Kudos to you Seesaw, for having the inner strength enough to recognize your father's abuse of you, and to estrange yourself from him in order to protect yourself and preserve the value of your life.

That is one of the hardest things we can do: leave people who we thought love and respect us.

Just yesterday, my cousin Facebook messaged me to tell me he thought my father was a great man, and wanted to share that with me. I messaged my cousin back that while I was glad for him, I was not the best person to wax nostalgic with about my dead father, who manipulated and verbally abused me when he was alive. He was a terrible, terrible father to me. Of course, my cousin used shame to try to make me feel bad, for setting up a boundary with him that he can't message me to reminisce with about my father. So, I told my cousin to stop contacting me. I would rather have rigid boundaries with toxic family members, then to have to accommodate my cousin so I can maintain some semblance of conformity or respectability with people I deep down despise for their abuse and lies.

When I was in high school, I went to see a therapist, and I was joined by my parents. When the therapist would ask me a question, instead of letting me respond my father would immediately speak over me in an attempt to control the situation.

I had told the therapist in my first session without my parents, examples of my father's abuse towards me (not towards my other siblings as far as I knew because neither of them every told me). So, when the therapist invited my parents to one of my sessions, he could see how overbearing and manipulative my father was, how enabling of him, and unsupportive of me that my mother was.

It's been a wake up call for me, as I have always been attracted to abusive, emotionally unavailable men whose personality traits are similar to my dead father's; highly intelligent, well-educated, very manipulative and controlling, and who use shame and fear as tools to try to control people they deem as weak and vulnerable. So, I haven't dated men in a number of years because I just don't want to subject myself to that anymore.

Whenever I sense someone is a controlling person, I will back away and avoid getting into any kind of relationship with that person for my own safety.