Amazing moment with my dad

I’m 33, my dad is almost 60, he’s a jolly guy but there’s always been distance between us. I’m his only son and just didn’t find joy in our heavily religious life the way he did. He and my mom shamed me when I was a little kid for masturbating, and I learned early to lie and hide my feelings and thoughts from them because I couldn’t handle the shame. I tried to make the church work for me, but it really alienated me from being able to say and pursue what I truly wanted and felt. Over the last 10 years my faith waned and I left the church. I’ve tried to protect them from feeling sad about my departure by emphasizing to them the ways I still value things from my Mormon upbringing and value their participation in it. My intentions were good, but even though I went out of my way to "make it okay" for them, I still didn’t feared allowing myself to explore my life for myself because of the hurt I could cause them. However, I finally have realized over this summer that I’ve been holding myself in limbo to protect them, and that if I ever am going to feel good and really move forward for myself, I'll first need to be openly honest about who I am and what I want. I may feel obligated to sacrifice my life to protect their happiness, but if I don't set that obligation aside, I'll never be free.So a month or two ago I told them the truth about how I’ve been affected by the shame that came with the religion they instilled in me and that I’ve been trying not to show anything that would make them uncomfortable, but that I need to be more honest with myself and with them, even if it hurts them. Their reaction was better than years ago when I first admitted my faith had gone. This time my mom acknowledged that as young parents they made mistakes without realizing it. It wasn't an apology, but I'm working on not requiring apologies in order to finally feel okay, and I accepted that this was how she was processing the experience at this time. My dad was attentive and supportive, even though he seemed uncertain what to say. It was still a lot more than I'd gotten before, and again, this was more about me moving forward than about feeling understood by them. I was glad I'd taken that step with them for myself.Two days later my dad approached me. He started by just asking how the summer had been. I told him about some of the personal discoveries I'd been making that were making me feel I understood my feelings and my behavior in ways that have always confused me until now. He said he was glad I was finding things that were finally feeling helpful, that he'd noticed my struggles through the years...And then he described my life to me.From childhood, through my teens, my marriage, divorce, and into the last few years, he described the struggle that he had seen me go thru. He didn't describe it the way I'm used to the faithful describing someone who has left the fold--he didn't add commentary filled with judgement and disapproval as I've heard him add before when discussing other dissidents. Instead, he described it to me the way I would have described it myself: the way I felt it while I experienced it. He said he saw how hard I had tried throughout my life to apply the principles of our religion in pursuit of the happiness the religion promised, and how confused he could see I was when I was continually met with loneliness and struggle. He didn't try to "fix" it or recontexualize it or promise me that God really still is looking out for me. He just spoke my struggle. He allowed himself to see and speak the ways that the religion, which means so much to him, really failed me. He didn't let his loyalty to his faith stop him from seeing me. He's never been a coward but as far as I've seen his bravery has always been within the boundaries of his religion. I felt like in order for him to say what he said, he let himself leave the church behind. He left it to reach me. It's the bravest thing I've seen him do--and in so doing, the most fully realized example of the ideals of the religion that I've ever seen from a member of that church.I just couldn't believe what was happening. It's the moment of intimacy I've always wanted with my dad. I've never felt so seen, so actually understood, by anyone ever. Part of what I felt I had accepted by being more honest with him was that I would probably never "fix" my relationship with him the way I had been trying so hard to do, and that finally arriving to "understand" one another would probably never come. I was realizing that it wasn't up to me to fix things, and that if it wasn't happening, there wasn't more I could do. So, just as I was done "needing" understanding from my father, suddenly it just arrived. The theme throughout his monologue to me was that he wishes he had been there during times where he could see my struggle but didn't know what he could do. I'm realizing now that for him, the church has always made the impact it promises it will make--instead of impeding his sense of self, the church allowed for it and made him feel nourished by it. His glimpses of my struggle over the years were totally foreign to him. He didn't understand why I didn't feel I was receiving the kind of guidance from God that he felt was routine for him at my age, and he probably just assumed I would figure it out eventually. (Which, I guess he's right, it was just a bigger "eventually" than any of us expected.) I think when I finally shared what my childhood was really like to he and mom, he understood more fully why I was struggling all those years. "I'm so glad you're finding a light turning on inside you and that you feel you know how to move forward," he ended, "and I want to be there now, son."I just wept. He came and sat next to me and pulled me into his chest and held me. We just sat there like that, him holding his crying boy. Normally it would have felt so awkward and weird, but it was the best. It was the happiest moment of my life.We've talked about so much since then and there's so much more I could say about it. But I just wanted to share this with this sub. I have delayed becoming a father all these years because I was worried about not being able to help a child find more happiness than I did. But now I sense that a happy life is possible, and that a father can play a role in that even if they didn't have the same experience in their own childhood. For years I worried my dad just didn't care that much to help me, even though he was a loving man who was involved to a point. But I see now that he and I both have hung back, both trying not to interfere with the other person's "thing", worrying that our "truth" would just be a burden for the other, or would be rejected in some way. For me it was fear that held me back, for him it was uncertainty. But goddamn: when you both can speak your truth, letting yourselves lean on eachother even if you have different fundamental beliefs, sharing your experience and allowing yourself to name the differences you see between you, you can have moments of connection that I just didn't believe were possible. I feel so fortunate to have experienced something like this before he or I died. I know that this isn't the kind of thing everybody is looking to experience as fathers or sons, and that's perfectly fine. But I'm so grateful for this experience, and just want it to be a testament that it can happen. I'm guessing that it's harder for it to happen if you find you constantly restrain yourself and hold back from expressing your real feelings in order to protect others. Ironically, maybe sometimes you really have to stop holding back and risk hurting them. Only then can they really see you, finally; and only then can you really see them. via /r/daddit https://ift.tt/2Gu4Hkz