It's Easy to Blame Your Dad
It's easy to blame your dad.
Once men start to reflect on who they've become, it's almost impossible not to reflect on their primary role model. You start asking the hard questions:
Why didn't he teach me it's okay to be both strong and vulnerable?
Why was he so emotionally unavailable?
Why couldn't he just tell me he loved me?
Why didn't he show me how to have real conversations instead of just working alongside each other in silence?
The awareness hits like a freight train. You're in your thirties, forties, or fifties, and suddenly you're connecting the dots between your dad's emotional distance and your own struggles with intimacy. Between his stoicism and your inability to express feelings. Between his definition of masculinity and the barriers it's created in your own relationships.
Once you see the impact of the person who raised you, it's hard to unsee it. The patterns become painfully obvious. The way you shut down when emotions get intense? That's dad. The way you solve problems instead of listening? That's dad. The way you measure your worth by your paycheck and struggle to just be present? Dad again.
And once you see it, it's even harder not to be angry about it. Why didn't he know better? Why didn't he do better? Why did he pass on these limiting beliefs about what it means to be a man? Your relationship is struggling because of lessons you learned in his home. Your kids are experiencing the same emotional distance you experienced. The cycle is repeating, and it feels like his fault.
I Get It
I'm still going through my own journey of understanding the lessons I learned in my father's home and how they impacted who I became. The realizations don't come all at once—they emerge slowly, often triggered by moments with your own kids or feedback from your partner. "You're just like your father" stops being an observation and starts feeling like an indictment.
I meet with men every week who are mid-life and just now reflecting on the direct and more subtle cues they absorbed from their dads. The explicit lessons: "Men don't cry." "Provide for your family." "Don't burden others with your problems." And the implicit ones: emotional needs are inconvenient, vulnerability is weakness, love is shown through action not words.
And after the "aha" moment, there's always a period of anger or disappointment that dad didn't do better. This anger is valid. The disappointment is real. You deserved a father who could show up emotionally, who could model healthy masculinity, who could teach you that strength and vulnerability aren't opposites.
The men I work with often describe feeling cheated—cheated out of a model for how to be both strong and emotionally available, cheated out of knowing how to connect deeply with their own children, cheated out of the tools they need to have the relationships they want.
Some men had fathers who were:
Present but emotionally distant.
Physically absent.
Critical or demanding.
Meant well but simply didn't know how to be anything other than what their own fathers modeled.
Whatever your specific experience, the grief is the same: mourning the father you needed but didn't have, and recognizing how that absence shaped you in ways you're only now beginning to understand.
I See It
As a therapist who works with men navigating this exact realization, I've guided countless clients through the process of understanding their father's influence without being imprisoned by it. And as someone working through my own father wound, I know this work isn't theoretical—it's deeply personal and often painful.
Research on intergenerational trauma and masculine socialization confirms what many men discover in therapy: patterns of emotional restriction, stoicism, and limited masculine expression are passed down through generations, often unconsciously. According to studies on fatherhood and masculinity, men frequently replicate their father's parenting style even when they consciously intend to do the opposite.
The anger you feel toward your father is a natural part of the process. But it's also where many men get stuck.
They spend years angry at their dads, blaming them for their struggles, and in doing so, they miss the opportunity to actually break the cycle.
Doing Better Now
Here's what I've learned, both personally and professionally, about moving beyond blame:
Your Dad Was Doing the Best He Could
This doesn't excuse harmful behavior. It doesn't mean you have to minimize your pain or pretend everything was fine. But consider this: your dad also learned from someone. And your grandfather learned from his father. Each generation was a product of the times they lived in.
Your father came of age in an era when men were expected to be stoic providers. Emotional availability wasn't on the checklist for being a good man. Companionship in relationships meant being present, not being vulnerable. The culture didn't give him permission or tools to be different, and he likely didn't even know there was another way to be.
He was navigating his own father wounds, his own limitations, his own cultural conditioning. He was doing the best he could with the awareness and tools he had. That doesn't make his limitations okay, but it does make them understandable.
You're Still Repeating the Pattern That Matters Most
Here's the painful irony: many men fight hard to be different from their dads. "I will never do it the way he did." You're determined to be more present, more engaged, more affectionate. And you are, in many ways.
But often, we replicate the one pattern that matters most: being disconnected on an emotional level from the people in our lives. We show up physically but remain emotionally unavailable. We provide and protect but struggle to share our inner world. We're present but not truly connected.
The surface behaviors change—you attend more soccer games, you say "I love you" more often, you're more hands-on with parenting. But the deeper emotional unavailability? That often persists, disguised in different packaging.
Now Is Your Chance to Do Better
Maya Angelou wrote, "When you know better, do better." You now know better. You see the pattern. You understand the cost. You recognize what was missing in your relationship with your father and what's at risk of being missing in your relationship with your own children.
This awareness is your opportunity. Not to blame your father, but to break the cycle he couldn't break. Not to stay angry at what you didn't receive, but to give what you didn't get. Not to remain stuck in disappointment about the past, but to create something different in the present.
Your children don't need a perfect father. They need a father who's willing to learn, to grow, to be vulnerable enough to admit mistakes and try differently. They need a father who's doing the work to become emotionally available even though he wasn't raised with that model.
Forgive Your Father
Blaming your father won't serve you in being a better father to your kids. The anger keeps you stuck in the past, rehearsing grievances, pointing backward. Forgiveness moves you forward.
Forgiveness doesn't mean condoning what was harmful. It doesn't require reconciliation or pretending the impact wasn't real. It means releasing the expectation that your father should have been different than he was capable of being given his own wounds and limitations.
Forgive your father—not for him, but for you. Forgive him so you can stop carrying his limitations as your own. Forgive him so you can write a different story for your own children.
Make the Shift
When men move from blame to understanding, from anger to forgiveness, something shifts. They stop being victims of their father's limitations and become architects of their own version of fatherhood and masculinity.
You can't change what you received from your father. But you can change what you pass on to your children. You can be the father who breaks the cycle, who models that men can be both strong and vulnerable, who shows that emotional availability is strength, not weakness.
Your children won't inherit your father's patterns—they'll inherit yours. And the work you're doing now to become more emotionally connected, more vulnerable, more present? That's the legacy that matters.
The cycle can end with you. The limitations can stop here. Your father gave you what he could. Now you get to give your children something more.
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Becoming a Better Father in Victoria, BC
At the Scriven Program, we help men understand and heal their father wounds while becoming the fathers their children need. Located in Victoria, British Columbia, and serving clients virtually across North America, our practice specializes in helping men break intergenerational patterns and create new models of masculinity.
Our services for men working through father wounds include:
Individual therapy to process your relationship with your father and its impact on who you've become
Fatherhood coaching to help you be emotionally present with your children in ways your father couldn't be with you
Support for breaking cycles of emotional unavailability and disconnection
Guidance for developing healthy masculinity that integrates strength and vulnerability
You can't change your father. But you can change yourself, and in doing so, change what your children inherit.
Contact the Scriven Program to begin the work of healing your father wound and becoming the father you wish you'd had.
