JBR
Senior Member
I believe there was love in my family, but my mother and father had very different personalities — and for me that resulted in confusion and resentment for many years.
I felt my mother's love all through my years with her. She was caring, communicative, lively-minded, interested in emerging ideas.
My dad was responsible and hard working, but seemed to have made up his mind about everything before his kids were born. He was ethical in relation to work & business. He was basically old-fashioned and rigid, and he had a hair-trigger temper. He believed in physical punishment with his boys. I became ambivalent in how I felt about him. In my adolescence I couldn't talk with him about my feelings & thoughts, and I became resentful. After I left the family nest, he at one point divulged to my younger brother "I didn't want to have kids, but your mother wanted to".
I always knew my mother loved us. Years later, I'd unkinked my emotions and clarified things in my understanding, and I realized that our dad did love his wife & sons... but sadly his emotional straightjacket, confusions, and work-related grind affected his manner in the home.
I felt my mother's love all through my years with her. She was caring, communicative, lively-minded, interested in emerging ideas.
My dad was responsible and hard working, but seemed to have made up his mind about everything before his kids were born. He was ethical in relation to work & business. He was basically old-fashioned and rigid, and he had a hair-trigger temper. He believed in physical punishment with his boys. I became ambivalent in how I felt about him. In my adolescence I couldn't talk with him about my feelings & thoughts, and I became resentful. After I left the family nest, he at one point divulged to my younger brother "I didn't want to have kids, but your mother wanted to".
I always knew my mother loved us. Years later, I'd unkinked my emotions and clarified things in my understanding, and I realized that our dad did love his wife & sons... but sadly his emotional straightjacket, confusions, and work-related grind affected his manner in the home.