What was Your Dad Like?

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I liked my dad, and if he had been more emotionally mature he could have been a great dad. But.

He was/is seriously emotionally immature - at about the 4-year-old level. He's constantly afraid people will stab him in the back so he figures he has to get them first, even if they're little kids. He just doesn't trust anyone. Had he done what I did, and read up on child development, he could probably have felt more comfortable around us and excluded us from his fear/vendetta, instead of being afraid of us too.

I have always had problems being afraid of men, but lately I've been getting better at seeing them as individuals, some safer than others, so I think I'm recovering. Still, it would be nice if he were available as a Dad now. We tend to like doing the same things, and he's good company outdoors. But not in this lifetime, alas.

i hate my dad, hes a pisshead, always has been and swears and shouts all the time. hes not allowed to drive because hes always over the limit so i escape from the house as much as i can.
we actually moved house last june because he was being a disturbance in the neighbourhood

I always thought my dad liked me better than my mother did, up to a certain age at least. There are pics of me as a baby with my dad and my big brother holding me and looking pleased as punch...not my mother. Wish I knew the truth about how things were in my family back then. He used to do a lot of cool, fun things with me as a kid. Took me beachcombing, made things with me in the shed. He didn't mind in the slightest that I wasn't a feminine type of girl.

Thing was, he'd already suffered a bunch of ill health, then when I was twelve he got diagnosed with cancer. I wasn't told that was what it was, I only found out from books a lot later. They didn't tell me anything. But from that moment onwards it seemed my folks were both permanently angry with me. I absolutely couldn't be good enough for them. I could not, hard as I tried, get them to say a good word about me, either of them. I would literally kneel and ask them to say something nice about me, and they'd tell me to get up and not be so stupid, but I felt like crap and I would have died to hear them say that I was good and clever and worthy and all that great stuff. But it seemed all they did was shout at me, and then when I cried they shouted some more. It was years before I linked this to my dad's illness, but I now think it wasn't coincidence. They had to be angry at something, and I was an easy target.

My dad had a foul temper, and while he never laid a hand on me, he was a big guy and I was always terrified that he might hit me. Also, after I started growing up physically, and especially if I wore anything he regarded as too revealing, he would call me horrible things. Words I didn't know he even knew. He was a 'gentleman' of the old school who would never insult or mistreat a lady...but in my teens I learned how narrow his definition of the word 'lady' actually was. Basically it didn't encompass any woman who was any way openly sexual, and he let me know it by treating me more or less with contempt after it was obvious I had any kind of a sex life. There was also the issue that being an early developer and a girl who knew next to nothing about how to deal with guys, I became a target for predatory older men, and I think he actually blamed me for this, even though I hadn't a clue what was going on or how to protect myself from it. That's part of the flipside of that attitude, too.

Also, he despised me for not working, even though I was still at school. Bear in mind this man, like all his generation, left school when he was 14, so any time I stayed on at school after that, he begrudged supporting me. I had summer jobs, but it never seemed to be enough and I'd get an earful any time I asked for anything. I spent precisely three months on the dole between leaving college and finding a job, and it was hellish. He never let up. Trouble was, I was a painfully scared, shy young woman. I was fired from two jobs for being not chatty enough with customers. I wasn't actually lazy, I just couldn't deal with people, and there aren't many jobs you can get at that age that take that into account.

I rarely saw him after I got married, and he died when I was in my twenties. We never did make things up, but with his attitude I'm not sure we ever could have done. Not without me becoming a sweet little girl again, and that was impossible.

My parents and I just lived in different eras. They didn't know how to deal with stuff in a modern, open way, and I suffered a huge amount because of it. I wish it had been different, but that's the way it was.

(The rest of the family, of course, idolizes him, so it's impossible to even speak about any of this...)

he was always away and faavoured my brother alot more than me,same with my mother...dont talk to them much

I didn't really know my dad when growing up, he was always working on contracts abroad. I got to know him better after my mom died, he worked a lot to support me and my bro but he stayed at home and no longer traveled.

I know it was hard for him to be a single parent and he wasn't doing a very good job- me and my brother got into trouble constantly, the house was a mess and my dad couldn't save a penny, we would just spend all the money he earned on fun stuff. I guess he was very emotionally immature and just didn't know any better.

he also had the same sense of humour as me. I guess I got this trait from him, never being serious, no matter how grim the situation is. we never talked about our feelings, even if we would try the other person would just start taking a piss out of it. it was fun, I actually love being this way.

I loved the fact that he wouldn't take "I don't know" for an answer, whenever I asked him something he'll know it, or he'd look for an answer and then come back to me with a detailed lecture on the subject, even if I'd lost interest in it long ago. he also took my random ideas seriously and never found them odd, like most people do.

he was really cool.

My dad is an undx'ed aspie, horrible temper (meltdowns) but underneath a nice guy. He's so intelligent... I was always jealous of his math & science abilities.

My dad was hyper, wore clothes till they were all worn out and still kept on wearing them. He hardly wore nice things, he worked and paid all the bills while my mother was a stay at home mom for a while until all us kids were in school full time. He also loves sports and had to watch them all the time and all his friends love them too. Sometimes he would have them all come over and they would sit up in the playroom and watch the game on TV. He is also messy and he curses when he gets mad and he sometimes throws things or slams things when he is mad. he also says inappropriate things and my mom says he is a jerk but she still loves him. Sometimes he starts talking to me about sports and I tell him I don't care for them.
He also has a loud voice so I was able to hear him when I was deaf. I wasn't profoundly deaf because I could hear sounds. He also has some hearing loss but he can hear fine but he just can't hear things I can hear and he always has to have the TV blaring.
He is also impulsive and when he gets an idea, he does it without thinking through.
He also talks fast. But he didn't discipline as much and he wasn't really strict as my mother.
My mother did most of the punishments.

i dont really know alot about my real dad, ive met him a few times and he was a drug addict. suposidly now though hes found jesus. i guess thats great for him but doesnt do s**t for the 3 kids he left for another man to raise who did a horrible job at it. with that said im not going into details about my childhood. me and my two natural sisters sufferd all hell

Sorry to hear that richard.

Doesn't sound like we have many great dads here...

My Dad died of a drug overdose when I was a baby so I didnt ever know him except what my mum said that he was really cruel and she was scared of him. He had Bipolar or schizophrenia.
He had shock treatment too so I guess he must of got pretty sick.
He had been in and alot of trouble and in prison. The same as me. No one else in my family has so must take after my Dad.

My dad is a permanent child, which was/sometimes still is great for outings, but terrible when it came to being a parent, he was a dad when he felt like it, couldn't say no to me as a child, disregarded any rules my mum set down for me. Made my mum always the bad guy, had a go at her when she smacked me on the bottom (which never hurt) but would clip me round the ear (knowing full well that I suffered from excema and hearing/ear problems).

He did nothing when my mum had a emotional breakdown and was drinking and unloading all her problems on me. (I live with her, but he saw it happening and the most he did was say to me she was mental ill, she wasn't, but that's a much longer story, but since what caused it also was affecting me I took it to mean that I was mental ill too, as he refuses to acknowledge what had caused the emotional breakdown)

When I said I was being bullyed he laughed.

When I had meltdown because of the above (and I now know AS) he would say I was jyst being spoiled (never mind if I was it was because he could never say no).

A psychiatrist has called him an Anarchist.

I love my dad very much.