Current Events > Having a shit father really affects your whole life

(+) Yeah! (+)

All you can do is break the cycle

Tell me about it.

Id rather not of had a father than have a bad one.

my dad did his best. from what he tells me from about his father, he was really cold and distant.
my dad was neither one of those so i was lucky in that regard.

with my son i hope i can be even better. though, i have some things i still need to figure out. i just hope i can do it :(

KiwiTerraRizing posted...

All you can do is break the cycle

That's why they invented vasectomies.

I broke the chain of shitty fathers: unfortunately a massive improvement from them is just an ok dude.....

I don't even know my dad.

My dad was a monster in ways I'll never be like but as far as him being a selfish flake and all around crappy provider, I'd be just like him if I ever had kids. That's why I had a vasectomy

Yep. Mine was a drunk who attacked me on the regular for years on end. I still get nightmares of him screaming in a blind rage, striking me in the face and the one time he grabbed me by the hair and slammed my head down on the edge of the table

I dont drink and dont ever plan on having children, so thatll break the cycle!

Harpie posted...

Yep. Mine was a drunk who attacked me on the regular for years on end. I still get nightmares of him screaming in a blind rage, striking me in the face and the one time he grabbed me by the hair and slammed my head down on the edge of the table

I dont drink and dont ever plan on having children, so thatll break the cycle!

That's heartbreaking. :(

I grew up without a dad myself. And my mom's boyfriends weren't so great. I got hit, but not super frequently.

plenty of good reasons listed to honor and respect a hardworking loving father

not everybody gets one
and sometimes they're stuck with a shitty abusive mother to boot

Dont even wanna get into it, but I sympathize TC.

Tell me about it. There was incident with mine last night. Thought things were going to become violent again.

While I'm not going to say my dad was bad, but my grandpa being a shitty dad, my dad crippling depression and my crippling depression, my line is done with me.

The world doesn't need another broken person.

Uncle Phil was a great Dad, imo.

My dad moved 3500 miles away when I was 10 with my step mom and her kids. Didn't have much contact with him over the next couple decades.

I felt bad when he died of covid last year until I found out he left all his belongings to my step sister.

You'd think that prick would at least think of me and my brother who he abandoned in his will. It was the final slap in the face.

Rot in piss, old man.

My father was an abusive drug addict who wouldnt hold a job.

He died 8 years ago from cancer so advanced he found out he had it when he broke a hip just walking.

I had my first child 3 months prior to him
asking me to come see him after not having talked to him for years.

He didnt mention my child at all. He died a month later and I didnt give a shit. Im glad hes dead.

Not having a father is often just as bad. Statistically at least.

I lived with three different pairs of caretakers throughout my childhood and they were all insanely vicious.

Harpie posted...

Yep. Mine was a drunk who attacked me on the regular for years on end. I still get nightmares of him screaming in a blind rage, striking me in the face and the one time he grabbed me by the hair and slammed my head down on the edge of the table

I dont drink and dont ever plan on having children, so thatll break the cycle!

Ive noticed that you have a really big heart and a very strong sense of character and integrity. Youre a wonderful person and the world is lucky to have you. Its really infuriating to hear that someone treated you that way. I find it empowering to be able to say that the parts of you in me die with this body to our parents, I hope you do too.

cuttin_in_farm posted...

Id rather not of had a father than have a bad one.

Yeah this is what a lot of them don't get. They think just being there is enough, but a bad presence is worse than none.

SauI_Goodman posted...

Not having a father is often just as bad. Statistically at least.

Thin air can't beat you.

This topic explains a lot.

The same could be said of mothers, but society seems to promote the idea that mothers are saints.

Kindest thing a man can do in this world is get a vasectomy.

Sorry to anyone with a bad relationship with their parents. I can relate. Break the cycle.

nexigrams posted...

Kindest thing a man can do in this world is get a vasectomy.

I'd rather wait for a sterilization pill. There needs to be other methods that don't involve sharp blades near my dick.

I haven't seen my dad since 2003.

My father can be pessimistic at times, get conceited and also likes to talk in big loops. He can be very torturous with his daily lectures on us. But I still love him and even though we argue a lot at times, I wish to help him get to a better position and I am determined to do so.

pkmnlord posted...

I'd rather wait for a sterilization pill. There needs to be other methods that don't involve sharp blades near my dick.

Drugs scare me WAY more than a knife does. I understand the effects of a cut. I've been cut before plenty of times. It stings, it bleeds, it eventually heals and you forget about it.

I'll never understand the mechanism of action for a pill, though. Are there any interactions or side effects that can change my brain chemistry, too? My personality? Or even rarely cause other problems that no one has thought of yet?

Nah I'll take a nice clean scalpel over that any day of the week. Pills scare me too much, always have.

As much anger as I have for my dad for fucking up royally in a lot of ways, its really because he did not know any better. He literally grew up without a father at all, so he had no example to follow.

[LFAQs-redacted-quote]


This is also true. My mother was very passive and enabling. So despite my dead stealing money, playing video games drunk 90% of the time, stealing her car, and verbally/physically abusing me

She kept letting him come back in the house because she felt her three sons needed a father. To this day I resent her almost as much as my dad tbh.

My mom was the more physically abusive one but my dad is a narcissist. As in Im certain he is NPD and even therapists have turned him away. He does not truly love anyone but himself.

I did break the cycle. Id never raise my hand against my kid and I married a man who loves her more than anything.

I grew up without my father around since he was locked up. That alone gives me an edge over my father at being a parent. That and the fact I'm not abusive to my daughter of course it's possible that being present can be worse than not being there at all if you are a shit person.

nexigrams posted...
I can understand your distrust of drugs in this case and in general, but I don't share that same paranoia.

My dad is a selfish asshole who doesnt care about anyone else.

Thats probably what I am too.

I am very sorry for y'all who had shitty fathers. I try my best to be a good father to my daughters. We did maybe screw them up slightly with the divorce but otherwise they seem happy.

Mine was just absent. That was bad enough. I lived with a hate for someone I didn't even know for so long. And it was born from me trying to send him a father's day gift and he sent it back "return to sender" cause he was afraid if we knew his location my mom would nail him for child support. And I'm certain we had his address. My mother is really good at finding people and she has his social security number so finding him for her is easy work. But even on the off chance we had it wrong it was still clear he was having nothing to do with me.

He didn't go out of his way to contact me till I was 18. I told him to fuck off basically. Took me till I was 33 to break down and accept his apologies for being absent. And that was just a case of it boiled down to I realized it was doing me no good to hold onto the hate. He had been a selfish alcoholic but got sober. Married a selfish drug addict. He made a point to to call my mom and apologize for what he put her through as he had now expierenced it.

But we live so far apart and so much time has passed we can never have a normal father son relationship.

When I was little, my dad always told me that he hated me and wished I was dead. That he'd go to my grave, piss on it, then dance all the way home. He blamed me for everything that made him unhappy in his life. He used to slap me around and insult me for having brown hair and green eyes instead of black hair like my parents, and my eyes needed to be either be brown or blue. Nothing about me was ever good enough for him.

When I was 9 we were in a really bad car accident. Someone was out drinking all night and passed out at the wheel, swerved into our lane and we had a head in collision with both vehicles going 55. Both my brother and me were the most injured ones, but my injuries went unnoticed and untreated. A week later at the hospital again they found out that my intestines had been severed by the seatbelt and now I was developing gangrene. They said I wouldn't survive the night, and rushed me to emergency surgery to remove the infected organs. The only hitch... They asked dad to sign the consent form for the surgery. He refused. Told them he'd rather let me die. Thankfully mom signed, and I believe in situations like that they do the surgery anyway and hit the parents with legal charges, but I lived.

That wreck also injured my spine. The seatbelt had smashed through my intestines and impacted my spine and damaged it. So, I had to go through physical therapy due to nerve damage in my belly, damaged muscles, and the spine injury. One day he got mad at me and hit me in the back right on the hurt part. It made my legs go numb and I couldn't stand up for like 5 minutes. I tried crawling to my room, but he just stood over me mocking me for being weak and pathetic.

I've got so many stories of him doing things like that. Those aren't even the worst of it. I'm pretty sure I have PTSD from both the wreck, and the things he did to me. I used to suffer from constant nightmares of being trapped and murdered. They stopped a few years ago, but the other week he did something that startled me a little bit and that same night I had another one.

I so wish that he was gone. He's almost died twice from an aneurysm over the last few years, and we got him to the hospital in time to save his life. The doctors kept telling us both times that he most likely wouldn't survive(he did though). The thing is, I didn't care if he lived. I wasn't worried about him, I was actually kind of hoping he wouldn't pull through.
And that scares me. I don't want to be like him, I never thought I'd feel that way about someone dying. I've been thinking my whole life that he's just a huge piece of shit, and when it came down to it, I felt the same way about him as he did me. I felt like a monster for not caring, for not hoping that he lived.

KogaSteelfang posted...
JFC, I hope for your sake you outlive your dad so you can do all those things to his grave (assuming anyone would even bother getting him one) he said he'd do if you died.

pkmnlord posted...

JFC, I hope for your sake you outlive your dad so you can do all those things to his grave (assuming anyone would even bother getting him one) he said he'd do if you died.

I hope I outlive him too. I wouldn't bother doing anything to his grave or anything though, just move on with life. I think that'd be the bigger insult to him, he'd want us to stop our lives and mourn over him for years. We won't be doing that, at all.

KogaSteelfang posted...

I hope I outlive him too. I wouldn't bother doing anything to his grave or anything though, just move on with life. I think that'd be the bigger insult to him, he'd want us to stop our lives and mourn over him for years. We won't be doing that, at all.

Do you still have any contact with him, and if so why? Anything is better than suffering such abuse

Ceralyna posted...

Do you still have any contact with him, and if so why? Anything is better than suffering such abuse

Yeah, I still live at home.

KogaSteelfang posted...

Yeah, I still live at home.

Are you and your family unable to get out at all? Is there nobody you can turn to, no friends or family? Or is leaving just impossible? Sorry if I'm prying too much, I'm just curious why you're still stuck with such a vile individual

Mine is extremely weird. Hard worker/good provider, very generous in his own way (his love language is definitely gifts and acts of service) but overly sensitive, prone to mood swings and just really hard to read at times. My sister reckons he has undiagnosed bipolar. He lost his father at 11, so maybe that had something to do with it. Anyway it's hard to know if he's a shit father or a good one with lots of issues out of his control. Either way, I could have turned out better

Ceralyna posted...

Are you and your family unable to get out at all? Is there nobody you can turn to, no friends or family? Or is leaving just impossible? Sorry if I'm prying too much, I'm just curious why you're still stuck with such a vile individual

He's kept us isolated from everyone else. I grew up that way, I was always shy and withdrawn, but this cranked those traits up to 11. I have social anxiety and depression now, so I really struggle to get anything done especially when it involves talking with others. Besides, until recently I couldn't afford to leave.

Biggest factor is that I've simply failed at every attempt at improving my life.

KogaSteelfang posted...

He's kept us isolated from everyone else. I grew up that way, I was always shy and withdrawn, but this cranked those traits up to 11. I have social anxiety and depression now, so I really struggle to get anything done especially when it involves talking with others. Besides, until recently I couldn't afford to leave.

Biggest factor is that I've simply failed at every attempt at improving my life.

Fight through it all, do not give up on yourself. You're alive, and you have a future, you just have to do the work to build it. And cut thart piece of shit off as soon as tyou can. Just start thinking of him as dead right now, and lay your plans to GTFO.