How is your relationship with your father?

Apparently the majority of men have a poor relationship with their fathers.

I can count on one hand the number of times I've spoken with mine over the past three years. There was no major conflict, just my resentment at his poor effort of being a father, which has grown to indifference over the years.

And many of my friends have similar experiences. How about you?

 

I count myself truly blessed to have a kind loving father such as mine. I'd say he did a pretty good job especially when you consider his childhood.

 

I used to have a pretty decent relationship with my father. We didn't go out fishing every weekend or anything, but we would converse and do family things. Toward the end of last summer, my parents split up and my dad has been chasing my mom ever since, answering her every command in order to get her back. Some of this has involved compromising me and my half-sister and for that, I have some resentment. He's done some really messed up things to me as a result. I rarely talk to him when I see him and try to avoid it and I can see he's starting to regret it. He tries to talk to me about it, but I just brush it off and mostly don't respond. Last week he told me he loved me for the first time in ages. I just told him "yeah" real quick and turned back around to do what it was I was doing. I kind of felt bad afterward, when he left, though. Oh well.

He's a good guy, he just messed up really big and it's going to take time. My mom - I'll probably never speak to her again. I haven't in a year.

 

We don't speak.
In public he doesn't acknowledge me.
He is a bit of a sad fuck though, doesn't much bother me.

 

almost no relationship. he ditched my mom, siblings and I when i was a toddler for some other bitch who he is now married to.
i have almost no respect for him so i don't talk to him.

 

I don't even know my father very well. I have only seen him and talked to him a hand full times in my life.

 

Mine's dead. But it wasn't the best.
But he was a distressed drunk my whole life so...

 

I've always gotten along well with my dad, much more so than my mom. But I love them both the same. My dad is pretty much my best friend, though.

 

I think my dad always tried to do the right thing, even though he was wrong about a lot of things. He has been dead for over 25 years.

 

I get along great with my dad, though he lives 3000 miles away from me. He is one of the most honorable, honest, kindest and hardest working men I've ever met in my life. We had a time that we were out of sorts with each other based primarily on differences in religion, lifestyles and such, he being rather conservative and me being a long haired pot head, but after a few years passed we both realized that our core ethics of honesty and integrity were them same and we got past our differences.

 

My father is a very lost person. He made my childhood a living hell.

We speak once a year on the phone now, he lives on another continent so I don't get to see him. I'd rather keep it this way. He just got out of an intensive 3 year rehab thingy, so I try to be supportive. It's the least I can do. I'll probably visit him if I ever have the chance.

 

i hate my dad.

 

This is my father
http://www.adl.org/learn/ext_us/Christian_Identity.asp?LEARN_Cat=Extremism&LEARN_SubCat=Extremism_in_America&xpicked=4&item=Christian_ID

He was very abusive to my brother and I when we were younger. Both physically and mentally. He has told me and I quote, "We should round up all of the homosexuals and kill them." One time I went with him down to branson Missouri on one of his religious seminars. This was before I really knew how he felt. I sat there with him as they started spewing out all of this racist shit. I looked over at him and told him I had to go to the bathroom, got up and left. I never returned. We never mentioned it. This was before I felt comfortable talking to him about shit. I spent the rest of the week walking around Branson while he went to the seminars. It sucks that he is that way but I really think it was part of the driving force for me in life. I wanted to take another path. I did. I hadn't talked to him in 3 years and probably wouldn't have ever again but he was at my sister's wedding earlier this year. We didn't even hug when we saw each other. A handshake. Later my brother told me about the Identity Christian thing and told me to google it. I fucking cried as I read it. It sucked to think that your father could hate so much. So now I am fatherless. I have moved on. My best friend doesn't have a good relationship with his father either. Other friends do though.

 

My dad's the best. I'm undergoing reverse Oedipal complex. But I had to kill him first.

 

my dad's a douche, but he's still always at least tried to be there for me. we butt heads quite a bit. i'm surprised we've never fought physically. i dunno...i bet we'll get along better once i move out.

i used to have a lot of friends who had a bad relationship with their father. i always figured it caused some sort of common quirk in us that drew us together to be friends. maybe the same goes for you.

 

whoop. i didn't realize i already posted in this thread.

 

My dad is more of a 'mate' than a parent, in fact, as a parent, he fucking sucks, but still we go out for drinks pretty often.

 

Maybe I've been the lucky one in having a good relationship with my dad.

 

My dad, is a person like anyone else. If he had the responsibility to raise me well, he did by his beliefs about what makes a positive impact on a person and only partly relative to my beliefs. We rarely talk, only when he's drunk. He is a body builder, spending 4 hours are the gym daily, even on weekends, works, watches television. We hardly talk about anything meaningful and when we do, it takes a long while to get him to understand a simple IDEA, for me, but a severly complicated idea for him. Were very hard to come to agreements with each other with and I attribute this to his physically based pleasures and my intellectually based pleasures. Its really alrite with me, because he is really just a person and is by no means bound to me, except by his own words and thoughts. Thats him, Librado Morales....

 

I have a great Dad.

I'm 37 and he's 63.

He's Irish and he & his family came over to live in England when he was 15, he never had much of an education, he worked 12 hour shifts in a papermill from before I was born till I was about 27, then when he got made redundant he became a milkman, starting work at 3am till 12pm. He's still there now.
My mum's a housewife so my Dad earned the money that provided for me and my younger brother. He brought home a modest wage but he was devoted to his family, the mortgage was paid off when I was 16, we always had a holiday every year and had a settee full of xmas prezzies every year too. Money was always tight and to a budget, we never had a telephone or car till I was about 15 I remember.
Looking back he's been totally committed to being a family man and providing for us. His only hobby is having a tiny flutter on the horses nearly every day... I think this is what has kept him sane.

I moved out when I was 25 and have been with my missus for 12 years now, I'm very much like him I think lol.
For 10 years now I've tried and am still trying to get into horse racing and understand the ins and outs of it... mainly so me and my Dad have something in common and have something to talk about when we meet up, that's all I genuinely do it for lol.

He's been a fantastic role model for me, I couldn't have wished for a better Dad and all that I am has come from him.

I suppose my biggest fear is not telling him or thanking him rather on what a great job he's done in providing for us and raising me.