My relationship with my father was great until I turned 12 and started forming my own opinions about the world around me.
“He needed me to need him and look up to him in the same way I once had. I needed him to trust me, to let me spread my wings and do things my own way.”Then when I was 20, things came to a head. My dad and I went to the department of motor vehicles to transfer the title of a secondhand car he had purchased for me as a surprise birthday present. We had an argument in the DMV parking lot about how I didn’t do things his way.
“In his generation and culture, you didn’t talk to a stranger about your personal issues. You just dealt with them yourself.” The truth is, I was nervous. I knew counseling wouldn’t be easy. I was going to speak up about sensitive issues and wasn’t sure how my dad would react in front of a mediator. When the therapist highlighted how his words affected me ― I had tears streaming down my face ― he paused. But he still didn’t comprehend my point of view and grasp that I wasn’t just being overly sensitive. He still didn’t see that he had raised me in a time and place that didn’t share that culture of machismo.
In our sessions, my dad had scratched the surface of traumatic experiences he endured when he was around 14 years old. I knew he should dive deeper into a challenging and emotionally vulnerable process. I also knew that admitting he needed individual therapy would be too hard for him. After all, my dad had said so many times, “I’m too old to change” ― he’d even said it while we were in therapy. I didn’t like hearing those words.