i posted this on another subreddit but i hope it’s also allowed here because i genuinely need advice, and it took a while to write everything.
posting on a throwaway account. TW: weight loss.
hi everyone, this has been on my mind 24/7. i’ve cried myself to sleep thinking about it multiple times, and i don’t know if i’m making the right choice.
for context, i’m 20 years old, and my dad is almost 50 years old.
growing up, my dad was mostly physically inactive. he was always overweight (~ 250 lbs at 6’1). my dad has been diagnosed with depression since childhood, and doesn’t cope well with stress.
during the pandemic, my dad told me that he wanted to lose weight. i was proud of him for deciding to make a healthy lifestyle change. i decided that i’d provide him with moral support, and that we’d go for walks together every day, because it’s hard for him to motivate himself to do high-commitment activities on his own. i also thought that this would help us get closer, and felt a moral obligation to go with him, because he worked very hard to raise me. his target weight was 150 lbs.
soon after he started his journey, i realized that working out stresses him out. people typically handle stress better when they’re exercising regularly, since exercise is a stress reliever. this wasn’t the case for my dad. my dad hated working out so much, and he would take all his anger out on me. however, he always disguised his anger as a “life lesson”. i genuinely fully believed him, and gave him the benefit of the doubt. i always knew that he thought a little differently than “normal” people, because of his depression. he always said that i need to know how to handle his anger, so that i’d know how to deal with the “harsh realities of life” in the future. i was understanding about the fact that exercising was very stressful for him, so i was okay with being the scapegoat during his walks, as long as he kept going and achieving his goals. his goals were my goals.
i didn’t fully realize the mental toll all the fighting was taking on me at the time. i thought there was something wrong with me for feeling depressed after the walks, especially since my dad used to tell me that everything he said was for my own betterment. i genuinely thought i wouldn’t be able to succeed in life because, as he said, if i can’t handle him, i can’t reach my full potential. therefore, i would always bottle up my feelings and try to ignore them. some days, my dad would get so mad at me, and would send me back home as a “punishment” for making him mad. he also would give me silent treatments and then make me responsible for asking for forgiveness. this really stung, especially since i was the one who constantly showed up for him to achieve his goals.
this went on for a little over a year, until my dad finally reached his goal weight. there was absolutely no “thank you”, or anything of that sort, even after his goal was achieved. to be honest, i didn’t really expect it or necessarily want him to thank me, because that wasn’t the point. looking back, this feels like a slap in the face, considering everything it took to get him to his goal. supporting someone in losing 100 lbs is not easy.
throughout the time since my dad started working out to when he reached his goal weight, my parents were going through a divorce. my dad wanted and had asked for the divorce. it was finalized shortly after my dad reached his goal weight, and he moved away for a while. while he was living alone, my dad would go for walks by himself to maintain his weight.
the next time i visited my dad was more than a year after he left. even though he’d been exercising at the beginning, he’d fallen back into his old habits and didn’t know how to cope with the divorce, so he started stress eating. he went all the way back to 250 lbs. that really hurt, but i understood that my dad is human, so i forced myself to get over it.
our relationship had improved after the divorce. last summer, i felt sad about my dad’s weight loss situation, so i convinced him to start walking with me again, and told him that we’ll focus more on the health benefits this time, instead of weight loss. he told me that he “doesn’t care” about the health benefits, and that he only works out to achieve an improved physical appearance. i thought my dad had learned better after the divorce, and that he wouldn’t act the same way as he did the first time during our walks, so i went along with it.
the same thing would happen again, and my dad would get mad at me during the walks, trying to frame his anger as “life lessons”. he would still threaten to leave me at home as a punishment, and he’d tell me that one day i’m going to give him a heart attack due to all the stress i give him. he would also keep giving me silent treatments after fights. this time, since i was older and had spent some time away from him, i spoke up for myself more. despite anything i said, he told me that i need to know how to deal better with people so that in the future, i will know how to handle tough situations (for example, a situation like failing my university practicum). he says that since he’s my dad, i can’t take his words to heart, since at the end of the day, he loves me and wants what’s best for me (whereas my university professor who might hypothetically fail me, doesn’t actually care about me). i stopped going with him to exercise after a few months, but he doesn’t know that this is why. he thinks it’s because we lost motivation again.
he doesn’t seem to understand that his fear mongering isn’t helping me. he never tells me that he believes in me, and always treats me like someone who can’t navigate life on my own. no matter what i try to tell him, he’s set in his ways. i’ve tried to communicate with him so many times, but each time he shuts me down since “he has more life experience than me” and therefore “knows better than me” and that i should “trust him and listen to everything he says for my own good”.
at this point, i’m supposed to be two years into my degree. however, i fell into a very deep depression and was basically on academic probation during each term of university. i only recently had the courage to share this with my mom. she listened to me, and told me that it’s okay, and that she understands what i went through. this lifted a huge weight off of my shoulders, because i had been hiding all of this out of fear for the past two years. my mom told me that i’m not my dad’s parent, and that his life is basically over already, whereas mine has barely begun.
i took this summer semester off so that i can get better and make sure i’m in the right headspace for school. i even told my mom that i want to take a gap semester, and she told me that she supports me. i’m so lucky to have her.
even though i realistically know that going with my dad isn’t my responsibility, i can’t help thinking that it is. he’s not physically incapable on going on his own (he did it when he was living by himself), but i know that when he has me, he is not mentally tough enough to go alone. i look at him every day and i worry about him, because he’s overweight, and lays in bed all day. he’s recently mentioned that he feels pressure on his stomach area, and that he has low self-esteem because of his weight. it hurts me. i really love my dad and i know that he loves me too, but i can’t handle exercising with him anymore. we get along so well when he doesn’t exercise. i’m really worried that if something health-related were to happen to him, it would be my fault, since i can technically push through the emotional abuse to go with him. i feel selfish. i’m scared that something permanent might happen to him. sometimes i consider helping him lose 70 lbs again and then make him maintain that, but i also don’t want to get hurt again.
i’m also aware that i won’t be able to get better if i don’t stop going to exercise with him, because he’s made it clear that he won’t change the way he acts towards me when we go for walks together. if i go with him, i would be telling him that he way he treats me is okay. it’s not like i don’t want to take time out of my day to go with him, the problem is the emotional abuse, which seeps into all parts of my life. it really is a lose-lose situation: either my mental health suffers, or his physical health suffers. i wish we could just go and spend time together without all of the extra drama, but unfortunately, he can’t handle that.
should i put myself first in this situation?
TL;DR my dad is emotionally abusive during our walks together, and tells me (and probably genuinely believes) that it’s for my own betterment. i’m unsure if i should keep exercising with him for his health’s sake, or if i should put myself first for once, and stop going.
Comments
What you did for your father was really compassionate and loving, but you can’t help someone who doesn’t want to help themself. He knows how to keep himself healthy, he just chooses not to do it. On top of that, he is being abusive. There is nothing in it for you.
I mean, yeah, obviously don’t subject yourself to continued abuse. The walks and his health are being used as tools to manipulate you and allow him to abuse you further. I highly suggest seeking therapy to unpack your feelings and learn how to draw healthy boundaries with your father.