Were You Close to Your Father?

Sorry for the loss of your father, OP. Been there. I was lucky in a way. I was never close to my father growing up, but in his final years I had to take care of him. My mom died, and my sister was worthless at taking care of anyone -which left me. He was bedridden for five years before he died. Not easy, but I got a chance to really know him, in ways I would never have thought possible in my childhood. I miss him.

If fragments of love and connection are all that you've got -at least you have them. As time goes by, fragments are all that really remain...

OP you have good memories and can recall times spent with your Dad fondly - that’s a win so many don’t and will never have.

You and your brother were good sons to him and cared for him when it mattered. You still do.

I hope you make your peace with that.

No.

We got on well despite a few very brief patches. He as a mensch. Classic family man and lifelong provider. He was masculine, kind, fair, open-minded, ethical, hard-working, sarcastic (but not nearly as much as his brothers and sisters), tall and handsome. We my friends and I got in trouble and needed a father to fix it we would get my dad because he was calm and efficient in crisis.

Unfortunately many men look back on their not close enough relati0onship with their fathers. For some it's because they have an old-school patriarchal view of parenting and have the misguided believe that fathers must be stoic to show leadership and retain respect. My father was somewhat close and playful until I reached Kindergarten age. After that he also remained mostly distant. Things got a little better by the time he was in his seventies. Boys need affection from both parents. When I see boys getting unconditional display of love from their father, I love at that relationship with wistfulness of what could have and should have been. We both lost out.

See the film, Field Of Dreams, to get a good representation of a dysfunctional relationship between father and son. In that one the father and son were about equally at fault, but the playing a game of catch at the end is emotional because that is what a true good relationship between father and son should be. Spending quality time together sharing the simple pleasures.

Very close. I only have one of them and I’ll miss him like crazy when he’s gone.

By contrast, my younger brother has been an amazing father to his own kids, now adults. I guess he learned what NOT to do from our dad.

My dad had a terrible temper. I grew up afraid of him. It wasn’t physical, but he used to yell and scream at us at the drop of a hat. He ruled the roost through fear and intimidation. No one would ever believe it though. My parents kept up a facade of the perfect family outside the home. I had to walk on eggshells at all times to try to not set off my father or mother. Mom was overbearing and super critical. She also had anger issues but hers was from a place of anxiety and panic instead of rage and anger like my father. They both think I am ungrateful and selfish for not having much contact with them.

My dad absolutely forbid yelling or displays of temper. He and my mom never yelled at each other.

Meanwhile, my partner’s family communicates mainly in the language of temper and screaming. It does not work for me.

My father was similar to that Op. Don't know if he knew I was going to be gay or just like that. He loved little kids and my sister but for some reason we never clicked. I think he visited me once while in college and went out to dinner and maybe the only time he saw me as an adult and we actually had a couple drinks together and had a good time. Literally the only time i can remember doing that. He later got into 2 different car accidents that almost killed him twice but lived into his mid 70's.

Anyways If it makes you feel betters, I once read that men of a certain era were mostly like that as fathers. Especially if they were the ones who went off to WW2. When they came back, society just kind of gave them a BIG pass at being an involved father as they had already risked their lives for their country. They left all of that engagement with kids to the mother, close to 100%.

Boo hoo.

You have only one father, and you failed ala basic test: show up, on time.

I showed up for Dad and if theres a “here after” we will meet up.

No. I escaped from that sadistic, cruel bastard when I was 17 and never saw him again. Almost 50 years later, I still have the mental -emotional scars from that prick. He did some major damage. His wife somehow located me in 2023 and called to let me know he was dying. My reply, “yeah, and?” Frankly, only when he was dead did I ( and my sister who went thru same terror with him) find any sort of relief. Some men should never, ever have children- he was one of those guys . Thanks for listening to my rant.

^good kid^

Sad last son.

R13 Good reply. Perhaps, Good riddance to bad rubbish, would have been too cold?

It's the big secret gay men won't admit, but most of us had bad relationships with our fathers. I think homosexuals have a reverse Oedipus Complex to be quite honest. I hated my dad when I was kid. He was cold and stoic and angry and we never clicked. However, like the OP, when he got old and mellow and I got to know him, we truly became friends. Now I miss the old fuck.

James Blunt sings a song called "Monsters." Very heartwarming and touching and I have seen "reactors" on Youtube break down sobbing and crying uncontrollably while watching it.

I can sit and watch it over and over and it leaves me cold and unmoved. The "monster" that was under Blunt's bed when he was a child that Daddy would chase away turned out to actually be my Daddy. A line in the song that really seems to affect the viewers goes: "No need to forgive..no need to forget, you have your faults and I have mine.." But, I sing: "I 'll never forgive and I'll never forget."

Fuck you " Dead Daddy." We were little boys doing little boy things and didn't deserve to be beat bloody by a drunken man with a belt. That belt buckle really hurt.

I know gay men who had great and close relationships with their father. Your sexuality is overwhelming predisposed, and is basically established before you start preschool.

Not really. But it’s complicated.

My father died at 60 from smoking—lung cancer, the predictable thief. He was a man of few words, deeply conservative, and not exactly the hugging type. Yet, to his credit, he accepted my gayness without fuss, which, given his generation and values, was something. Oddly, my friends liked him more than I did. I used to joke that they saw a version of him I missed.

We became closer toward the end, when I found myself translating the oncologist’s jargon into something he could understand—managing his care, managing my grief. It was the most we ever really talked.

But here’s where the story gets weird.

Years after he passed, I did one of those Ancestry.com DNA tests. I expected 100% Portuguese—after all, both sides of the family proudly traced their roots there. Imagine my shock when the results came back: nearly 50% Ashkenazi Jewish.

Wait—what?

My father was born out of wedlock. A family mystery no one dared speak about, certainly not to my no-nonsense grandmother. But now, with half my DNA lighting up the Jewish diaspora, I couldn’t leave it alone.

I turned detective.

Turns out, my grandmother was 19 when she had my dad. She and her older sister worked as live-in domestics for wealthy families during summers in Upstate New York. The timeline and geography matched perfectly with something curious I found among my closest DNA matches: a nice Jewish gentleman from Mississippi.

He told me about his wealthy relatives—an aunt and uncle who summered in Upstate New York to escape the Southern heat. He didn’t like them much, but the coincidence was hard to ignore. We compared notes, and though we never said it outright, we both understood what we were implying: his uncle may very well have been my grandfather.

I chose not to dig further. Some stories have enough clarity in silhouette. And I wasn’t sure I wanted to shine a light on the rest.

So, were we close? Not in the traditional sense. But in the end, I held his hand through cancer. And now, decades later, I’m still holding onto the threads of his story—piecing together the man, and the mystery, he left behind.

We had a decent relationship, he was vaguely supportive of me, nothing that needed decades of therapy… but he was generally aloof toward everyone even his kin, and lived in his own head a lot.

Yes - he was a wonderful, funny man.

Very loving father; former state champion quarterback & track star - but never cared that i didn't follow in his footsteps.

He died way too young (brain tumor).

I'm grateful for the time we had together.

Jesus I hope some of you are seeing therapists if you're still harboring all of this 50 years later.

I was never close to my father which makes it somewhat perplexing that at the age of around 10 I sobbed uncontrollably as I tightly held on to him, begging him not to leave the house one night after a particularly bad fight with my mother. All these years later, I like to think that little boy instinctively knew he was better off having his father living at home with his family (which also included my three older sisters).

The first 45 years of my life, my father and I just tolerated each other. It wasn't because of my being Gay though when I came out that certainly didn't help things. Then about 18 years ago I had a breakdown. At one point I was catatonic. It was almost a year before I was back at work full-time. This was the first time I let my dad know what was really going on with me, and amazingly he was really there for me. A couple of years later, when my husband of 17 years left me, again it was my dad who really came through for me....along with my mom, aunt and friends. The last 8 or 9 years of his life we could finally just sit and talk...about almost anything. It was wonderful and totally unexpected to have almost complete closure and I'm grateful for those last years with him.

Interesting question OP. Growing up, I never thought that I was close to my father - although he and I share the same name. However, I have recently retired and just finished walking the Camino de Santiago, which has given me lots of time to contemplate things. I realized that I shared a lot of traits that my Dad than maybe I thought both personally and professionally. As a result, I feel much closer to him now than when he was alive.

No he quite literally ignored me. I was never alone with him except for one short car ride, not for a walk or an ice cream cone, nothing. He never entered my room. There is a pic of me when I'm about 3, I'm on his lap I'm sure my mother placed me there and he's looking blankly at the TV. Not at me not at the camera no smile.

All very strange and yes I'm messed up. My mother wasn't much better.

I was very close to my Dad and dream about him almost every night. In my dreams, he's still alive, and we have adventures together the way we did when he was alive. I miss him so much I can't stand it. He died of Alzheimer's disease, and the last couple of years were agony.

[quote]I know gay men who had great and close relationships with their father. Your sexuality is overwhelming predisposed, and is basically established before you start preschool.

r19 Read the thread. Most everyone agrees with me, we weren't daddy's boys. There's an obvious correlation between our relationship to our fathers. Sure, some had good affairs with their dad's. But be honest. Most every gay guy I know has some major disconnect to his father. But we're all mama's boys! And yes, it all starts in those first few years, before preschool, when your Oedipal relations to your parents is established.

My theory? The straight boy loves his mother, and he is jealous of the father. The fact he can't be with his mother takes that 3-year-old and he transfers his sexual obsession to girls. The gay boy never does that. He maintains that very close bond with his mother, and he transfers his sexual obsession to his father who rejects him. Of course, it's not 100% and like anything psychological there is variation. But in general, the straight male is conflicted by his separation from his mother. And the gay male is conflicted by his separation from his from father. Sexuality is a tempest born of gender angst.

OP and R1 - Sorry to hear of your loss. Perhaps if you had attended his funeral, it would have been closure. I miss my father. I have 2 brothers, one committed suicide, and the other walked away and was unwilling to do anything. My father wanted to live with me, but I was reluctant. I regret that I did not care for him better after my mother passed away. He was not an invalid, but lonely. Now I miss both my parents a lot. They were loving and good parents.

My father’s brand of narcissism isolated him from my brother and I. We were lucky to have good grandparents who would take us in and provide refuge from his self centered behavior. Our mother died young and he to this day, almost 40 years later, blames all of his bad decisions on her sudden passing. He overlooks the bad decisions he made earlier in life like getting kicked out of college and going AWOL while he was in the army.

He’s basically on his death bed now. I fly up and visit when I can, but he never asks how I’m doing. It’s just a recitation of things from the distant past. He refused counseling and won’t do physical therapy. Nothing changes.

R29 Don't quit your day job, Dr. Mary Freud. That was a whole bunch of stereotypical rubbish. There is no universal gay boy experience, nor is every father ashamed of his gay son. You have no right to chastise someone for 'not reading the room' just because it's not the majority of thought. If you wanted every post to be blind agreement, you should have taken this topic to Reddit instead.

Timely post.....my father died last week.

He was a kind man, but he was also a bit of a mystery to me. I think at heart he was a bit of a misanthrope and didn't know how to be a husband or father......in fairness he had shitty role models. His father was a mean drunk that chased him into the path of a moving car. I understand now - with the benefit of maturity and some really good therapy - he did the best he could.

We didn't get along well for a long time, but we got as close as we were ever to be about 15 years ago, and he shared some glimpses of who he was with me.

I loved him, and he loved me, and that's all one can hope for, really.

Extremely.

Ahem.

I was. My dad was a huge pain in the ass and a super nice, decent guy.

My mother told me she thinks I was my father's favorite person, and she might be accurate.

I was holding his hand as he took his last breath, while he was still trying to pat my hand to get me to stop crying. I told him I would cry until I was ready to stop and he'd have to accept that. I was so knocked off my feet at fifty-one to lose him, not understanding what a steadying force he was in my life. Everyone was worried, I was so completely off my game for months. Eleven years later and I still miss him almost every day.

r32 I'm not chastising anybody. I'm giving my theory which you tried to refute without any sort of respectful discussion. And the fact that my theory riles you so much says plenty. And I clearly said that a general rule does not eliminate variation. Almost all gay men love their mothers, or if they hate her, it's because she was a domineering old witch. You're not being honest. Look at the thread. There is a disconnect between us and our fathers. The only stereotype is with you who cling to this 'born that way' theory based on some gene which has never been discovered. I'm not ashamed of my sexuality like you. I take proud responsibility. In fact I'm a queer supremacist.

my Dad and his Dad were both physicians. a lot of time at work. on call. a lot of stress, he was a heart/lung surgeon.

as an adult I learned he'd have rather gone into medical research but he was pressured by his Dad to go into private practice....so that must have been hard for him. He was quite artistic, a watercolor painter.

He and my mother were both heavy social drinkers, and divorced when I was in college. My Mom intimated to me my Dad was gay or bi.

He and my grandfather were of the generation where the child raising was really the women's work. I miss him. But the drinking in the 1960s made things very difficult. He was a bit of a Jekyll and Hyde.

My two younger siblings had it worse. I feel for them both.

My father was very quick-tempered and very quick to criticize. When angry, he was loud. He was also an extremely intelligent man, could tell great stories and jokes, and could be very entertaining and charming if he wanted to be. I wasn't afraid of him, but I also didn't look up to him as a role model. I was much closer to my mother and I looked to her for advice and support. Ironically, I'm practically his spitting image, and now if I'm downtown passing reflective surfaces I'm startled to see him (as he looked 30 years ago) on each and every street corner.

According to my siblings, he was very critical of me as a child, particularly since I exhibited no interest in "masculine" pursuits. I don't really have memories of this. But I was also an accomplished child and teen, consistently in the top ranks of my classes, winning lots of awards in both scholastics and music, often appearing in the paper. I think he was torn between being proud of me for those things and being ashamed of me for not being more overtly masculine.

When I left home to go thousands of miles away for college, I was startled that it was my dad much more than my mom who would call to check on me. It often told people that my relationship with my dad was not close, but one of my friends who claimed that he had a very close relationship with his own father overheard some phone conversations I had with my dad and said, "I think you actually have a very close relationship with your father".

When I was nearing 40, I moved back to my home town. My parents were long divorced at that point. My dad would call me daily, sometimes many times a day, and make up reasons for me to have to go visit him (asking me to bring him something from the store, for instance). I was headed down to Palm Springs one winter day when he had a very serious fall. He was put in the hospital for observation and by the time I turned my phone back on after plane travel, there were a zillion messages from siblings telling me that the doctors had determined that my dad had a brain bleed and that he had refused treatment. (He was 87 at the time). He was still conscious. I phoned him and asked him if he would like me to fly back, and he said, "no, let's just say our goodbyes now". And so we did. He was unconscious a few hours later and died the next day.

I guess our relationship was complex and he was a terribly complex person. He was very fond of argument, and demanded that I and my siblings be prepared to show evidence if we had strong opinions about world events or politics. He loved to read and was curious about the world. He had a great sense of humor and memorized and told jokes by the thousands. Those are traits I admire and hope that I inherited. I hope I'm less critical than he was and especially less hurtful in my interactions with family and friends. I'm still my mother's child - but I don't dismiss my father's contribution to my nature as inconsequential.

[quote] I'm not chastising anybody. I'm giving my theory which you tried to refute without any sort of respectful discussion. And the fact that my theory riles you so much says plenty.

R37 You don't want a discussion you want conformation. You didn't come up with this 'theory' through any research. You did it by making assumptions and assigning stereotypes, which is why you're trying to shut down anyone whose experience doesn't confirm your bias. Not all of us were rejected by our fathers. Not all of us were attached to our mother's apron strings for our entire childhoods. These are stereotypes.

You don't even know what I look like, let alone tell if I'm 'riled up' over your obnoxious prattling. But that's the problem with people like you. Your assumptions are facts no matter what reality actually is. It is YOU who needs to look around the room instead of sitting in your echo chamber where you're comfortable and challenged.

Again, you should have taken this to Reddit where the OP is never challenged and instead handheld and ass kissed. Not everyone has the same experience, and all voices and different experiences should be heard.

R27 he wasn't your biological father, dear.

R5 People project societal images onto their parents as much as they do in their romantic relationships.

The moment I accepted my Dad for who he is and not what I wanted or thought how he should have raised me, I appreciated him so much more.

But Field of Dreams is powerful because it’s emotional fantasy but that’s also the problem. It romanticizes a version of fatherhood that never really existed for many, and instead of holding space for the pain of that absence, it mythologizes it with something like, “he couldn’t say he loved me, but playing catch meant the same thing.”

And because of that movie, I’ve actually met guys say in real life how much they want their dad to play catch or whatever and their Dads weren’t even into sports.

R29 A lot of truth to this but you’re also describing women’s daddy issues and I think gay men and women share the same process of “father hunger”.

Definitely why there’s a lot of Dad / Son porn.

I was never able to figure out why my mother stayed with my father, but as I got older there became a word for it: she was afraid he would be a family annihilator and kill me or both of us.

There were three children from a previous marriage. None of them were in contact with him for two decades before they died.

He was occasionally physically abusive but mostly verbally and emotionally abusive. As a young child, I may have gone for two or three weeks without him speaking to me or even looking at me, and I could never figure out what I'd done. In retrospect, I'd done nothing.

He lied about the most basic, easily-found-out things (including stolen valor from the time he was in the war; more than once people asked me what he had done to earn the Purple Heart framed in the living room). My mother's family could not stand him, to a person. My friends didn't want to come over to my house. In sixth grade my P.E. teacher had some health problems and my dad stepped in to teach for a month. It was a nightmare. A kid who was my semi-bully told me on the playground, "I'm so sorry about your dad."

Finally when I was around 30 I overheard my mom and her sister in the kitchen talking, lubricated with red wine. My aunt said, " ... and the thing I'll never forgive is that he never had enough room to love anyone who wasn't you, including [my name]. He didn't deserve that." That overheard remark did more for me understanding than anything ever before.

I have been in two adult relationships, both of which were sick and abusive and few would believe the details. Since deciding it was healthier for me to remain single and have good friends, my life has improved immensely.

Yes, I read Jeannette McCurdy's "I'm Glad My Mom's Dead," and I believed every word.

Judith Viorst talks a lot about "father hunger" in her book, Necessary Losses. (That whole book is...A LOT.)

R43, I definitely agree with the older/younger porn thing. Whenever I watch one of those, in my mind, I'm the younger one (and I'm no spring chicken). It feeds/sexualizes the desire to finally be loved, appreciated, accepted, etc., by a father figure. For me anyway.

Yes. Very much so. He passed away this past year at 90.

He was a type of Italian-American man that you won't see anymore, very often.

And the weirdest thing is that I feel myself becoming him in certain ways that I never expected.

OP, he sounds like a user. One of those guys who has to be in a relationship. In that one period when he was recovering and couldn’t meet anybody, he used you and your brother as substitutes, even filling your heads with romantic ideas of your future relationship building houses on the same property, etc. Then he acted like that never happened when he met somebody and was able to fulfil his emotional need in a third marriage. I’m sure he reverted to distance and division because he was aware of that and was embarrassed by his failure to keep the promises that were made. It was easier to assume a distance and pretend that in fact there was something wrong with you, that your existence offended him in some way. That it was your fault. What a coward.

Still, what you describe is about 1000% more than I ever got from my birth father - he’s such a nothing to me, I prefer to describe him like that. His passing will mean nothing to me.

I loved my father, but he was ashamed of my being gay. He couldn’t get over it, and it created a rift that couldn’t be overcome. He said some very cruel things.

We didn’t speak for two years before he died. The funeral was agony, and all my family viewed me as a monster. They didn’t hold back. The result was that I became completely estranged from my family. I still have no contact with them nearly thirty years later.

Thanks r47, that describes his actions perfectly.

I loathed my father while growing up, I was close to my Mom. We had nothing in common, and he was always putting me down and was just an asshole. Now, my Mom's dead, he's 80, and I'm over 50, and all that stuff from that past somehow disappears. Are we like a father and son in a sitcom? No, but I care about him and look out for him, and I care if he lives or dies.

I'm not sure when it happened or why, but every negative feeling I ever had about him just went away. Maybe it was my Mom dying - I'm not sure.

I adored my father. I called him every day and took care of him when he was battling stomach cancer. He passed away at 68 years of age and I miss him every day. My family was helpless when he was diagnosed with cancer. I took him to all his chemo, doctor and radiation appointments. Grocery shopped for him to buy him healhier foods after taking him to a naturopathic dr…….best father ever!

My parents provided for me, but they did not raise me. On the surface, we had a good life and a good family. It was a solid, materially stable upbringing. But neither parent did a single thing to nurture us in any useful way and so you find your own way as a person and an adult and for a long time, as a result of the neglect, I didn't do a very good job of it. They were utterly inert. My father was a weak character. His childhood was harsh. He didn't know how to do anything but work hard and work constantly. I could sense the weakness and I despised it, probably because I despised it in myself. Funnily, when he was ill with dementia and circling the drain, I was his biggest champion in terms of his dignity and comfort. Funny how it works out.

Years later a therapist said to me, having covered it all, "you're very forgiving." I'm not particularly. The older I get, the dimmer my view of them. Good people, lousy parents. But, as I said to him that day and as I still think today, nothing they did was accompanied by malice.

But I'm glad I'm gay and without kids, because....

ETA, still there was a lot I could have learned from my dad. He could fix anything or nearly electrocute himself trying. I wish we had been closer in the that's a man's job sense. If it weren't for Youtube, I'd be completely useless.

My dad swung wildly from protective and caring of to viciously cruel to me. He’s 85 now and in ill health and lives 2000 miles away.

Dad projected an image to the world that was not real. He cared far more about what others thought about him than actually living as he wanted others to believe. I think it was due to the fact that his father was the town drunk, so he had a massive inferiority complex. He ground us kids down by making us feel we were “less than” and had to work hard to show we were worthy in the eyes of others. This was the polar opposite to Mom, who inexplicably had a superiority complex, so that tension played out all the time.

My parents divorced when I was fifteen and my mom, without my input, assigned custody to Dad, who almost immediately moved in with his girlfriend. Basically I lived alone the last three years of high school. Dad dropped in once a week and left money to buy lunch at school and get groceries, but I had no car and there was no market in our town. Mom picked me up twice a week to take me to dinner and stop at Krogers.

I went off to college and didn’t hear from Dad for years. He remarried and divorced during that time. Eventually a boyfriend talked me into reconnecting with him. He came to visit me while I was grad school and we spent a pleasant day together. Since then, I moved across the country and it seems the physical distance helped to improve our relationship. He married a nice lady and she facilitates our getting together. When my ex and I adopted a newborn, Dad became a model grandfather. Now fifteen, my daughter adores him. I see a gentle, loving old man when they interact and part of me wishes he’d been like that with me.

He’s not going to live much longer, so I try to focus on the good memories rather than the others. Once in a while when I’m around him, I have to fight off the urge to confront him about certain things he said and did, but it’s getting easier with time.

R54 My ex hated that his extremely cold and distant dad was a fun and affectionate grandfather to his siblings’ kids

Your ex, R55, failed to grasp why grandparents & grandchildren get on so well. They have a common enemy.

OP - your dad sounds like an asshole. A man of his times - but you really bend over backwards to see his good side.

My dad was a great father - but a horrible husband to my mom (tons of cheating and tons of verbal abuse). Plus he did some shady things on the side (embezzlement) and actually went to prison.

I'm estranged from him - despite all of the above, he was a great dad - involved on a daily basis and always there for us. He told us he loved us every single day.

Just wish he could have been as good to other people.

Jeez R56, that’s cynical.

Why yes.

My father was often gruff and formidable when I was of school age. Before that I recall he was warm and agreeable. For all my years in school he was a bit hot tempered easily provoked (if I agreed with him he would somehow see it as my trying to outsmart him or some other ploy. Many times he was fine but other times required walking on eggs.

With age, however, his positive qualities were realized, he became relaxed and kindly and genuinely interested in other people's lives and perspectives. Of my siblings I was very much the oddball, but I was glad that we grew into an easy and agreeable relationship. In that time we discovered that we shared some fundamental character traits and we got along very well.

(My mother on the other hand was always a bit nervous of disposition and nothing pleased her, not ever. Age and senility magnified all of her many faults and turned her into something of a terror. Hers was the opposite path of my father, with age magnifying only her faults.)

No. And he's been dead for over 30 years and I still have bitterness toward him, and don't have the energy to discuss what his faults were.

No. He was psychologically abusive growing up. Told me on many occasions that I was worthless and would never amount to anything. This was said to me for, say, having a messy bedroom at age 7. He thought nothing of telling a 7 year old that they were worthless. Spent a lot of time in therapy just over that aspect of my memories.

As I got older as an adolescent he alternated between ignoring me completely for long stretches and then angrily lashing out at me for something. He was largely absent mentally and emotionally if not physically, except when he got some bug up his ass and zeroed in on me as the easiest target for his rage. This was my male role model as a teenager. Again, a lot of therapy to unravel years of negative conditioning he foisted on me.

My family is otherwise close. I loved my mom. My siblings got similar but oddly unique forms of abuse and mine was always extreme indifference and emotional neglect with bouts of unpredictable anger. I stayed close to all of them and regret nothing, but if I hadn't felt that pull from the rest of the family I would've walked away from him forever at 18.

He softened in later years and we had a semblance of a relationship at times, but I never forgot my childhood. Now that he's gone almost 10 years, it's the childhood memories that linger, the later truce of sorts is less prominent in my memories.

If you have kids just know that how you treat them as children is what will stick with them forever, long after you're gone.

R52 "My parents provided for me, but they did not raise me." I think a lot of people born before the 80s felt this way.

My dad was a good provider and my mom was always there - but I don't recall getting much guidance at all. There were never times when "like my father always said..." Good grades, success, do your best, don't be a jerk - but not too much more than that.

I think kids were a forced byproduct of marriage and we were raised differently, which is talked about all the time. Get on your bike and be gone for the entire day and nobody knew where you were. It was a very laissez-faire approach to child rearing.

Not that I approve of the helicopter parenting today - at all. But our parents were so different - I'm sure their parents were potentially even less involved.

Parenting now is just out of control. I can think of 5 instances - friends and some famous people - who moved to the college town when their kids went to college. That NEVER happened when we were young. No way. Your parents didn't come with you to college.

On the other hand, parents and kids seem to be much closer and have better communication and expectations. Maybe there's less of a generation gap. The world of the 1940s/50s was vastly different than 70s/80s so maybe they didn't have much advice to give? But I would say the world of the 90s/2000s is a lot more siimilar to 2010s and 2020s.

r40 Bullshit. You're typical of many gay men who feel guilty about their sexuality and thus try to "blame" it on some elusive gene. I'm ashamed of nothing and love to tell fools I choose to be gay, just to see them search for some way to attack me.

Sexuality is much more fluid than you "born that way" cowards will ever admit. Our sex lives are obviously the result of cultural and social influences. That's why when I was a kid only 5% of everyone was LGB. Now, 20% of teenagers consider themselves queer. If it's hardwired why the difference?

A reverse Oedipus doesn't mean one is tied to their mother's apron strings. It's just the opposite of a heterosexual male whose sexuality is rooted in separation from his mother. My mother always encouraged my independence.

Hilarious that you started your assault by calling me "Mary". No dearie, I'm a man. Now what feminine influence caused you to use a woman's name for a gay man as a desperate insult? 🤣

Be careful what you wish for. If heterosexuals ever find a gay gene there will be a mass abortive slaughter of homosexual and bisexual fetuses in the womb.

Did anyone else's father openly express resentment about having to feed and clothe his offspring for 18 years? My dad would count the food we ate and tabulate a "bill" for us sometimes, I guess to shame us? For living?

R64 - you're batshit crazy. There are a ton of straight men who didn't have good relationships with their fathers. The whole 'bad father' thing has been debunked a 1000 times. It's a homophobic explanation. And if that one doesn't fit, then it's because a gay man had a terrible mother and hates women. Conservatives will pull either one out - but not explain why the same father and mother produced straight kids as well as a gay one.

We know that there are multiple correlations between birth order, a gay genotype and other biological factors that are involved.

You just pissed because it's only you and your backwards homophobic reasoning for why men are gay. FF.

Nope. He was a violent, crazy psycho.

My dad just kinda wasnt interested in us. We called him the lodger. We turned oit well and often wonder how great we might have been with some actual parenting, guidance from him. He called me a sissy ad a kid; years later my sister told me that he said he regretted that. He never hit us ir left us short of money but he was never in my school and was just not interested in us. He died 2 months ago with me and my sister there; but never, ever hugged us. He left no Will; though we get the family home; complicated by lack of a will; and no money for burial; which we paid for without hesitation. He was probably on the spectrum. Alcoholic who said he drank cos he was so shy and awkward socially. Ive a friend who lost his dad as a teen and that trumps my situation; but only just.

My mother referred to my dad as Spock. No human emotions. She deserves to be referred to as Mommie Dearest, but that’s another thread.

The weird thing for me is my mother spoke of a very happy childhood and family home. And her mother, my grandmother, was a lovely woman. Yet my mom couldn't nurture a grudge she was so indifferent to feeling. Good fathers were like winning the lottery... happened rarely and to other people.

I am guessing, with zero sarcasm, that there have been multiple posters on DL who were closer to my father than I was.

When I was younger Dad was the typical 60's emotionally distant father. Never home. Very generous with gifts but not overly engaged with me and my brother. He was a highly decorated WW2 fighter pilot. Very Great Santini. The gay issue never came up.As he aged and became more decrepit he became more demonstratively affectionate towards me and my "mate" as he called my partner of 25 years. The last time we saw each other he shuffled down the walk to hug and kiss me. We told each "luv ya" He died in his sleep 2 days later at 89. So grateful we had those later years. Miss The Captain terribly.

Just a friendly reminder: Father's Day is Sunday, June 15!

[quote]Did anyone else's father openly express resentment about having to feed and clothe his offspring for 18 years?

R65: Both of my parents did with my much older brother. He turned 18, finished high school, and was awaiting a stint of Army Basic Training when my parents told him the week that he graduated that he should expect to find his own home or pay them a rent. The rent was not at all a large sum, but the symbolism of the act was of much importance to them - or rather to my mother who was behind it all and persuaded my father to play the tough one. My brother said he never got over the shock of the cold request.

Explaining this custom of some America families to people from other parts of the world inevitably gets a shocked reaction, at least.

R74 - depends on when this happened. There were a lot more unskilled labor jobs that were available back in 70s and 80s that paid pretty well.

Now if it was only a few weeks before basic training - then yeah, that's an asshole thing to do to expect him to get a job for a few weeks.

Most parents would do well by charging their 18+ children rent - my friend does. Not a massive amount - but something.

R41 Oh I can assure you he was my father, I got the family nose.

Good guess though, it's not the behavior of a normal dad.

He was a heinous monsters, so no