Axa - Your post makes perfect sense. Over 15 years ago a therapist told me that a struggle I was having with a college professor was a replay of my struggle with my father. I was livid! I thought it preposterous but I couldn't get the thought out of my mind. And as I mulled it over for a couple of years my denseness finally cracked and I saw what she meant. Like you, my father was distant and very set in his ways, unbending. A cookie cutter description fit that particular professor. It would take quite some years still before I understood that what kept me repeating the same pattern with professors, employers, boyfriends, husband was that I was psychologically still locked into a struggle to try to connect with my father.
Now I see clearly that until I gave up that need and that, albeit unconscious, desire to be in true relationship with my father I would continue to try to "right" the "wrong" of my early (pre-verbal) childhood. I think the line from Stormchild really gets to the heart of the matter. excusing the inexcusable is part of the kit. It is part of the futile exercise of trusting the untrustworthy, seeking love from the unloving, seeking care from the uncaring, seeking mercy from the merciless.
The question then becomes, "How do I let go of my NEED to receive love and affection and nurturing from my father?" And the devastating part is that it truly is a need. How do I let go of something that I need? That question has lingered for me after years of searching for the answer. And though i am sure it can be found in books and from exceptional counselors, I actually had to find an answer for myself. I began by acknowledging that I was not going to get what I needed. This was not a one time deal. I had to do this over and over for a long time. I had to acknowledge how wrong it was, how appalling it was, how devastating it was and is. I had to come to understand that NO ONE, not even my siblings, was going to affirm me in my understanding. And then I had to grieve the pain of that loneliness. And even though my heart still aches over this and I still grieve, though less painfully, I came to accept that I am MUCH better off being able to fully emotionally detach from what I longed for, and deserved from my father.
Ironically, in conversations with two different people yesterday, I learned of two women in their 40s and 50s who have not been able to emotionally free themselves from their fathers (one of whom is deceased) and they are paying terrible prices in their lives for that. It also struck me how dramatically my perspective has changed. Had I heard either of those stories a year or two ago I would have been emotionally sucked in but yesterday, though my heart ached for them, I could see exactly how they, themselves could free themselves independent of anything their father did or could have done. And that IS the lesson that I read repeatedly in books that help point me to my goal. The power to release myself is in me. It has taken me 20 long years to get there but I never gave up the hope nor the search. I am stubborn and that stubbornness worked against me by keeping my emotionally locked in to my father but it also kept me searching. Until I tried absolutely everything and all the arrows kept pointing back to me, I kept hoping beyond hope that there could be some kind of reconciliation. It was when I came across the term Narcissism that I found a framework within which to understand my father. That pushed me into acceptance that he would never, could never change and that the change was all up to me.
This is one person's story about overcoming and letting go of the excruciating pain of growing up with an inaccessible father and the disastrous effects on so many parts of one's life.
