Poll: Do you have a good relationship with your dad?

In My Humble Opinion
1

I would like to see how good of a relationship the average person (at least the average Doper) has with their dad.

Could you indicate:

  1. Do you have a good relationship with your dad?

  2. If no, then:
    a) How do you feel about that? (Do you care, does it bother you?)
    b) Do you have a better relationship with your mom?

  3. Gender.
    I’ll go first:

  4. No

a) It bugs me a lot
b) Yes

  1. Male
2

Yes
Male

3
  1. Now: yes, excellent; used not to be during my teenage years, though.
  2. Not applicable.
  3. Male.
4

[ol][li]Sort of; it’s much, much better than when I was a kid/teenager, but it isn’t perfect. We’re both very controlling people, and we like things done our way. Problem is our way is different. I know he loves me and wants the best for me, and I love him and would do anything for him. Well, almost anything – I won’t do things his way all the time![/li][li]I wish it could be an easier relationship, like I have with my mom, or like my siblings have with him.[/li]Female.[/ol]

5

Yes

I’m very close to both of them but my relationship is different with each.

My father raised us as teenagers, my mom when we were young (yeah, I have a stay-at-home dad, kinda, he has a job but he sits in the house…anyway). My relationship with my father is way more intellectual and we “get” each other’s sense of humour etc… My mother is a bit humourless but unlike my father, she’s not crazy so can be depended on more to find a practical solution to problems and not get overly excited at the drop of a hat. I love them both for what they are.

Female.

6
  1. Not much of one. For instance, I don’t recall him ever telling me he loved me.
  2. I’d like to have a better relationship, but he’s very trying.
  3. Male
7

  1. Yes, we have a pretty decent relationship. There’s a lot less fiction than there is with my mom. (FTR her and my brother get along even less well) He’s always been the more stable parent, so there’s that.

  2. Female

8
  1. Yes, terrific relationship.

Male

9

Should have previewed… by that I mean that AFAIR he’s never told me that to my face. I’m sure he has, just not anytime recently, like in the past 25 years.

10

**Do you have a good relationship with your dad?**Yeah, sorta.

Do you have a better relationship with your mom? Not really. Mom and dad always have been busy with their own lives, and I really don’t owe them a lot. The main difference is that dad is an easier person to get along with in general, lives close, and welcomes my advice and assistance, whereas my mom doesn’t.

I’m female, 39.

11

good relation with dad? yeah. a great onel, actually. i count myself lucky to have him as a dad and hope i’m half as good if/when i have kids.

yes, there’s a worse relation with the female birth giver. this is due to many many things, all of which could be a pit thread. i recognize that she has my welfare in mind, but everything she touches turns to shit. i don’t know if she intends it, likes the constant chaos, or if it’s just some brand of fate.

male, 24

12

Way, way better. I consider her my only real parent and him a relative that gives anything at all as an unexpected bonus.

Male, 32

13

1) Do you have a good relationship with your dad?

Mostly. Not perfect, but enjoyable and companionable and mutually respectful at least.
b) Do you have a better relationship with your mom?**

I wouldn’t say that. My Mom and I don’t always communicate as well, although she’s generally not as stubborn. I have a lot of respect for her, although not the “put her on a pedestal” type. I think she respects me more as the years go by.

3) Gender.

male

14
  1. Do you have a good relationship with your dad?

No, he was a tyrant with a wide mean and violent streak, and he became an alcoholic. I hadn’t seen him for the last 25 years of his life, and I didn’t go to his funeral.

  1. If no, then:
    a) How do you feel about that? (Do you care, does it bother you?)

I don’t feel bad about not having had a relationship with him; he didn’t want one. But I’m bothered about a lot of things regarding it. Mostly, I don’t care. Can’t change it now.

b) Do you have a better relationship with your mom?

I did for the last six years of her life. Before that, it was off and on.

  1. Gender.

Male.

15
  1. Not good, in the sense of having genuineness; not bad, in the sense of hostility or anger. He is willfully un-self-aware, so there is no possibility of a real relationship. His motto is that there is no use looking back and dwelling on mistakes, so don’t talk about stuff that happened in the past.

2a. I’m ok with it. It’s too late for a father relationship to do me any good. I now play the part for his sake, because I’m not angry or bitter any more, thanks to a couple of years of therapy. Sadly, my sister is not so fortunate.

2b. Not really, she was very similar, although less angry herself (she died about three years ago). She was, perhaps, a little more open to growth.

  1. Male (gay)
16
  1. Somewhat. Dad was in his 40s when I was born so I didn’t get to do things with him like other boys with their dads[sup]1[/sup]. He was also a little abusive[sup]2[/sup] and imposing[sup]3[/sup].
    2a. Not really. I think our relationship is pretty much normal.
    2b. Yeah, I am. Mom is a traditional housewife; I always had more contact with her than Dad.
  2. Male.

[sup]1[/sup]Like how to throw, how to fight, etc. He did teach me how to play cards.
[sup]2[/sup]“You have to hit them to get their attention.” Other than spankings when I misbehaved, he rarely hit me; I recall being slapped in the face when I wouldn’t get up to go to church but that’s it. The threat was always there, though.
[sup]3[/sup]He’s a WWII veteran who lied about his age in order to enlist and applied his military training to us kids. He was mostly out of that habit by the time I came along.

17

1) Do you have a good relationship with your dad?

Very much so, I’m grateful for both my parents and my relationship with them but even more for my Dad. Hell, the spare bedroom in my home is called ‘Grandma and Grandpa’s room’ since it basically exists for their convenience. We had the typical turbulent teen years, he undoubtedly got the worse end of that since I’m the youngest of four closely spaced girls, but even through all the drama and strife I always knew I was loved unconditionally. The older I get, the luckier I feel to have had that gift.

We went thru a rather odd period in my early twenties of my father telling me he was proud of me constantly, I finally realized he’d had such low expectations for me that he figured I’d not make it as a grownup and he’d be supporting me in a basement or some such, hence his apparent joy at my non-fuckedupness.

His politics have gotten increasingly conservative as he’s gotten older, so we often argue about Big Stuff but in an enjoyable non-vindictive kind of way. I appreciate the effort he took growing up to hide some of his less wonderful traits from us kids, homophobia and bigotry for instance, and we’ve had some very serious arguments about those things as adults. We finally arrived at a tenuous peace, realizing the other one isn’t going to change but I played the big trump card of not being involved in the family if I have to hear that type of stuff and he gracefully ceded and keeps his opinions to himself.

Recently I took a turn on my career path that’s coincidentally bringing me quite close to the career he retired from so now we have all sorts of work-related chatter and I know he’s bursting with happiness about it, so I’m glad for him.
3) Gender.

Female

18
  1. Yes, a very good relationship.

I have a good relationship with my mom, too, but I’m more like my dad than my mom in a lot of ways. We like the same TV shows, for instance, which my mom detests because they are too violent or bloody or whatever. Also, my dad has a Doper-like sense of skepticism which obviously I share, whereas my mom occasionally goes in for airy fairy New Age stuff (like, she had her astrological chart done once) that makes my dad and me roll our eyes. We have a similar sense of humor and recommend each other books and movies all the time.

I think my parents are mostly happy that they have one functioning daughter, as my sister is currently en route to a life of pathetic loserdom.

My dad has a pretty short fuse and when I was 11-15 or so, we fought a lot, until I realized there was pretty much no point, as we both felt bad about it the next day. At that point I simply refused to engage him in arguments anymore. I think the last fight we had was nine years ago, when I was eighteen. (My sister’s never been able to figure this out. They fight all the freaking time.)

  1. I’m female. And I live on the opposite side of the country from my family, which may help.
19

1) Do you have a good relationship with your dad?

I have an amazing relationship with my dad - I’ve been my dad’s girl from the beginning. I couldn’t have asked for a better father - he’d move heaven and earth for me and my brother (and now, our children, or soon-to-be-born children).

b) Do you have a better relationship with your mom?

Nope - I love my mom and we get along much better now that I’m an adult, but we’ve always had a precarious relationship. I think we’re a little too similar at times.

3) Gender.

I’m female.

20

I have never met my biological father.

The man I called “daddy”, the man I believed was my father until I was sixteen years old, loved me very much. He made my mother promise never to tell me the truth, he wanted to be my one and only father. The last time I saw him was right after I started my first semester of college, he was so proud of me. A couple of weeks later he died. My mother had broken her promise and told me, but I never let on, and he went to his grave knowing that he was my one and only father.