What's your experience with Dad?

I do not consider my father anything else but my biological elder. He is not a dad, he is an abusive, wild, and idiotic fly.

My father and I are sort of alike in some senses, though. He was smaller, weaker, and obviously less fortunate than most of the boys in his class growing up. However, I must've gotten the intelligence that lacks in him as of now. He and I do share an interest in computers, programming, coding, etcetera, but other than that, his expectations of me were to be a sportsman. I should be outdoors. I will get married and have kids with a Catholic wife, and that'd be the end of it. How wrong was he, right? Hahahahaha.

I might feel differently about him, but as of right now, I do not enjoy his company. I do not enjoy my mother's company. I do not enjoy the company of anyone else right now. I just want to be on my own, alone, and behind a computer where that's the only real safe spot.

 

My dad and me are fairly close, and I certainly have a far better relationship with him than my mom.

Unlike my two older brothers, we both love sports and always watch them together. But we never have "serious" talks, and I'm at a point where I'm comfortable with not telling him about my orientation.

 

My dad is an annoying shallow nuisance who I can't cut ties with because he's paying for my surgery in four months time.

 

My father throughout my whole life kind of distanced himself, it always seemed to me that i could never do anything that would be considered "good". I haven't came out to my father yet, and i am kind of dreading the day, so i cannot really say anything in that direction. But when i was a kid i never really liked sports as much as my dad did, and i tried my best to always play them when i could and always tried my best but i could always hear my dad getting all mad when i would mess up (like miss the ball in baseball).

When i was a kid i always had a really hard time getting a long with my dad because i felt that he hated me, because i would always get the most of his wraith. I sometimes still feel that way but i try to put it back in my head, because i have just accepted that he just doesn't know how to talk to people and have also learned that when my father is mad at someone else he takes his anger out on the closest person.

My dad never really played any sports with me i was always that kid waiting for my dad to come play catch with me and he would never show up. He never really talked to me and supported me through life, that i guess in his eyes was my mom's job, so idk about that part as well. I always have had a really hard time talking to my dad or getting his approval, he is kind of family oriented anti-social. I pretty much have given up trying to get his approval because it never goes anywhere lol. It becomes pretty difficult to spend time around my dad because he's so judgmental and narcissistic.

 

Me and my dad don't really talk. After my parents divorced I didn't really keep in touch with him. My sisters and brother see him all the time, but I haven't seen him in 6 months now. I don't call him and he doesn't call me (well he did on my birthday 4 months ago but that conversation lasted a little under 2 minutes) When I move back to Ireland I'll probably see him every now and again but we won't be having any kind of father-son relationship. He doesn't even know I'm gay, but I'm not too worried about telling him because I don't really care about his opinion.

 

Me and my dad? He acts like he cares but he is racist and homophobic. Thank god he lives in Missouri. And I think now that I'm old enough I can opt out of visiting him. Thank God.
I have NEVER liked my Dad.

 

My experience with my dad has been alright. We're not particularly close (I'm not close to my mother either), we might go somewhere together if we share a common goal like going to an outdoor food market in Montreal, or going to the movies, although the latter is very rare from me.

Beyond that, my father has been mostly just present financially rather than emotionally, which I'm fine with. Some of the choices I've made have disappointed him, but it's not something that's abnormal, and it brought him to change his opinion of me gradually as I grew up to be more accepting of my...eccentricities. I don't know how much of a disappointment the fact that I was gay was to my father, but my relationship with him hasn't really changed. We still talk like we usually do, we've briefly talked of homosexuality (one of his ex-coworker was gay and married, so he had some insight that he thought I may be missing).

If I had to say, my relationship with my father is better than my relationship with my mother. If will likely sound rude, but my mother is just "there" nowadays, like a table in the living room. My relationship with her is alright. Growing up she's the one that was the most "controlling" so we clashed a few times, but nothing excessive. Nowadays we might talk, and joke around a little, but the relationship stops there.

 

Hrm. Copying this from an earlier post I did on my family to save having to rewrite it all:

My Dad: During his lifetime, my dad molested two of my sisters, raped his business partner's 20yr old granddaughter, and emotionally abused both my mom and myself for over 10yrs (Ages 8-18 basically. No, he never attempted to molest me - because we all know that question was hanging out there, don't we?). His favorite methods were to give me chores or odd jobs around our property, provide incomplete instructions, and then come back later and tell me how stupid and useless I was because I hadn't 'done it right' (meaning: hadn't read his mind). A particularly fond memory is when he sat me down one fine summer day and spent 30 minutes calmly explaining to me that because I didn't know how to use power tools and build things, the only thing I was good for (and would ever be good for) was shoveling shit (we had several barns and mucking out was one of my chores). That he'd never once tried to show me how to use said tools or get me interested in such work was beside the point. He was also a big fan of passive aggression, leaving us at motels in Anchorage while he went and ran around shopping or whatnot, or leaving us to sit in the car while he went in to his business partners gas station for coffee after we'd all been on the road for hours driving home from the city. If we defied him, he would take something of ours and hide it, often never to be seen again.

Oh, and when he wasn't doing all that he basically defrauded several banks, using the same piece of land as collateral for loans from multiple institutions. He managed to wipe out my college fund (such as it was) somewhere in there as well.
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I leave speculations about the nature of my relationship with my dad as an exercise for the reader

Todd

 

Me and Pops were close at a time. Up until I was 5. After that, He seemed to be bored of his home life yet he never left. He always worked constant overtime after overtime at his job at the time. And then the affairs started. He didn't become a "stable" figure in my life again until I turned 13. Basically my own Dad made my life, both outside and at home, hell due to his recklessness. But as much as I want to hate him, I can't. It wasn't until I became a teen that I learned his father abandoned him and his mother. Him being forced into the elder position(his eldest brother actually drunk himself to death shortly after their dad left), he had to take on a lot that he wasn't ready for. So it made sense that he would always manage to screw me over astronomically.


Nowadays, I don't love him like I should but I don't hate him like I shouldn't either. If that makes any sense. Honestly, I think my relationship with him is sloppy due to him lacking the help he should've gotten and poor circumstances. Which seems to be one of few similarities he and my mother have in common. Anyways, He tried. I will give the man that much. I don't think I was a disappointment to him as a child because I was very rugged. Not in a sporty way but a daredevil/unique way. But when he and my mother realized, when I was 14, that I most likely wasn't straight I think that hurt him a lot and he retreated from me. So now it's like a weird, terrible coming of age story.

Though I will admit that I am Tough, Stubborn/Unyielding, Untrusting, Resentful and quite Wrathful in my relationships with other males because those are the key traits that defined me and my father's on and off volatile relationship. :dry:

 

Well its not that good and I really don't like him. I can't remember any good times I had with him growing up. He would beat my mother until she was finally able to leave him. He never hit her again after she left them but he would constantly come over and verbally abuse her. He was never a good dad and I can remember several occasions when he told me he was going to kill my mother and bury her in a mountain for no one could find her. So I'm kind of glad that he's not in the country anymore.

 

I LOVE my Dad! We've always been close, and always will be, even after I tell him my "little secret". Love him to death even if he annoys me sometimes.

 

My dad and I get along a lot better than my mom. My mom is very controlling and is very conservative. My dad, being more liberal and from NY, is more tolerant and easy going. He doesn't stress me out like my other parent. I've always admired my dad. He's funny as hell and I'm more confident with telling him about...you know...eventually. He's done so many things for me in my life that just saying thank you isn't enough. I love my dad!

 

My dad was well involved in my life until I was 9. My parents divorced (and it was messy as hell), and he moved into a small home on the other end of town, and he's been there ever since they split. I've spent every other weekend at his home since I was 10 until I turned 15. I'm definitely closer with my mom, but my dad has taught me some valuable things here and there, even though he's a jerk.

I guess I'm indifferent towards him because I don't talk to him much. Sometimes he'll come over to the house, sometimes I'll go see a movie with him, or I'll stay the night at his place if he wants me to. He's in my life more lately because of my transition and he wants to keep an eye on me, and see my progress, but I don't feel very close to him.

But it kinda sucks because he's a really intelligent guy once you get passed the half-assed, demanding attitude and thick foreign accent. I look just like him and apparently share the same mannerisms, but thank god I didn't get his personality. He's quite reserved and too lackadaisical about a lot of things in life.

 

Me and my dad have a love/hate relationship. We CLASH. I argue with him at least once a day and we call each other every name under the sun and then the next minute, we're fine.

 

My parents don't know I'm gay and to be honest I don't really either of them. I don't know if anything would change if I told him i was gay, and I hope it wouldn't.

 

I am not close with my dad. Contact is minimal. I do not ask him for anything, and I stay away from him whenever possible. As of now, that is how it will stay. Not sure he deserves to know the truth about his son, but it is partially his own fault.

 

I guess throughout my life my dad and I have had an OK relationship, we have had our fair share of falling-outs and disagreements, but despite his strict, macho Army-man exterior he has been a good dad for the most part. Of course the whole idea of coming out to him was something that caused me to distance myself a bit more from him later in life, he made his opinions on homosexuality pretty clear and made it fairly obvious that any family member being gay would be disowned - extra pressure on me being the only male of all four children.

I guess our relationship was on the rocks when his worst fears were realised, that his son was gay. I remember for a period after initially finding out he would always refer to me as 'your son' when talking to my mum about me. We were never really bitchy with one another though, he was always civil to me and my boyfriend and never stopped him staying over - so things did go much better than expected.

Now some 5 years down the line (having moved out about 4 years ago) I consider myself in some ways to be much closer to my dad now. He's slowly accepted Erik as a part of the family and of course he's taken on board my opinions on this not being a choice, this not being a lifestyle I choose by looking at the gay celebrities on the TV (narrow minded i know). And for once he expresses pride in where I have gotten with my life and how well i'm doing for myself professionally - which has only added to make our relationship closer. Plus he knows I'll always be in his corner to back him up when my mum is being particularly annoying - the males stick together in our family ;-) I guess all we needed is a little space.

 

My father divorced my mother when I was 2 years old, then we moved away. He tried to have a relationship with us, but my mother made it impossible after a short while, and he moved back to Mexico.

She married again, and this stepfather was a bastard to me, no love lost when he died in a car accident when I was 12.

But now, I wonder what kind of father I am to my children, I get along differently with each one, but already I am seeing signs of alienation since the separation.

It's difficult to be a dad. We are supposed to provide the means of life, but too often we outsource or subscribe to the emotional contribution that the mother makes. I have had no model of fatherhood to follow, so it's been pretty much making it up as I go along. The whole "absent father" syndrome is real, but I think it is a symptom of our modern industrial economy where we are supposed to be separated from our children while we are at work. I don't want to idealize the old agrarian culture where fathers worked with sons in the field, but at least they were close, and a father could teach a son or daughter a thing or two.

Now, fathers and their children have very little to do with each other, the school, the state and the mother all have their way, and fathers are, unfortunately, an afterthought. They have to find the strength, after a long, stressful and exhausting day at work to interact with the kids, it's doesn't come naturally...

 

My dad and I were close when I was little, but during elementary school and high school I wasn't as close to him like your typical father-son relationship. That's not to say he didn't care about me or hated me, it's just he puts a lot of time into his job and didn't have much time for me like my sisters. It didn't bother me much as I am pretty self-sufficient and if I needed someone to talk to I had my mom whenever I needed to talk (which was rare, I keep my problems to myself).

Only recently have my dad and I started to connect more but still it's not the stereotypical playing catch or anything. Still I am happy that he wants to talk to me more and asks me about my day. Although I do feel I have failed to be the perfect son, but he's never made me feel bad about my interests or hobbies.