Trying to get my Dad's acceptance

[Cheesehead]

I will never forget the day when I was a teenager my father and I were arguing about something...probably one of my friends or something I did...and he told me he would never accept me for what I was. And this was ment as general acceptance...there wasn't anything major that needed being accepted. It was mainly just to accept me for who I was and what I liked instead of not liking the choices I made for myself. My father is very opinionated and overall inflexible...something to this day at the age of 83 will not recognize and I am still at 45 trying to feel like my father accepts and likes the person I am. I have no idea why it is so important to me for him to accept me as I am, cause I know that it will never happen, but it is the carrot I will always be chasing after for the rest of my life.

[oak]

Oh Cheesehead, can I relate.

You are totally not alone in this situation.

At this point, is there anything that can done or said while he is still alive?

[MizLzie]

Oh yeah, I get this one.

My seminal moment was finding out that a promise of $$ (to make up for YEARS of not supporting) was made only to my sister. It was only because she said he had to give some to me that I received this "gift". It was then I realized that he wasn't just disappointed or ashamed of me. He didn't want me.

I no longer seek his acceptance (openly), but in the few times I have heard his voice on the phone these last years, and he wishes me well or something that a dad would say, I cry. Of course I cry. This man who has openly despised me, mainly for my resemblance to my mom who I am terrified of becoming, expresses the warmth and love I have always craved? Who wouldn't sob...

He is in his 70's and multiple strokes, living overseas. I will never see him again, and the last time we spoke was only because my sister made me (him?). Was there with him in person and what he said to me would suggest that he cares. But I am so tired of/used to waiting for him to care, I just don't even know what to think...

*hugs* to you as well Oak.

[Cheesehead]

It's really hard to explain the dysfunctionality of the relationship between my father and I. As I have gotten older and had more conversations with him it seems like each of us have a perspective of what our relationship is like, or should be like, that is on complete different ends of a spectrum. I have made the choice in recent years to distant myself somewhat from our relationship because frankly I don't really like him. I love him, but I certainly don't like how he is. And there is no way he is ever going to change and see my perspective so why do we continue to play the silly games and act like we have this really close, special relationship?! And I always end up feeling bad because he plays it like we always have had this close, special relationship and how hurt and shocked he is to find out I don't feel the same way. And when things are going well in my head I can intellectually realize that I will never get what I want from him and that's ok. But when my head is not in a good place, it can just paralyze me with pain that my father considers me a huge failure. I so just wish that I could get rid of the wounded little girl inside of me would hurry up and get fixed so I can get on with it!!

[irrationalpersist]

I have tried all my life to win my dad's approval and acceptance. It has been an incredibly painful and hurtful journey. When I thought I was making some inroads it turned out he was just using me as a companion to fend off his loneliness until he could get into another relationship. Since then he has been absent from my life again.

I have finally come to the conclusion that he really does not care about me or care for me. In the last 5 years:

1. He allowed me to stay in his basement suite while I was in school. I didn't have to pay rent in lieu of providing caretaker services for the property and some social media/advertising services for him. When we set up this arrangement he promised I would have a place to live until I graduated and then he fell in love, moved out, and put the house up for sale.

2. My dad married his third wife on an island that required two ferries to get to. My husband and I arrived on time. He asked us to drive across the island to pick up his friend and fiancé because there was no cab on the island. We agreed to do this. When we got back to the wedding the service was over and they were taking family photos. They had gone ahead with the wedding while we were picking up his friends and not waited for us to get back before going ahead with the service.

3. He agreed to sell us his house and give us the time to put the money together to make the purchase and then gave us an eviction notice which meant we had to come up with the money much sooner than we had planned.

4. He sold us the house at market value after having the property appraised. We agreed to handle the sale without a realtor to save on the fees. In the disclosure documents he did not mention there was an oil tank buried on the property. While we were repairing the storm drains a couple of months after purchasing the house we found the oil tank, and later, contaminated soil. He never took any responsibility for selling us the buried oil tank without disclosing it, and never helped us out with the clean up bill.

5. He and his wife had me over for Christmas Eve a couple of years ago. I was staying nearby at the family cabin on the island they live on with my dogs because our house was up on cribs getting a new basement. My dad knows that I am in recovery for alcohol and drugs and yet his wife used alcohol in the food she cooked. He never said anything about my sobriety and I felt so uncomfortable saying anything when I was supposed to be having this rare family dinner, a chance to rebuild our relationships. "Oh, the alcohol burns off in the cooking." Um, no it doesn't. I felt light headed after eating dinner and later got a crashing head ache. I worried that I had lost my sobriety of 15 years from eating the food, which I only did because I didn't want to hurt my dad's feelings.

6. My dad and his two sisters could not decide what to do with a piece of family vacation property that they held jointly. My dad has 6 kids and a step son. My aunt1 has 5 kids. My aunt 2 has 1 kid. They decided they were going to each will their 1/3 share to each of their offspring and leave it to the next generation to figure out how to manage this property. My family operates on a system of favouritism. Some of my family members have had access to that cabin every summer their children were growing up, some of us have never used it and have no attachment to the property. I wanted to talk about alternate plans for dispersal of this property because I had no attachment to it and I did not want to own property with siblings and cousins who had been privileged in its use over my lifetime. My dad would not talk about it with me and dismissed my concerns.

7. I had told my dad that I was upset with the condition of our relationship and that I needed to make some changes. I didn't talk to him for many months while I grappled with the reality of my relationship with him. Just before Christmas I felt I had made some headway and wanted to spend some time with him to repair our relationship. I offered to make a trip to the island so we could take a walk for an hour. He said he had shopping to do that was more important than spending time with me.

In January I broke off contact with my dad. The longer I stay disconnected from him the more pressure I feel internally and from siblings to re-connect. He is turning 87 this year and I don’t believe my relationship with him will ever improve. He is an alcoholic.

It has been an incredibly painful journey working through the reality of the condition of my relationship with my dad. Especially when I see my other 5 siblings seem to be okay with him. It has also been an extremely liberating experience to deal with the legacy of his narcissism and deprivation. I am noticing everyday that I am taking better care of myself and my home.

I wish everyone struggling to make sense of the casual cruelty of distressing family systems. We can get better and we can improve our lives and our relationships. Hallelujah!

[Burgess!,.]

This just makes me happy to read. I love it when positive people and positivity in general comes across as genuine and heartfelt instead of forced or coercive; the emails and the pumpkins sound like they would probably make me smile, too, and I love that you felt included in those messages (because sometimes my instinct with certain forms of positivity

[Bradyn]

At 40 years of of age I had a couple revelations about my dad:

1) I had two dads: One was the Pretend dad-that only existed in my imagination (he was really great!), the other was the dad I actually had.

2) The attention & acceptance I sought from my father, the approval, the "son I'm proud of you's" for the first 40 years of my life, HE DID NOT POSSESS. The praise & love that I expected (and fucking deserved!), he was incapable of giving. Throughout my life, I would accomplish something new & share it with him with expectations of 'finally getting the praise', 'finally making him proud' 'finally being good enough that he will see it'. As if this particular achievement was going to get me the love & praise I was seeking from him. This went on for 40 years. At 40 years old, I finally accepted that what I sought from him "did not exist in him" A friend once said to me "It's like going to the hardware store to get an ice cream cone" The hardware store is not in the ice cream cone business. This was a long & painful lesson of my life. I would go to the hardware store for a nice vanilla ice cream cone over & over & over & over, & always leave disappointed.
I urge any of you who may have stumbled on to this thread to realistically evaluate your father's capacity for love & acceptance. If what you seek in your father does not exist as a personality trait of his, you may never get the ice cream cone you seek. This was the case for me, and each time i was denied my ice cream cone, it hurt a little more. Yes we deserve the love of a father, but the ones we have may not be able to give it. Don't hurt yourself by expecting the love you deserve to come from the one who can not give it. -Bradyn

[MisterEarl]

Hello Cheesehead,
I have a suggestion. Watch the Johnny Cash movie, "Walk The Line." Johnny had an older brother who was killed in an accident. The father favored the older son, and openly said that "the wrong one was killed." This, of course, devastated Cash Junior. Years later, after his celebrity cannot be denied, Johnny invites the family to his palatial home. He's practically begging father to acknowledge his despite-long-odds success. This the father will not do. The father will not surrender the power to deny his son what he wants most. His was a message of, "You might gain all the fortunes of the world, but none of it means a thing because you'll never gain my acceptance." Sounds to me like you are in a similar situation.