My parents didn’t raise me how I would’ve preferred to be raised. And I don’t just feel that way because I discovered TRP.

My mother, and her obsessive overprotective traits, stifled any normal social upbringing I could of had. I wasn’t allowed to hang out with friends or have a birthday party in fear of getting ill, I couldn’t do sports or swim in fear of getting injured. It got so bad that I never had a normal birthday party with friends as kid or teenager growing up, never had the opportunity to try anything new, etc. I hid every single bit of my social life that I did have, hoping she wouldn’t destroy that too.

At first, I thought my father understood what I was going through. I figured he was just allowing my mom to be her petty self towards me so he wouldn’t have to hear her bitching every night. It turns out, I was wrong.

The first time I confronted him about this was when I was around 15/16. We were at a boys trip with the rest of the men in the family at a cabin in the woods. That summer, I went to summer school and befriended a girl who became my first everything. First time hanging out alone with someone (at all), first time being allowed to go to someone else’s birthday party, etc.

And I overhear my father talking to my uncle… “I think he has a girlfriend”. My heart sank. To think that after the way he raised me, that I was somehow capable enough of getting a girlfriend when I could barely have guy friends was fucking insulting. I lashed out at him, told him everything how I really felt… “But it’s OK to have a girlfriend”. I felt defeated, like as if I didn’t even know who my father really was anymore.

Fast-forward almost a decade later to now, not a whole lot has changed with the dynamic of me and my parents. I still don’t tell them anything about my social life or personal life. The dynamic got better when I left the house at 18 to join the Army, but has gone considerably more sour since I moved across the country last year and only see my parents on holidays instead of every other weekend.

Now in my mid-20s, my dad is starting to pull the “when will you get married” types of questions. The first time he popped this question was right after a LTR ended (which he never knew about), and my cousin got arrested. The conversation got a bit touchy but I told him that this was a bridge he burnt a long time ago, so stop trying to make it worse.

Now this weekend, he had the audacity to try and set me up with his friend’s daughter, whom I probably haven’t seen since I was like 10 years old, under the guise of coming to a BBQ with his friends. After finding out I wasn’t coming, he says “Oh but [friend’s daughter] is here and she has no one to talk to” to which I not-so playfully said “Not my problem”. I knew exactly what he was insinuating here. He comes home with this smug look on this face, stares me down and walks away before saying “I hope my face says it all”.

After I finally get him to start talking, he finally admits his covert actions of trying to set me up with her. To which I properly told him how insulting that feels and that I don’t give a fuck. “Fine, you don’t deserve a wonderful woman like her. You deserve nothing to be your miserable self.”

This shit is starting to get on my nerves to the point where I might just get on a plane back to my house.

How the fuck do I have a man-to-man conversation? How am I supposed to get this all of my chest? How am I supposed to tell him that he can’t just “bro” up me after being nothing like that when I was child?