Editor’s Note: The author of this post requested, and was granted, anonymity for this article to protect the identity of his family members. This post originally ran in 2018.
When I was a child and having one of my many disagreements with my mother, a retort from her would often be, “Wait until you’re a parent. Then you’ll understand.” Since becoming a dad myself several years ago, I’ve been thinking about that phrase a lot.
Like many contemporary dads, I am a different kind of parent than my father. Broadly speaking, I’m more present than he was in my childhood. The conventional wisdom is that social and cultural norms were different “back then.” We should cut, say a distant father, some slack because of this. Not me.
My father appeared to be a nice, gentle man. He never disciplined me, rarely even raised his voice. But then, I didn’t see much of him. He would leave the house for work before I woke. He would be back for dinner. He often worked weekends.
He never did the school drop-off or pickup routine. Never read me a bedtime story. Never came to a “parent’s evening” to meet my teachers or classmates’ mothers and fathers. He rarely spent time alone with me.
Now, as a father myself, I find this almost unthinkable.
A specific example of how little time my father and I spent together is this: I can count on one hand the movies my dad took me to see. On two fingers to be precise (ICYI: Bronco Billy and Airplane). I’ve been taking my daughter to see movies since she was 3 years old. I’ve lost count of how many hours we have shared together, side by side in a darkened theater.
To me, it boils down to this — I LOVE spending time with her, and sharing in those things she’s enthused about (like movies). My dad’s lack of this in my own childhood seemed at best lazy at the time. But it wasn’t simply that.
Distant father started as a prison dad
When I was a teenager, I discovered my father had been in prison (no one told me — I found some letters in the attic). He was incarcerated from when I was a baby until I was 4. He didn’t see me at all that entire time. In contrast, I spent this equivalent period with my daughter as a stay-at-home dad. When I think of the amazing time I spent with our daughter, the heartlessness of his subsequent decision to not spend time with me is amplified.
It gets worse.
Despite the prison time — for embezzlement — he somehow had a successful career as an office manager. He would often work late and on weekends. Ah, that explains why he spent so little time with me. He was too busy funding our house and home.
Nope. He was too busy having an affair.
An affair that began within a few years of him coming out of prison. An affair that lasted until I stumbled upon it when I was 19. He eventually co-owned the property she lived in. He was living a fantasy second life there, where he didn’t have a family to live with.
There’s a sucker punch. He took out his mortgage with her in my name.
This all came to light when I opened a piece of mail I thought was addressed to me (my father and I have the same first initial). The letter turned out to be about the property he owned with her. I still remember the sarcastic “thank you” he repeatedly directed at me while my mother screamed at him.
The full scale of his betrayal only came to light a few years ago, when he randomly blurted out a confession to my mother (they’re still together) while reacting to a melodramatic plot on a TV drama.
His sorry behavior is alien to me. Abhorrent. I’m supposed to dismiss this as “things were different back then”? No.
I haven’t confronted him about any of it — the lies, the betrayal, his lack of interest in my childhood. He has a heart condition, and I can’t trust myself to not explode at him. But I can barely stand to be around him, and I do my best to avoid speaking to him.
So I simply seethe with internal anger whenever I think of this whole sorry scenario. Fuck that guy. Never be that guy. Never be ANYTHING like that guy. You’re a good dad, I tell myself. That guy is an asshole.
Then I think about my daughter. My amazing daughter. Who I love and adore. And who will never – ever – have a father like that.
Photo: Trym Nilsen on Unsplash
This guy’s father was in prison, he didn’t have strong morals. Yet, he managed to give his kids a “boring” childhood…..4 bedroom house and a dog. His parents stayed married, his mom was able to stay at home and raise him. Boring? What an ungrateful son.
He takes out a mortgage in your name? That can be systematically remedied by legal action. You sitting there crying about it makes you look weak. And you are weak.
This guy now has kids, a family.
I really wish he would stop complaining about his dad and acting the victim. Clearly, this guy knows nothing about forgiveness, and the demonstrated fact that he will run around in this circle of lack of manliness by not forgiving his dad.
It seems like a hard thing to do, but the alternative, the states that this guy lives in, are worse. I will make a strong bet that this guy suffers from one or more disorders and is now passing them on to his kids, unknowingly. This guy had a better childhood than many people do.
I know this because I am faced similar but worse circumstances And it is immediately clear to me that to continue blaming your father just keeps some related undesirable character trait alive in yourself.
At least your dad funded your house and home, you ungrateful son. And, even while he had an affair, he kept your mom not having to work so she could spend her time raising you. Maybe your Dad and mom just couldn’t get along, and instead of leaving your Mom and you and your siblings poor and without a home (which many Dads do, if you haven’t ever raised your head of of your own self-pity), he handled that while trying to make his own life something livable.
The more I reread this article, the more I see the author as an ungrateful child that will create weakness and poor character traits in his own children, while running around looking foolish, as he did in this article, by playing the victim.
You really want to be a good dad? Show your kids about forgiveness, so that they don’t adopt your trait of lifelong blame and self-imposed victim-hood. Choose not to do that, and you perpetuate your father’s shortcomings for generations to come, weakening not only your bloodline but society in general.
Choosing anonymity is another sign of lack of personal accountability.
Will, just because he the author’s father did some things right doesn’t mean he gets a pass on all the shitty stuff he did. Your notion of forgiveness seems to be: pretend that nothing bad ever happened. That notion is what’s foolish.
Healthy forgiveness doesn’t mean that you have to make nice with the person who hurt you. You can have compassion for them but if their behavior continues to be destructive, you’re not obliged to have anything to do with them. Healthy forgiveness doesn’t mean not getting angry. Healthy forgiveness at least partly means not letting that anger destroy your life. The author is trying to channel his anger into being a better father than his own father was. That part is an entirely appropriate use of anger.
As for being grateful, the author is already doing that by trying to get along with his father.
Additionally, if someone does shitty things to you and you call that person out for each of the things, does that mean you have a “trait of lifelong blame and self-imposed victim-hood”? Obviously not. Just because the author holds his father responsible for the misdeeds the latter committed doesn’t mean he blames the latter for all of his problems.
You have been very quick to judge here. In addition to the things I’ve mentioned above, how do you know the author didn’t pursue legal action regarding the mortgage? You don’t. Plus, claiming that the author shouldn’t be pissed off at someone who violated his consent is ridiculous. He is pissed off and he is expressing his feelings in ways that don’t harm others—this is a very healthy thing to do. Secondly, the editors say he chose anonymity to protect his family members. What makes you so sure that a lack of personal accountability is the reason instead? Choosing anonymity may be consistent with the hypothesis of lacking personal accountability but it’s also consistent with many other hypotheses that are more plausible in my opinion.
I encourage you to think about why this article made you so angry. It seems you’re carrying a lot of repressed anger (at one/both of your parents and at yourself) which you’re expressing by lashing out at the author.
Finally, here’s another example of how anger can be healthy. I was angry at your comment. The anger gave me energy and I used it to write this comment in response. And at the end, that enabled me to access compassion for you. Writing the article must have helped the author access compassion for his father or at least progress towards that goal. Talking about it is very important, it’s one of the faster ways to move past the cause of the anger.