Successful Female Engineer Doesn’t Want to Make Her Father Proud

Relationships between parents and adult children can be complicated, especially if childhood resentments persist.

Despite having a “verbally abusive” father growing up, a woman who always spent more time devaluing him as a child than celebrating him, she admits she still stays in touch with him and has lately been overwhelmed by his constant bragging about her achievements. .

“He uses all my accomplishments to brag to his friends and show what a great father he is,” the woman wrote. A post on the “Off My Chest” Reddit forum. “I became who I am DESPITE HIM, not because of him.”

As his career continues to develop and his success becomes more important, he is unsure of how to separate his adult identity from his father.

A successful female engineer has admitted she struggles to celebrate her professional achievements because she doesn’t want to make her father proud.

The 28-year-old engineer explained that although he was a “pretty decent” kid with good grades, great friends and hobbies, his relationship with his father was always strained. “I wasn’t very available to my parents,” he wrote. “Despite this, my father would verbally abuse me for any reason he could think of… My life changed for the better when he moved out.”

Jack F | Canva Pro

While she described their relationship as transactional — taking everything away from him, berating him for “not doing anything right,” and belittling how successful he would be after college — he continued to distance himself from her. But now she can’t escape his constant comments online.

It’s as if he takes credit for his successes by invalidating his childhood experiences. “It makes my blood boil,” he wrote. “Every step I took to get away from him improved my life significantly… With the support of my mother, I thrived.”

RELATED: Dad Was Upset That His Teenage Daughter Did ‘Nothing’ For Him On Father’s Day After Forbidding Her From Talking To Her Mother On Mother’s Day

After a difficult childhood, the successful engineer is ‘tired’ of his father bragging about his achievements online.

Before he started his career and went to college, while his father was still out of their home, Criticized his every move.

“I went to university to study engineering. “My mother supported me financially throughout this process… (My father) contributed almost nothing,” he wrote. “He said it was a waste of money because I wasn’t good enough.”

“At one point he even accused me of stealing my mother’s school fees. “He just said he wasn’t sure I wasn’t hiding the money and lying about having to pay… I’ve since graduated and been pretty successful in my field.”

Chinkevich | shutterstock.com

Studies have found that Parental jealousy is not uncommon, he says, and often leads to lifelong resentment and tension in parent-child relationships. It seems that the reason for this woman’s experience was that her father, whether subconsciously or not, tried to limit her potential during her childhood.

However, now that he was successful, he made the switch. Grab attention in a completely new way taking credit for their achievements.

RELATED: 9 Characteristics of Parents Who Often Don’t Communicate After Their Adult Children Grow Up

The engineer’s childhood resentment has carried over into adulthood, and he is tired of letting his father take over his adult success.

“Every time I publish an article, he writes HUGE posts on Facebook, bragging about my accomplishments,” he wrote, arguing that his mother is the one who should really give him a pat on the back. “(She) is not as proud of being my mother as he is because she has her own personality and achievements!”

“All he did in my formative years was set me up to fail, and now he wants all the bragging rights for not failing.”

She doesn’t want to give him any credit. So who can blame him? His success was directly linked to his mother’s support and hard work. His father had nothing to do with it.

“I hate the fact that I can’t be fully excited about the release of another work because I cringe when I read disgusting articles about how proud you are,” she said. “He treated me (badly) when I was nothing to brag about, and now he wants a gold medal for having a successful daughter.”

If he wants to move forward and try to have a relationship with his fatherIt can start with an honest conversation about all the ways he still feels hurt by his childhood behavior, but it can be simpler. He could have blocked her social media.

If he can celebrate with people who truly support him, there’s no point in continuing to follow his posts. This is his success, his life and his career; he can define it, celebrate it, and enjoy it however he wants.

RELATING TO: Daughter Who Was ‘No Contact’ With Her Father 17 Years Ago Now Wants to Talk But Only Feels ‘Indifference’

Zayda Slabbekoorn is a News and Entertainment Writer at YourTango, focusing on health and wellness, social policy and human interest stories.