Reply #106: Sorry can't be gentle. The best way to deal with a "My way or the highway"... [View All]

[TheMadMonk]

...ultimatum, no matter who it comes from, is to hit the blacktop and stick your thumb out the moment it is feasible to do so.

Your father is an authoritarian abuser. Nothing you do at this point will earn you his love. Caving in to his demands might get you grudging acceptance, and beating the living fuck out of him might possibly garner a degree of respect. But no change you make in yourself will gain his love, that change can only occur in him.

If he has the family so thouroughly cowed that they themselves will all break off relations with you on his say so, then sadly you are better off without them. You will not be abandoning them to walk away, they obviously abandoned you long ago.

The purpose of a family is to give its children a fighting chance in the real world. The purpose of dynasty is to perpetuate a power structure that by its very nature must be oppressive to survive.

Go out, build your own family, try not to make the same mistakes, and by your example, you might redeem those members of your "old" family, who have not been thouroughly broken to the dynastic yoke.