re: Just found out my father is dead - no one wrote an obituary

i am sorry for your loss. It sounds like you lost your father while he was still living. You are not alone in this tragedy. It sounds like he had Emotional Deprivation Disorder.

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The lack of affirming love in a person’s life can have a dramatic effect on how they perceive themselves, others and the world.
An unaffirmed person needs the consistent, authentic affirmation of another human person in their life. Since unaffirmed persons have missed being loved and affirmed as a child, the person needs to be able to experience the unselfish, unconditional, authentic love of another human being.
According to Drs. Terruwe and Baars, since the emotional life of an individual with this disorder was arrested or never formed as a child, therapy provides a safe environment where these persons may be themselves and begin to grow through the same developmental stages that one normally experiences during childhood. As the individual comes to feel loved and accepted by another person, the emotional life will begin to grow at the stage in which affirmation was denied or stopped during childhood.
The Affirmation therapist remains consistently and affectively present to the person, inasmuch as he or she provides the emotional affirmation as well as the intellectual affirmation that the person needs to grow properly. Ultimately, for healing to be successful, the person must be able to feel his or her goodness and uniqueness and so experience his or her own worth. The person must feel safe and secure in this relationship with the therapist so that he knows that he is no longer alone—someone finally understands and accepts him, just as he is. The therapist also offers intellectual affirmation through gentle correction of distorted beliefs and thinking acquired during times of emotional trauma.
When this state finally comes about in the therapeutic milieu, the individual’s emotional development can resume its natural course and the symptoms of the disorder will gradually disappear.

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This book called "Healing the Unaffirmed" explains a lot. If your father did not receive the love he needed as a child, then he may have passed that to you to a degree. You may not have been loved by him in a way you needed it. You may have received the love you needed later. This book will explain a lot.

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[quote]What is Affirmation?
All human beings have an intrinsic need for human love. With the exception of Divine intervention, it is essential to receive human love in order for an individual to feel good, worthwhile, and lovable—and have the capacity to love others. In essence, we must first be loved in order to love.
One’s ability to love is set free when that person sees himself or herself as good, worthwhile, and lovable. According to Christian psychiatrists Dr. Conrad W. Baars and Dr. Anna A. Terruwe, this process is called “affirmation,” and it occurs when one person is the source of unconditional love and emotional strengthening for another person. From the perspective of Christian awareness, this capacity to love is essential in order to live out the commandment of Jesus to “love one another” (John 13:34, 15:12).

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It seems that your mom wanted to unconditionally love him but he did not know how to receive her love. It seems he needed therapy, but most therapists do not know about Emotional Deprivation Disorder.

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olgoi khorkhoi

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My Dad was a difficult man, sometimes charming and sometimes violent. He was gone working often, and you never knew what mood he would be in when he came home.


He was the kind of drinker who wouldn't drink for months, or even years, at a time, but if he took the first drink, he'd wind up totally hammered.


Unlike your father, he never abandoned his family, but I've seen him hit every one of us. I have no doubt his time in Korea left him with PTSD, which he never sought treatment for.


We often didn't get along, but as we both aged, we reconciled, for which I think we were both thankful.


Be thankful that you didn't follow his path, and that you're a better father and human being than he was.

Probably one of the best avenues of letting this off your chest that you have.

I will keep you in my prayers.

Please do not burden yourself with regret. Don't mourn for what could have been, but rather look at what was the reality. You were not unlovable -- he was incapable of anything resembling love.


Spend your time being thankful that he had little influence on determining what kind of person you would become. He did you a favor with his absenteeism.


Give your children the love and guidance you never got.