Letter to my father

[Carolynn]

You know CJ, I read you father's letter when it was first posted, and frankly, I was so disappointed in it that I just did not know what to say. What I got from his entire letter, this often somewhat delightful intellectual, philosophical discourse, could be boiled down into a few singularly un-helpful sentences--Don't need the approval of others for your self esteem; Keep others at arms length; Be A Man (whatever that may mean). Honestly CJ, I have lived among men for 63 years, have been partially socialized into sets of male behavior to keep from being beaten and rejected, and passed, mostly, in the male world, and I STILL DO NOT UNDERSTAND THEM!! I feel so bad for you that this man with the obviously excellent intellect was unable to be human enough to understand the simple act of acknowledgement you asked for, and loving enough to be able to give it. I am glad you have at least returned to the edge of the barrier of understanding between you to find a comfort zone where a relationship can be continued, but sad it will never be what you need.

Please be at peace with what you can have my friend.

Love, Carolynn

[Anita]

Hi CJ--
I thought I had posted on this after your father's letter came through. On one look-through I don't see any post from me, so it was one I thought about a lot, but didn't get around to writing.

And Les Brown would likely add: "Repeat after me: 'I deserve the best that life has to offer and I need to be happy right now! Not when a whole bunch of conditions have been met... but right now!'

It took me a while to see why this rubbed me the wrong way. The above quote I can agree with, as a way of looking at life in the big picture; it's an ideal that fits how I try to live.

But if someone is coming to me with specific emotional stuff they need to bring to my attention, then I might seem uncaring if I bring this up.

I've been on both sides of this issue in my life. With many of my girlfriends, I was playing the role of your father, being the logical person who could see clearly how the world ought to work. The girlfriend seemed like the one with all the messy emotions. Why couldn't she just accept reality?

With other people, especially family members, I was the emotional one who was seeing problems between us. And they were the ones who were fending me off, insisting that there was no problem, or it was mainly with me, or I was being totally unreasonable.

Is either position "better?" I doubt it. I had to learn a lot about really listening to my girlfriends, trying not to "fix" them before I heard them out.
On the flip side, I had to learn how to almost immediately back off from family members who couldn't handle even a fraction of my emotions.

I guess I'd have to say that I also learned that reversing the whole picture upsets everyone, too. The few times I did suddenly get emotional with my girlfriends, it was way too much for them, too--they were counting on me being the logical pole, even though it was frustrating them!
On the other side, my family members didn't really like it when I calmed down enough to come up with more logical reasons for my feelings; they liked it better when they could just dismiss my emotions as unfounded.

You and your father have both done whatever you could do to address the issues between you. It may not have satisified either one of you, but I think it's useful to remember that both of you tried to do the best that you were capable of at the time. It may not ever change, or...one of you or both of you will find a way to enter the other's world, no matter how briefly.

[Tammy Lynn]

cj i grew up with out my father i never had the father things to do with him so i understand u good luck cj i love u as a freind

[Bernice]

I stumbled on this thread for the first time just today, while Googling “Hugs, Bernice”. Sorry, “Bernice P” is not me. So why do I dredge this intensely painful thread back up after several years of quiet repose? Just heartless, I guess,:P or maybe because it is so insightful, that it bears a fresh look by our newer sisters. There is so much to learn here.

CJ, your father was (or is) much like my father was, always an analytical scientist interested in theories and facts, but apparently not in opinions or feelings. Your father is very intelligent (like father, like child), but also much like the character Spock from Star Trek. Your father is coldly analytical, unemotional, detached. No, it appears that he just doesn’t get this part.

This next rambling will sound unrelated at first: There is only one TV show on one station that my SO (Debbie) likes to watch, but which we cannot get over the air with antennae. Debbie wanted us to continue to spend $600 a year to have cable TV. I offered to purchase the series (“Army Wives”) every season on DVD, in return for our discontinuing cable TV. Anyway, we now watch the episodes without commercial interruption. I cry my eyes out, while she plays “chat-noir” on her laptop, and laughs at me for being so emotional.

“Big Boys don’t cry. Big boys don’t cry.” Yeah, Yeah, well, I’m not 100% male, and most of us here are not 100% male. Perhaps your father is 100% male.

Still, as I grow older, I try to see the positive aspect as often as possible. Your father said: “Emotions add flavor to life and also turbulence.” Imagine that: for 35+ years as a child psychologist, your father professionally detached himself from the problems of people who are inherently very emotional. One possible motivation for that is that he, just like the character Dr. Spock, fears the emotional unraveling that could occur within himself should he ever allow himself to be the slightest bit emotional. (Never mind that having a fear of having emotions is like wanting to go swimming without getting wet.) For him, any emotion was a tremendous threat to his ability to objectively serve the unemotional needs of his clients.

His statement is not a condemnation of you for having emotions. It merely expresses the baggage that comes with emotions. We must not blame him for having conditioned himself to be unemotional. It was an important part of his job. We could say that he shouldn’t have brought this part of his work home with him, but this is not only insensitive to express, but also needlessly confrontational.

I also say “give credit where credit is due.” He obviously cares very much for you, and gave his response a great deal of thought. The mere thought of 32 pages of handwritten anything makes my hand hurt. My father would never have read 14 pages of anything remotely emotional, let alone responded with 32 pages of cogent discussion.

Clearly, your father confessed being unaware of the seriousness of the problems between the both of you. He made a sincere effort to address them to the best of his albeit professional ability. I do hope the reconciliation process continued long after this thread went dormant.

I think we all put our parents on pedestals. As infants, and small children, our parents consistently demonstrate to us that they can reliably meet our every need or want. They are omnipotent and invincible. When we mature, we also suffer some very repulsive indignities: We realize that our childhood perceptions of reality were not 100% accurate, and also that our parents cannot any longer provide for our every need. Our parents suddenly have some very annoying flaws! How dare they? Have they no understanding of just how tormenting their flaws are to our poor and tender psyches?

Our parents do not suddenly choose to be imperfect. They do not become imperfect merely to torment us. It is we who must deal with the fact that they never were perfect. That isn’t always easy; (never mind always, this isn’t ever easy).

Despite the obvious fact that I am emotional, I’d like to think I am something like your father. I’m not a real big huggie touchy feely kind of person in professional circles, or even with my extended family. I seem to be the only one in my family who has any level of discomfort with hugging everyone else. Part of my aloofness in professional settings is fear of rejection, and part of it is fear of charges of sexual harassment. Part of it everywhere else is that it doesn’t seem honest to me to hug someone when I don’t really feel close to them. Learning to express my feelings hasn’t been smooth sailing either, though this forum has been immensely helpful in that respect.

So, when I sign “Hugs” here on this forum, you should all know that that is a sincere and heartfelt feeling.

Hugs,

Bernice

[Dalindra]

I first want to say I doubt I would have found this thread if not for Bernice having found and replied to it.

I went back to the top and started there. 2 hours later, and I admit I did not read every reply I cried alot and feel for both you and your father.

I was never emotionaly close to my father, not that I didn't want it I am not sure he was even capable of it. I Did finally start to get closer to my father in the end (I was working for him at the time) and as we sat not looking at each other, him at his paperwork me at the computer, we were fimally able to open up a bit. Had he not died of a heart attack we may have become even closer though I cannot say.

I recently cam out to my mom who is totaly ok with it. She agrees with me though iy I had to my father he would have dis-owened me and never have spoken to me again.

The only other thing I wanted to say is that when your father talked about "compartmentalizing" things in your life I think some took it the wrong way. Every life needs structure and there are many "parts" to my life I do keep seperate.

This doesn't mean you lock the door and throw away the key on stuff that are painfull or considered over in our lives. And one part of our live cannot be completely seperate from any other part, that will totaly make you crazy as in split personalitys.

Another analogy that has its own problems but I like beter is to think of your self as a cut gem. Each faucet is a diderent part of you, some larger then others but al a part of the whole. We sometimes look at one faucet through a microscope, mostly those we are least pleased with.
But if you want to see the true beuty of the gem that is you, you need to step back and look at the whole thing.

Anyways that is my 2 cents worth.

P.S. I think your father has a better grasp of the English langue then I do

[CJ]

Wow. A blast from the not-so-distant past.

Thanks for your comments, Bernice and Dalindra (and, belatedly, Anita).

It's a little bit weird that this would surface now; I gave my SO, Roxanne, the whole printout of the thread to read just over a month ago. She hadn't known about this correspondence between me and my father. She just loves my father, by the way, and has a deep respect for him, having even gone on to say that she wished her own father were more like mine (emotionally speaking, the former is Captain Kirk to my father's Mr. Spock). What reading this thread has done for her, amongst other things, is to make her better understand where my own "abnormal" desires have taken me in my life. That cannot be a bad thing, I think.

First off, I love my father. I really do. But, as with any relationship, there are places of darkness as well as places of light between us. The places of light have always been a boon to me (and, I hope, to him). These would include the fostering of a natural curiosity about the world and the almost spiritual striving to remain grounded and centered in one's own self. The places of darkness, on the other hand, are the subject of this thread.

My father isn't "unemotional"; I think he's just unable (or perhaps unwilling) to show his emotions to, or to share them with, those he cares about. As such, yes, he's gone through the socialization grinder and come out 100% male, I believe. Of course, this meant something different back in the 40s and 50s. I'm fully aware of that. Part of our confusion today regarding the nature, the form, and the "function" of masculinity, I think, is due to the fact that, from the 60s on, gender roles and expectations have been "deconstructed" to death. It looks as though we're no longer sure what society expects of us as men. Are we to be Kirks or Spocks? (Or, perhaps, McCoys?) My father grew up in an era when such confusion either didn't exist or simply went unacknowledged. To be sure, "unacknowledged" doesn't equal "non-existent." But that's another story. I'd venture a guess--based strictly on my own observations (and I AM an avid people-watcher)--that most men today try to find a comfort zone between Spock's cold rationality and Kirk's ebullient emotionalism. I'll even go out on a limb by further guessing that the rise of male-to-female transgenderism in the public social sphere is an expression of this quest. But that, too, is another tale.

To answer your question, Bernice: yes, the reconciliation continued. Well, actually, the whole issue just went away. I willed it away by deciding to just not "go there" anymore with my father. Thus, our relationship has become somewhat instrumental in nature. I visit him much less often than I formerly did but, when I do, I'm given lists of music he's looking for--he's a rabid jazz fan--and try to find those tunes when I get back home. Recently, more difficult issues have cropped up in my life that have forced me to put my father's wants on hold. I know he senses this, too, but there's nothing to be done about it. He never inquires about the details of my life. And I never volunteer them. Simply because, well, they have much to do with the Captain Kirk side of me, I guess. Hey, even after all these years, I'm still trying to find my own comfort zone, too (my guess is that this zone is hidden deep within the unexplored reaches of the Delta quadrant! ).

By the way, I have to be up front about this: I certainly admire anyone who has the patience to wade through this thread. My hope is that it's not time you'd consider wasted. I know it wasn't for me.

Love,
CJ

[Dalindra]

Not wasted time at all CJ!

Did take about 2 hours but I felt time well spent