MEN - when did you finally understand/ forgive your Dad? (page 2)

wha happened?

I think when I finally got a clue is when a young couple moved into our guest house. The wife had grown up with my ex wife as JW's. The couple were expecting and soon enought there was an addition to the family. When I started to watch what they went through as young parents, baby sick, up all night, no sleep, etc etc, I felt compelled to apologize to my parents for acting like such a shit when I was a teeneager

Locutus of Borg

I have forgiven but am still angry.

We came into the kult when I was 5, in 1958. He was mentally and physically abusive and a hypocrit, still is. I am legally blind in my left eye and partially deaf in my left ear due to his beatings.

He held all congregational positions, wore his righteousness like an overcoat that went on when around other witnoids, came off otherwise. Had me fucking scared shitless of dying at armageddon most of my life from 5 to 13 or so when I started to figure it out. He ALWAYS treated other witnoids better than his own family.

He was a womanizer and a philanderer.

He made millions in the 60s and 70s in construction and real estate and land speculation. then pissed it away pioneering for the kult in the 80s and 90s to absolve himself. He owned three beautiful homes. He pioneered right through the bank repoing his $500,000 country home up north. Then moved to another home he owned down south until the bank repoed that one a few years later. Now he is living in a rental cottage that he owned with it mortgaged to the limit (way beyond actually) and will be repoed eventually.

Now he is old, sick, and penniless, living on credit card debt. He doesn't get much SS because he didn't report but a minimum of his earnings during his life.

He could have done alot for his sons, left a ton of assetts and a thriving construction business to us when he passed, but he didn't, the kult got every last penny. We have had to make it for ourselves. I have two brothers still in who are on the same track as him. My youngest brother never bought into it, he is doing OK.

The sins of the fathers . . .

Reflecting on the above, no I have not forgiven.

knows better

i never understood my dad. he was a drinker and didn't seems to care about us. until he was on his death bed.

i have forgiven him. just can't forget the injustice of it all. he had everything and didn't want it. sad man really

Mad Dawg

My father used to beat me till I bled for sins real and imagined. He never played baseball, or football or anything else with me. Never watched a game on TV with me until I was in my 30's. He took my sister fishing all the time, never me. And yet, I was always the loyal one. Of 4, I am the only one who still speaks with him.

Today, at 70, he is a pitiful old man. His life has been wasted by anger. It has destroyed every relationship he had. We have a working relationship, but we will never be close. I still do not understand him, and am not sure that I want to. I can't understand a person so adamant on being right that they are willing to sacrifice every relationship to prove it.

When I was a kid, he was offered a position in the factory he worked in as a supervisor. He turned it down because he didn't want to be an "asshole." Everybody in management was automatically an asshole. When I landed my job as an engineer, he asked me, "Are you in management?" I responded, "Yes Dad, I am an assshole now."

XJW4EVR

I do not have a need to forgive my father, as there is really nothing for me to forgive.

Could he have helped me out by assisting me in getting a college education? Yes, he could have, but the fact that I did it myself (work, grades, financially) made it all the more sweet when I crossed the stage and recieved my BA.

Could he have actually done something with his professional life, instead of being a barber, janitor or restaurant owner? Yes, he could have, but that is his issue, not mine. BTW, I respect hi, because he never worked for anyone else, and that entrepenurial streak is in me. I just need to find the outlet for that entrepenurialism.

Could he have made different choices in his religion? Perhaps.

The thing I have learned is that all these things are in the past. Were there things that could have been done better? Perhaps, but I can't change those things. I can only learn from those mistakes and strive not to make them again.

leftbelow

I had more guilt then anger toward my dad. But we were getting really close until I let my guard down and said something negitive about the Org. Now he barely talks to me at all. But I still love him becuase in a different time and place it would have been me shunning him.

So everytime I get the chance I just tell him I love him!

MEN - when did you finally understand/ forgive your Dad?