My dad was extremely disapproving, so I learned to always hide what I was doing unless it was guns or sports. Actually, that's probably one of the reasons I ended up so reclusive; as my hobbies drifted further and further away from what he would approve of I hid more and more, while others went out and found people with the same hobbies at conventions and such, because I expected nothing but disappointed looks.

He acts sort of like he's disappointed in me sometimes but he's never explicit about it.

I'm pretty certain my father would think I was gay if it weren't for him finding out about me stealing his porn when I was a kid (this was before my family got our first computer, and thus before I saw the superiority of 2D). I have never been interested having sex or getting girls, and I hate sports and other "manly" shit.

He served in the military throughout my childhood and teenage years, and got deployed a lot. As a result, I never really got to see him often.

He's an alright guy, smart, open-minded, and doesn't expect much of me other than that I be happy. I think he might be a little disappointed in me, though, because I've never had a 3DPD or much of a social life.

I could fill a post or two with whining about it I guess, but yeah -- not a good parent. I still try to minimize contact with him and reveal as little as possible about what I'm doing, thinking, feeling, etc.

I probably have some issues.

He wanted me aborted (Though he's Christian). When I was born he made it clear to my mother that he wanted nothing to do with me, and so we moved away.

Later we moved back because my mother wanted me to at least know my father (And my father was in trouble with my grandparents, as he'd never told them about me). My mother worked nights, so I spent the night at his house every weekday. He insulted my mother, sometimes. And sometimes he would take the only phone into his room and lock the door because he was pissed off. So I'd creep around the house, too terrified to make any noise and unable to call my mom for help or anything.

He made it very clear that he disapproved of my appearance, and it was something that he focused on a lot. Appearances, that is. He never said anything directly, but it was always very clear to me, even as a child, that he was constantly disappointed. My mother confirmed it later on when I was older.

I don't really care for him. I could go on about it for a long time.

Pretty good father, I didn't show any feelings of affection towards any of my parents, though. It doesn't feel good, I don't even think I can say I had bonded over time with them. I think I only stayed with them as long as I did because they provided a house and food, to me they were always "those people".

He was just a typical "Disneyland dad" you see so much in divorces. I wanted him around more as a youth, but when I grew into my teen years I saw him as a very flawed person. I respect him, though; he only wanted to take it easy playing music and doing things he loved. It just never seemed to set in that he had responsibility till my 2nd sister came along.

My father was pathetic, and I do not know him at all. The same goes for my mother.

The only person I really know, is my sister, I guess.

Good parent by all means, on the contrary its me who's a bad son not living up to expectations, etc.

Never met mine except for apparently one time when i was two.
I apparently have a couple older sisters i've never met though. Be kinda neat to see what they look like at least.

My dad is friendly, outgoing person, kind and helpful to everyone he meets.

Until he gets home. Then he's kind of a jerk.

He shoved me into a wall once, so I punched him in the face. It was pretty cool.

He is fairly disappointed in me for the most part, but I don't think he hates me. Or at the very least shows it.

For the most part my relationship with my parents have always been minimal as in no one gives a flying fuck about each other past living in the same house. When I do finally get work again and get my own place, chances are I'll rarely see or talk to them.

My dad expects a lot of me and wants me to have normal goals and ambitions. To his credit, he has supported me a lot. It's mostly due to his yelling at me during my teenage years that I ended up doing well in school. Since I'm the only child that might be why he didn't just give up on me.

The downside to all this is the expectations, which I'll never be able to get away from unless I physically left and cut off contact between us. My dad told me my goal in life should be to make enough money to provide well for a family in the future (!) He doesn't know I've been a neurotic unsocial wreck all this time or about any of my real interests, because I've been able to hide all that from him (and from the rest of my very traditional family.) I don't have any goals of my own at all, so I just do what he wants me to do, because otherwise I'd be doing nothing. But the whole family thing is going to be an issue.

My dad is almost as paranoid as I am. He thinks everyone is out to get him, so nobody really pays him any attention. I feel that one day he will pass on and regret all of his wrong actions in his life. I don't hate him, but he does not want anyone getting in his life.

>>2492
Uh, my dad is like rarely coming around me. Once or twice a year. Of course I can go around him more often and he wants that now that I am older. I rarely saw him when younger outside of those two times a year (my birthday and christmas, both times within 2 months of each other). Uh he had a bunch of other children, some he does not openly say he has. He has like 6-8 kids only 4 of which he admits on facebook or in his personal life. He was a police officer for suburban chicago suburbs, then when he got into chicago - he was a chicago firefighter and paramedic (apparently thats how it works - unless you have 'connections' you first work in suburban emergency services, then move into the city if you want to.

Really fun fact: he retired and apparently 'found god' and is a minister now. Funny given all the children by different women he had & whatnot. lolol.

Also, I hate sports and he is 'lukewarm' / okay with sports and did weightlifting while in those fields/careers. But at least he likes Star Wars and has some political interests, that is something....(he isnt a really big anime fan, nor a DDR fan - so there goes the 'bonding at an anime convention' idea - then again probably a bad idea anyway due to the shit that goes on there)

>>2517
I hate expectations too. I don't want to live up to some false ideal. Im the only son of my mother and my grandmother and mother want to prove that I am not a failure out of some shitty payback to my father's side of the family.
Expectations suck ass, they weigh you down....

He's more of a wreck than I am. Throughout his life he's been an on and off alcoholic, and had one hell of a shit childhood.

Basically, my grandpa was in the army (also an alcoholic), and was really tough to my dad. He used to get beaten all the time. My dad ran away from his home at 15 and lived by shoplifting and getting money through stealing shit, until he got a job driving busses. My mum was his first love, and he was already drinking a hell of a lot by the time they got a house together. He was already going to alcoholic classes when my mum had my sister, and the same for me. My dad tried to have a reunion with my grandpa when I was just 3, and apparently my grandpa treated me with the same sort of harshness that he treated my dad. Eventually, I must of done something because my grandpa apparently slapped me (I can't remember any of this, but I was only 3). My dad beat the shit out of my grandpa, whom I never heard about again until he died.

Throughout my childhood I got treated really nicely by my dad when he was sober, I think he was really paranoid that he would fuck up somehow and turn into his dad. He and my mum split up when I was 12 because of his alcoholism.

Nowadays, he lives alone on benefits, and only leaves the house to buy drink. He's been to every alcoholic's class under the sun, yet has only been off the booze for like a month. He occasionally phones once every few months, and is either really drunk (and crying), or he's sober and trying to make some shitty small talk.

Whenever he comes over to my mum's house, he always hugs me and my sister for like 10 minutes and bursts into tears. He's really shaky and looks like he's aged about 20 years in the last 5 years. He always tells us over and over again how proud he is of us.

All in all, my father's side of the family is not quite the best bloodline in the world. If I can get to 30 without being an alcoholic then i'll have done better than the last two.

My parents spilt up when I was in high school. Now I'm 25 and me and my dad are renting a house together. He doesnt really give a shit what I do, he just watches TV and plays online poker all the time. We literally go days without speaking a word to each other, I guess we have an understanding.

>>2534
Alcoholism is genetic?

My relationship with my dad isn't bad and isn't good. Growing up he was a little too quick and excessive with physical discipline. He was also verbally abusive. He just had (and still has) anger problems in general. In high school I learned how to handle my parents better, and/or maybe they backed off somewhat, because there was less conflict in our relationship. On the plus side he was always supportive of me, though at the same time he always thought he knew what was best for me and could be very controlling. But he never demeaned me, my ability, or my potential. That may be the main reason I don't have father issues despite a less than ideal relationship, and it might be part of why I don't have any major issues in general. Because I know he doesn't hate me, even if we didn't always see eye to eye, and still don't.

After moving away for college my relationship with my dad got better since I rarely see him. I doubt I turned out the way he wanted (like most dads he wanted a more manly son, I'm sure) but he's relatively openminded so I don't think he's that disappointed in me. At the very least he's proud of my academic accomplishments and continues to support and encourage me in that area.

>>2556
There's a large genetic component, yes. That's one reason I don't drink very often. Both of my parents are alcoholics and my sister has also had some alcohol problems.

Disclaimers:
- I'm going to use this post as therapy. My apologies if I alienate anyone.
- I hope I'm not wrong and being unfair to him in any part of my post. I'm certain I'm projecting onto him, but I don't know to what extent.
-
We're both very intelligent, emotionally distant and think we're unsung geniuses. This includes, of course, thinking we're smarter than each other. I don't know if he is or ever was as neurotic as me, but I don't discount the possibility.
Even with all my shortcomings and all the worry I surely cause him, I get the feel that he's very glad to have had a son he can relate to. However, I think he projects too much of himself onto me and thinks I'm more like him than I actually am. It's a shame I don't have any of his drive, but we get along well and care deeply for one another.
He's also basically made explicit that he's not going to let me fall into the NEET/hikikomori lifestyle, which I don't know if I should be thankful for - I don't know if I have it in me to be anything else.

My father left my mother and I when I was six after he caught my mother with another woman.

My father would often say that he was going to work, would pull out of the driveway, and just go next door to drink with the asshole living there.

My father later married a woman who abuses him.

They kidnapped me one day. I was returned, and I was oblivious to the entire ordeal.

My stepmother locked me in a cottage without a floor or electricity or telephone lines overnight for telling her nephew, who was a year younger than me, to stop trying to see my penis. I was seven.

My father owns a boat and a "fishing charter business" in Wells, Maine. He has never had a paid charter.

I hold no arrogance over him, no disappointment over his shortcomings, and forgive what he did to my family.

Why? It's because I've never seen my father as a father. Because none of my family, sans my grandmother, really filled their familial roles, I have always considered them to be an equivalent to other people's relationships as "aquaintances". My household consists of my mother, her wife, her friend/ex 3DPD/ renter (who was supposed to get an apartment closer to her job in "two weeks or so" back in 1994) and myself. There are no family roles. There is just a system amongst humans forming roles and executing the care of the house and feeding its occupants. More of a dormitory than a family.

I have faith that I can fulfill a role as a father and husband and do a good job at it, and I have a good base understanding of a functioning family with certain roles and such, but I only know any of this from my grandmother teaching me. She died about a year ago, and my only major role model and only person I considered actual family, disappeared. It was like losing a part of me, and from that point on, I knew that I had to form who I am based on who I want to be, and not by adopting from role models. I guess that system would work in a household with at least one parent acting their gender and fulfilling their parental duties in a clear-cut fashion. I never grew up in an environment like that, so I don't really see my parents as my parents, per se. More like friends. Friends that are growing tired of one another very quickly.

>>2627
You have a weird life, dude.

My dad has been a dick for as long as I can remember. Whenever I felt bad about something, he would put me down. He never once tried to help me. When I graduated from highschool and started staying home for weeks or months at a time, he would insult me and call me a bum and threaten to kick me out of the house on my 19th birthday. During highschool, he would bitch about my grades when they were better than almost everybody in my classes. He would also point out that I had no friends every now and then like it was something to be ashamed of. It's clear that I have some problems right now, but that's his response to everything. I never even managed to get my drivers license because he wouldn't take the time out of his day to help me learn. When I tell him that I should go to the doctor and get some tests taken he looks like I'm crazy. I'm unhealthy as fuck and could have a terminal illness for all I know, but he doesn't give a shit.

He's never physically abused me, but I have no respect for him whatsoever. If I ever move out and live a life of my own I'll cut off contact with him. He's a terrible father and should never have had children.

>>2633
I am messed up sexually and socially because of it. I really want to fix that, and to do that I need to become as independent as possible. I feel bad, but I really have to abandon all of my family. Sure, I'll help them when they really need it from me and attend funerals, but other than that I really need to get out of this environment.

>>2645
I feel that I must reply to this.

Something which I have long considered a truth is that as much as a child is not obliged to like his own father, a father is not obliged to like his own children. His limit of responsibility is that he supplies the minimum amount of resources and care neccesary to allow his children to grow into decent people and also he must not actively do anything that hurts his children. Anything else above that level is what I consider to be philosophically 'above the minimum line of responsibility'.

I don't know whether he adheres to the first requirement, but he doesn't seem to have adhered to the second one.

>>2645
Sounds like my dad.

Only a bag of criticism and hatred despite all my efforts to please him. I was top of the class, gained extra merit awards, won competitions... but it wasn't enough for him. I wasn't the son he always wanted and he swept me under the carpet because I was too weak and timid to be his heir.

My father and my mother beat me, though. Sometimes just their hands, once my father and my mother used hammers and mallets. They threw away my clothes into the wind and locked me out of the house, naked with nothing to wear, for a few days. I had no friends and had no place to go so I slept under the long grass in the woods. It was very cold and very hungry. I don't know why I crawled back to them... I could've stayed in the gale until death. Maybe they were trying to prove to me that I needed them?

As I got older they changed, though. They at least try to show a little support now but they aren't sorry for the past. And they have no empathy. It was because I would have lived an 'easy life' had they not been so cruel. They had to struggle to get to where they were, which I recognise, but they could've told me of their struggles and I may have shown appreciation and respect. But they thought I was an ungrateful little demon that deserved to be punished in hell.

I didn't want to be bad... I tried to be good and I tried to do my best to please them.

But in the end nobody cares.

>>2647

>a father is not obliged to like his own children

I have to disagree with it. In a way, yes, I understand what you mean. Whenever I thought about having children I was scared that they won't turn out how I wish they did and I'd be disappointed in them.

But that only proves that I'm not suited to be a parent (just like the vast majority of world's population it seems). I think that if there was no social pressure to start a family the world would be a way better place than it is now.



As for me, my father (and parents in general) did a good job but you can’t make bricks without straw. My sister turned out to be a great woman (although she's loud and obnoxious by my standards but I'm sure I'm just biased because of jealousy or something) but I was good for nothing all along and I'm sure there was no way to avoid what happened with me.

I sometimes wish I could just switch parents with someone who deserved better ones. I would feel better by pushing some of my guilt on them and the other person would be able to live a better life.

>>2647
I think you're underestimating the "minimum" amount of care necessary for a child to grown into a healthy, successful person. I'd be surprised if anyone could properly raise a kid without loving them.

>>2715

>I'd be surprised if anyone could properly raise a kid without loving them.

Just pretending would probably be enough (if you're a good actor).

>>2705
Those fucking psychopaths should be thrown in jail. Do you live with them/off them?

>>2721
I'm not only referring to how a kid needs love to grow but also to how it would most likely be impossible to carry out the monumental task of successfully raising a child without a significant level of emotional attachment.

>>2746
I don't live with them but I stay at University with their financial support.

Now that their children are leaving them I think they're starting to feel regretful. My sister ran away from home for a month and they seemed to show sorrow. They're very strange. When we're with them they're abusive. When we leave them they're supportive.

Like they depend on us to satisfy their desires.

My relationship with my father was distant, whenewer i asked for some money he gave me money, whenever i asked for special sorts of foods they were bought for me. Hes has a melancholic personality which made me think that he was disapointed with me when i was little.

When i was in elementary school i came up with the idea that my mother coerced my father into marrying her because she was preagnant with me and ruined his life in the process, but apparently that wasn't the case.

Sometimes when i was young he would reflect my shortcommings in some kind of melancholic display, a sort of despair, for example: When i told him that i didnt like to read books or newspapers he responed while he was staring in to thin air with a look of regret and despair that when he was my age he was reading everything he could get his hands on, he said that in such a way that it makes me rage even today.

Once i had a dream where my dad was a robot sitting at the table in the kitchen eating soup and then suddnely my mother stabbed him in the back with a huge butcher knife.

He is much more friendly and understanding with other people and my stepbrother and stepsisterthan he is with me.

As for my mother and my older stepsister who is like my other mother. They are insane, i did some reading on the internet and now i'm sure that those accursed harpies have a narcissistic personality disorder.

I just couldn't bear to be my own father if I had to walk in his shoes.

Put yourself in the place of your father. Wouldn't it just be so soul crushingly disappointing, to see your son who had so much potential, end up like this?

This human being that you painstakingly raised, spent hour after hour, year in year out working and caring for, turned into such a horrible person.

I would want to neck myself.

>>2813
I couldn't hope to compare to my father, ever. His life is straight out of an old novel. As the eldest son of an old landowning family that lost everything, he had to take responsibility for supporting his siblings and worked to bring the family back to a good standard of living. He's also really social and a born leader, which I guess you've got to be to do the things he's done.

Compared to him, I haven't done a goddamn thing with my life. Of course I haven't had the opportunity to do the sort of thing he did because I didn't grow up in hardship, but it doesn't change the fact of what I am.

My dad has Schizophrenia.
As a child I remembered him as a goofy creative man, while I was told he was sick and dangerous.
When I was 11 or so he tried to takeaway my little brother, depending on the account it was for a bike ride or kidnapping. That was the last time I saw him for almost 10 years.
I just got to see him again over the holidays. I heard his heart beat (!) and confirmed he still existed. I still don't really know him. He lives thousands of miles away now, because my mom wouldn't give him any more chances.
I googled the illness to be sure I was spelling it correctly and reading the symptoms make me very nervous ;-;

>>2813
funny that youd say that. depending on the source, in my case my father talks to me more often an want to do more stuff with me as i turned out "good", had good grades in school, did extracurriculars (debate team), did not need my ass wiped or diapers changed, etc. That was in high school.

Of course I am now in community college and 20, dont have a license/take the bus there, and....some other stuff and he still wants to do that. heh.

I used to have bad relations with my dad, but after a few months of living with him back in my home country, I really started to know him and now we're both good.

My dad divorced my mother shortly after I was born. I visited him every now and then but I hardly remember anything about the visits other than a few things. He married two more times afterward and we have basically a neutral relationship today since he has three new kids and all.

If I ever become a dad, I want to be nothing like him.

My parent split up when i was little because my dad cheated on my mother (i can understand why, she's quite cold and uncaring, but she provides for me, so i'm stuck with her), i see my dad a couple of times a week, but he's more like a big brother or a friend.

He does have his faults, but he's genuinely a nice guy. I have mother issues more than anything.