Hello to you both again! Thank you for the additional feedback. Inky – I’m sorry to hear your relationship with your father is strained. Some men struggle to express their feelings, especially towards the ones they love. Also, I sometimes wonder whether some fathers in a father/son relationship perhaps don’t feel a little competitive with their child. It must be hard relinquishing the reigns to a younger male. I’m not sure. Just speculating. The issue I describe in this post came up because we happened to visit my in-laws last weekend. We only see them a two/three times a year so it’s all very manageable but when these instances of favoritisms do creep up, I become enraged/perplexed and have to work through those feelings. I’ve tried to resist psychoanalyzing the situation because doing so presupposes that there may be some legitimate reason why his father behaves the way he does. Perhaps it’s all more about understanding why he does what he does while still remaining critical of these patterns of behavior. Anyway, thanks once more.

Aiyana – your post made me smile! 🙂 Thank you for your suggestions. Perhaps my efforts to encapsulate family dynamics across four decades and three generations made it all seem a bit more dramatic than it is day to day. I wish you good luck with your father’s day efforts.

Take care,

Hester