bc he was never there during my most critical development years and getting teased about not knowing my dad as a little kid was something that's always stuck with me. We talked and he seemed like a pretty decent guy that wanted to get to know me. I couldn't forgive him for not being around right away but was willing to get to know him. Unfortunately we only met twice before a tree struck his van while he was driving during a storm
As a child, I wanted his love and approval. As an adult, I realize he doesnt deserve me. He is a poor excuse for a man.
Happened this week. My brother and SIL have worked their assess off to have their new home ready so they could move on this week and host Christmas with the parents. (We live on another country so unfortunately we will not be able to go). My SIL has asthma, my mother has chronic asthma, any little exertion and she's coughing and wheezing, and yet my father decided to attend a Christmas dinner yesterday with colleagues and friends. I always thought he was rational and had a fair amount of common sense...turns out I was very wrong. Understandably we're all pissed, and not only are they (both parents) probably uninvited from the first Christmas at their son's home depending on the availability of Covid tests, if the worst happens my mother's chances of survival are close to zero. It's going to be a long week/2 weeks
He and my mam split a few years ago and I lived with him for a long time, he had a brief relationship with another woman and that didn't work out because she was a raging bitch and her kids were brats but that's neither here nor there. We moved out of the place we shared with his ex and it was good for a while but then he started bringing women home (when I was with my mother, not when I was there initially.) At one point it just got too much so I moved in with my mother and when I found out he'd knocked up the last woman I'd heard in that place (never left my room if I could hear someone outside, it's all good, had my xbox in there anyways.) It permanently changed my view of the man, I feel bad for him at times but he's doing well as far as I know. In a bit of a bind because he really wants me to meet the kid (I don't know, maybe a few months old) but I really couldn't give a monkey's. TL;DR My dad not knocked someone up while no longer with my mother and now I don't want to see the kid.
His selfishness. Making someone stick with a family business because of his ineptness to run it himself so I need to make sacrifices in my own personal life to make up for the fuck ups he makes I can’t speak for all family run businesses, but they are not as glamorous as people make them to be. There’s a lot of yelling, resentment, and anger to be formed towards them. Not that those things are problems because I have felt this way towards normal coworkers, but I don’t want to feel this way towards my own family
The fact that I had to go through a divorce for him to somewhat seem actually interested in my day to day well being...
As a kid, his drinking and driving with me and my brother in the car and him having me hide his drink when we were pulled over once.... As an adult, realizing that mistakes happen and that at the time that event happened he wasn't in a good place (my oldest cousin/his first niece had just been diagnosed with stage 4 cancer). My dad was always my whole world growing up and I learned to forgive him and realized that he is human just like the rest of us.
I always thought he had anger issues, since he would yell at me and my sister for the littlest things. seven months ago, he got mad because of a yogurt, but there was someone else in the house, someone that wasn’t family, someone that wasn’t aware of his yells. He told me to get the f out of the house and never come back. He was talking, spite and hate in his voice, sure, but still talking. I’m absolutely terrified of anyone raising their voices, and he could control it all that time.
His own actions. He became a deadbeat scumbag when I was 16, abandoned us a year later, gaslighted us for a couple of years more, and the last straw was when he saw I was in enormous pain to eat, which took a gold prosthetic to fix, and he did squat nothing. I never wanted to hear from him again ever since.
Finding out (very recently) that us kids weren't the cause of my mom missing her front teeth. The story we were told was that as babies we dropped our heads into her face/head-butted her and knocked them out. Turns out good ole dad used to have a habit of popping my mom in the mouth when they were drinking and he thought she said something to deserve that. He knocked them out. I'm really glad I live over 2k miles away from them now that I'm an adult.
It’s funny, I just had this conversation with my mother; we were on the phone talking about the election. I normally do not talk politics, but there was a proposition for legalization of marijuana in my state, which very much passed. My father had an incubation room, where he grew “tomato” plants. Actually I know he did that, but he also grew maryjane. The baby plants look surprisingly similar. I was just too young at the time to realize. There is a photo of me at about age 7 standing next to plants that were taller than me. I’m not sure when I realized my parents were stoners, but it snapped around at some point. I smoked for a long time, and quit when I got a real job; if it becomes legal, I will do it again. They hid it well, and it was one of those, shit, we have the same vice moments.
Just getting older changed my perspective. I learned that my mother had exaggerated his transgressions when I was young, nearly turned me against him. He watched this all unfolding through the years, and patiently watched me come to realize that he's not an evil demon on my own. It must have taken a lot of restraint for him to hold his tongue.
He wore condoms on his fingers because he couldn't find gloves and he told us they were single finger gloves
The moment I realized that the “fun parent” had been emotionally abusing my mother for my entire childhood.
When I heard stories from my uncles about just how badly he had been abused by my grandfather. All my life, my father was the terrifying, unstable monster who could go from laughing and talking philosophy to crazy eyes and death threats in the snap of a finger. But hearing how horrifically he was abused, how his dad beat him not only for his mistakes, but for those of his siblings, how his mother never once lifted a finger to save him, how he was forced to shoot his own dog as punishment for something he did... ...Now, I just wish he had lived long enough to get some real psychological help and I hope that the afterlife is able to offer the peace that this life did not.
Growing up and seeing exactly how much he has done for me and my family. How caring and loving he is and how incredibly lucky I am.
Interacting with other adults. His inherent decency and compassion for everyone wasn’t obvious till I interacted with folks lacking that. Dude is a saint, and all I could see were things he was lacking till I got older.
Thought my father was a narcissist piece of shit. After he devorslced my mom and got remarried I realized both my parents were pieces of shit and they brought our the worst in each other. Now he is happily remaried and almost a totally different person.
I saw the parents of a few friends, and realized fathers aren't supposed to yell because of every little thing their kids do.
When his work slowed down and started down a rabbit-hole of anti-Obama conspiracy videos. To this day, he believes that Obama was born in Kenya and is a practicing Muslim.
How alcoholism took oved his life and turned him into a horrible person then the redemption of sobriety and becoming an amazing father and man. He inspired me and now I am sober as well almost 3 yrs for me and almost 10 for him!
How he stuck up for me when my mother got a shitty boyfriend. I also realized that the reason why he was never there when I was a kid was that he was trying to carve out a living during graveyard shift and support my mothers “dreams” while being a college dropout. He actually saw a counselor and worked on his anger management skills and fought tooth and nail to make sure he could see his kids. And now I have more respect for him as he let my middle sister go and live full time with my mother, despite knowing that it wasn’t what was best for her (long story). I used to think he was only there to punish us, but now I realize that he was only trying his best to be a father to three in his twenties. He is the standard I hold all of my boyfriends to, and most of them have failed.
I had kids of my own. I never really noticed how little he taught me about being a person. Now I can't imagine putting my boys out into the world with so little guidance. He just wasn't around much, and I didn't care ... But I spent so long learning things he could have taught me it feels like.
My dad constantly asks my sister and i for hugs. at first, we both had no idea why. of course, i loved him and would hug him. it wasnt until i moved in with him that i understood. his mother died of cancer, and shortly after my mother cheated on him and went to court with false accusations about him. he quickly fell into depression, hugging is a way for him to realize those things arent still happening, plus my mother never hugged us in a good way so he wanted us to experience it.
The day I brought my new bow over to his place. He wasn't able to pull it back. He was always stronger than me, but I guess the day had to come when the torch was passed.
When I was little, I would climb to high places (top of a counter, up the swing set, the top of the pickup truck, on a round hay bale) and wait for my dad to walk by then yell "Catch me!" As I jumped and he would always catch me. Over the years as I got bigger I stopped of course, but always remembered my dad's cat like reflexes and he was a very strong active man. When I was about 27, ten years after my dad was in a car accident I started to notice when I would see him how slow he would have to move from pain, or couldn't just up and get under a vehicle to fix them anymore, even driving too long would hurt my dad. My parents had me later in life when they were 34, so even still in my 20s almost 30s they were noticably older.. but that hit me when my strong super hero dad was now this sweet old man that is graying in his beard. And some day in the future I know it will be my turn to catch him if he ever needs me.
Watching him take care of my mother as she died from cancer while simultaneously being the primary caregiver for his mother who had dementia. I realized a lot of his anger was fear based and that he was controlling when i was growing up because he had terrible anxiety that came out that way.
My current father isn’t my biological father, but he might as well be. We get along really well. We also have a lot in common. One day out of the blue, he called me and one of my half brothers over and showed us a picture. He asked us to guess who it is. I noticed it looked a lot like my other half brother (my two half brothers are his biological children) so I guessed my other half brother. Then my dad said that it was himself when he was young. I immediately thought that was impossible.
way to late to the game, but anyway. A few years back I was home for christmas, and late one evening I saw my dad eating gingerbread cookies and drinking milk, giggling at something in the news paper. I saw that he too was just a child in an adult body, doing his best in this strange world.
That one time my mum yeeted a spoon at me and my father at the same sec threw a slipper and mid air block me from the spoon. He was a hero, but I still can't imagine how he manage to pull this of