I appreciate you sharing that. My father certainly wasn’t one of those “man’s men” and certainly had no bias on gender boundaries, mostly because of how pragmatic he was, but also because of behaviors he chose to not emulate from his father.
He also used to beat the shit out of me because his father beat the shit out of him and it’s really hard to break that cycle. I’ve chosen not to have kids because he and I once discussed (after my first legitimate suicide attempt) the fact that he never wanted to be “that” father and he didn’t know what happened. He even opened up how much it scared him the first time he threw me down a short flight of steps into the wall of a hallway in our house.
I have no crystal ball to explore what-ifs for any of us, but I imagine your father walking out on you was the most positive choice he made in his entire life. I appreciate you for the man you’ve become as a result.
QuestioningEspecialy