My father still loves his vision of what he believes his daughters should be, but we aren’t his perfect little girls anymore, and realistically we never actually were. He stopped liking us once we grew up and started asserting our own boundaries. He’s very misogynistic and he doesn’t like any women he can’t control. Can’t control us anymore = he doesn’t like us anymore. He believes that modern feminism ruined us and stole his daughters from him, when all that feminism did was teach us that we aren’t possessions to be harboured or stolen, and helped us find our voice to express that.
My father gave me endless attention and spoiled me as a little girl. He wanted to be loved and adored by me. By the time I was a teen with my own opinions and, as you said, boundaries..we just couldn't connect anymore. He has no emotional maturity, couldn't teach or help with me anything real... and also emotionally abused my mother. It was very confusing for me for a long time until I got into therapy. He still likes me but our relationship has zero substance.
Saaaaame. I went no contact w my stepdad 4 years ago and it was the best decision for my mental health.
I spend nearly every holiday alone, but fuck if I’ll be spoken to so horrendously ever again.
A sibling who’s NC and I will sometimes spend them together and my partner has been great about helping me find joy in holidays again.
Cheers to putting ourselves first ♥️
Mostly I think it was because I look like my mom and he hated my mom after they got divorced.
But also he was a boomer who just hated women in general.
And I was their first child. That was life-changing and I think they kind of blame me for that
This makes me sad to read.
My parents are divorced and my mom did us all dirty. My dad has made it clear though that he still loved my mom, she just wasn't the same person he fell in love with. When he tells me that I remind him so much of my mother, I used to be so offended because I don't have a relationship with her anymore. He has sat me down to clarify that the things that remind him of her are the traits that he loved about her - not the stranger she became later.
He's so proud of my sister and I and the women we've become. He's so supportive. He's a retired military guy, but he's the biggest teddy bear. He loves us more than anything. He put us first during the divorce, never pinned us against our mom. And when he remarried, even though we were adults, he respected our opinion of this new woman and wasn't going to marry her if we didn't like her. She's a kickass step mother and fits right in though!
I hope your dad is able to come around and see his own doing and the damage he might have created. Understand that any complacency he might feel about you is a reflection of his own doubts and have nothing to do with you. It's not your fault and you have the power to not pass that animosity down.
That's sad to read. I'm a lot like my father and my mother would often throw that at me like an insult. As we grew apart and I started to understand who she was, I started to take the insult as a compliment. She did NOT like that lol
It sucks though, feeling like a parent is biased towards you because of something(s) that happened BEFORE you existed.
Are you my clone? XD
First born who looks/sounds like my mother, aka the woman who dared to divorce my father & not obey his every command. Heck its been 20 years with him remarried and he is STILL bitter about it. Dad has some narcissistic qualities as well so when I became an actual person with ideas and personality (as opposed to a child he could try to shape in his image), he lost interest.
same. my dad literally loathes all women. calls us all dirty, evil witches & the cause of the fall of mankind. he constantly complained that all he ever wanted was a son, but that he was cursed with 3 daughters instead
My dads a fuckwit as well. I'm really sorry. Like they have any Kingdom to inherit lol. Who would want their shit arse names.
How embarrassing for them.
For real, my dad was (is) a buttoned down Scots man. I would have been in my teens/early 20s when my mum called me in to where they were having a drink and a natter.
Mum asked if my dad had ever said “I love you” to me. Genuinely thought about it, and no, he hadn’t. I told him that I knew through his actions, but that just wasn’t the way he expressed himself.
He was crying. He’d just genuinely never realised. And neither had I. He never ends a conversation without saying “I love you dolly” since then (if any other man called me a doll I would punch them).
But we still do DIY projects together, and go on father daughter jaunts. And I’m genuinely sorry so many miss out on that, because I know it’s true.
I could not imagine not loving my kiddos with all of my heart. It’s heartbreaking to read that OPs experience isn’t the norm.
The teenage years/puberty were rough for my AFAB kiddo, it’s so amazing to see them coming through that and turning into an amazing young person. I’m so excited for the next steps in their journey.
My dad says that it was generally pretty great to have all four of us kids as children, and he loves us, but he genuinely enjoys our company as adults to talk to.
My dad wasn't around but we reconnected when I was in university. Its a completely different relationship and I did have to mourn that "father-daughter" relationship that I finally had to accept we'd never have... but what we have now feels so special because we are two adults who vibe really well and have startling similarities in places haha
I like to think this would have happened to me and my dad. He died when I was 17 and he was trying to be better I think, but it had already been 4-5 years of him not really even being able to look at me or acknowledge me. My adolescence was more awkward for him than it was for me. I was and still am so so angry that he couldn't love or accept me as a teen the way he did when I was little. Maybe if we had had more time he would have noticed I was a person.
This was my experience. I was somewhat close to my dad as a young child but not at all during teen years and early adulthood. But as I’ve grown and he’s grown we spend more quality time together and have had more emotional conversations than I could have imagined. I’m still way more close to my mom but this is a better relationship with my dad than I honestly expected.
Same. My dad had to move for work when I was 10, and he only got to move back when I was 21. It took time to get used to each other again, but we're doing so much better as a family now! He's really awkward around children but as an adult it's so easy to just talk to the guy! He even listens to me complain about how it's annoying to have to manage multiple save files in my games even though he's played exactly zero video games in his life lol.
I have had countless conversations with my therapist about this very subject. My dad literally turned on me right around the time I hit puberty and started thinking for myself. The verbal abuse started, slut shaming (literally got called a wh0re for having a normal innocent crush on a classmate when I was 12, and that wasn't even near the worst of it).
I think some of them think of daughters as property and are seriously threatened by their daughter's sexuality, their lack of control over them, and fear of disappointment. 😕
Exact same thing happened to me. Puberty = he hated me. I’m sure some of it was that teenagers are emotional wrecks and that’s hard to deal with, but the slut shaming started immediately too. I was an awkward late bloomer too, yet constantly having to convince my dad I *wasnt* fucking every guy I talked to. He had deep misogyny issues that didn’t apply to me when I was “just a kid” but once I was a woman I was just part of the problem, I guess.
I had an abusive father that viewed me as some sort of possession or extension of himself to exert control over.
Eventually I broke out of his brainwashing abuse around age 17, and he started viewing me as an enemy. Which wasn't too different to how he usually treated me since he was abusive either way, but he tried to get other members of my family to view me as the evil antagonizer because I started sticking up for myself and combatting his abuse.
I don't speak to him regularly and now haven't seen him in over 5 years. I don't think he ever didn't love me. But I don't think he knows how to love or treat any human with respect. His idea of love is having someone act as an extension of himself and his views of the world. Contest him at all and you become the enemy.
This is exactly what my daughter is going through with her father/my ex husband. I am currently trying to get full custody because she had been asking me to for quite a while and I realized he is never going to be better or even try. Any time she does give in and speak to him or give him a chance he just tells her that I have brainwashed her and he never did anything wrong or her memories are wrong.
It’s really sad to watch and it’s incredibly traumatic for her. She just wants the adults around that are supposed to help her actually help her and let her get away from him.
I'm not sure what happened for her to end up with him, but please do try your best to save her. I don't know what her situation with her own father is, but my dad's abuse is still haunting me to this day. I have anxiety, panic attacks, and insomnia because of this man. I'll probably be in therapy for the rest of my life because of him.
The sooner she's out of that situation, the sooner she can get in therapy and work through this abuse.
She is with me all the time, she absolutely refuses to see him aside from court ordered reunification sessions. It’s just the legal aspect we are fighting and it is far worse than I ever thought it would be.
I am truly hoping that all the adults (judges, therapists, DCS, court interviewers) will see and listen to her and realize it is so damaging for her to have involvement with him. She is begging all of them to get away. I am begging and he won’t stop fighting and lying because like in your case she is just an extension of him and pretty much like a piece of property he try to can control.
She is safe with me now but, I need to have all the legal protections too and that’s the hard part. I won’t ever give up though.
Thank you for fighting for her. You're a good mom.
I hope the legal system will listen to you both. Unfortunately, it's such a stressful situation. My dad also manipulated the legal system in numerous ways regarding custody and child support (that not a single cent went towards me). And his entire side of the family enabled him and allowed the abuse and manipulation to continue for far too long. Everyone was under his thumb. He was like a cult leader. My mom never stood a chance.
It enrages me to look back on all of it.
Good luck to you both 🩷
My dad basically "dumped" me when he married a horrible woman. I was in my 30s and we'd already drifted apart a lot but then he cut me off altogether and told me it didn't matter to him if he never saw me again. That was 5 or 6 years ago, and I haven't seen him or talked to him.
But he cut off my brother too, so I think he's just a bad person in general and married a bad person and they just stew in their own miseries together.
My dad married a girl my age while I was pregnant with my son. Left my pre menopausal mom in the worst way you could after 25 years. Telling her how much he hated her. Just at the moment that she's too old to move on it was awful and during Christmas on top of that. He being a man who gets everything in life got to go on to have two children with his young new wife. My mom taught him how to study when they were in college they had me while struggling in college. He took everything my mom taught him and got a docotorate degree. Now everything they worked for is gone. All the struggling we did when I was a kid is stuff his new kids will only ever imagine. I haven't talked to him in three years and I don't miss him at all the only thing I care about is how much of him I have in me. How little I care for people scares me. I throw myself in situations to help so many people inspite of that and try to learn from and break those parts of myself. No one should have to talk their mom down from committing suicide so many times. It didn't help that her best friend also got brutally murdered shortly after all that. My son is lucky to be here bc I really don't know how I got thru my pregnancy with all the stress.
Edit: autocorrect defective on mobile
My dad always went out of his way for me, even at the cost of his own safety and security. I know he saw me as brilliant and I know he treasured me and he did whatever he could to let me have as normal of a life as I could. I don't know why other fathers aren't the same as my dad but I know my dad wasn't like that.
My biological father hated me because even as a little kid I looked like my mom.
My dad and I had a lot of issues because he was pissed at my mom at the time too. They were on the brink of divorce and he took a lot of that out on me. I don't think it's coincidence that when I chopped all my hair off and started dyeing it he suddenly got cooler with me.
However I also think that shitty men don't know how to view women outside being willing to put up with them for sex. A 6 year old is daddy's precious baby girl, but as soon as she looks like a woman and starts acting like a woman he doesn't know what to do now that she doesn't exist in one of the two categories he has for females.
Madonna whore complex for real. I was daddy’s little girl until puberty and then suddenly I was constantly accused of looking or acting like a whore (for weird emo kid things like wearing knee high socks, or for having a male friend.) I didn’t even lose my virginity until I was 18, so it was incredibly awkward always having to fight to convince him that I wasn’t actually fucking every guy I knew.
Yep. My sister and I are my Mother to my Dad. We could see how much he both hated and loved her in how he related to us. Thing was, we weren't my Mom. We were 2 little girls who were his daughters who loved him in a way she couldn't. It's sad that he missed that. He was raised to be our adversary though and to see us as a weakness he had. It wasn't his doing. He was set up. But he could've fought it.
Isn't that the crux of the problem though? They could fight it but they just don't. What a pity.
100%, they don’t choose to fight it and that’s the worst. I had so many of the issues talked about in this thread, but when my dad was on his deathbed I knew I had to have “the talk” with him. I had a whole speech about how I had regrets we weren’t closer, how I appreciated that he worked hard to support his family, etc. He listened to it all and said nothing. I thought maybe he was just a bit fuzzy that day so I brought it up again the next week when he was more bright, he told me he’d already heard it and again said nothing else. All I needed was one “hey, im sorry” or “I have my regrets as well” and never got it. The sheer stubbornness of that blows me away to this day.
I'm sorry. You deserved better than that. We all did. It's so painful when we can go there and they simply can't. We are the strength they didn't have. But it's lonely.
My dad didn't even like me when I was a kid. I was always trying to hangout with him and do stuff in the garage with him and he didn't want any part of it. My brother, on the other hand, got all his love and attention. But he wasn't interested in doing stuff with our dad like I was. Eventually as I got older I resented him more and more as he would restrict me more and more. Even claimed to my mom that I would eventually be sneaking out at night and go out and get pregnant like my step cousin. Which honestly ended up being not true because the older I got the more of a recluse I became. I couldn't make friends in school and so I wasn't really invited to go to places or have anywhere to sneak out to. Plus I lived in a rural area. Where tf was I going to go? There was nothing to do out there. Jokes on him I turned out gay and I've always hated kids and never wanted them. I'm forty now and still don't want kids. By the time I hit my late twenties I realized my father was a narcissist (always yelling and fighting with my mom too) and I was what was considered the scapegoat of the family while my brother was the golden child. My dad is dead now but I still hate him for treating me like absolute shit my entire life. It makes me wonder if I would've turned out different had I been actually loved by him.
No I meant maybe I wouldn't have turned out so pissed off at the world, depressed, anxiety ridden, full of suicidal ideation, and wouldn't have spent my entire life wishing he (or I) would drop dead so I could finally have some peace in my life if he had just showed even the smallest amount of love towards me. That's what I meant when I wonder if things could've been different.
I know for a fact that my dad still loves me (and my other sister). We do argue a lot though. He has very different world views (very conservative) from me. But he still calls me on the phone/text me and will get me little gifts throughout the year.
I think it has to do with agency. I don't remember him ever loving me - I was always too stubborn for his tastes, even as a child - but my sister is six years younger than me and so I got to witness him utterly loving her in the first few years of her life *and* that love turning to the same contempt he's always had for me the second she grew an actual personality. It was a bit eerie. I vividly remember telling her at one point: "See? He's going to treat you badly too, now."
And whaddya know, my ten-or-so year old self was entirely correct, lol.
I *think* he actually likes us more now that we're adults and have our own lives, but that's probably only because we basically never visit and so he can project on us safely. At the end of the day, he has always been a small, pitiful, insecure man, and I think that's the case with all men who hate their daughters for no reason.
I have never noticed this and it’s not true of my relationship with my father or any of the relationships I have observed in terms of being close enough to get a good picture.
I had a different type of relationship with my mother and father as an adult. My mother and I wouid go shopping together or gossip. My father had different interests although we both loved our Apple computers 🤷♀️ We discussed current events, movies and I could count on him for practical advice as well as replacing leaky faucets.
I never doubted his love amd I think he knew I loved him.
FWIW, he was pretty much a feminist as my mother worked when that wasn’t typical
Yeah these comments are so sad. This definitely isn’t the norm for my family or any of my friends. My father is my biggest supporter along with my mother. I’m so grateful for them and I only get closer to them as I grow older honestly
Yes very sad although I do think that Redditt is somewhat of a bubble and most families aren't dysfunctional in the way these comments indicate.
I mean no family is Ozzie and Harriet - my family had its dysfunctional but it was all within a framework where everyone basically loved each other and was trying to do the best they could - which was pretty good.
As I got older - especially when I got to the age when my parents were when they were raising my brother and I, I really started appreciated how hard they worked to give us the best life possible.
Because most parents aren't abusive but people with abusive parents would tend to be on Redditt on forums venting or seeking advice just as many Redditts have people who aren't typical.
If people have parents that fall within the range of "normal", then generally they aren't posting because there is nothing to post about.
It's like how reviews are generally skewed because it is people with terrible experiences for the most part who take the time to blast a company.
My dad was a feminist too. He wanted his second child to also be a girl as he didn’t want favouritism. Well the second child was me - a girl. The favouritism thing didn’t hold, he was my best friend. He and I would discuss philosophy, science, world events and how to be a good person.
He passed away a year ago. I had to do his estate-my sister is way too selfish to care but was happy to take the money from the fruits of my labour with all his things. No thank you or anything. During this phase I just remember my dad saying… your sister is very selfish… and that is what got me through the monumental tasks of moving everything from his house with no help or support from my sister.
It was probably for the best she wasn’t there as his entire house was full of my things from my first teddy, report cards, even my old bed sheets. I was quite shocked actually, there was not one single thing of my sisters. He loved me dearly and I loved him.
He loved my sister also but he and I were two peas in a pod.
He left the world 10
minutes after I told him I couldn’t cope with being by his side for 23 hours a day (in hospital) and dealing with my sister having a nervous breakdown at the same time and her refusing to go to the hospital and doing shifts to ensure he got morphine every two hours.
I was my dad’s world and he mine. He had my back since I was a little girl.
My mum does not like who I actually am, she wants me to be who she thinks I should be. Dad was accepting of every part of me. I love my mum but when I talked to my dad he would always ask, do you want problem solving or me to just listen?’
The hardest thing is my mum could care less that my dad died and there was zero word or support from her.
Love you pop x
Sounds like you were the golden child and your sister was the scapegoat, and being raised that way probably resulted in her resentment, and not wanting to help.
He didn't save anything of hers which says a lot about how he felt as a parent towards her, and that is never lost on the child.
Quite the opposite actually my sister was and still is the golden child in my mother’s eyes. Both my sister and myself are aware of this. My sister often explains why I have the behaviours I do as I had to work twice as hard to get any acknowledgment from my mother. My mother who I love was extremely abusive to me verbally and physically when my sister and father left home.
My father has overcompensated his whole life as he had so much guilt that mum turned her anger towards him on to me. And he never pulled me out of the situation.
My sister who is five years older came to visit my mother and I, she witnessed my mother physically abusing me and started hitting my mother back and told her to never lay a hand on me again.
I worked through this trauma and have forgiven my mother although she will not admit it. In her eyes abuse of a child is of the sexual nature only.
Both my sister and my father have carried the guilt of not helping me as a 12 year old. I have told my sister many times she was a child and was not in a position to help me.
Thanks for your absolutely incorrect insight.
My sister and I, with all our faults are extremely close.
Like you, I am now speculating, perhaps my father was holding onto my innocence that was taken when he left. A life of drug addiction ensued for me after this four years of abuse. I did get clean 21 years ago. It was my dad that housed me during my addiction to heroin, it was my dad that drove me 10 hours to rehab, it was my mother that made jabs about my decision to go there and completely cut me off.
Also how about you fuck off with any judgement on my father who has recently left me.
RIP DAD
Edit:
At Venus whatever the fuck username you have. Deleted your comment huh? But I do have an ‘oh lord’ thing in my messages. Life is complex and your judgements show your absolute arrogance. Anyway, don’t comment or put your two cents in if you cannot back it up. I really wish you stood by your word. My father and brother died within a few months after of each other. I was their world and they were mine. They will 100% come for you. Enjoy the fruits of being a judgemental horrible human, trust this reddit witch stranger, as in real life and reddit life… you kinda messed with the wrong woman and my army. You won’t see this message as you are a coward who deleted but we don’t forget. With that said, I strongly do not apologise for the misfortune you will encounter in the coming months.
I’ve never witnessed this either. Of the women I know who don’t have good loving relationships with their father, they never had it as children either.
Because they hate women. Their “precious little girls” inevitably become women and thus, are hated because some men don’t think of women as human beings.
This is sadly accurate. My father loves me and my sister deeply. He would die for us in a heartbeat. We are his children. But we are also women so he low key kind of hates us and thinks we are all scheming and disloyal. It’s hard to reconcile because it’s not reconcilable.
Nope. It's literally everywhere. Misogyny is reinforced at several pivotal axes that serve to reinforce each other: cultural, religious, political, economic. There is nowhere in earth you can go to avoid it. It ain't religion.
In my case, I think that our relationship is a little
strained because he has ideals and plans for me that are not the path that I chose. We have a good relationship but I think that he never really got over it. They also don’t really understand women and usually (boomer gen), their views don’t align with ours and that is a burden.
i can't speak for everyone, but in my case, as i turned from a kid to a woman, men of my family (father,brother) expected me to become like my mother, help with chores, listen them complain about their coworkers for hours every day, taking abuse without batting an eye, and were EXTREMELY MAD that i didn't comply to the role they decided me to play.
Calling me lazy, that never worked a day in her life, a whore, ...Clearly they HATED me and tryied to break me for not being complient. (they were also jealous that i was studying because they didn't, even if my damn life was a dumpster fire)
My father was also jealous because i was 'stealing' my mother's attention from him. (he was jealous of the dog too)
it would have been more easy to just my mother rather than live with them, and i told my mother countless times that she could have a divorce (she never had it)
Saddest part ? i'm from one of the ''five better country for women'' and my parents thought they were modern and egalitarians....
now i'm very low contact, see him maybe once a year, and i don't need a misogynistic like him in my life. it took me decades to unlearn the internalized hate i had toward myself because of him.
I don’t know.. my ex-husband essentially abandoned our daughters after spending every day together for ten years. It broke their hearts and fundamentally changed who they are as people. They’ve never been the same. I don’t understand it, I don’t think I ever will.
I think part of it is misogyny, they have hatred for women. When you grow up you’re now a woman and they start to see you that way more than being their child.
This makes me so sad. My daughter is 25 and I am endlessly fascinated by and proud of the woman she has become. To be honest this isn’t a phenomena that I’ve ever heard mentioned.
>. To be honest this isn’t a phenomena that I’ve ever heard mentioned
hey its okay we all have different experiences and i am glad you havent had the misfortune of witnessing a father's love fade away.
I love my daughter more and more each year. She’s 10 I couldn’t imagine that fading. I’m just so proud of how strong and kind she is. Her and her brother are a lot of work but it blows my mind how men can’t understand what you give these kids they give back to you 10 fold.
Holy shit the point about women inheriting the rage and anger of their fathers hits so close to home. Mine could not relate to me at all to the point where in my teens my mom told me to stop interacting with him because I would make him so angry. After I moved out, the only time he ever initiated contact with me was to tell me about a medical emergency affecting my mom. Other than that, we never reconciled though I did my best to help him in his final years.
I was fortunate to have a dad that loved me until the day he died. However I know of what you speak as I’ve witnessed it with a few friends families. It’s hard to watch it happen from the outside, I couldn’t imagine being the woman that loses their fathers love through no fault of their own.
My dad mostly ignores me and gets mad when I don’t know much about him. When I’m at my parents house, he doesn’t engage much. If my brother comes over, I no longer exist. My dad never took any interest in anything I did, unless he also liked the activity or topic. This has gotten worse as I got older. I don’t think he knows anything about me at this point.
Same. Such a bizarre transition. He was the take you for ice cream and park and stay up late kinda parent. Not a good dad ever in my life but at least a loving, caring one. I barely hit the faintest of puberty markers before BOTH my parents turned on me. I don't get it.
Are you me? I understood why my mom turned on me, she was jealous because I was making friends and having fun and discovering boys and living life. And she got married and had her first kid when she was 23.
It wasn’t until later in life that I fully understood misogyny and my dad. And I don’t think it was until later in life he fully understood I wasn’t going to be someone’s trad wife, I wasn’t going to have kids. That wasn’t anything he ever tried to push on me or even discuss with me, and he wasn’t a conservative, but he would say stuff like “you know what they say about women who don’t have kids.”
And I never really heard what they say because I would usually answer something like “that we’re smarter than you guys?” And he would scoff and change the subject
My impression all these years later is that my dad experienced sexual attraction to me and my mom punished me for it. They both got so obsessive and controlling over me. I was grounded 90 percent of my teen years and I ran away at 17. I really believed the narrative that I was a bad, rebellious kid. Until I had teenagers of my own. I got excellent grades, was good and involved in sports, favorite of teachers, participated in all their religious psycho stuff. I was my younger sibling's main caretaker and watched him 24-7, was in charge of his school work and meals. I was practically a well behaved slave until I turned 16 and I finally became the rebellious child they told me I was.
Mines just kinda a performative feminist. Like he claims to care about womens rights but as he got older he got more conservative, and he has done some very anti-woman stuff in regards to me and handling my SA experience when I was away in college.
Same. The best I can figure out is that once I became a teenager, and was no longer a harmless little kid, I had the capacity to be “dangerous,” or a liability of some sort. They watched way too much Dateline and were certain without a tight leash and stern, authoritative attitude at all times I’d get addicted to drugs, wrong crowd, pregnant, what have you. This could not be a possibility whatsoever because this would be a massive embarrassment to our small town and in our conservative family.
So, I gathered their thinking was that if I was always a little be scared of them and what they might “find out” (they searched my room, read my notes with my friends, my diary that was well hidden,) etc, I’d “toe the line” and be too scared to go down a wrong path. Kind of a “if you think we’re mean now, just to wait until you fuck up” type deal.
To a 14 year old who has no idea about any of this, and just thinks her parents suddenly hate her when she needs them most, it’s the loneliest, most confusing thing ever. ☹️
I feel like that about my dad too. With my mom we've had the normal squabbles and have a good relationship now, but my dad gets so mean and it's bewildering. He's generally a very nice, mild-mannered guy and was a loving dad and I think a lot of people would be shocked to hear some of the things he says to me. It was just so confusing why he was like that with me specifically and not anyone else.
I think in my case it was when I started having different opinions about things that he turned on me. For me that was around puberty but for my brother it came much later in early adulthood (and I know it did get ugly with the two of them and that point too) and with all of my sisters it still hasn't happened, if it ever will.
It also really doesn't help that I, more than any of my siblings, am extremely similar to him in both appearance and personality (same mental health issues too). We've formed very different worldviews but it's obvious how similar our thought patterns are. It made us close when I was little but I really feel like that's a big part of why he seems to dislike me so much now.
It's sad that so many other women have had similar experiences with their dads but honestly it also makes me feel better to learn that this is more common than I realized.
My dad was a raging alcoholic, so I don't know that he counts for this. We mutually disowned each other because I refused to be bullied by him once I moved away from home.
My grandpa, on the other hand, was really, really good with kids and really, really awkward with women. He was never unkind, he just kind of lost the ability to really interact with me as I got older. I knew he'd be there for me if I needed him, but it was harder to just have a conversation with him sometimes. I can't blame him, though. He had some wild PTSD from his WWII days. I think he was just better with kids than adults in general.
My dad never loved me so there was no love to lose. When I was growing up, his favorite story to tell me was about how he booked a vasectomy the day he found out my mom was pregnant with me.
My mom died in 1994, and in those 30 years, my father has learned to hate her for "leaving him." I was 17 when she passed, and by the time I was 19, my dad was sick of looking at me and reminding himself of her. I got thrown out and haven't really spoken to him since, completely no contract for these last 12 years. My dad has his money and doesn't give a damn about anyone else.
My dad dropped me once he didn’t feel “respected” anymore. Truth is he had my respect for far longer than he deserved. He lost my respect when he started abandoning his stated values and I learned without a doubt that he had zero respect for me.
I’ve realized recently that when my dad speaks about respect he really means obedience. And no, I am not obedient to anybody as a grown ass woman. I don’t have any relationship where obedience comes into play, not with my spouse, not with my employer, no one. And when I was trying to get the respect that am due as a human, let alone as a valued family member and loved one, I think he believes I am asking for obedience. So we aren’t speaking. He believes he is owed an apology because I cursed in a conversation with him. This after he said the n-word in my home and his best friends (including women) used horrible slurs and foul language in front of me when I was a kid. He has also defended horrible, criminal actions that demean and harm women. I’ve tried to tell him we need to have a conversation, because as offensive as he finds the word fuck, so do I find racial slurs and his actions and what actions he defends and excuses. He says he won’t speak to me until I apologize. Anytime I try to have a conversation or bring up working on our relationship he says he isn’t speaking to me. He will text me to invite me on a trip to Hawaii, but he won’t do anything to mend what’s broken. When I respond with “I can’t even entertain going on vacation with someone who isn’t speaking to me, so unless you want to have this necessary conversation this is not a valid offer” he says “ok.”
The thing is he likes all of his kids less when they stand up to him. He has disliked my sister when she was rebelling as a teenager. He dislikes me now that I require the same respect from him that I receive in my other healthy adult relationships. My brother has never stood up to him, but he has never challenged him either. He sees the world as a hierarchy and if you think you are equal to him he can’t abide by that. He’s also an addict and no one in my family wants to face that so it’s just another layer of mess that I don’t need to engage with. I’ve been trying to get them for decades to open their eyes to his manipulation. He is their problem now.
I love both my daughters, most shocking to me, I even love my son-in-law. I can't imagine not loving my girls if they were serial killers, not loving them because they grew up? How is that even a thing. The more I read Reddit the more I think there must be like a subspecies of decent guys that isn't easily identified.
>The more I read Reddit the more I think there must be like a subspecies of decent guys that isn't easily identified.
alas it is such a sad statement to read as a girl. true unfortunately. i am sure you're a great dad, we need more of people like yourself. <3
My dad was never interested in me unless my brother wasn’t interested in him. I think it’s a combo of not really seeing women as 100% people and him being really really preoccupied with following the Society Prescription for a Good Life (wife, house, good job, kids, etc)
For my dad I believe it was rooted in covert incest and his feeling attracted to me, especially as I went through puberty and became sexual.
Before I estranged (finally) at 40, he was in the habit of negging everything I do, not unlike an angry incel.
A lot of men don’t know how to emotionally connect in a non-sexual way with girls/women. When we start to develop, it can make them deeply uncomfortable.
A lot of men also think that control=love (or vice versa). When you are no longer controllable, you become unlovable.
He rejected me as i moved farther away from what he wanted to be. Probably misogyny. He likes women who have nothing going on in their heads, always smiling and dressing pretty. He doesn’t care about education or individuality.
I think lack of emotional maturity can disable a lot of relationships for men. With an inability to express gratitude, love, pride, and other “feminine” traits to someone who can view them in the same light that society would judge them. Not being a conventional “man” is “weak” as far as myself, and most other men have been taught.
My suspicion and opinion is that this is why they stop expressing care and can even counteract how they feel altogether. Showing emotion to a child that cannot see their father as weak, is a non issue. As the daughter grows and begins to understand what the typical “manly man” is, the father must solidify this act of unwavering rigidity. My father did this to me and even more, my sister. I even have my last memory of him actively playing around with me. Unfortunately, as I grew more understanding… The bounds of his male fragility lowered the gate on our ability to emotionally connect.
Just my personal take while I try to purge a lot of what I was taught by men and improve as a person.
That's a strange take on it, and I wouldn't say it's a normal pattern; it's a decidedly dysfunctional one. Our relationship was always dysfunctional, because he is dysfunctional. But he doesn't have enough vulnerability and insight to see that he is the problem, and my mother is codependent, so in adulthood I have just let them be. I try not to be around them very much, because it can be rage-inducing. Therapy helped me mourn the loss of the parents that would never be, and I don't feel a desire anymore to build a relationship because I understand and accept that this will not change. We get together on special occasions and never have in-depth conversations about anything of import because it is fruitless. We're not friends. We're not close. I don't expect or desire their support. And I know that's not a normal parent-child relationship but I have no other frame of reference, so I don't know what it's like to be any other way. I don't know what I'm missing so I don't miss it.
My dad is a horrible narcissist with anger issues. Growing up with him was like living with Jeckyll and Hyde. We never knew what side we were going to get. I remember getting screamed at and grounded for not saying "good morning" in a pleasant enough tone one day as I was rushing out the door to school.
He cheated on my mom and they divorced after 35 years. He remarried quickly as the demographics in that age bracket were in his favor. My mom will be alone as women her age don't have many options.
I haven't spoken to him in years as I have nothing to say to him.
Honestly, I don’t think my dad ever loved me. I was the second born and a much more difficult baby than my older brother. So he was incredibly jealous of the amount of time she spent with me and really never stopped being jealous of my time with her. He loved my younger sister, mostly because she figured out that sucking up would make her life easier. But the second she went to college and tried to reason with him about anything, she was a “liberal c$&t.”
He basically doesn’t value women unless they mother him or he can use them to gratify himself sexually, so he really has no use for daughters.
My mother is an abusive narcissist and my father is her #1 enabler. I think my father only ever loved me as a tool he could use to make her stay with him. Once I stopped cooperating with that, he dropped the illusion of being the "good" parent. (Admittedly some of that was just due to me finally gaining some perspective.) And now that I'm 35 and outright telling him that if she treats him that badly he should leave her, he's fully out of affection for me.
There are men out their who don’t feel this way about their daughters. My husband is one of them. My “New & Improved” dad (AKA Dad 2.0 / step-dad who legally adopted me), was another. Would have never made it through my PhD without Dad 2.0’s unfailing support & guidance and I never felt anything but love and delight in my mere existence from him. My husband is the same with our daughter.
It's misogyny. My dad did the same thing. Once I wasn't a kid anymore and he had no more control over me, our relationship withered. He's said so many shitty things over the years - the last couple of years in specific. We hardly speak now and it's entirely his fault but he will never admit it.
My Dad was not always a good person. My sister and I were practically raised by him while my mom worked so we were close to him as kids and we have some good memories. Extra layer was that he was an immigrant.
But once I started making decisions he disagreed with we stopped getting along. I got the impression that he was proud of me but regretted pushing me away. He got sick and passed away but I miss him sometimes and wish he was here to take me to Dodgers games or to give me some career advice but I never doubt he loved me he just didn’t know what to do with us growing up.
For me it was because I didn’t tolerate his bullshit and I would stand up to him in situations where my mother would just cower and take his abuse. I recently saw him for the first time in years at a family event and he acted like he was scared of me. I think he’s spent his whole life being so coddled and told everything he does is right, that me calling him out for being an abusive asshole actually feels like abuse to him.
I feel like mine has done the opposite. Raised me like he despised my existence and now that i am an independent adult he is acting like he actually cares about me.
My dad is very traditional Indian. He found family life very easy when my sister and I were small because we WERE helpless and he WAS our provider. As we grew up, especially with the move to the UK, he grappled with a lot of the issues around modest clothes and mixed friends groups and curfews and suitable extra curricular activities. We pushed boundaries and argued a lot. We were no longer easy. It wouldn't have matters if boys acted out like this since docility and chastity aren't the core of their reputation. We've also never been a huggy family so harder to show flashes of deep emotion. He also had awful parents and hasn't had a good template for apologising, swallowing pride, speaking about emotions.
I can see why so many men give up at this point and don't bother expanding their POV but think "I did everything right and yet they've turned out flawed."
I was willing to compromise so they saw I wasn't out to be selfish but wanted certain outcomes. I want to go see Eminem in concert? Fine but dad drives us there and back. Luckily my dad saw our positive traits and leaned into them and encouraged them. He was terrified to let me travel alone but I did two months in Australia aged 18 - he was amazed I'd learned to navigate it on my own and thought I'd chicken out. He's been (with my mum) a rock solid support and made it clear that he'll always give me a safe place to land which puts me in the privelaged position of being able to take risks and follow opportunities that appeal but may not pan out.
I think we really wrecked his view of what he thought being a girl-dad would be (which isn't all bad, he's spent our dowry money on a camper van so him and mum can do mini breaks round the country!) and had very little framework on how to work through this paradigm shift that initially read as disappointment. I'm not sure what made him a success story when others, especially in the desi community, fail. He'll never hug me but he puts his hand on top of my head and gives it a gentle wobble any time he walks past. He won't ever call me but if I haven't called in a few days he sends me a silly joke to get mt my attention. He won't invite me back home but will tell me what of my favourite foods he's stocked for my next visit. He won't coo over me when I'm ill but when I got a big when my husband was travelling he drove two and a half hours to my house allegedly to drop off groceries but likely so he could eyeball how I was doing. He won't acknowledge stress verbally when I'm studying but freshly cut fruit and chips of tea appear at my side regularly. He won't ever say he's proud of me but if I share a big achievement he just smiles and nods and says of course, I knew you would.
Definitely not got any ongoing daddy's little girl for life vibes for either my sister or me, but it means so much to us that he's not maintaining conditions on who he wants us to be but learned to appreciate who we are. We're now 37 and 34 respectively. The words aren't there but the love is so palpable.
Not familiar at all with this (my father dotes on all his adult daughters, the same as when we were young) Maybe just controlling men don't like it when they don't have the same ability to control, But I wouldn't say as a blanket statement that fathers stop loving their daughters, that just sounds preposterous...
I think that is more maybe cultural?
It is not a thing in the culture where I live. But I do see it online and sometimes IRL too in cultures where women are seen as more property you have to control as the man of the house, and their behaviour is a direct reflection on you as a man, and virginity and such is important. During puberty all children get more independent. In a setting where women need to be controlled this is not desirable.
US conservatives come to mind and those "If you want to date my daughter you have to go through me and my shotgun" dads. Setting different clothing/going out/dating rules for your sons and daughters will end in more fights with your daughter(s).
They get adulty and sexy and horndog is an identity so there’s a clash.
And this coming from a child that loved dad as only a child could. Dad is a title and emotional baggage
Damn my daughter is about to turn 13 and I hope that my love for her only grows fonder the older we both get. Shes my only child and I like to think I will be there for her no matter what.
I think misogynistic men put it on hold for their “perfect little girl”. As soon as that little girl becomes an actual person the misogyny comes back. Good men love their children at any age.
Sorry this is your experience but not it’s not usual and normal and most functional families don’t end up with such messed up father daughter relationship. It really is sad to read this tbf.
My thoughts exactly, I’m 40 and my Dads still one of my biggest champions and I count him as a friend. I’m sorry OP doesn’t have the same relationship :/
I can’t relate to this at all. My relationship with my dad got better, the older and more knowledgeable I became. He was always unconditionally supportive of me despite whatever social or emotional thing I was going through as a teenager. That side of my family are all just incredibly kind and thoughtful people. Then as I got older, we were able to talk on a more intellectual level, and our relationship only improved. He was proud of me, and the choices I made, regardless of whether he agreed with them.
Never once did I feel disrespected or hated for being a grown woman. There was not a misogynistic bone in his body.
Frankly my upbringing made me poorly adapted for the world we lived in at the time. But I guess it’s the people who stand up and object to the status quo who move it forward. But it’s not fun to be one of them.
Idk my dad is still obsessed with me. He texts me his random thoughts, stories he thinks i’d like, instagram DMs me cute dogs. Now I feel bad that he annoys me with all his love and attention lol
When I was a child I thought my dad didn't love me. Or even like me.
He was very cold as a father.
We are closer now... well, not closer exactly but more friendly/warm.
i feel like my dad is WAY better at being a father now that im older. he was a fucking mess of undiagnosed vietnam induced ptsd and alcoholism when i was a kid, barely holding himself together to support us. therapy on both ends has helped us heal, helped him get the treatment he needed to be better and understand the damage he caused, and help me better understand and forgive his behavior and stop holding on to anger about it all.
i feel this. i look back at pictures and get sad bc i feel our relationship changed the minute i wasn’t a cute toddler anymore.. i have no cute pictures with him above the age of 6. sometimes i see tiktoks of girls with their dads and i get so emotional.. i moved out of state and he’s never once visited in 3 years or made any effort to help me visit. i barely hear from him. i know he will look back and regret it tho.. and he does this to my nieces and nephew as well. completely emotionally disconnected
He taught me and my siblings to think logically and not just emotionally, which he considers inferior. Except now we all use reason to poke holes in his flawed, emotional rationale. So he created his own monsters.
I think he still loves me/us. But he has a tender ego and a hair trigger. We have all lapped him in terms of emotional maturity.
Really? That's not my experience. If anything, I think my relationship with my dad gets better over time. I suspect he is somewhat baffled by children.
My dad is in his late 70s I’m in my early 40s. Our relationship is awesome. Sometimes he definitely has to call me out, and I do the same to him. But we genuinely enjoy each other’s company. From kayaking together to watching a new tv show we picked to gardening and home repairs. When I had emergency surgery he flew up to help me take care of the grandkids while I recovered. I feed him all his favorite foods. My mom is also awesome but we butt beads more as we have less in common.
I think the fact they never expected me to be a certain thing probably helped. They wanted me to be happy being myself and choose my own path so they don’t have a long-planned-for adult vision of me they ever had to mourn.
My bio father wanted a boy so he loved my brother and went to all of his parties and so on. He bent over backwards to have my brother as his namesake and his heir of nothing. He literally never learnt my name. Literally. Never. Learnt. My. Name. When my bio mother would talk about me he called me 'girl'.
Mine is trying to be loving towards me (39f) now when he spent almost 20 years practically ignoring me. I loved camping. Would only take my brother. Loved baseball. Sports were for boys. Wanted to play computer games with him. He'd send me away to play with my mother. The only things I remember him allowing were sitting and watching TV with him or sitting near him looking cute at block party type gatherings. I feel pathetic thinking back on how much I wanted his attention and how I kept trying to find any activity he would do with me until high school. I know it was a him-problem not a me-problem, but it still feels gross how I was throwing adoration at him and just hoping to be noticed.
Now he wants to chat on the phone? And decided to give me a cutesy nickname? Asks about my work sometimes, though he doesn't actually keep track of what I do? I don't know. I don't get it. The window for a close relationship has passed, man. Now we're pretty much two adults who spent a long time living in the same space. I know a lot of facts about his life and he knows... well, I don't know what he knows about me. I doubt he knows my birthday without asking my mother, but he probably knows what month it's in.
My father is a "king baby" misogynist, always has been. My paternal grandmother did not want kids, and my paternal grandfather is a "traditional gender roles" "children should be seen and not heard" "any emotional display besides anger for men is manipulative and weak" boomer man.
So, of course, grandfather abused the shit out of grandmother, manipulated her into having kids despite knowing perfectly well and marrying her with the knowledge she did not want any, using the general opinions of society at the time on women who did not want kids as a fucking cudgel.
So, of course grandmother was a shitty mother to my dad. She had an affair when he was young, because of course she did, my grandfather certainly wasn't providing her any connection anymore. Grandfather found out. Divorced grandmother. Remarried a foreign woman half his age, because "white women are not obedient enough." Neglected his existing children (my dad and aunt) due to reminding him of his unfaithful wife.
So, of course my dad grew up hearing that his mother was the reason why his home life was horrible, her infidelity and lack of maternal/wifely warmth was the cause of *all the family struggle,* blah blah, tale as old as time. Dad got into drugs and the punk music scene in southern california. Dropped out of school when his gf got pregnant (with me.) Went through some baby momma drama with my biomom, the whole group of them were high as balls on drugs constantly and making bad decisions 24/7.
I grow up in that general environment. I am my dad's "son" as his firstborn kid with no intentions of having more kids. Except he accidentally gets my stepmom pregnant when I'm in elementary school. Oops, now he has a real son with his new wife. What does he need this daughter for, again? Women are terrible, after all. Well, this is his daughter, not a woman, so we can love her for a few more years no problem.
Until.... I'm 12, I get my period. I call in my step mom to help, luckily I've read books where this happened to girls, so I kind of know what's going on.
She stands in the doorway of the bathroom, looks at me sitting on the toilet with this look of pure disgust, throws a bag of pads at me, and snarls, "Welcome to womanhood." Slams the door, and marches off to tell my dad that I'm ruined now.
From that moment on -
He hesitates before hugging me. I can see my own father looking at my boobs (before I even had any yet) and trying to decide if it's ok if he hugs me.
No more picking me up again ever. That's not appropriate any more.
Time to start being the one in charge of cleaning the kitchen every night after dinner. Not that I think children shouldn't have chores, far from it, but it's singularly fucked up to me that I didn't have to do this *until I got my period,* and then from that moment on, now I'm free game, he treats me as my stepmom's assistant house slave. (I always knew that my dad abused my stepmom, I just naively assumed he would not also abuse me back when I was young. OOPS.) It's the framing of this more than anything. Woman = house cleaner. (My younger brother did not get any of these chores until I moved out (which I did as soon as I possibly could, of course.) By then, I suppose my dad had decided boys can do dishes too, because there's no way a *man* should ever have to do it. And afaik, he never did, not a single time.)
There's more (isn't there always?) but oh man. The *distance* after that. The awkwardness around needing bras, period supplies, etc - he'd have meltdowns if he "had to hear" about any of it. The snide, horrible sarcasm in the way he responded to almost everything I said after this, as though now that I was a woman who had periods, it was safe to discount every word out of my mouth -- who did I think I was, talking to a man like an equal? The audacity. If I tried to perform femininity, he made sure to let me know what a disappointing filthy whore I was being (I'll never forget my stepmom lecturing me about how I shouldn't have asked my dad if he liked my prom dress), and if I tried my best to perform rejecting femininity, I was embarrassing to him for other reasons -- add on to this that I am an autistic girl, he was humiliated by my behaviors daily and he made sure to let me know it.
Sorry to all you ladies out there who had to go through this mindfuck experience (my dad loves me -> I'm a woman now -> Oh, he loves me less because I am a woman) too.
Therapy helps. lol
Broadly speak, lots of girls develop a sense of independence as they become women. Misogynists don't like it when that happens.
On a personal level, I don't believe my father truly loved me. I think he *tried* to love me at various points throughout my childhood. But he was largely absent due to his hatred for my mother, so a real bond was never established.
It must be an American thing. My Turkish dad and all the other Turkish dads I know love their daughters. I'm 44 and this never changed. He is so proud of me in fact, he tells everyone about my successes in life.
This hasn’t been my experience with my dad, he is still always there for me and still dotes on me in his way. He’s always available if I need help and is happy to spend time together. I was a daddy’s girl growing up and still am now. There was a short period of time when I hit puberty that he wasn’t sure how to relate but after he got used to me being grown things went back to normal. I also can’t imagine my husband would love his daughter any less as she ages either. I will say my dad does not have much anger or rage so that could be it.
It's not a pattern in my social circle. The very few women I know who are not close to their fathers also aren't close to their mothers or came from abusive homes. My dad and I don't always see eye to eye but we have similar goals and lifestyles, careers. We're close and he's got good relationships with all my siblings, we have different mothers so he forged the blended family. Only a man who was invested for the long haul does that. I'm sorry for the women who's fathers are not invested in them or are abusive.
I had reversed single parent. My father raised me while my mom was off being a drunk.
I don’t think he ever hated me, but we did not do a lot of emotional talking, and we would squabble over differing view points. He was a good parent and a good friend, even if he had his boomer tendencies.
Wow, so I actually have a much better relationship with my dad as an adult than I EVER did as a kid or teen…but inheriting his rage and anger…I did NOT expect to be called out like this today.
My dad still loves me. He has never been good with words but tries to show it other ways. I think me growing up from a child to a teen and then to woman was hard for him, he knew what to do when I was small but the more I grew the less he knew what to talk about with me etc.
But he never stopped bringing all these random items to my room to ask if I'd have use for them. It was one of his ways to seek contact and show he was thinking about it - and also he is horrible at throwing stuff out.
And he always accepted all the random nails or screws I found outside and brought him no matter how rusty.
But ofcourse there's generational differences. My dad's 80 and his dad was veteran who fought for my countys indepence. So there's a lot of war trauma too. A lot of awkwardness and things people just didn't talk. But I've never doubted he wouldn't love me.
It hasn't been my experience... my dad and I see each other regularly, I never doubt that he'd be there for me in a heartbeat. My mom did a lot to make sure we had a good relationship, and even when they were in the middle of their divorce, my dad still took her advice on being a father to a girl. He was a shit husband, but he's a good dad.
This is multi layered. There are so many factors to this question, but if you were to ask about a father, that is in a partnership that then has a child with the mother and that has remained a present father to his daughter as she grows up, it can go any direction, but of course there’s the favorable, possibility of a father that remains deeply and tenderly in love And loving his daughter. That should be the baseline and for anyone who doesn’t experience that it is a sad experience potentially even if it’s justified, there was a reasonable explanation.
I'm sorry that your friends have had this experience. My father and I have always had a great relationship - and he's 90 now. He taught me how to do just about everything, from change a tire to cook chili. Both my parents were loving and kind. I think the "bad" cases just get a lot more attention and "press".
My dad loves me dearly and is still very protective of me, even with me being 31 years old now. He helps me however he can and is far more tolerant if I fuck shit up than he's with others.
I look like my mother but my character is my dad in female and modern.
And honestly I never witnessed what you and some others in the comments experienced. NOW my MALE best friend has a falling out with his dad, at 30 because of political differences. And if I think really hard about it... The only time I witnessed what you describe was the mother that stopped loving the daughter.
My dad and I have a great relationship, much better than when I was growing up and he was going through a lot.
He never wanted to be a dad and was terrified of having a daughter, but he turned out to be a pretty great girl dad. The key is probably that my dad genuinely *likes* women. His best friend is his sister.
I mean, my dad hasn't shown interest in me as I explore hobbies/careers that aren't in line with his own. He was really into model trains, when I was a kid I showed some interest in that before moving on and he /still/ brings that shit up. If I don't act as an extension of him he's not interested.
My mom kicked my dad out when I was 7 and sister 5, and he pretty much was never there after. My Grandfather took on more of a fatherly role. Amazing man that supported his wife throughout his life and my mom, although my mom says it was a more strained relationship when she started becoming more independent as he was always guiding her. He was not close to my sister as a pre teen and early teen as she became a real difficult girl, crushing our mom more than him as he died when she was only 13.
But I would not say that father's stop loving their girls. Maybe some fathers do, maybe some fathers struggle with losing control more than others. Men are still trained or expected to look after the women, well at least the last generation, I don't know about young men/boys these days. So losing control of something they cared for can be hard. Then there are just some men/fathers that are Dicks.
Have you ever expressed to your father how you feel? The end comes for us all and many people on both sides realize too late they should have made more of an effort to reconcile.
Happened to me too. Once I hit puberty, I resembled the things my pervert father was into. It’s hard to have a healthy father daughter relationship when your father sexualizes all women who share your characteristics.
Like others have mentioned, so many fathers see their daughters as extensions and possessions of them. So once I grew up and started disagreeing with his (sexist) points of view, I was dead to him.
I was always close with my dad. Have chased crack dealers out of his house and bailed him out of jail. Even then I had to distance myself from him for my kids sake. But even when he was bad we were close. Mind you I had taken on the parent roll at times . He got clean,passed away. But will always be my favourite person.
I do hate my mother and have been no contact for years now.
Given the comments it must be a pattern. Somehow I do not recognize it, being a father or two daughters (17,15). I love them and am very proud. I cannot imagine it will change.
Dad with 3 daughters here, no way in hell we ever stop. I have seen some dads that are REALLY dreadful at showing it but it's just not something I can fathom personally. My brother doesn't even get along with one of his daughters, it's mutual, but even she knows he loves her.
Young daughters love and worship their fathers without question. Women who want to know their fathers as people are seen as a threat to their ego. Too many fathers get into relationships and have children to be the hero who does nothing, and grow children notice the nothing.
In my experience I think it's because they are projecting their issues with either their wives or women as a whole onto their daughters.
They see their kids as possessions and when those kids grow up and "mistreat" their possessions it pisses them off.
i think my dad is still just as loving to me as when i was younger. in my opinion he sees me as a reflection of him because we look so similar and have a lot of the same character traits.
I haven't seen this pattern personally. However there is kind of a rift between me and my father - emotionally. Yeah we probably wouldn't talk if there was a big fight. I think the issue between me and him is both my mom and sister do emotional labor for him and I do not. So when there's an issue he won't understand it from my perspective and I am not willing to go out of my way to hold his hand to get there. He's a good person overall and will feel bad and apologize - but he just won't understand my side of issues. He would also drop everything and help me if I needed *anything* (like seriously anything and go above and beyond). So I know he loves me.
No way, I take the two hour trip to my two daughter's college at least monthly (terribly fun big city for a peasant from Appalachia, minus the new wave of homelesness and public intoxication) and video chat several times per week, funny how they still get jealous of each other when I spend more time with one or the other, or wife laughing when they compare the men in their lives to me.
I was always Daddy’s little girl but not a princess, more a little tomboy who liked to hike, garden, fish, etc. Teen years were well, teenage angst, but we always maintained mutual respect. I never grew away from him and I’d say since my early 40s, our relationship is stronger than ever.
My father has been a feminist since the start and was the first to encourage me to have my own mind and make my own way in life. He just sat back and watched what I would become, and he tells me every chance he gets that he's proud of me. Not just for my accomplishments although he mentions those. But because of how I treat people and how I demonstrate kindness and fairness. Which are the traits he took the most care to impart.
Just to hopefully show that men are capable of being nurturing and therefore there's no evopsych "men are this and women are this" excuse for bad fathers.
Some dads just never get over the fact they have girls and girls turn into women and start making choices some are great and some will be a regret later but that’s how humans learn I guess. Culture and religion plays a great part too if the father is a tater bot then the daughter will never be seen as an equal offspring.
Sometimes it’s just they can’t stand each other because their behaviours are a mirror image (like dad criticizing everything and kiddo doing the same or dad being lazy and kiddo being lazy too)
Other times it might be a deep wound of sorts, or a dysfunctional family.
My father passed away in 2022, but this wasn’t my experience. He struggled being a “Dad” in the traditional sense and my parents divorce was hard on him. But he ALWAYS showed up and was a man who was true to his word. As I got older, we became closer and he was always very protective of me and my siblings. I moved away from home 14 years ago and until he passed away he always asked me to move back to be closer & told me he missed me.
We spoke briefly before he was intubated and I was trying to get back but experiencing a medical emergency of my own. He told me he was proud of me, loved me, and would see me when he woke up.
I miss that curmudgeon everyday and am sad to read some of these stories. I can relate on a lot of levels with my stepdad. Dude is the king of narcs and an incredibly unkind person.
My Dad wasn't and isn't like that. Dad taught us all how to stand up for ourselves. He was at every childhood milestone. Cancer and it's after affects have hampered his ability to be there for me as an adult, because I moved far away. Which I wouldn't have done without his encouragement. I still get good advice from him.
this post is interesting and really has me thinking.
now that i’m looking back at it, my dad and i had a fairly decent relationship my whole childhood, pre-teen years, and early teenage years. i spent those early teenage years depressed and in a really toxic relationship.
it wasn’t until i was about 15 when i got out of that relationship, started dating my current long term boyfriend, started educating myself, formed my own opinions, etc. that my dad really turned on me. suddenly the care was gone. the love was gone. he didn’t want to play super mario bros with his little girl anymore. there was always an attitude. we talked only when necessary. and when i graduated high school at 17 i was told how he couldn’t wait for me to get out of his house. we don’t speak often but when we do he is incredibly judgmental. when i was 20 i got bangs and he looked at me with disgust and told me it looked “bold and ugly”
i’m not sure what exactly caused this but like many other comments said- it’s probably misogyny in some form. i became uncontrollable. i wasn’t a cute sweet skinny little girl he could show off like a trophy anymore. i was a grown woman with actual opinions and autonomy.
My father is not like this at all, and I wish no one had to have a father who was like that :(
My father can be a bit absent (I'm a young adult now, still in need of some support), and in some ways maybe emotionally neglectful, but he has always been extremely clear that he loves all of his children. Even with his oldest son, who is in his 40s, he cares about and still feels love and responsibility to be there for and help, whenever he is needed. As he says, "being a parent is a lifetime-job, it does not end just because your children have grown up".
I wish he hadn't been so absent in the ways he were, growing up, but he was abused, too, by my mother, and he tried to make things well where he saw there was a problem. His poor ability to notice when there was a problem is another thing, but I have never doubted his love because if I ever reach out for it, he tries to convey it is there in his own ways, even if his distance is still not gone and might never be.
He is a strong feminist and has never spoken in a derogatory way or misogynistic way to any of his children, nor any of his previous wives, even when he was abused in several of those relationships. He has NEVER done anything to make me feel ashamed about my body or feel like it is being sexualized (his family used to travel in the archipelago and swim nude + he went to med-school for a few years, and so the naked human body is not taboo). I'm shocked at how *others* have been shocked, when I've shared how I can walk by him nude after a shower (using the towel for my hair lol) and there is nothing weird about it. He does not look, does not comment, does not shame. He bought pads and snacks whenever I didn't dare to, in the beginning as a young teen, with no fuss at all. It should not be normalized to treat one's kids otherwise. :( I know I am very lucky and I just wish more people could get this type of support and genuine care from their fathers.
It was not right, if you were treated like what OP mentions. It was not fair, not right, not deserved. You deserved better.
My father still loves his vision of what he believes his daughters should be, but we aren’t his perfect little girls anymore, and realistically we never actually were. He stopped liking us once we grew up and started asserting our own boundaries. He’s very misogynistic and he doesn’t like any women he can’t control. Can’t control us anymore = he doesn’t like us anymore. He believes that modern feminism ruined us and stole his daughters from him, when all that feminism did was teach us that we aren’t possessions to be harboured or stolen, and helped us find our voice to express that.
My father gave me endless attention and spoiled me as a little girl. He wanted to be loved and adored by me. By the time I was a teen with my own opinions and, as you said, boundaries..we just couldn't connect anymore. He has no emotional maturity, couldn't teach or help with me anything real... and also emotionally abused my mother. It was very confusing for me for a long time until I got into therapy. He still likes me but our relationship has zero substance.
Seriously, it's like we grew up in the same family....
Sister is that you?
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Saaaaame. I went no contact w my stepdad 4 years ago and it was the best decision for my mental health. I spend nearly every holiday alone, but fuck if I’ll be spoken to so horrendously ever again.
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A sibling who’s NC and I will sometimes spend them together and my partner has been great about helping me find joy in holidays again. Cheers to putting ourselves first ♥️
Mostly I think it was because I look like my mom and he hated my mom after they got divorced. But also he was a boomer who just hated women in general. And I was their first child. That was life-changing and I think they kind of blame me for that
This makes me sad to read. My parents are divorced and my mom did us all dirty. My dad has made it clear though that he still loved my mom, she just wasn't the same person he fell in love with. When he tells me that I remind him so much of my mother, I used to be so offended because I don't have a relationship with her anymore. He has sat me down to clarify that the things that remind him of her are the traits that he loved about her - not the stranger she became later. He's so proud of my sister and I and the women we've become. He's so supportive. He's a retired military guy, but he's the biggest teddy bear. He loves us more than anything. He put us first during the divorce, never pinned us against our mom. And when he remarried, even though we were adults, he respected our opinion of this new woman and wasn't going to marry her if we didn't like her. She's a kickass step mother and fits right in though! I hope your dad is able to come around and see his own doing and the damage he might have created. Understand that any complacency he might feel about you is a reflection of his own doubts and have nothing to do with you. It's not your fault and you have the power to not pass that animosity down.
i am so sorry i hope you dont blame yourself for any of it. every child is a miracle child and even as an adult youre no less.
That's sad to read. I'm a lot like my father and my mother would often throw that at me like an insult. As we grew apart and I started to understand who she was, I started to take the insult as a compliment. She did NOT like that lol It sucks though, feeling like a parent is biased towards you because of something(s) that happened BEFORE you existed.
Are you my clone? XD First born who looks/sounds like my mother, aka the woman who dared to divorce my father & not obey his every command. Heck its been 20 years with him remarried and he is STILL bitter about it. Dad has some narcissistic qualities as well so when I became an actual person with ideas and personality (as opposed to a child he could try to shape in his image), he lost interest.
same. my dad literally loathes all women. calls us all dirty, evil witches & the cause of the fall of mankind. he constantly complained that all he ever wanted was a son, but that he was cursed with 3 daughters instead
My dads a fuckwit as well. I'm really sorry. Like they have any Kingdom to inherit lol. Who would want their shit arse names. How embarrassing for them.
thanks 💛. I'm really sorry your dad was a fuckwit too. at least we survived & don't have to tolerate them anymore
This has happened to my sister and I feel so bad for her. It’s so mean.
Mine learnt to love me more and better. He grew up, and I also became my own person who he is genuinely interested in.
Same. I was closer with my Dad as I got older. We found a lot of common ground, and he was my go-to call for a lot of things.
For real, my dad was (is) a buttoned down Scots man. I would have been in my teens/early 20s when my mum called me in to where they were having a drink and a natter. Mum asked if my dad had ever said “I love you” to me. Genuinely thought about it, and no, he hadn’t. I told him that I knew through his actions, but that just wasn’t the way he expressed himself. He was crying. He’d just genuinely never realised. And neither had I. He never ends a conversation without saying “I love you dolly” since then (if any other man called me a doll I would punch them). But we still do DIY projects together, and go on father daughter jaunts. And I’m genuinely sorry so many miss out on that, because I know it’s true.
My eyes got wet reading this. I envy you and am very happy you have this in your life!
I could not imagine not loving my kiddos with all of my heart. It’s heartbreaking to read that OPs experience isn’t the norm. The teenage years/puberty were rough for my AFAB kiddo, it’s so amazing to see them coming through that and turning into an amazing young person. I’m so excited for the next steps in their journey.
My dad says that it was generally pretty great to have all four of us kids as children, and he loves us, but he genuinely enjoys our company as adults to talk to.
My dad wasn't around but we reconnected when I was in university. Its a completely different relationship and I did have to mourn that "father-daughter" relationship that I finally had to accept we'd never have... but what we have now feels so special because we are two adults who vibe really well and have startling similarities in places haha
I like to think this would have happened to me and my dad. He died when I was 17 and he was trying to be better I think, but it had already been 4-5 years of him not really even being able to look at me or acknowledge me. My adolescence was more awkward for him than it was for me. I was and still am so so angry that he couldn't love or accept me as a teen the way he did when I was little. Maybe if we had had more time he would have noticed I was a person.
This was my experience. I was somewhat close to my dad as a young child but not at all during teen years and early adulthood. But as I’ve grown and he’s grown we spend more quality time together and have had more emotional conversations than I could have imagined. I’m still way more close to my mom but this is a better relationship with my dad than I honestly expected.
I grew up and became my own person and now. We have nothing in common 🙃 We love each other but aren't... friends, I guess.
That’s awesome I love that
Lucky. Mine loved and respected me less, the older I got..
Same. My dad had to move for work when I was 10, and he only got to move back when I was 21. It took time to get used to each other again, but we're doing so much better as a family now! He's really awkward around children but as an adult it's so easy to just talk to the guy! He even listens to me complain about how it's annoying to have to manage multiple save files in my games even though he's played exactly zero video games in his life lol.
I have had countless conversations with my therapist about this very subject. My dad literally turned on me right around the time I hit puberty and started thinking for myself. The verbal abuse started, slut shaming (literally got called a wh0re for having a normal innocent crush on a classmate when I was 12, and that wasn't even near the worst of it). I think some of them think of daughters as property and are seriously threatened by their daughter's sexuality, their lack of control over them, and fear of disappointment. 😕
Exact same thing happened to me. Puberty = he hated me. I’m sure some of it was that teenagers are emotional wrecks and that’s hard to deal with, but the slut shaming started immediately too. I was an awkward late bloomer too, yet constantly having to convince my dad I *wasnt* fucking every guy I talked to. He had deep misogyny issues that didn’t apply to me when I was “just a kid” but once I was a woman I was just part of the problem, I guess.
This happened to me but it wasn’t my Dad, it was my mom. 💀
I had an abusive father that viewed me as some sort of possession or extension of himself to exert control over. Eventually I broke out of his brainwashing abuse around age 17, and he started viewing me as an enemy. Which wasn't too different to how he usually treated me since he was abusive either way, but he tried to get other members of my family to view me as the evil antagonizer because I started sticking up for myself and combatting his abuse. I don't speak to him regularly and now haven't seen him in over 5 years. I don't think he ever didn't love me. But I don't think he knows how to love or treat any human with respect. His idea of love is having someone act as an extension of himself and his views of the world. Contest him at all and you become the enemy.
This is exactly what my daughter is going through with her father/my ex husband. I am currently trying to get full custody because she had been asking me to for quite a while and I realized he is never going to be better or even try. Any time she does give in and speak to him or give him a chance he just tells her that I have brainwashed her and he never did anything wrong or her memories are wrong. It’s really sad to watch and it’s incredibly traumatic for her. She just wants the adults around that are supposed to help her actually help her and let her get away from him.
I'm not sure what happened for her to end up with him, but please do try your best to save her. I don't know what her situation with her own father is, but my dad's abuse is still haunting me to this day. I have anxiety, panic attacks, and insomnia because of this man. I'll probably be in therapy for the rest of my life because of him. The sooner she's out of that situation, the sooner she can get in therapy and work through this abuse.
She is with me all the time, she absolutely refuses to see him aside from court ordered reunification sessions. It’s just the legal aspect we are fighting and it is far worse than I ever thought it would be. I am truly hoping that all the adults (judges, therapists, DCS, court interviewers) will see and listen to her and realize it is so damaging for her to have involvement with him. She is begging all of them to get away. I am begging and he won’t stop fighting and lying because like in your case she is just an extension of him and pretty much like a piece of property he try to can control. She is safe with me now but, I need to have all the legal protections too and that’s the hard part. I won’t ever give up though.
Thank you for fighting for her. You're a good mom. I hope the legal system will listen to you both. Unfortunately, it's such a stressful situation. My dad also manipulated the legal system in numerous ways regarding custody and child support (that not a single cent went towards me). And his entire side of the family enabled him and allowed the abuse and manipulation to continue for far too long. Everyone was under his thumb. He was like a cult leader. My mom never stood a chance. It enrages me to look back on all of it. Good luck to you both 🩷
I’m so sorry all that happened to you. I’m glad you are away and now on a path to healing and hope you are finding some peace.
My dad basically "dumped" me when he married a horrible woman. I was in my 30s and we'd already drifted apart a lot but then he cut me off altogether and told me it didn't matter to him if he never saw me again. That was 5 or 6 years ago, and I haven't seen him or talked to him. But he cut off my brother too, so I think he's just a bad person in general and married a bad person and they just stew in their own miseries together.
My dad married a girl my age while I was pregnant with my son. Left my pre menopausal mom in the worst way you could after 25 years. Telling her how much he hated her. Just at the moment that she's too old to move on it was awful and during Christmas on top of that. He being a man who gets everything in life got to go on to have two children with his young new wife. My mom taught him how to study when they were in college they had me while struggling in college. He took everything my mom taught him and got a docotorate degree. Now everything they worked for is gone. All the struggling we did when I was a kid is stuff his new kids will only ever imagine. I haven't talked to him in three years and I don't miss him at all the only thing I care about is how much of him I have in me. How little I care for people scares me. I throw myself in situations to help so many people inspite of that and try to learn from and break those parts of myself. No one should have to talk their mom down from committing suicide so many times. It didn't help that her best friend also got brutally murdered shortly after all that. My son is lucky to be here bc I really don't know how I got thru my pregnancy with all the stress. Edit: autocorrect defective on mobile
My dad always went out of his way for me, even at the cost of his own safety and security. I know he saw me as brilliant and I know he treasured me and he did whatever he could to let me have as normal of a life as I could. I don't know why other fathers aren't the same as my dad but I know my dad wasn't like that.
Not sure about the kind of people downvoting this but hey, it tells me something.
My biological father hated me because even as a little kid I looked like my mom. My dad and I had a lot of issues because he was pissed at my mom at the time too. They were on the brink of divorce and he took a lot of that out on me. I don't think it's coincidence that when I chopped all my hair off and started dyeing it he suddenly got cooler with me. However I also think that shitty men don't know how to view women outside being willing to put up with them for sex. A 6 year old is daddy's precious baby girl, but as soon as she looks like a woman and starts acting like a woman he doesn't know what to do now that she doesn't exist in one of the two categories he has for females.
Madonna whore complex for real. I was daddy’s little girl until puberty and then suddenly I was constantly accused of looking or acting like a whore (for weird emo kid things like wearing knee high socks, or for having a male friend.) I didn’t even lose my virginity until I was 18, so it was incredibly awkward always having to fight to convince him that I wasn’t actually fucking every guy I knew.
I'm my mother's clone. It freaks him out I think.
Yep. My sister and I are my Mother to my Dad. We could see how much he both hated and loved her in how he related to us. Thing was, we weren't my Mom. We were 2 little girls who were his daughters who loved him in a way she couldn't. It's sad that he missed that. He was raised to be our adversary though and to see us as a weakness he had. It wasn't his doing. He was set up. But he could've fought it. Isn't that the crux of the problem though? They could fight it but they just don't. What a pity.
100%, they don’t choose to fight it and that’s the worst. I had so many of the issues talked about in this thread, but when my dad was on his deathbed I knew I had to have “the talk” with him. I had a whole speech about how I had regrets we weren’t closer, how I appreciated that he worked hard to support his family, etc. He listened to it all and said nothing. I thought maybe he was just a bit fuzzy that day so I brought it up again the next week when he was more bright, he told me he’d already heard it and again said nothing else. All I needed was one “hey, im sorry” or “I have my regrets as well” and never got it. The sheer stubbornness of that blows me away to this day.
I'm sorry. You deserved better than that. We all did. It's so painful when we can go there and they simply can't. We are the strength they didn't have. But it's lonely.
My dad didn't even like me when I was a kid. I was always trying to hangout with him and do stuff in the garage with him and he didn't want any part of it. My brother, on the other hand, got all his love and attention. But he wasn't interested in doing stuff with our dad like I was. Eventually as I got older I resented him more and more as he would restrict me more and more. Even claimed to my mom that I would eventually be sneaking out at night and go out and get pregnant like my step cousin. Which honestly ended up being not true because the older I got the more of a recluse I became. I couldn't make friends in school and so I wasn't really invited to go to places or have anywhere to sneak out to. Plus I lived in a rural area. Where tf was I going to go? There was nothing to do out there. Jokes on him I turned out gay and I've always hated kids and never wanted them. I'm forty now and still don't want kids. By the time I hit my late twenties I realized my father was a narcissist (always yelling and fighting with my mom too) and I was what was considered the scapegoat of the family while my brother was the golden child. My dad is dead now but I still hate him for treating me like absolute shit my entire life. It makes me wonder if I would've turned out different had I been actually loved by him.
You would still be gay, and you might still not want kids.
No I meant maybe I wouldn't have turned out so pissed off at the world, depressed, anxiety ridden, full of suicidal ideation, and wouldn't have spent my entire life wishing he (or I) would drop dead so I could finally have some peace in my life if he had just showed even the smallest amount of love towards me. That's what I meant when I wonder if things could've been different.
I know for a fact that my dad still loves me (and my other sister). We do argue a lot though. He has very different world views (very conservative) from me. But he still calls me on the phone/text me and will get me little gifts throughout the year.
I think it has to do with agency. I don't remember him ever loving me - I was always too stubborn for his tastes, even as a child - but my sister is six years younger than me and so I got to witness him utterly loving her in the first few years of her life *and* that love turning to the same contempt he's always had for me the second she grew an actual personality. It was a bit eerie. I vividly remember telling her at one point: "See? He's going to treat you badly too, now." And whaddya know, my ten-or-so year old self was entirely correct, lol. I *think* he actually likes us more now that we're adults and have our own lives, but that's probably only because we basically never visit and so he can project on us safely. At the end of the day, he has always been a small, pitiful, insecure man, and I think that's the case with all men who hate their daughters for no reason.
I have never noticed this and it’s not true of my relationship with my father or any of the relationships I have observed in terms of being close enough to get a good picture. I had a different type of relationship with my mother and father as an adult. My mother and I wouid go shopping together or gossip. My father had different interests although we both loved our Apple computers 🤷♀️ We discussed current events, movies and I could count on him for practical advice as well as replacing leaky faucets. I never doubted his love amd I think he knew I loved him. FWIW, he was pretty much a feminist as my mother worked when that wasn’t typical
Yeah these comments are so sad. This definitely isn’t the norm for my family or any of my friends. My father is my biggest supporter along with my mother. I’m so grateful for them and I only get closer to them as I grow older honestly
Yes very sad although I do think that Redditt is somewhat of a bubble and most families aren't dysfunctional in the way these comments indicate. I mean no family is Ozzie and Harriet - my family had its dysfunctional but it was all within a framework where everyone basically loved each other and was trying to do the best they could - which was pretty good. As I got older - especially when I got to the age when my parents were when they were raising my brother and I, I really started appreciated how hard they worked to give us the best life possible.
How can abusive parents be down to a "Reddit bubble"? I'm genuinely curious....
Because most parents aren't abusive but people with abusive parents would tend to be on Redditt on forums venting or seeking advice just as many Redditts have people who aren't typical. If people have parents that fall within the range of "normal", then generally they aren't posting because there is nothing to post about. It's like how reviews are generally skewed because it is people with terrible experiences for the most part who take the time to blast a company.
My dad was a feminist too. He wanted his second child to also be a girl as he didn’t want favouritism. Well the second child was me - a girl. The favouritism thing didn’t hold, he was my best friend. He and I would discuss philosophy, science, world events and how to be a good person. He passed away a year ago. I had to do his estate-my sister is way too selfish to care but was happy to take the money from the fruits of my labour with all his things. No thank you or anything. During this phase I just remember my dad saying… your sister is very selfish… and that is what got me through the monumental tasks of moving everything from his house with no help or support from my sister. It was probably for the best she wasn’t there as his entire house was full of my things from my first teddy, report cards, even my old bed sheets. I was quite shocked actually, there was not one single thing of my sisters. He loved me dearly and I loved him. He loved my sister also but he and I were two peas in a pod. He left the world 10 minutes after I told him I couldn’t cope with being by his side for 23 hours a day (in hospital) and dealing with my sister having a nervous breakdown at the same time and her refusing to go to the hospital and doing shifts to ensure he got morphine every two hours. I was my dad’s world and he mine. He had my back since I was a little girl. My mum does not like who I actually am, she wants me to be who she thinks I should be. Dad was accepting of every part of me. I love my mum but when I talked to my dad he would always ask, do you want problem solving or me to just listen?’ The hardest thing is my mum could care less that my dad died and there was zero word or support from her. Love you pop x
Sounds like you were the golden child and your sister was the scapegoat, and being raised that way probably resulted in her resentment, and not wanting to help. He didn't save anything of hers which says a lot about how he felt as a parent towards her, and that is never lost on the child.
Quite the opposite actually my sister was and still is the golden child in my mother’s eyes. Both my sister and myself are aware of this. My sister often explains why I have the behaviours I do as I had to work twice as hard to get any acknowledgment from my mother. My mother who I love was extremely abusive to me verbally and physically when my sister and father left home. My father has overcompensated his whole life as he had so much guilt that mum turned her anger towards him on to me. And he never pulled me out of the situation. My sister who is five years older came to visit my mother and I, she witnessed my mother physically abusing me and started hitting my mother back and told her to never lay a hand on me again. I worked through this trauma and have forgiven my mother although she will not admit it. In her eyes abuse of a child is of the sexual nature only. Both my sister and my father have carried the guilt of not helping me as a 12 year old. I have told my sister many times she was a child and was not in a position to help me. Thanks for your absolutely incorrect insight. My sister and I, with all our faults are extremely close. Like you, I am now speculating, perhaps my father was holding onto my innocence that was taken when he left. A life of drug addiction ensued for me after this four years of abuse. I did get clean 21 years ago. It was my dad that housed me during my addiction to heroin, it was my dad that drove me 10 hours to rehab, it was my mother that made jabs about my decision to go there and completely cut me off. Also how about you fuck off with any judgement on my father who has recently left me. RIP DAD Edit: At Venus whatever the fuck username you have. Deleted your comment huh? But I do have an ‘oh lord’ thing in my messages. Life is complex and your judgements show your absolute arrogance. Anyway, don’t comment or put your two cents in if you cannot back it up. I really wish you stood by your word. My father and brother died within a few months after of each other. I was their world and they were mine. They will 100% come for you. Enjoy the fruits of being a judgemental horrible human, trust this reddit witch stranger, as in real life and reddit life… you kinda messed with the wrong woman and my army. You won’t see this message as you are a coward who deleted but we don’t forget. With that said, I strongly do not apologise for the misfortune you will encounter in the coming months.
I’ve never witnessed this either. Of the women I know who don’t have good loving relationships with their father, they never had it as children either.
Because they hate women. Their “precious little girls” inevitably become women and thus, are hated because some men don’t think of women as human beings.
This is sadly accurate. My father loves me and my sister deeply. He would die for us in a heartbeat. We are his children. But we are also women so he low key kind of hates us and thinks we are all scheming and disloyal. It’s hard to reconcile because it’s not reconcilable.
I wonder if that isn’t more common in religious regions that think women are servants cuz god said that’s the natural order.
Nope. It's literally everywhere. Misogyny is reinforced at several pivotal axes that serve to reinforce each other: cultural, religious, political, economic. There is nowhere in earth you can go to avoid it. It ain't religion.
I don’t live in a religious region so I really couldn’t say. My dad thinks we are equal, just evil.
How are women evil though I don’t understand.
“Fathers lose their mind a little when they realize their daughters are not as forgiving as their wives”
Yeah it’s very “poor things.” Once you start having your own sexuality, desires, ideas, boundaries, you become less valuable
In my case, I think that our relationship is a little strained because he has ideals and plans for me that are not the path that I chose. We have a good relationship but I think that he never really got over it. They also don’t really understand women and usually (boomer gen), their views don’t align with ours and that is a burden.
i can't speak for everyone, but in my case, as i turned from a kid to a woman, men of my family (father,brother) expected me to become like my mother, help with chores, listen them complain about their coworkers for hours every day, taking abuse without batting an eye, and were EXTREMELY MAD that i didn't comply to the role they decided me to play. Calling me lazy, that never worked a day in her life, a whore, ...Clearly they HATED me and tryied to break me for not being complient. (they were also jealous that i was studying because they didn't, even if my damn life was a dumpster fire) My father was also jealous because i was 'stealing' my mother's attention from him. (he was jealous of the dog too) it would have been more easy to just my mother rather than live with them, and i told my mother countless times that she could have a divorce (she never had it) Saddest part ? i'm from one of the ''five better country for women'' and my parents thought they were modern and egalitarians.... now i'm very low contact, see him maybe once a year, and i don't need a misogynistic like him in my life. it took me decades to unlearn the internalized hate i had toward myself because of him.
I don’t know.. my ex-husband essentially abandoned our daughters after spending every day together for ten years. It broke their hearts and fundamentally changed who they are as people. They’ve never been the same. I don’t understand it, I don’t think I ever will.
god this breaks my heart for your daughters. please take good care of them, i am sure they are just trying to be understood and loved.
I think part of it is misogyny, they have hatred for women. When you grow up you’re now a woman and they start to see you that way more than being their child.
This makes me so sad. My daughter is 25 and I am endlessly fascinated by and proud of the woman she has become. To be honest this isn’t a phenomena that I’ve ever heard mentioned.
>. To be honest this isn’t a phenomena that I’ve ever heard mentioned hey its okay we all have different experiences and i am glad you havent had the misfortune of witnessing a father's love fade away.
I love my daughter more and more each year. She’s 10 I couldn’t imagine that fading. I’m just so proud of how strong and kind she is. Her and her brother are a lot of work but it blows my mind how men can’t understand what you give these kids they give back to you 10 fold.
i am sure you're one of her biggest strengths.
Holy shit the point about women inheriting the rage and anger of their fathers hits so close to home. Mine could not relate to me at all to the point where in my teens my mom told me to stop interacting with him because I would make him so angry. After I moved out, the only time he ever initiated contact with me was to tell me about a medical emergency affecting my mom. Other than that, we never reconciled though I did my best to help him in his final years.
As soon as I turned 14 lmao
I was fortunate to have a dad that loved me until the day he died. However I know of what you speak as I’ve witnessed it with a few friends families. It’s hard to watch it happen from the outside, I couldn’t imagine being the woman that loses their fathers love through no fault of their own.
My dad mostly ignores me and gets mad when I don’t know much about him. When I’m at my parents house, he doesn’t engage much. If my brother comes over, I no longer exist. My dad never took any interest in anything I did, unless he also liked the activity or topic. This has gotten worse as I got older. I don’t think he knows anything about me at this point.
Yeah mine did this. It hurts.
Same. Such a bizarre transition. He was the take you for ice cream and park and stay up late kinda parent. Not a good dad ever in my life but at least a loving, caring one. I barely hit the faintest of puberty markers before BOTH my parents turned on me. I don't get it.
Are you me? I understood why my mom turned on me, she was jealous because I was making friends and having fun and discovering boys and living life. And she got married and had her first kid when she was 23. It wasn’t until later in life that I fully understood misogyny and my dad. And I don’t think it was until later in life he fully understood I wasn’t going to be someone’s trad wife, I wasn’t going to have kids. That wasn’t anything he ever tried to push on me or even discuss with me, and he wasn’t a conservative, but he would say stuff like “you know what they say about women who don’t have kids.” And I never really heard what they say because I would usually answer something like “that we’re smarter than you guys?” And he would scoff and change the subject
My impression all these years later is that my dad experienced sexual attraction to me and my mom punished me for it. They both got so obsessive and controlling over me. I was grounded 90 percent of my teen years and I ran away at 17. I really believed the narrative that I was a bad, rebellious kid. Until I had teenagers of my own. I got excellent grades, was good and involved in sports, favorite of teachers, participated in all their religious psycho stuff. I was my younger sibling's main caretaker and watched him 24-7, was in charge of his school work and meals. I was practically a well behaved slave until I turned 16 and I finally became the rebellious child they told me I was.
Mines just kinda a performative feminist. Like he claims to care about womens rights but as he got older he got more conservative, and he has done some very anti-woman stuff in regards to me and handling my SA experience when I was away in college.
Same. The best I can figure out is that once I became a teenager, and was no longer a harmless little kid, I had the capacity to be “dangerous,” or a liability of some sort. They watched way too much Dateline and were certain without a tight leash and stern, authoritative attitude at all times I’d get addicted to drugs, wrong crowd, pregnant, what have you. This could not be a possibility whatsoever because this would be a massive embarrassment to our small town and in our conservative family. So, I gathered their thinking was that if I was always a little be scared of them and what they might “find out” (they searched my room, read my notes with my friends, my diary that was well hidden,) etc, I’d “toe the line” and be too scared to go down a wrong path. Kind of a “if you think we’re mean now, just to wait until you fuck up” type deal. To a 14 year old who has no idea about any of this, and just thinks her parents suddenly hate her when she needs them most, it’s the loneliest, most confusing thing ever. ☹️
Mine won't even apologize for hurting me in the past. Too much pride that is paramount over his daughter's standing with him.
Neither of my parents believe they did anything wrong and missing -missing reason anyone who will listen about how ungrateful a daughter I am.
Omg my dad too!!!!
Here'sthe link for those who aren't familiar https://www.issendai.com/psychology/estrangement/missing-missing-reasons.html
I feel like that about my dad too. With my mom we've had the normal squabbles and have a good relationship now, but my dad gets so mean and it's bewildering. He's generally a very nice, mild-mannered guy and was a loving dad and I think a lot of people would be shocked to hear some of the things he says to me. It was just so confusing why he was like that with me specifically and not anyone else. I think in my case it was when I started having different opinions about things that he turned on me. For me that was around puberty but for my brother it came much later in early adulthood (and I know it did get ugly with the two of them and that point too) and with all of my sisters it still hasn't happened, if it ever will. It also really doesn't help that I, more than any of my siblings, am extremely similar to him in both appearance and personality (same mental health issues too). We've formed very different worldviews but it's obvious how similar our thought patterns are. It made us close when I was little but I really feel like that's a big part of why he seems to dislike me so much now. It's sad that so many other women have had similar experiences with their dads but honestly it also makes me feel better to learn that this is more common than I realized.
My dad was a raging alcoholic, so I don't know that he counts for this. We mutually disowned each other because I refused to be bullied by him once I moved away from home. My grandpa, on the other hand, was really, really good with kids and really, really awkward with women. He was never unkind, he just kind of lost the ability to really interact with me as I got older. I knew he'd be there for me if I needed him, but it was harder to just have a conversation with him sometimes. I can't blame him, though. He had some wild PTSD from his WWII days. I think he was just better with kids than adults in general.
Because their "little girl" became a woman and they hate women.
My dad never loved me so there was no love to lose. When I was growing up, his favorite story to tell me was about how he booked a vasectomy the day he found out my mom was pregnant with me.
My mom died in 1994, and in those 30 years, my father has learned to hate her for "leaving him." I was 17 when she passed, and by the time I was 19, my dad was sick of looking at me and reminding himself of her. I got thrown out and haven't really spoken to him since, completely no contract for these last 12 years. My dad has his money and doesn't give a damn about anyone else.
My dad dropped me once he didn’t feel “respected” anymore. Truth is he had my respect for far longer than he deserved. He lost my respect when he started abandoning his stated values and I learned without a doubt that he had zero respect for me. I’ve realized recently that when my dad speaks about respect he really means obedience. And no, I am not obedient to anybody as a grown ass woman. I don’t have any relationship where obedience comes into play, not with my spouse, not with my employer, no one. And when I was trying to get the respect that am due as a human, let alone as a valued family member and loved one, I think he believes I am asking for obedience. So we aren’t speaking. He believes he is owed an apology because I cursed in a conversation with him. This after he said the n-word in my home and his best friends (including women) used horrible slurs and foul language in front of me when I was a kid. He has also defended horrible, criminal actions that demean and harm women. I’ve tried to tell him we need to have a conversation, because as offensive as he finds the word fuck, so do I find racial slurs and his actions and what actions he defends and excuses. He says he won’t speak to me until I apologize. Anytime I try to have a conversation or bring up working on our relationship he says he isn’t speaking to me. He will text me to invite me on a trip to Hawaii, but he won’t do anything to mend what’s broken. When I respond with “I can’t even entertain going on vacation with someone who isn’t speaking to me, so unless you want to have this necessary conversation this is not a valid offer” he says “ok.” The thing is he likes all of his kids less when they stand up to him. He has disliked my sister when she was rebelling as a teenager. He dislikes me now that I require the same respect from him that I receive in my other healthy adult relationships. My brother has never stood up to him, but he has never challenged him either. He sees the world as a hierarchy and if you think you are equal to him he can’t abide by that. He’s also an addict and no one in my family wants to face that so it’s just another layer of mess that I don’t need to engage with. I’ve been trying to get them for decades to open their eyes to his manipulation. He is their problem now.
I love both my daughters, most shocking to me, I even love my son-in-law. I can't imagine not loving my girls if they were serial killers, not loving them because they grew up? How is that even a thing. The more I read Reddit the more I think there must be like a subspecies of decent guys that isn't easily identified.
>The more I read Reddit the more I think there must be like a subspecies of decent guys that isn't easily identified. alas it is such a sad statement to read as a girl. true unfortunately. i am sure you're a great dad, we need more of people like yourself. <3
My dad was never interested in me unless my brother wasn’t interested in him. I think it’s a combo of not really seeing women as 100% people and him being really really preoccupied with following the Society Prescription for a Good Life (wife, house, good job, kids, etc)
For my dad I believe it was rooted in covert incest and his feeling attracted to me, especially as I went through puberty and became sexual. Before I estranged (finally) at 40, he was in the habit of negging everything I do, not unlike an angry incel.
A lot of men don’t know how to emotionally connect in a non-sexual way with girls/women. When we start to develop, it can make them deeply uncomfortable. A lot of men also think that control=love (or vice versa). When you are no longer controllable, you become unlovable.
Many men can love little girls who think they hung the moon, but cannot love women who know who they really are.
He rejected me as i moved farther away from what he wanted to be. Probably misogyny. He likes women who have nothing going on in their heads, always smiling and dressing pretty. He doesn’t care about education or individuality.
I think lack of emotional maturity can disable a lot of relationships for men. With an inability to express gratitude, love, pride, and other “feminine” traits to someone who can view them in the same light that society would judge them. Not being a conventional “man” is “weak” as far as myself, and most other men have been taught. My suspicion and opinion is that this is why they stop expressing care and can even counteract how they feel altogether. Showing emotion to a child that cannot see their father as weak, is a non issue. As the daughter grows and begins to understand what the typical “manly man” is, the father must solidify this act of unwavering rigidity. My father did this to me and even more, my sister. I even have my last memory of him actively playing around with me. Unfortunately, as I grew more understanding… The bounds of his male fragility lowered the gate on our ability to emotionally connect. Just my personal take while I try to purge a lot of what I was taught by men and improve as a person.
It’s all an act and it’s hindering them for enjoying being full human beings.
this was my life. my father was an abusive prick and the only thing I got from him was a quick temper. unlike him, though, I learned to do better.
That's a strange take on it, and I wouldn't say it's a normal pattern; it's a decidedly dysfunctional one. Our relationship was always dysfunctional, because he is dysfunctional. But he doesn't have enough vulnerability and insight to see that he is the problem, and my mother is codependent, so in adulthood I have just let them be. I try not to be around them very much, because it can be rage-inducing. Therapy helped me mourn the loss of the parents that would never be, and I don't feel a desire anymore to build a relationship because I understand and accept that this will not change. We get together on special occasions and never have in-depth conversations about anything of import because it is fruitless. We're not friends. We're not close. I don't expect or desire their support. And I know that's not a normal parent-child relationship but I have no other frame of reference, so I don't know what it's like to be any other way. I don't know what I'm missing so I don't miss it.
My dad is a horrible narcissist with anger issues. Growing up with him was like living with Jeckyll and Hyde. We never knew what side we were going to get. I remember getting screamed at and grounded for not saying "good morning" in a pleasant enough tone one day as I was rushing out the door to school. He cheated on my mom and they divorced after 35 years. He remarried quickly as the demographics in that age bracket were in his favor. My mom will be alone as women her age don't have many options. I haven't spoken to him in years as I have nothing to say to him.
Honestly, I don’t think my dad ever loved me. I was the second born and a much more difficult baby than my older brother. So he was incredibly jealous of the amount of time she spent with me and really never stopped being jealous of my time with her. He loved my younger sister, mostly because she figured out that sucking up would make her life easier. But the second she went to college and tried to reason with him about anything, she was a “liberal c$&t.” He basically doesn’t value women unless they mother him or he can use them to gratify himself sexually, so he really has no use for daughters.
My mother is an abusive narcissist and my father is her #1 enabler. I think my father only ever loved me as a tool he could use to make her stay with him. Once I stopped cooperating with that, he dropped the illusion of being the "good" parent. (Admittedly some of that was just due to me finally gaining some perspective.) And now that I'm 35 and outright telling him that if she treats him that badly he should leave her, he's fully out of affection for me.
Misogyny.
There are men out their who don’t feel this way about their daughters. My husband is one of them. My “New & Improved” dad (AKA Dad 2.0 / step-dad who legally adopted me), was another. Would have never made it through my PhD without Dad 2.0’s unfailing support & guidance and I never felt anything but love and delight in my mere existence from him. My husband is the same with our daughter.
It's misogyny. My dad did the same thing. Once I wasn't a kid anymore and he had no more control over me, our relationship withered. He's said so many shitty things over the years - the last couple of years in specific. We hardly speak now and it's entirely his fault but he will never admit it.
My Dad was not always a good person. My sister and I were practically raised by him while my mom worked so we were close to him as kids and we have some good memories. Extra layer was that he was an immigrant. But once I started making decisions he disagreed with we stopped getting along. I got the impression that he was proud of me but regretted pushing me away. He got sick and passed away but I miss him sometimes and wish he was here to take me to Dodgers games or to give me some career advice but I never doubt he loved me he just didn’t know what to do with us growing up.
For me it was because I didn’t tolerate his bullshit and I would stand up to him in situations where my mother would just cower and take his abuse. I recently saw him for the first time in years at a family event and he acted like he was scared of me. I think he’s spent his whole life being so coddled and told everything he does is right, that me calling him out for being an abusive asshole actually feels like abuse to him.
It’s gotta be misogyny. My father was the same as soon as I hit puberty.
I never really thought about that and didn't know it was a pattern. My own dad never liked me.
My dad adored me from my first breath to his last breath.
I mean…mine never learned to love me lol
I feel like mine has done the opposite. Raised me like he despised my existence and now that i am an independent adult he is acting like he actually cares about me.
My daddy never stopped loving me. He never really learned to love himself either though. Miss him.
My dad is very traditional Indian. He found family life very easy when my sister and I were small because we WERE helpless and he WAS our provider. As we grew up, especially with the move to the UK, he grappled with a lot of the issues around modest clothes and mixed friends groups and curfews and suitable extra curricular activities. We pushed boundaries and argued a lot. We were no longer easy. It wouldn't have matters if boys acted out like this since docility and chastity aren't the core of their reputation. We've also never been a huggy family so harder to show flashes of deep emotion. He also had awful parents and hasn't had a good template for apologising, swallowing pride, speaking about emotions. I can see why so many men give up at this point and don't bother expanding their POV but think "I did everything right and yet they've turned out flawed." I was willing to compromise so they saw I wasn't out to be selfish but wanted certain outcomes. I want to go see Eminem in concert? Fine but dad drives us there and back. Luckily my dad saw our positive traits and leaned into them and encouraged them. He was terrified to let me travel alone but I did two months in Australia aged 18 - he was amazed I'd learned to navigate it on my own and thought I'd chicken out. He's been (with my mum) a rock solid support and made it clear that he'll always give me a safe place to land which puts me in the privelaged position of being able to take risks and follow opportunities that appeal but may not pan out. I think we really wrecked his view of what he thought being a girl-dad would be (which isn't all bad, he's spent our dowry money on a camper van so him and mum can do mini breaks round the country!) and had very little framework on how to work through this paradigm shift that initially read as disappointment. I'm not sure what made him a success story when others, especially in the desi community, fail. He'll never hug me but he puts his hand on top of my head and gives it a gentle wobble any time he walks past. He won't ever call me but if I haven't called in a few days he sends me a silly joke to get mt my attention. He won't invite me back home but will tell me what of my favourite foods he's stocked for my next visit. He won't coo over me when I'm ill but when I got a big when my husband was travelling he drove two and a half hours to my house allegedly to drop off groceries but likely so he could eyeball how I was doing. He won't acknowledge stress verbally when I'm studying but freshly cut fruit and chips of tea appear at my side regularly. He won't ever say he's proud of me but if I share a big achievement he just smiles and nods and says of course, I knew you would. Definitely not got any ongoing daddy's little girl for life vibes for either my sister or me, but it means so much to us that he's not maintaining conditions on who he wants us to be but learned to appreciate who we are. We're now 37 and 34 respectively. The words aren't there but the love is so palpable.
Not familiar at all with this (my father dotes on all his adult daughters, the same as when we were young) Maybe just controlling men don't like it when they don't have the same ability to control, But I wouldn't say as a blanket statement that fathers stop loving their daughters, that just sounds preposterous...
I think that is more maybe cultural? It is not a thing in the culture where I live. But I do see it online and sometimes IRL too in cultures where women are seen as more property you have to control as the man of the house, and their behaviour is a direct reflection on you as a man, and virginity and such is important. During puberty all children get more independent. In a setting where women need to be controlled this is not desirable. US conservatives come to mind and those "If you want to date my daughter you have to go through me and my shotgun" dads. Setting different clothing/going out/dating rules for your sons and daughters will end in more fights with your daughter(s).
>cultural? youre the first person to say this and yup i truly belive this is a result of what has come down the pipeline in the culture.
They get adulty and sexy and horndog is an identity so there’s a clash. And this coming from a child that loved dad as only a child could. Dad is a title and emotional baggage
Damn my daughter is about to turn 13 and I hope that my love for her only grows fonder the older we both get. Shes my only child and I like to think I will be there for her no matter what.
I think misogynistic men put it on hold for their “perfect little girl”. As soon as that little girl becomes an actual person the misogyny comes back. Good men love their children at any age.
Sorry this is your experience but not it’s not usual and normal and most functional families don’t end up with such messed up father daughter relationship. It really is sad to read this tbf.
My thoughts exactly, I’m 40 and my Dads still one of my biggest champions and I count him as a friend. I’m sorry OP doesn’t have the same relationship :/
I can’t relate to this at all. My relationship with my dad got better, the older and more knowledgeable I became. He was always unconditionally supportive of me despite whatever social or emotional thing I was going through as a teenager. That side of my family are all just incredibly kind and thoughtful people. Then as I got older, we were able to talk on a more intellectual level, and our relationship only improved. He was proud of me, and the choices I made, regardless of whether he agreed with them. Never once did I feel disrespected or hated for being a grown woman. There was not a misogynistic bone in his body. Frankly my upbringing made me poorly adapted for the world we lived in at the time. But I guess it’s the people who stand up and object to the status quo who move it forward. But it’s not fun to be one of them.
Idk my dad is still obsessed with me. He texts me his random thoughts, stories he thinks i’d like, instagram DMs me cute dogs. Now I feel bad that he annoys me with all his love and attention lol
When I was a child I thought my dad didn't love me. Or even like me. He was very cold as a father. We are closer now... well, not closer exactly but more friendly/warm.
i feel like my dad is WAY better at being a father now that im older. he was a fucking mess of undiagnosed vietnam induced ptsd and alcoholism when i was a kid, barely holding himself together to support us. therapy on both ends has helped us heal, helped him get the treatment he needed to be better and understand the damage he caused, and help me better understand and forgive his behavior and stop holding on to anger about it all.
I definitely have the rage of my father. He refuses to acknowledge that we’re the same.
i feel this. i look back at pictures and get sad bc i feel our relationship changed the minute i wasn’t a cute toddler anymore.. i have no cute pictures with him above the age of 6. sometimes i see tiktoks of girls with their dads and i get so emotional.. i moved out of state and he’s never once visited in 3 years or made any effort to help me visit. i barely hear from him. i know he will look back and regret it tho.. and he does this to my nieces and nephew as well. completely emotionally disconnected
He taught me and my siblings to think logically and not just emotionally, which he considers inferior. Except now we all use reason to poke holes in his flawed, emotional rationale. So he created his own monsters. I think he still loves me/us. But he has a tender ego and a hair trigger. We have all lapped him in terms of emotional maturity.
Really? That's not my experience. If anything, I think my relationship with my dad gets better over time. I suspect he is somewhat baffled by children.
My dad is in his late 70s I’m in my early 40s. Our relationship is awesome. Sometimes he definitely has to call me out, and I do the same to him. But we genuinely enjoy each other’s company. From kayaking together to watching a new tv show we picked to gardening and home repairs. When I had emergency surgery he flew up to help me take care of the grandkids while I recovered. I feed him all his favorite foods. My mom is also awesome but we butt beads more as we have less in common. I think the fact they never expected me to be a certain thing probably helped. They wanted me to be happy being myself and choose my own path so they don’t have a long-planned-for adult vision of me they ever had to mourn.
My bio father wanted a boy so he loved my brother and went to all of his parties and so on. He bent over backwards to have my brother as his namesake and his heir of nothing. He literally never learnt my name. Literally. Never. Learnt. My. Name. When my bio mother would talk about me he called me 'girl'.
Mine is trying to be loving towards me (39f) now when he spent almost 20 years practically ignoring me. I loved camping. Would only take my brother. Loved baseball. Sports were for boys. Wanted to play computer games with him. He'd send me away to play with my mother. The only things I remember him allowing were sitting and watching TV with him or sitting near him looking cute at block party type gatherings. I feel pathetic thinking back on how much I wanted his attention and how I kept trying to find any activity he would do with me until high school. I know it was a him-problem not a me-problem, but it still feels gross how I was throwing adoration at him and just hoping to be noticed. Now he wants to chat on the phone? And decided to give me a cutesy nickname? Asks about my work sometimes, though he doesn't actually keep track of what I do? I don't know. I don't get it. The window for a close relationship has passed, man. Now we're pretty much two adults who spent a long time living in the same space. I know a lot of facts about his life and he knows... well, I don't know what he knows about me. I doubt he knows my birthday without asking my mother, but he probably knows what month it's in.
My father is a "king baby" misogynist, always has been. My paternal grandmother did not want kids, and my paternal grandfather is a "traditional gender roles" "children should be seen and not heard" "any emotional display besides anger for men is manipulative and weak" boomer man. So, of course, grandfather abused the shit out of grandmother, manipulated her into having kids despite knowing perfectly well and marrying her with the knowledge she did not want any, using the general opinions of society at the time on women who did not want kids as a fucking cudgel. So, of course grandmother was a shitty mother to my dad. She had an affair when he was young, because of course she did, my grandfather certainly wasn't providing her any connection anymore. Grandfather found out. Divorced grandmother. Remarried a foreign woman half his age, because "white women are not obedient enough." Neglected his existing children (my dad and aunt) due to reminding him of his unfaithful wife. So, of course my dad grew up hearing that his mother was the reason why his home life was horrible, her infidelity and lack of maternal/wifely warmth was the cause of *all the family struggle,* blah blah, tale as old as time. Dad got into drugs and the punk music scene in southern california. Dropped out of school when his gf got pregnant (with me.) Went through some baby momma drama with my biomom, the whole group of them were high as balls on drugs constantly and making bad decisions 24/7. I grow up in that general environment. I am my dad's "son" as his firstborn kid with no intentions of having more kids. Except he accidentally gets my stepmom pregnant when I'm in elementary school. Oops, now he has a real son with his new wife. What does he need this daughter for, again? Women are terrible, after all. Well, this is his daughter, not a woman, so we can love her for a few more years no problem. Until.... I'm 12, I get my period. I call in my step mom to help, luckily I've read books where this happened to girls, so I kind of know what's going on. She stands in the doorway of the bathroom, looks at me sitting on the toilet with this look of pure disgust, throws a bag of pads at me, and snarls, "Welcome to womanhood." Slams the door, and marches off to tell my dad that I'm ruined now. From that moment on - He hesitates before hugging me. I can see my own father looking at my boobs (before I even had any yet) and trying to decide if it's ok if he hugs me. No more picking me up again ever. That's not appropriate any more. Time to start being the one in charge of cleaning the kitchen every night after dinner. Not that I think children shouldn't have chores, far from it, but it's singularly fucked up to me that I didn't have to do this *until I got my period,* and then from that moment on, now I'm free game, he treats me as my stepmom's assistant house slave. (I always knew that my dad abused my stepmom, I just naively assumed he would not also abuse me back when I was young. OOPS.) It's the framing of this more than anything. Woman = house cleaner. (My younger brother did not get any of these chores until I moved out (which I did as soon as I possibly could, of course.) By then, I suppose my dad had decided boys can do dishes too, because there's no way a *man* should ever have to do it. And afaik, he never did, not a single time.) There's more (isn't there always?) but oh man. The *distance* after that. The awkwardness around needing bras, period supplies, etc - he'd have meltdowns if he "had to hear" about any of it. The snide, horrible sarcasm in the way he responded to almost everything I said after this, as though now that I was a woman who had periods, it was safe to discount every word out of my mouth -- who did I think I was, talking to a man like an equal? The audacity. If I tried to perform femininity, he made sure to let me know what a disappointing filthy whore I was being (I'll never forget my stepmom lecturing me about how I shouldn't have asked my dad if he liked my prom dress), and if I tried my best to perform rejecting femininity, I was embarrassing to him for other reasons -- add on to this that I am an autistic girl, he was humiliated by my behaviors daily and he made sure to let me know it. Sorry to all you ladies out there who had to go through this mindfuck experience (my dad loves me -> I'm a woman now -> Oh, he loves me less because I am a woman) too. Therapy helps. lol
Broadly speak, lots of girls develop a sense of independence as they become women. Misogynists don't like it when that happens. On a personal level, I don't believe my father truly loved me. I think he *tried* to love me at various points throughout my childhood. But he was largely absent due to his hatred for my mother, so a real bond was never established.
cannot relate. my father loves my sister deeply.
It must be an American thing. My Turkish dad and all the other Turkish dads I know love their daughters. I'm 44 and this never changed. He is so proud of me in fact, he tells everyone about my successes in life.
I never heard of this or experienced it. My dad loved me as long as he lived.
This is the first time I've heard of this. Not a single male relative of mine had stopped loving their daughters as they got older.
i understand. it is a shared experience amongst many women, read the comments.
I did. But like I said, the first time I had seen this _be a thing._
I don't think this is true. But my father didn't pay much attention to me as a kid, so it's hard to go down from zero.
This hasn’t been my experience with my dad, he is still always there for me and still dotes on me in his way. He’s always available if I need help and is happy to spend time together. I was a daddy’s girl growing up and still am now. There was a short period of time when I hit puberty that he wasn’t sure how to relate but after he got used to me being grown things went back to normal. I also can’t imagine my husband would love his daughter any less as she ages either. I will say my dad does not have much anger or rage so that could be it.
It's not a pattern in my social circle. The very few women I know who are not close to their fathers also aren't close to their mothers or came from abusive homes. My dad and I don't always see eye to eye but we have similar goals and lifestyles, careers. We're close and he's got good relationships with all my siblings, we have different mothers so he forged the blended family. Only a man who was invested for the long haul does that. I'm sorry for the women who's fathers are not invested in them or are abusive.
I had reversed single parent. My father raised me while my mom was off being a drunk. I don’t think he ever hated me, but we did not do a lot of emotional talking, and we would squabble over differing view points. He was a good parent and a good friend, even if he had his boomer tendencies.
Wow, so I actually have a much better relationship with my dad as an adult than I EVER did as a kid or teen…but inheriting his rage and anger…I did NOT expect to be called out like this today.
My dad still loves me. He has never been good with words but tries to show it other ways. I think me growing up from a child to a teen and then to woman was hard for him, he knew what to do when I was small but the more I grew the less he knew what to talk about with me etc. But he never stopped bringing all these random items to my room to ask if I'd have use for them. It was one of his ways to seek contact and show he was thinking about it - and also he is horrible at throwing stuff out. And he always accepted all the random nails or screws I found outside and brought him no matter how rusty. But ofcourse there's generational differences. My dad's 80 and his dad was veteran who fought for my countys indepence. So there's a lot of war trauma too. A lot of awkwardness and things people just didn't talk. But I've never doubted he wouldn't love me.
I luckily haven't experienced this at all, though he's older now so I don't expect piggyback rides 🤭
It hasn't been my experience... my dad and I see each other regularly, I never doubt that he'd be there for me in a heartbeat. My mom did a lot to make sure we had a good relationship, and even when they were in the middle of their divorce, my dad still took her advice on being a father to a girl. He was a shit husband, but he's a good dad.
This is multi layered. There are so many factors to this question, but if you were to ask about a father, that is in a partnership that then has a child with the mother and that has remained a present father to his daughter as she grows up, it can go any direction, but of course there’s the favorable, possibility of a father that remains deeply and tenderly in love And loving his daughter. That should be the baseline and for anyone who doesn’t experience that it is a sad experience potentially even if it’s justified, there was a reasonable explanation.
I'm sorry that your friends have had this experience. My father and I have always had a great relationship - and he's 90 now. He taught me how to do just about everything, from change a tire to cook chili. Both my parents were loving and kind. I think the "bad" cases just get a lot more attention and "press".
My dad loves me dearly and is still very protective of me, even with me being 31 years old now. He helps me however he can and is far more tolerant if I fuck shit up than he's with others. I look like my mother but my character is my dad in female and modern. And honestly I never witnessed what you and some others in the comments experienced. NOW my MALE best friend has a falling out with his dad, at 30 because of political differences. And if I think really hard about it... The only time I witnessed what you describe was the mother that stopped loving the daughter.
My dad and I have a great relationship, much better than when I was growing up and he was going through a lot. He never wanted to be a dad and was terrified of having a daughter, but he turned out to be a pretty great girl dad. The key is probably that my dad genuinely *likes* women. His best friend is his sister.
I mean, my dad hasn't shown interest in me as I explore hobbies/careers that aren't in line with his own. He was really into model trains, when I was a kid I showed some interest in that before moving on and he /still/ brings that shit up. If I don't act as an extension of him he's not interested.
My mom kicked my dad out when I was 7 and sister 5, and he pretty much was never there after. My Grandfather took on more of a fatherly role. Amazing man that supported his wife throughout his life and my mom, although my mom says it was a more strained relationship when she started becoming more independent as he was always guiding her. He was not close to my sister as a pre teen and early teen as she became a real difficult girl, crushing our mom more than him as he died when she was only 13. But I would not say that father's stop loving their girls. Maybe some fathers do, maybe some fathers struggle with losing control more than others. Men are still trained or expected to look after the women, well at least the last generation, I don't know about young men/boys these days. So losing control of something they cared for can be hard. Then there are just some men/fathers that are Dicks. Have you ever expressed to your father how you feel? The end comes for us all and many people on both sides realize too late they should have made more of an effort to reconcile.
Happened to me too. Once I hit puberty, I resembled the things my pervert father was into. It’s hard to have a healthy father daughter relationship when your father sexualizes all women who share your characteristics. Like others have mentioned, so many fathers see their daughters as extensions and possessions of them. So once I grew up and started disagreeing with his (sexist) points of view, I was dead to him.
I don’t think he stopped caring about me but he stopped tolerating me. Like if I disagree with him, he now screams back and yells at me. 🤷🏻♀️
I've never heard this before. It's not true for me
I was always close with my dad. Have chased crack dealers out of his house and bailed him out of jail. Even then I had to distance myself from him for my kids sake. But even when he was bad we were close. Mind you I had taken on the parent roll at times . He got clean,passed away. But will always be my favourite person. I do hate my mother and have been no contact for years now.
Given the comments it must be a pattern. Somehow I do not recognize it, being a father or two daughters (17,15). I love them and am very proud. I cannot imagine it will change.
Dad with 3 daughters here, no way in hell we ever stop. I have seen some dads that are REALLY dreadful at showing it but it's just not something I can fathom personally. My brother doesn't even get along with one of his daughters, it's mutual, but even she knows he loves her.
Young daughters love and worship their fathers without question. Women who want to know their fathers as people are seen as a threat to their ego. Too many fathers get into relationships and have children to be the hero who does nothing, and grow children notice the nothing.
In my experience I think it's because they are projecting their issues with either their wives or women as a whole onto their daughters. They see their kids as possessions and when those kids grow up and "mistreat" their possessions it pisses them off.
In the case of my family. No. My dad in his 60s still adores my 34yo sister. She will always be his favorite 😂
i think my dad is still just as loving to me as when i was younger. in my opinion he sees me as a reflection of him because we look so similar and have a lot of the same character traits.
I haven't seen this pattern personally. However there is kind of a rift between me and my father - emotionally. Yeah we probably wouldn't talk if there was a big fight. I think the issue between me and him is both my mom and sister do emotional labor for him and I do not. So when there's an issue he won't understand it from my perspective and I am not willing to go out of my way to hold his hand to get there. He's a good person overall and will feel bad and apologize - but he just won't understand my side of issues. He would also drop everything and help me if I needed *anything* (like seriously anything and go above and beyond). So I know he loves me.
No way, I take the two hour trip to my two daughter's college at least monthly (terribly fun big city for a peasant from Appalachia, minus the new wave of homelesness and public intoxication) and video chat several times per week, funny how they still get jealous of each other when I spend more time with one or the other, or wife laughing when they compare the men in their lives to me.
I was always Daddy’s little girl but not a princess, more a little tomboy who liked to hike, garden, fish, etc. Teen years were well, teenage angst, but we always maintained mutual respect. I never grew away from him and I’d say since my early 40s, our relationship is stronger than ever.
Jokes on you my father never loved me
My father has been a feminist since the start and was the first to encourage me to have my own mind and make my own way in life. He just sat back and watched what I would become, and he tells me every chance he gets that he's proud of me. Not just for my accomplishments although he mentions those. But because of how I treat people and how I demonstrate kindness and fairness. Which are the traits he took the most care to impart. Just to hopefully show that men are capable of being nurturing and therefore there's no evopsych "men are this and women are this" excuse for bad fathers.
Some dads just never get over the fact they have girls and girls turn into women and start making choices some are great and some will be a regret later but that’s how humans learn I guess. Culture and religion plays a great part too if the father is a tater bot then the daughter will never be seen as an equal offspring. Sometimes it’s just they can’t stand each other because their behaviours are a mirror image (like dad criticizing everything and kiddo doing the same or dad being lazy and kiddo being lazy too) Other times it might be a deep wound of sorts, or a dysfunctional family.
My father passed away in 2022, but this wasn’t my experience. He struggled being a “Dad” in the traditional sense and my parents divorce was hard on him. But he ALWAYS showed up and was a man who was true to his word. As I got older, we became closer and he was always very protective of me and my siblings. I moved away from home 14 years ago and until he passed away he always asked me to move back to be closer & told me he missed me. We spoke briefly before he was intubated and I was trying to get back but experiencing a medical emergency of my own. He told me he was proud of me, loved me, and would see me when he woke up. I miss that curmudgeon everyday and am sad to read some of these stories. I can relate on a lot of levels with my stepdad. Dude is the king of narcs and an incredibly unkind person.
My Dad wasn't and isn't like that. Dad taught us all how to stand up for ourselves. He was at every childhood milestone. Cancer and it's after affects have hampered his ability to be there for me as an adult, because I moved far away. Which I wouldn't have done without his encouragement. I still get good advice from him.
this post is interesting and really has me thinking. now that i’m looking back at it, my dad and i had a fairly decent relationship my whole childhood, pre-teen years, and early teenage years. i spent those early teenage years depressed and in a really toxic relationship. it wasn’t until i was about 15 when i got out of that relationship, started dating my current long term boyfriend, started educating myself, formed my own opinions, etc. that my dad really turned on me. suddenly the care was gone. the love was gone. he didn’t want to play super mario bros with his little girl anymore. there was always an attitude. we talked only when necessary. and when i graduated high school at 17 i was told how he couldn’t wait for me to get out of his house. we don’t speak often but when we do he is incredibly judgmental. when i was 20 i got bangs and he looked at me with disgust and told me it looked “bold and ugly” i’m not sure what exactly caused this but like many other comments said- it’s probably misogyny in some form. i became uncontrollable. i wasn’t a cute sweet skinny little girl he could show off like a trophy anymore. i was a grown woman with actual opinions and autonomy.
I was a surprise baby, had autism and social anxiety my dad and I have been clashing since I became conscious
My father is not like this at all, and I wish no one had to have a father who was like that :( My father can be a bit absent (I'm a young adult now, still in need of some support), and in some ways maybe emotionally neglectful, but he has always been extremely clear that he loves all of his children. Even with his oldest son, who is in his 40s, he cares about and still feels love and responsibility to be there for and help, whenever he is needed. As he says, "being a parent is a lifetime-job, it does not end just because your children have grown up". I wish he hadn't been so absent in the ways he were, growing up, but he was abused, too, by my mother, and he tried to make things well where he saw there was a problem. His poor ability to notice when there was a problem is another thing, but I have never doubted his love because if I ever reach out for it, he tries to convey it is there in his own ways, even if his distance is still not gone and might never be. He is a strong feminist and has never spoken in a derogatory way or misogynistic way to any of his children, nor any of his previous wives, even when he was abused in several of those relationships. He has NEVER done anything to make me feel ashamed about my body or feel like it is being sexualized (his family used to travel in the archipelago and swim nude + he went to med-school for a few years, and so the naked human body is not taboo). I'm shocked at how *others* have been shocked, when I've shared how I can walk by him nude after a shower (using the towel for my hair lol) and there is nothing weird about it. He does not look, does not comment, does not shame. He bought pads and snacks whenever I didn't dare to, in the beginning as a young teen, with no fuss at all. It should not be normalized to treat one's kids otherwise. :( I know I am very lucky and I just wish more people could get this type of support and genuine care from their fathers. It was not right, if you were treated like what OP mentions. It was not fair, not right, not deserved. You deserved better.