Dad Part 3

So I had this conversation with a friend of mine who has a kind of similar situation with her father and she said that when her father does call he always says how bad he is at keeping in touch with her and making plans and how bad he feels. She said to me, "You know I used to really kind of gloat on that, and now I say to him, well I am not any better." She made me realize that I still am viewing my father as I would if I were a kid and were getting angry with him for not being there the way I want. As my friend put it: “I don’t play games any more with it. It’s like if I wanted to see him so bad I would call him regardless of whether or not he calls me.” Now that’s, well, healthy and very well adjusted, I’d say. My father said to me during that phone call last week to “stop by” and I said, “Okay, just call me” and when he didn’t, instead of calling him, like I would with anyone else because I wouldn’t interpret his or her not calling me as a he or she not liking me or blowing me off but more on the assumption ‘oh they forgot’, instead, nope, I went to ‘well forget him if he wanted to see me so badly he would have called and here I am again doing all the work in the relationship’. Which whatever way you look at it, it doesn’t matter because that’s what I feel. However, my feelings are not necessarily the entire picture of a situation. Who knows how my father views all this? Again, to me, it’s a no-brainer…the parent is the one who is supposed to do all the giving in a relationship with a child, giving and giving without expectation and with the idea behind every thing that this is the one relationship not about you and your ego….but about unconditional love.

I know for a fact that my father doesn’t feel that way about parents and their children. He is a fan of saying “Well you’re a grown up now…” He once broke up with a woman who he told me was too close to her kids….hmmmm pretty telling, if you ask me. I mean I think that my father never acted like a parent to me and always expected me to be his equal, colleague or friend. I don’t think he understands that when you have children, they are your children for life and the nature of that relationship is not about equality…Your parents are supposed to be the people who you can count on to love you and want to see you, no matter what, no matter what goes on in their lives and yet, my father constantly says he is too busy to visit me…too busy with the renovations on his house, with work, with his new life. That’s what you say to friends– not family. But he doesn’t think there’s anything wrong with that. I do. That’s the reason why I feel like I don’t want to see him lately….because I don’t think he values me as his family.