Physical & Emotional Abuse Support Group

No, it's not stupid to love your dad. No parent is perfect, no matter how hard we try. He had his faults but it sounds like it was more with your mother. Love your father.

I love my dad a lot. sometimes I get so upset I can't controll myself, I do and say horrible things. And I think a lot of that has to do with being abused. My dad was abused way worse than me, his only faliure is letting that beat him rather than being strong enough to face it and work through it like I have.

I had a dad like that and he totally ripped up my self esteem, my ability to be in a realtionship with a man, and basically, I can`t really say that I have anything good to say about him period. As far as I am concerned, he is a destroying enemy. I have written him off and will have nothing to do with him. He is so self focussed on his own wants and pleasures that he couldn`t even be anything of a dad to his sweet little girl. He had to destroy. He can go straight to he** for all I care.

Its normal to want to love your parents ,but dont let that love come between you and non abusive family members or let that love alow you to be abused anymore ,you need firm boundries to make sure he is not abusive any more and you need to be prepared to walk away if he starts being abusive toward you or anyone around you .Abusers are capable of behaving if they think they can not get way with anything ,in a marage or childhood it is imposable to control their behavior but as a grown woman you have the power to simply walk away if you have to ,that may keep him in line ,but dont think he is really not that bad ,he is just playing nice ,he has not become a saint...good luck...

this sounds just like my father, if you add a lot of physical and possibly sexual abuse into it. the focus on grades, nothing ever being good enough, constant criticism and putting people down, and then the public displays of self-righteousness..... and, he was strongly church-going which is what REALLY got me - there he was, convincing everyone he was this upstanding citizen and decent man!

i have found it very hard to forgive him over the years and have written it off as a fissure that will never be healed. i'm not interested in healing my relationship with him - only in my own self-esteem as well as being close to my mother whom i love. i just don't feel he deserves any more of my energy.

his needs and wants always came first and he took everything. i dare say i hate him. but, i think it's very normal to want and need your parents' love, and to want to love them. you just need to determine whether letting your father in will be healthy to your overall development, or not.

No it's not. My Dad has done the same type of stuff to me and I still love him.

No, it's not stupid at all. I had a rough time with my parents growing up. They were very strict, and as you said nothing was ever good enough. I mean, they even had the yard surveyed and marked off with white string and I wasn't allowed to leave the yard until I turned 16 and got a job. Then things changed a bit. My sister had free run of the neighborhood before I was even allowed out of the yard and she is 5 years younger than me. So I turned 18 and moved out very fast to get away from the yelling and name calling and occassionally a hit here and there. I met my x-husband and the relationship was horrible. He ended up stabbing me, I had no choice but to live with my parents at the time for I had my daughter. One day she was being her ornery self (all little ones are at times) and my dad took his fist and thumped her on the top of her head. Not hard enough to floor her, but her papa hit her and it crushed her heart and mine as well. That day I looked at my father and told him that this WOULD NOT continue. They love my daughter so very much, but I told him that he needed to get some help or I would pack everything up and leave. My daughter is not going to go through or see what I had to see all growing up and even into my adult years by my husband. My dad got on Zoloft, and he is a totally different person. I mean loving, kind, and everything. Of course he gets irritated at times, it is just human nature. He can control it now though. If she gets ornery (she is 5 now) he tells her it is going to be "time-out" time. She settles right down. I have seizures and strokes so I live in the apartment above them with my boyfriend and daughter. I look at this as a start of a relationship that I never had with my dad. We all just started over again in a sense. The past is there but we don't dwell on it, we are all aware of it, but it is not talked about a whole lot anymore since we spent days talking and straightening things out. When I was growing up I was always so frustrated inside, I don't like that feeling at all. I can now enjoy my family and truly love everyone. It doesn't always turn out that way, but I thank the Lord that it did for me. I have no worries about my dad watching my daughter while I go to the doctor, I know it has changed. My daughter gets to see my dad for who he could have always been, and I love that.

my dad was verbally abusive to my mom, sister and brother, but I was born late in life and he had changed. I love him and I was his little girl, but I am not naive to what he did and sometimes I feel very sad and angry at him. But mostly, I love him and miss him terribly. He passed away when I was 17. Your feelings are your feelings and feelings aren't wrong or right...they are feelings and whatever they are, they are ok to have.