Those of you who have abusive fathers, how has this affected your life?

11 comments

  1. Yeah, my dad was abusive. Very liberal with the belt. Sometimes in his haste he would grab the wrong end and I’d get hit with the buckle end of the belt. There were quite a few days where mom kept me home from school the next two or three days, if you know what I mean. Not sure what his problem was. Leftover anger from being a draftee in Vietnam? idk. But I pretty much lived in terror of him until I reached the age I could fight back. He really mellowed out after I left home. In fact his grandkids from all my other siblings love him and he’s a doting grandfather. The ONLY reason my kids have any relationship with him is because of my wife. There is a noticeable strain there between he and I from all those years ago and everyone knows why, but doesn’t talk about it. But I think the emotional detachment if never having a dad (I had a father – no dad – big difference) is was probably hurt the worst. No father figure to toss a football around with or show me how to fish. I had to teach myself to shave and tie a neck tie. He wanted no interaction with me, and I felt the same. Just talking to him elicited yelling. I walked on eggshells until I left home. No joke: I was so afraid of him I never called him “dad” until I was like 11 years old. I just didn’t engage with him.

    All I know is, I vowed at around age 10 that I would never lay a harmful hand on my own kids and I’ve never broken that vow. I think the toll and repression of all those years came flooding out when our first was born. We were up in the maternity ward room and it was the moment they first brought our daughter to us, after leaving the delivery room. My in-laws were there in the room. The nurse gave my daughter to me. First time I ever held her. I didn’t cry. No, I full-on sobbed. So much so that my wife, who just had the baby a few hours before, got out of the bed to come over and comfort me. I just cried and cried and wetted her little blanket with my tears. I just couldn’t conceive in that moment how much I loved this little life in my hands and how anyone could physical hurt and abuse their child.

  2. It made me a better man than him, because I swore to never follow that path. It took a long time to come to forgive him and realize it was due to mental illness (paranoid schizophrenic), which also probably helped give me a greater appreciation for mental health. I think it helped me be a little more understanding as a father myself, to my child.

  3. I didn’t have it nearly as bad as some, but I would say that he was abusive, particularly from a verbal and emotional standpoint (and others have reaffirmed these feelings when I’ve finally opened up about it in recent years).

    He degraded me, belittled me, seemingly went out of his way to embarrass me in front of friends and family, screamed at me so loudly people down the street could no doubt hear it (over just about anything). It’s still burned in my brain how he used to look at me like I was a pest. Or how he’d tell me to stop talking about something because no one cares about what I’m talking about. And ironically, when I became a shell of a person too afraid to talk in public as a teenager, he told me to grow a personality or no one would ever like me.

    I don’t have a kid, and there have been times where I get scared thinking about it, worrying I’d do the same. But I think if anything it’s been a thorough example of how not to be a good father, which showed me how to be a good father. So if/when I do have a child one day, nothing else will matter more to me than making sure the cycle stops there – and he can have the connection with his dad I never did.

  5. I haven’t seen my dad in 9 years.

    From around the time my parents divorced, when I was 7 or 8, the abuse started in the form of mental and emotional abuse. This would be anything from degrading, belitteling me, to even going to the point where my dad would tell me that my stepfather should die. He would also try to manipulate me into thinking that my dad was the “good guy”, and that my mom and stepdad were the bad guys. Memories are hazy, but the mental and emotional abuse took a hard effect on me, specially later on when things escalated to a whole different level.

    By different level I mean full on attacking me when I was 14. At that day he had gotten angry at me, because at that time, a moment ago I told my mother about an argument me and my dad were having. My father, being the jealous narcissistic piece of shit (he always said “no telling your mom what happens here”, which is horseshit and I didn’t obey that rule) that he is and angered, grabbed my throat, pushed me against a wall, and started applying pressure on my throat. I remember sobbing and telling him to stop and that it hurts, to which he responded “it will hurt even more soon”. His girlfriend’s daughter walked in which prompted him to let go, and he took (more like stole) my phone and left. I managed to take my sister’s phone, run out, call my mom, after which she called the police. While the police was on their way, my mom also asked a friend of hers to drive there for my safety, and he just arrived as my dad found me outside, he didn’t say a word, and started approaching me. At that point I was scared that he was going to kill me. After the family friend arrived, my dad ran back inside, came back out with a camera, took a picture of us two in the family friend’s car, and my dad threatened to accuse him of kidnapping if I went anywhere with him. The family friend just said “yea yea”, dad went inside, and we waited. The cops then arrived 2 hours later.

    My dad, his girlfriend and her daughter all told to the police that nothing happened. I told otherwise, the police believed in me. This eventually went to court, where my dad pathetically tried to use his own “bad past” (don’t know the full story of his past, and I don’t care either way) as an excuse for his assault towards me. No one in the court room believed my dad for a single bit, and my dad was eventually charged with misdemeanor assault with a fine. He walked out of the court room with his head low.

    What I should also mention, is that my dad has a habit of trying to buy silence, love and respect from me in the form of gifts and cash. When the assault happened, he tried to give me 100€ and told me to “let go of it”. I took the money, but I knew that he had crossed the line, for the last time ever. I’ve had enough of him. The fact that he tried to coward away from the whole ordeal, instead of taking accountability and responsibility of what happened, and the years and years of mental abuse that he put on me. I’ve had it to the limit.

    I still suffer from the consequences of my dad’s abuse towards me, and I’ve made the decision to never ever visit him again. I have never talked on the phone with him since, and I refuse to, but he sends birthday wishes and things like that through text. Honestly, I feel like he doesn’t dare to show any kind of remorse, or even try to apologize or fix things, which he NEVER did for ANYTHING, at least genuinely. It was always for his own “gain and power”, if you will. Sometimes it feels like he doesn’t know how to properly apologize. Even then, I wouldn’t forgive him.

    I’m not scared of him anymore, I despise and hate him. Today, me being 23, if he were to ever show up at my appartment door, I would have no issue fucking him up as payback, not at all. If my dad is reading this: Fuck you.

  6. As a contrast to seeing how volatile he was on an emotional level, I developed into someone who learned to keep tight control on their emotions to the point that I can sometimes come off as dead on an emotional level. I also can do this weird thing where I “go away inside” as a coping thing. I think I might have something of a reactive anger thing

  7. I think extremely negatively of men in general. It might not be fair, but my dad was, and still is, a violent sociopath. So now I see other men in his shadow. I will forever be untrusting of them

  8. I learned what kind of man not to be. I realized strength and masculinity is really about controlling my emotions, not letting them control me. I learned that self-discipline is the bedrock of being a good husband and father. I gave my children my all, my love, guidance and the home to grow up in.

    I found that where I am weak, my wife is strong and to not be threatened. My adult life has been to a large degree, 40 years of trying to heal what was broken.

  9. Grew up with my (only) mother until my dad sued her over custody. The court ruled in his favor, thusly meaning I was forced by law to see him. The berating was worse than the beating. This went on for a while, my mother and I had to flee to another country where we have relatives when it was the worst. Eventually my mother won full custody of me.

    So, back to the initial question. Having MY father made me hate him but it also meant I never had a role model, you know? So, with no role models you become influenced by really awful that people and their tactics.

    I’m 33 and it wasn’t until like two years ago that started to think differently from younger me ie focus on people you met / or are your friends.
    For me to to change my thinking I started doing DBT. It helps me focus on the two people that have always been good to me, and its inspiring.

    _Any incorrect spelling / grammar or incoherency
    Is due to English not being my first language and I have also mixed a couple of Ambien with wine._

  10. It has been said a lot already, but it showed me what kind of person I didn’t want to be. My father was violent, chain-smoking, alcoholic that had a hero complex, and would do whatever it took to be that hero in the eyes of anyone other than his family; although he expected us to already see him as a hero, because he brought home a paycheck. Anyone who didn’t think so, or misbehaved, or woke him from his evening nap, got a close up of his belt, fist, or an earful of verbal abuse.

    How has it affected my life? I’ve done my best to accept that he wasn’t a good person, and I’ve tried to do all I can not to be that kind of person. I have learned to be the kind of person I would have wanted as a father, patient, tolerant, and genuinly caring. You don’t have to forgive the one who hurt you, but you do have to forgive yourself and allow yourself to move forward. Stagnation is the enemy of progress.

    Edit: For grammar, thank you Mr. Bot.

Leave a Reply
You May Also Like