Regi,

Your father definitely cares about you. You need to realize that some people dont know how to process emotions, or even how to show they care. Some people in life don’t know how to ask others how their life is going; you must have had a good mother (or another adult) because you noticed this behaviour and you have realized it does not feel good. You are capable of showing emotion and being the father you never had.

Forgive your father because he was never given the chance that you were given that is, to realize just how to care and show others empathy. Your father is telling you that he is incapable of helping you in those areas of your life and you will learn that this is alright. Nobody is perfect. Realizing our parents aren’t perfect is hard but necessary. It might help to see it as a type of handicap that was imposed on him when he was a child by his father. What is important is it seems he has good intentions and does not seem abusive.

Do you want to feel better about your father? I had two that were pure evil. My real father left my mother before I was born and I never met him and my step father murdered my mother.

Trust me when I say your father is doing the best he can. 🙂

Dear Regi:

Adult children sure do their very best to accept their parents the way they are (your last line), put a lot of effort to understand their parents’ childhood, their parents’ difficulties, their parents’ feelings, reaching out to the parent, again and again, asking, listening.

But many parents  do not make that kind of effort, not even close, as you described about your father: “He doesn’t say anything. He doesn’t show any emotions… silence.. he changes the subject. He never asks”.

What I found out is that this is often the case because parents have to earn others’ attention and love but their children’s love is guaranteed to them. A parent’s emotional investment in one’s child is not required because a child, minor or adult, is there for the parent, forgiving anything, accepting everything.

anita

Dear Regi:

A parent knows that a child will follow them (much like a fawn follows its mother deer into the forest, anywhere she goes), no matter what. As a matter of fact, the more rejecting a parent, the more desperately the child follows, looking for attention, for acknowledgment.

On the other hand, more often than not, if a person rejects a neighbor, a boyfriend/girlfriend, that person will reject in return. So the person invests in the other, tries to be nice, attentive.

And so, often, a parent will be nice to everyone else, to strangers in the street, but not to their own children.

Does this make sense to you, did you witness this yourself in other people, perhaps?

anita

Dear Regi:

I don’t understand what you mean by “My dad also will never be able to show empathy, he never has”- because you wrote earlier: “There was empathy on his face for sure” regarding his wife, your step mother. So when you wrote that he will never be able to show empathy, you mean, show empathy to you, specifically, correct?

But if he is able to show empathy for the step mother, then he is able to show empathy. In this case he is able to show empathy for you too, is he not?

anita

Dear Regi:

You wrote that he doesn’t know how to show his empathy- but you wrote that he showed it toward your step mother.

When you feel empathy, do you show it, does it show on your face, in your voice… is it something you try to do, to have it shown or does it happen automatically, naturally?

anita

Dear Regi:

My voice gets softer when  I am talking to  a person to whom I feel empathy. My eyes are  looking at the person (not away), my facial features alert. I am facing the person, attentive to  the person (not walking away, not  busy doing  anything other than attending to the  person).

Sometimes I don’t feel empathy, but determined to act empathetically, I do.

Which brings me back to your father (he  is in the title  of your thread). I suppose he too, if he didn’t feel empathy, could intend to and  determine too act empathetically  toward you.

anita