Parental Relationships

I was just thinking about starting this thread. I wouldn't exactly say I've had a poor relationship with my dad. In fact, he's always supported me, but he's always been a little more distant than what I would've liked.

I'm increasingly clashing with him, but that's just because I'm old enough where I don't always agree with him on everything. It also doesn't help that I've been more than ready to move out, yet I'm home more because of the summer break.

I'm not really comfortable with my orientation enough to have any set opinions on it yet, but I've been thinking that because our orientation is so stigmatized in society, we look deeper into our environment. Our parents didn't screw us up emotionally any more than straight people's. No son has a perfect relationship with their dad. No daughter has a perfect relationship with their mom. We've just analyzed those relationships more in a subconscious effort to convince ourselves it was nurture that made us this way, and maybe we can "nurture ourselves straight" if we identify the causes. We talk about these problems from our past more than others, so our problems are more public than straights'. A stereotype is born. Again, just a developing theory of mine.

 

I've always had a good relationship with my dad.

 

Yes.

 

I had a pretty good relationship with my dad until I was about 13.
Now we don't talk very much but I still seem to have a better relationship with him than a lot of my male friends have with their fathers.

 

As far as I know (and I only know this from the "gay education" animation so often posted on this forum), the idea that a boy's relationship with his father can affect his sexuality is Freud's idea, and his idea about lesbians was that they suffer from penis envy and wish to "avenge their perceived castration" by taking a woman for themselves. In other words, since he was the originator of the theory about gay men and he never theorized that lesbians' relationships with their parents affect their sexuality, a lesbian version of the theory doesn't exist at large.

 

I got along quite well with my mother and still do. The difficult relationship was with my father. We've always been at each others throats. This is partially because we both have a strong willed, hot-heated, rash, and sometimes ferocious temperament.

 

Nope I get along well with my father. Didn't so much before though. But we go to the gym everyday and stuff together now.

 

My dad and I are not close. I haven't seen him in 8 years, and haven't spent any time with him in 12. Last I heard he had remarried a woman he met online. I know he moved to North Carolina too. My step-dad and I are on even worse terms: all we do is fight.

I used to completely disprove the idea of how my lackluster relationship with a positive male influence causes my gayness - and I still don't believe it honestly - but at least know I can understand where the idea comes from. However, I have learned through EC that there are enough gay men out there with positive father-son relationships to disprove the theory.

 

Just another datapoint, I have a fairly good relationship with my father. Sure there were rough times, but we're both older and wiser now.

 

I have a mostly good relationship with my father. I have had a couple of bad fights with him, however.

 

I don't think my relationship with my dad was much different than his relationship with my (straight) siblings. My parents both yelled too much for me to want to hang out with either of them anyway.

 

I've always had a good relationship with my father, but we've actually gotten closer since I came out. Our relationship now is pretty awesome.

 

My relationship with my father is non-existent, and I want it to stay that way. He's hurt too many people.

 

My dad and I are close, but neither of us is a talker by nature, so we don't say a lot to each other. But I know he'll back me up the hilt if I need him to.