I am asking because I am trying to forgive my father for the abandonment I felt for the first 16 years of my life and the disappointments I have experienced between and during our reconciliations. I have not been perfect in our relationship either, and I am working on owning my contribution to our dysfunctional relationship, but what I am coming to find out though is … I want to forgive him (to release us both), but I don’t like him.

I have given this much thought, questioned myself extensively, and it always comes down to … I love him as a human being, but I don’t like him as a person.

We have had contact for the last 7 years and this is what I have experienced. I will say this, he has helped me (watched my daughter for 3 years so my husband and I could go bowling, helped me fix up my house and pack up the moving truck) and been nice in some ways. I believe he cares about me, but … he is, for me, turning out to be the person I don’t want to become. He is not in touch with his feelings and doesn’t like talking about them, especially when it deals with me and my brother; he doesn’t take an initiative to be in people’s lives – he will respond to most requests, but they are on his timetable = 7 days, but if I don’t call him back in 2, he’s mad – a double standard; he gossips; he spends more time with people he doesn’t like (which he has told me), than ones he says he does (my brother, me and my daughter); he is not consistent in his word or keeping promises; responds in anger and assumptions, instead of asking questions of why something was said or done; he requests my brother and I to call our step-mom, which we do, but she has yet to call one of us of her own volition (or under his pressure/request); he makes fun of people and calls them names; he holds my brother’s past and choices against him, but complains that people keep treating him like an a**hole or the bad guy; he will help my half-sister out – feeds her, doesn’t charge her rent so she pay her bills (and go drinking or traveling for over 7 years), but when my brother was without water and electric, because he lost his job, my brother was told to sell his stuff and deal with it; complains about money all the time, I borrowed him money once and he kept telling me he couldn’t pay me for 6 months, because of “bills”, then found out later, he bought a computer and pool.

My desire is to be at peace and let the past be the past, and accept that I feel the way that I do about the man who gave me life is ok. I know I can’t change him, and I accept that; I can only change myself, and have been coming to the conclusion, that he is my teacher in this life, and I am learning a lot of lessons about myself and life.

I will be honest, I am open to him being in my life right now is because of my daughter. She likes him, he likes her, and I am willing to try for her.