I posted something similar in Chat a few days ago but no responses so decided to try here as this is really playing on my mind recently.
My parents have just been for a short visit (about a week) and, like always, I found it quite hard to get on with my father. I really don't like spending time with him. He is not rude or unpleasant really, though I sometimes feel he still treats me like a child at times which grates. The main thing is that I think I harbour quite a lot of resentment towards him for the way he was during my childhood. I start off with the best intentions of being friendly but always slip into being very curt with him, which I then feel very guilty about. At the root of the problem is that I just don't really respect him and I'm not sure what I can do about this to improve the situation.
My dad wasn't a terrible father in that he wasn't at all abusive nor was he completely absent. He just was barely a father at all. I don't know whether it's being melodramatic to class it as neglect but to me it feels like a mild form of neglect.
His job was his life and his family was not a priority at all. We barely saw him during the working week and he was frequently travelling with work on the weekends too. If Dad was there for dinner on a school night, that was an event. Even when we were on family holidays he'd always be working on and off. He managed the occasional weekend bike ride or trip to the swimming pool but day-to-day parenting was almost 100% done by my mother. He was more like a fun uncle or something. He could do the playing and the joking and the fun activities (though infrequently - as I say he was not a daily presence in our lives) but beyond that we knew not to expect anything. On the rare occasions he had to actually look after us he was like a cartoon clueless dad, needed detailed instructions from my mother as if he was a babysitter rather than our parent. I remember one time in my childhood when my mother was really very ill, bed bound, and this forced his hand rather but he was terrible at everything. He did absolutely nothing round the house, either, besides fixing things and mowing the lawn.
Of course when we were little we worshipped him. Access to him was so limited and he only did the fun stuff, so we adored him and craved his attention. He probably thought this meant he was doing a brilliant job. Now I am an adult and have my own children and I can see how rubbish he was. He provided for us very well financially but he was not really a parent to us.
In many ways I had a really privileged childhood and I don't want to compare myself in any way to people who really had awful parents. But it does actually still really hurt that we were always put second to his work. I internalised it and accepted it as a child but I think about it now as an adult and a parent myself and it makes me quite sad and angry (for my mother as well as me and my brother). The thing is I don't think there's much point in complaining to him now as the past can't be changed and I'm sure he'd claim that he only worked so much to provide a comfortable life for us.
I can't help comparing him to my DP who works to live, not lives to work, and is really my equal partner in raising our two children.
Anybody have any comparable experiences or advice?