It sounds like you have a very good & thorough understanding even though it is NOT the understanding your father wants you to have.....yiu GOT IT!!!!

Actually I learned well from my parents what I didn't want to be like too. Growing up I thought my parents issues were ALL because of lack of education & intelligence. I mean really as a kid & wondered where the stupid stuff my dad said came from so I strived hard myself to excell in school. I had to work harder at it than the other kids but I competed with the best of them. That was where I got my recognition & sense of accomplishment. My parents didn't criticize so at least they did no harm in that area. My dad didn't want me to go to college because "it would fill my head with bad stuff" I blew him off like always & went to college. Got an AA in music & flute performance & a BS in Accounting & Computer Science. Guess my dad changed his toon about college when I ended up in a computer engineering career. If ASD had been known about in his lifetime I am sure he fit ALL the criteria & I had a mom who had such bad self-esteem & self-confidence that her behaviors created a trap at home. I always got the feeling that because I was their only child that they wanted to be overly protective & keep me their baby forever & I would have none of that which is probably why we fought constantly. The strange thing is that I can't remember the details if our fights just the sensation that I hated what they were like as parents & I had a need to escape & since I couldn't escape I fought. (Lol....fight or flight....if you can't flight you fight?) My mom didn't drive until I was 16 & they had no friends & knew no one so there was no way I could get anywhere except to school & home unless I walked. Even in those days Los Angeles was not the safest place especially in the part of town where we lived.

I cat totally relate to not wanting to be a parent. I KNEW I disn't want to be like my parents but I had no other examples to learn from that was what I wanted to be like. I did get married & had our daughter & I messed up on my own fighting the pressures to be like my parents & in-laws.....but I fought their expectations without any guilt because I KNEW all my life that I was NOT LIKE THEM....so why should I be like them.

I seriously think my parents were incapable of knowing just how totally dysfunctional as parents they really were. They excused away their behaviors on their own childhood lives & they blamed the church people for not including them in because they lived too far away & didn't habe the money to send me to the church school. I actually realize now that they didn't include them in because of my dad who would get in the stupidest arguments about things he knew absolutely nothing about wuth people who were having an intelligent cinversation. I remember always being embarrassed that he was my dad even at a very young age when I heard him arguing with other people. He had no idea how stupid he sounded because his mind was sure he was right no matter how wrong he really was.

Interesting how totally different childhoods & family environments can land us in basically a very similar situation.

I do understand that need to get away & get your independence.....something I fought for all my life but never achieved it until I was 54 & my parents were no longer alive & I finally left my bad marriage. Yea I married a guy just like my dad only I had convinced myself that no one with an education could be like my dad.....ah was I wrong. It took me good therapy & a lot if research to learn why they were so similar.....but it makes sense now. I was finally able to stop fighting in my marriage & flee. Best thing I ever did in my whole life & getting around people not like them really helped me relate to people & find the peace in my life I always wondered if it existed.

I love my simple farm life now surrounded by down to earth people & animals. It definitely doesn't take money to create happiness....just a peaceful life that you are satisfied with.