Aibu to think dads don’t like talking on the phone?

[OccupantofInterplanetaryCraft]

Anyone remember an old tv ad where the daughter would ring home, her dad would pick up and straight away would say I’ll get your mum?

Just done my weekly call to dad in different country. Tried to fill him in on some positive news, sympathised with his concern about something but it’s like getting blood from a stone getting him to talk on the phone.

Anyone else’s dad the same or is it perhaps me he doesn’t want to talk to 😩

Mine is the same, hates talking on the phone so I end up chatting to my mum all the time. I worry I’ll regret it when he’s gone but it’s just how he is. He’s got family that live far away that he never speaks to, he’s not a phone person at all!

Thank you! I’m not alone!😮 it ends up being a series of questions to get something out of him. There’s about 2 minutes about the weather, (shocking apparently) and then lots of well, I don’t know this and I suppose so’s, and then well, I’ll let you go now.

Its hard work🙂

Mine won't get off the phone just had a 40 min chat

I used to have lovely long chats with my dad on the phone, we lived in different countries and we'd talk twice a week for at least an hour at a time. When he died and it hit me that the phone would never ring again with his calls it broke my heart.

I live in the same house as my dad temporarily, he phones me more now then whenni lived an hour away, then gets stroppy when I try to get him off the phone

He won’t do small talk and his hearing isn’t 100% so I understand why. He is also very much of the mind that if you are phoning there must be a reason. Once he knows everything is ok, then I think he thinks there’s nothing else to say. The concept of chatting is not there.

But has always been like that, I guess.

This made me laugh, because this week I had a missed call from my dad which immediately sent me into a tailspin of panic (he never calls. Ever. I talk to him only as an add-on to my multiple calls per day to my mother). I called him back. No answer. I called my mother. No answer. I called my siblings, they hadn't heard from either parent all day. I considered packing the car and making the 3-hour drive to my parents' house to intervene in whatever emergency was clearly in progress. I called my father again. He answered. Turned out he'd phoned me by accident while trying to send me a photo of the cat and was unaware that he'd done so (photo of cat still not received several days later. Says it all). I love my dad very much but I dread to think of how we'll all cope if my mother dies first and we have to try to communicate with him without her.

Ha! That’s something I would do. We lost mum last Christmas and he is on his own so I’m aware of how lonely he must be (although siblings are near by).

Mine is ok sometimes, but I can always tell if there’s some sport or something on tv he wants to get back to, because he’ll keep trying to end the conversation.

His word for ending it is ok. “Oohh-kayyy”

This means fuck off and let me watch the sport.

I think the cynical part of me thinks some men consider talking to adult children part of Wife Work

My OH will do the same if either of the girls phone. A quick hello how are you then it's over to me, even if the call his phone. Never a problem with the gc and wasn't a problem when the girls were younger, if he was away while they were little he'd call and read their bedtime story. He's actually much the same with me, I do most of the talking on the phone with him.

Jeez mine loves to talk on the phone & would happily chat for hours every night

I ALWAYS get a flash of worry if I answer a call from home and it's my dad. I think he's called me himself less than 5 times in the 22 years I've been away.

Thankfully my hometowns finally moved with the times and you can usually get a mobile signal so mums mobile it is if I'm calling.

Both my older girls are more likely to call dh, he LOVES to chat whereas I'm more likely to go "aye, ok then, bye".

I think I must be a dad then 🤔
I don’t speak to my own father but my father in law loves a yarn! So I guess I haven’t observed the same as you.

Ah, it’s only meant light hearted, but every week I get off the phone and think did I just have a conversation?!!

I'd rather talk to my dad than mum.

sometimes its knowing what to say, that some people struggle with

@Mountaineer0009

yes, I get that. I think that’s why he focuses on why is someone ringing, what has happened? He runs out of questions then!

It's definitely a Dad thing, I used to joke that the BT advert, I'll get your Mum, was made for my Dad. If my late OH said more than a dozen words to our daughters on the phone it was always commented upon by them, He's chatty tonight.

The opposite for me really. Dad is great and staying in touch - we end up chatting about anything and everything at least once a week for a couple of hours. Never on the phone for less than 30 mins. Mom and I chat for hours in person but she could go months without calling me herself!

YABU for thinking 'Dads always do X' about anything OP! Everyone is different.