Purposeful Ignorance
I currently live with my father and his (current) wife.
We don't get a lot and almost never have, for various reasons. But the one I care about the most, is his purposeful ignorance and dismissal of my mental and emotional needs.
He's openly vocalized that he does not care about how I feel; claiming his job as a father isn't to comfort me, but
to "prepare me for the world". He also does that whole "I know my kid better than they know themselves" thing.
Due to this, we never built any trust. So, when he tries to "help" me, I don't know what's going on so I panic and mess it up because he doesn't tell me.
He always assumes he knows what the issue is, but never attempts to learn the "why". Then proceeds to complain about "repetitive patterns", when he doesn't bother to actually UNDERSTAND the issue instead of assuming what it is.
Here's a metaphor I used to try to get him to understand (that failed):
Say you're new royalty. You're neutral towards your staff and your dinner is presented to you. Suddenly you're poisoned. You're in the middle of dying, and the nurse brings an "antidote" for it.
You never built trust with your staff and you're dying. But you're presented "help" which could ALSO be lethal.
Would you take the antidote...?
Does your metaphor mean that you and your dad haven’t established trust and mutual understanding yet, so you don’t feel that you can take his advice? It sounds like he doesn’t listen to you and instead just tries to fix you into what he wants. I struggle with the same thing with my own dad. He is always trying to tell me what is “really” going on. It feels like I can’t be myself around him. It sounds like your dad cares about you, if he is trying to prepare you for the real world. He just doesn’t know how to connect with you either. Were you and your dad ever close? Was their a time where you felt like you guys connected?
There was a time, long ago. When I was still a baby. I loved being around him and I wanted to be just like him.
Occasionally to this day we can almost see eye to eye. We'll chuckle about the world being in flames, or about something we have in common. But it's not frequent enough to be healthy.
It's not just that he doesn't know how to connect with me. He doesn't WANT to connect. I've tried initiating conversations with him to help him do so. But it just ends in us yelling at each other.
My father does the same thing trying to tell me what's "really" gonna happen out there. But, instead of me not being able to be myself... I haven't discovered who I am yet and he's just claiming his perception of me is who I "really am."
@jdotphillip Hi. This is really sad. I think I “know” your dad. That purposeful ignorance might be something he manifests in other areas of life as well. He is likely afraid of a lot of stuff. “Knowing everything” is his protection. He likely doesn’t have a clear picture of the outside world either.