To feel so sorry for my Dad?

[Kneehigim]

First up, he's happy, in a relationship the past 25 years and healthy.

However.

When he was a teen he moved to London to work on building sites and was there for 6 months. He then got a call to say that his father was ill and that he needed to go home to run the family business. At the same time his uncle offered to bring him to Australia with a job opportunity there.

In the heel of the hunt he went home and still runs the family business. He's a 'make the most of it' kind of person so appears happy, but whenever we chat, there's a deep longing in him for what might have been. He never fails to mention the opportunities he almost had. I think we just chat a lot so he probably doesn't actually consciously think this on a daily basis, maybe I bring out the worst in him lol. We probably have deeper conversations than most people.

So, I'm at that age in life where I can make it or break it. I've a few decisions to make. I genuinely don't want to end up 70 and a little bit sad about what I never did.

There is literally nothing I can do for my Dad apart from to succeed myself in life which cheers him up no end. I can hear the pride in his voice (and I have done nothing to be proud of).

I don't even know why I'm posting. There's nothing I can do. AIBU to be fucking annoyed with his father for stealing his future from him? What the fuck do we do to our children. Such a responsibility we hold in our hands!

Wah! I'm just ranting.

Yes I think this is about you. Are you in a happy relationship?

He genuinely is happy with his life now but I suppose maybe he had young dreams and then life got in the way

But surely that's fairly normal?! At one time, I had a dream to work overseas, it didn't happen, occasionally I wonder how my life would have turned out if I had done so. I sometimes wonder how my life would have turned out if I was still with my first serious boyfriend. But I'm very happy with my life and how it has all turned out. I'm inclined to agree with a PP that if your Dad is still dwelling on this, he may be a bit of a glass half empty type of person

People had a greater sense of duty and taking their 'rightful' place in Society.

True to some extent, however his sense of ‘duty’ could have taken him into the church, or medicine or military over his family. It really depends on the individual.

All this "woulda coulda shoulda" though-it's easy to have been a success in daydreams the path you didn't take, isn't it?

I'm 51, even in my generation of Women, lower WC, deprived city etc, there's a massive sense that we haven't achieved what we could have, given the chance. Very few people did.

You’re only 3 years older than me. I never had any sense that I couldn’t achieve what I wanted or there was anything holding me back. Granted I came from a much more privileged background. But I’m certain whatever background I was from I had a rocket under me to achieve - if anything it might have been stronger if my life circumstances had been harder.

I think people often hold life circumstances responsible for holding them back when acfually it was their own personality and their own choices.

Tatiana, I literally don't even know where to begin to start with that. So I'll just say, spoken like a true .....

Tatania You are from a more privileged background, you haven't a clue. I was a child living in 2 rooms, no hot water, outside toilet shared with other families, and 2 siblings.
When I was a kid no one talked about going to university, the big thing they pushed for the bright kids was to stay on and do O Levels and A Levels. And very few did. Most left school as soon as they could and got a low paid job if they could.
My first serious boyfriend joined the army at 17 as he could not get a job. He lived in a seriously rough bit with about 90% unemployment and lots of alcoholics, including his mother. Employers would not employ people who lived there, so joining the army was his only way out.
Could we all have achieved more if we had been brought up in a relatively privileged background? Absolutely. And the lack of confidence at dealing with others who were more educated, better dressed and with a posher accent took years to overcome as well.

I don't agree that it's easy to turn your back on responsibilities in order to follow your dreams. Some people do sacrifice their plans in order to take care of family.

My dad was very similar. He is the most intelligent person that I know. Whatever he turned his hand to he did well at. He taught himself plumbing, building, car maintenance,diy, tailoring, carpentry. He also had a successful career in banking, having taken himself off to night school to get the necessary qualifications. He was made to leave school at 15 without qualifications because his mum re married and had young children and needed my dad to earn money to support the family.

If my dad had been born into a different family and allowed to finish school and go to university his life would have been so different.

He hated every day of his working life. But he was good at it and he wanted to give us a life that he never had so he sacrificed his own dreams in order to give us ours.

I understand what you are saying OP. My dad had an awful childhood and knowing what happened to him upsets me so much because he has only ever made sure that I've had a good life, despite him not having one.

You don’t really have to start with anything. The upshot of the thread is:

I hope I never tell my dd in 20 years time that I wish I had done this that or the other. I need to just do it.

I'm starting to think that this is more about me than about my Dad!

Whatever your background, whatever difficulties you’re presented with - just try to do the things you really want to do.

I was a child living in 2 rooms, no hot water, outside toilet shared with other families, and 2 siblings.

Just like my great grandparents - my ggf left school at 13 and trained as a brassworker - he and my ggm lived in a two up two down with an outside loo and no hot water. He played in the local brass band and was an amateur artist. He made a success of his life within the parameters he was given - and enabled my grandmother to go to university and became a teacher.

On the other side my father grew up on a farm with no running water inside, just a pump in the yard, and frost on the inside of the windows in winter. His early education was messed up by the war, but he ended up at the local grammar, from there to Oxford and became a psychiatrist.

Equally, I know people from my background who felt personally stymied from doing what they wanted to do. Which was really from forces within them, rather than anything in their environment preventing them.

Yes Tatania within the parameters given. Although I suspect it was more common for people to live in the conditions your GGF did when he was a kid. I am only in my late 50s, so this was not long ago.
I have argued very much that we all make choices about our lives. But of course our childhood and education has an impact on the choices we can make as do other elements such as disability, sex and race.

And EVERYONE I know who grew up in the 60s had frost on the inside of their beroom windows. That was standard for anyone from a working class background and even many from a middle class background. It was not a sign of poverty by itself.

Of course you leave school at 13 there are many professions barred to you - but it doesn’t mean you can’t make a success of your life and achieve what you want within your own sphere.

I don’t think that many people growing up in the 60s had a pump in the farmyard as their sole water supply. My great uncle was still farming with horses. My great aunt made all the dairy produce herself.

But this is getting a bit Monty Python.

How do you make god laugh?.

Tell him/her your plans

Just try to enjoy each day, meditation may help.

My grandmother used to prop the babies up in a drawer (yes, a drawer), with a bottle stuck in their mouths and go out and work on the farm. That's how my father was reared. She has never spoken about losing a child or miscarriages but had 5 children (Dad being the eldest, three daughters, then her youngest son an asshole )
They really came from nothing really but Dad has made a fairly decent wage out of his work.
I think he sees us being educated and successful and probably wonders why he's just a farmer. He is pretty much self-taught in everything.

I’d feel sadder for your dad that he ended up with an abusive wife.

He's away from her (HER being my mother) for 25 years now.

Oh good! I read your posts as though they were still married but she no longer beat him up.

Honestly - I think it is human nature to chat about what if’s, not necessarily in sad way, just to marvel at how particular choices can make such a huge difference to the course of our lives.

Are you quite young, OP? (Though I assume probably not, if your dad is 70.) I ask because you seem terribly surprised about your father’s compromises, roads not taken and missed opportunities, as though these things are only occurring to you now.

My parents are also in their 70s, and I think I’ve always been aware of the extent to which they made ‘dutiful’ choices (which they don’t see as choices, though of course they were), in both cases the eldest children of widowed parents who took them out of school aged 12 and put them into unskilled jobs to bring in income, remained semi- literate and poor and ended up with a large family they couldn’t afford and housed both surviving grand parents in a tiny house with us for decades — whereas in both cases there were younger siblings who held out, insisted on staying in school, got scholarships and got to university and entered professions.

(One of the odder features of my childhood was that while we had an outdoor loo and I was sharing a bed with my grandmother and my sister, and ate very carefully towards the end of the week, my father’s younger brother was a golf-playing engineer with a games room and children at private schools. )

I do understand the social pressures to which they were subject, but I am also impatient with their passivity and their ‘Oh, that’s just what life was like’ and ‘We didn’t know any better’ attitude. Especially when they tried to pass it on and discouraged me from even considering university because ‘it’s not for the likes of us’ (I did four degrees on scholarships and grants, and my younger siblings followed me) and have always been very uneasy at any of us being ambitious, or even moving jobs, or doing something purely because we wanted to.

My mother in particular is completely unaware of how much happier she is around people who have a difficult life circumstance not of their choosing — serious illness, a child with a significant disability etc — and how unconsciously angry she is around women, especially, who prioritise their own happiness as highly as other people”s.

I suppose what I’m saying is, people need to own their choices.

“I could have been someone”
“Well so could anyone”

That’s from Fairytale of New York

I think it’s quite normal to reflect back on what could have been. He could have refused to take on the farm and gone travelling but he would have known he would have been estranged from the family and felt guilty. He chose duty. He chose to be George VI rather than Edward VII.

He could have gone to Australia and had a really shit time...

'You took my dreams from me
When I first found you'

Pish Taken out of school at 12 to work would have limited their choices though. And at 12, you do have to ultimately do what your parents say.
We do all have choices, but I don't think we should deny that some people have far more choices than others. Sometimes on a very simple level. For example, many disabled children in the past were not taught how to read and write. Sure they can learn as adults, but of course it would have an impact on their life.

I think everyone gets to a stage in life where they look back over all the twists and turns, and have some regrets.

My dad was the same. He was the typical "lad" really, bright but lazy. Had no clue what he wanted to do. Careers advice at school was no use. He went to uni and did food science, "because it looked quite interesting at the time". Worked in the food industry for a few years, then moved into teaching, which he was very good at.
But then, in later years, he turned around and said, "You know, I wish I'd been a lawyer, I'd have really enjoyed that." And he would have been really good at it as well. But that wasn't an option at the time. He made the best decision with the information he had.

I think everyone feels that way. Hell, I'm in my mid-30s and already have lots of "what if?" moments.

Do you think your dad is telling you to get out there & be brave?