I honestly hate my father. Help..-_-

Ihurttoo

I am so sorry you are going thru all of this. But, I see things a bit differently from the other posters, maybe because I could have written your post myself when I was a teenager.

I also live in Ky, and my father was also a farmer. (Along with being a minister.) You can imagine the strictness of the combo. Like your father, mine also insisted on using us as farm workers. I resented it deeply and hated him for it. He never spoke to me unless it was to get after me about something or boss me around. He had us hoeing out the tobacco patch and garden, hauling hay, moving the cattle from one end of the farm to the other, and many other horrible jobs and most of it we had to do in unbearable heat! So, I definately know what you are talking about!

I HATED the farm and wanted no part of it. I swore as soon as I was old enough to get away from it, I would NEVER live on a farm! But, as most people know, God has a sense of humor. When I was 27, I met the man of my dreams. He was everything I always wanted and he had a great house in town, and never farmed. But, after we got married, we sold the house, to use the equity to build a nicer one. Meanwhile we needed a place to rent, and the house I grew up in (the one on the farm), was available and was cheaper than the ones in town, even though it was nicer. So, we rented it from my parents.

Unfortunately, my husband got the "farm fever" while we lived there. He went out every day helping my dad, and he loved it! Next thing you know he wanted to farm!! I about died!! But, the major difference is that I am an adult now and dont have to do anything I dont want to do. I didnt want to keep him from a dream of his, so I told him we could buy a small farm of our own, but that I am not doing anything on it...EVER!!!

I thought that'd be a decent compromise and it was until we had a child, a son. Now, our son is 6 and my husband tries to make HIM go everywhere on the farm and do stuff like my Dad always made us! I have severely limited this, as I dont want him having the kind of childhood that I had.

But, now that I am married to the farmer, I do understand a bit better why my Dad did the things he did, by seeing it thru my husband's eyes. For people like your Dad, my Dad, and my husband (farmers), when they involve their kids with the farmwork, it is their way of spending time with their kids. They dont know how to connect with them in other ways, and think that by being together on the farm, they will get closer, (even if their kids hate the farm.) They dont understand that we are resenting them for making us be there!

Farmers also work very hard on the farm (as you know from doing it yourself!) But, most jobs people do dont entail nearly as much physical labor as farming. Therefore, most farmers think that alot of the rest of the world is lazy. Laziness is one of THE worst things a person could be, at least to a farmer. It is right up there with the sins of lying, stealing, etc. to most farmers. Most of them would almost rather their kids turned out to be theives than turn out to be lazy! It is THAT serious to them! So, they try to build the work ethic on the farm by working their kids butts off. But, often this backfires and when we grow up, though we dont turn out lazy, we DO turn out to resent them for forcing us to do things we didnt want to do every day for YEARS!

I hated my father too. But, like I said, I didnt understand this until after I married a man who turned out to be a farmer. So, a few years ago, I sat down and talked to my Dad and explained to him that though I now understand that he wanted to spend time with me and didnt know how else to do it, and that he wanted me to have a work ethic, that he went about it wrong, and that it made me resent him and withdraw from him. I explained to him that I viewed farming as a masculine thing and being very feminine, it was very vile to me. Much like he is very masculine and would resent being made to do feminine things for hours daily for years. It would be like his mother making him crochet afghans to sell for hours a day for years. (His mother sold afghans at flea markets.) If he hated it from the first time he ever did it and was forced to do it day after day, for years, he would grow to hate her. When I explained it to him this way, he finally understood.

I think the key to getting your father to understand you, is to first show him that you understand HIM. You might try writing him a letter explaining to him that you understand that he wants to spend time with you and that he is trying to instill a work ethic in you, but that there are other ways to go about this where you can actually enjoy spending time together. Explain to him that you HAVE a work ethic and tell him the jobs you do at home and tell him about your plans for the future. But, also tell him that your relationship has not been good and that now that you are old enough to decide where to spend your time, you dont want to spend it with him if he plans on spending it in the future the way he has in the past. Tell him how the way he works you the whole time you are there makes you feel used, like he only wants you for free labor, not for a daughter. Tell him how it has made you feel and what you would like your relationship to be like.

I really truly believe that you can mend this broken relationship if you both will work on it.

I am sure he loves you or else he would have walked away as so many fathers do. Also, since he calls constantly wanting to see you, he obviously loves you. I think that he just doesnt know how to show it and doesnt understand how much all of this is affecting you. But, I think once he sees that you understand his feelings, he will make an effort to see yours.

I hope you will give it a try. I am not saying it will be easy, or that it will happen overnight, but I do think your relationship can be saved. It took a few years to work thru things with my father, but we now have a good relationship. Though he was a terrible father to me as a child and a teen, he is a good father to me now, as an adult. You never know how much talking can accomplish until you try it.

Please let us know how it turns out. I will be thinking of you and wondering.

Your Ky neighbor,
Amy