Hi, confessional here. I’m a guy (now mid 20s) who was in a relationship with his father from late single digits to my mid teens, which happened as an organic evolution from physical punishments. I don’t have vivid moment-to-moment memories of it, but I remember feeling very cared for, as he was typically very distant and uninterested in me. After the relationship started, we became much closer, and I ended up having an (otherwise) very close and pleasant relationship with him, that I still stupidly have very fond memories of.
He ended up losing interest when I was comfortably in puberty, and our relationship returned to what it used to be. After about a year of that, he divorced my mother, and we moved countries, leaving him behind. I didn’t make contact with him since his death, and although nowadays I’d like to pretend it was out of anger, in reality it was because he never reached out to me. He died about 18 months ago - in the meantime, I’d been having some mildly abusive gay relationships (receiving abuse, but in a complicated way where I’d often provoke otherwise nice people into harming me), and was currently in a reasonably long-running, but distant relationship. When he died, I went back home for the funeral, and generally went crazy for about a month, cutting myself, ruining friendships, doing drugs etc., and when I came home I felt pretty cleansed.
Nowadays, I allow myself to recognise that my feelings were probably more grief and rejection than anger or resentment, and I allow my feelings towards him to colour my life a little. I’ve been in talk therapy, I revealed what was going on to my mother and sister (who were wonderfully supportive, and believed me, thank god), and found out via my aunt that my grandfather abused my father sexually. I’ve generally been doing very well, but occasionally I’ll touch an item of clothing that used to be his, or hear a piece of music he used to love, or recognise him in another person, and I’ll be so overcome with emotion that I often have to excuse myself to self-soothe - I do not try to interrogate what I’m feeling, as I realise it’s not possible to really disentangle negative from positive, or love from anger. Despite that, I feel largely happy nowadays, even if I do feel shame at how strongly I feel love and empathy towards him, and particularly at how strongly I reject the idea I was “abused”. Sorry, that ended up being longer than I anticipated - love your blog, and thank you for having an open space for this. If you have any recommendations for further reading on this topic (although I’m already a Nïn fan, of course), I would love to hear them. À bientôt!
Thank you so much for sharing my love, I'm very happy you felt comfortable telling me about this. It sounds to me you're coping with his actions and his loss about as well as you could, and I'm glad to hear you're happy — grief works in weird and unexpected ways even for the people who had perfectly wholesome parents and even decades down the line, so it makes sense that you'd still find yourself being "triggered" (not necessarily in the traumatic sense) to emotion at seeing reminders of him! I think you don't owe anyone any descriptor you might want to use for yourself, and you're entitled to love and mourn and empathize with (and on the other hand, to have these feelings change and evolve into less positive ones) whoever you want no matter the hurt they may have caused you: I love my mother very dearly despite everything, and knowing what she's been through I have great empathy and pity for her, and in general I don't enjoy describing myself as a victim or a survivor of violence or abuse, and no one can change that except for myself, should I happen to one day start hating my mother or become comfortable with the label of victim. Shame is the enemy of joy, and there's very little use in feeling ashamed about something you can't change at your own will! I love you dear, and I hope your journey only leads you to more happiness and self-understanding, I wish you all the best ❤️
