Dear B.,

I’m writing you this letter to tell you I won’t be answering phone calls from you or agreeing to see you in person for the foreseeable future. I’m still willing to correspond with you via email or letters, and I want to keep in contact with P. and K. without limitations, but I have some deep seated issues with you and our relationship, and, frankly, I feel us talking on the phone or seeing each other will only be a waste of time unless we address these issues.

I’ve decided on written communication because interruptions, distractions, and misunderstandings are one of the issues we need to work out. I recently had some problems communicating with someone else and I found that slowing the dialog down to the speed of the written word helped keep the conversation cleaner and clearer. It also meant we had a tangible record of our conversations, to which we both could refer. The page was our impartial observer. It’s a court of last resort, but that’s the point I’ve reached.

As you read through this, I’m pretty sure you’ll ask yourself, “Where is all this coming from?” Time and again we’ve had discussions where I’ve tried to talk to you, tell you about feelings and thoughts that mattered to me, and instead of listening you’ve assigned a cause to what I was saying which allowed you discount or ignore it. In general, the cause you’ve assigned has had nothing to do with matter at hand, but I suppose that’s what makes it so effective: one can’t argue with the absurd.

For as long as I can remember, I’ve made excuses for you. “Well, you know how B. is.” I learned long ago that getting you to understand me was difficult, but any sort of vehemence (let alone actual anger or frustration) made it completely impossible. The more abstract and circuitous, the more likely you were to actually comprehend what I wanted to communicate.

One problem: People aren’t abstractions. I am not an abstraction, I am your son. Frustration and anger aren’t nebulous concepts, they are tangible and immediate feelings. They are my feelings and you refuse to deal with them, and thus refuse to deal with me for who I am, which leaves me to choose between your denying me or my denying myself.

Up until now I chose the later, because self-sacrifice goes over better with one’s self-image and no son wants to be denied by his father. Notice how even now I’m generalizing – talk about a bad habit. I extended that self-denial and generalization into the rest of my life and it cost me heavily. For a long time I wore myself out trying to make myself, especially my feelings, into abstracts. Eventually, I even learned to edit out what I didn’t want to see about myself: “IsoGolem (Abridged)”. Neither actually worked, except to make me unable to see the sources of my problems, making my own actions increasingly confusing to me and everyone around me. The more I tried to make sense of myself, while still avoiding those truths, the more confusing life got. If A. hadn’t suggested I get counseling, she and I would probably still be married, still miserable, and still unable to understand the reasons for any of it.

I’m not saying any part of the previous paragraph is your fault or responsibility, it’s mine. I made my choices, I own them. My point is, beyond just my relationship with you, I’ve driven this road until long after the wheels had come off the cart. In the last few years, with continuing therapy, I’ve done my best to leave that road behind, but my relationship to you has remained exactly the same as it’s always been. I’ve avoided trying anything new out fear and apathy: I know I can’t change it, so why should I even try. However, I’m tired of this vicious circle, of feeling this way, of having to carry your baggage along with my own. I’m tired of all of it and I just can’t do it anymore.

I can’t change what you do, but I can change what I do. It’s time I took the chance on the other option: for my own sake, I’m going to start being honest with you, and leave the choice of what you do about it up to you. If you choose to blow me off, then so be it, but I’m done excusing you from that choice.


I must say, aside from the other benefits of written communication, I’m looking forward to not talking on the phone with you. I spend those calls in an odd mix of feeling bored out of my mind, running myself ragged trying to find the signal in all the noise, and being generally frustrated at how little signal I can find. I can’t even count the number of times I’ve just made up an excuse so I could get off the phone. Worst of all, after I hang up, I’m left exhausted by the effort and saying to myself, “Well, there’s another block of time wasted, another number of minutes I’ll never get back.”