My father is a narcissist and bits and pieces of all these stories feel familiar, and I have so much empathy for everyone who has shared in this forum. I didn't know until I was 25 that there was a word for my dad's behavior, I always just thought he was a mean person. My parents divorced when I was 8, he moved out of our house but my dad never acknowledged the divorce or signed any papers for the next 11 years. He is nothing but a controlling and manipulative person who uses any scrap of leverage he can find to try and manipulate everyone around him. He was downright cruel to my mother and my sisters and I growing up, always using fake "affection" as a way to get us to do what he wanted. It took a while for me to realize even his most sincere praise and love was fake and was used as tools. It's hard to realize as a young adult that your father doesn't love you and never has. But I've learned enough about him to know that it has nothing to do with me, he's genuinely incapable of love or feeling compassion towards another person, even his family members. He takes every chance he can find to make himself the center of attention, and it's just sad. Even all of my baby videos are my mother filming myself or my sisters and him jumping in front of the camera trying to steer the attention toward himself. To date, this is still how every family event goes. He talks over everyone and proudly boasts about himself in odd ways and becomes scathing and insulting when someone else is receiving attention other than him. The only thing he holds closer to his heart than his racism is his sexism, and being a woman and having 2 sisters, he constantly said terrible things about women growing up and did everything he could to try and make me feel deeply ashamed about my body, especially when puberty hit. Once I entered high school I had matured enough to put a lot of emotional and physical distance between us, and the only time I saw him was at dinners, with him surrounded by his friends and him basking in the attention. He would tell lies and pretend that we were incredibly close and that he was a wonderful father. He only wanted his kids around when there was an audience (his friends and co-workers) there to watch his performance of "look what an excellent father I am!" He would take these moments to shower us with false praise and gifts. He'd whip out checks for thousands of dollars and give us presents and call us names like "sweetheart"- but only when others were watching. These were the only moments we ever had contact with him. Outside of these performances we never saw him and he had nothing to do with our lives. We played along because we knew we would get things out of it, but deep down it really hurt and I wanted so badly to expose him for the manipulative liar that he was. I'm a much more healed person now, I went off to college and basically cut off contact with him. I majored in Women's Studies and found so many empowering female role models there and I can honestly say that I think most of the damage he's done to me has healed over. I'm sorry for rambling but I've never had an opportunity to talk about my father outside of my family before and it feels good to have somewhere to tell my story instead of holding it in. I genuinely hope that everyone in this forum can find their own paths toward healing and feeling loved in their lives.