A war of worlds pt2

After that I walked into my room and calmly shut the door.

A couple of weeks after that he literally surrendered. He told me he had done everything that he could to control me, that he had not been successful and that he was done trying. He said that he had done his best to raise me as well as he could but that from here on out I was on my own. Shortly after that event, I went from family member to boarder, paying rent and coming and going as I chose.

The sad part is that the whole ten year power struggle between us did not need to happen. I knew from day one that he was not going to control me and he knew that I felt that way. But his ego would not accept the possibility of a child out thinking him. He forced himself to believe that eventually some punishment or restriction would get me to do what he wanted.

Neither one of us was in the right. But as a child, I didn't know any better. As an adult he should have. When his military type tactics weren't working he should have looked for a different solution instead of just continuing to apply more of the same. I went head to head because he went head to head.

If he had even once shown a genuine interest in what I thought about a given situation or listened to why I thought that the way I had in mind to do something was better than the way he wanted it done, then there would have been no reason for resistance. I resisted because I was being told I did not have a choice and that was unacceptable to me. There is always a choice. When told I didn't have one I automatically chose the opposite of what he wanted or just decided not to do it at all.

If his manor and demeanor had been friendly rather than antagonistic he could probably have easily manipulated me into doing what he wanted. For example, he could have gone on at length about how he wanted  be able to take the whole family to the rodeo on Saturday, but he wasn't going to be able to do that because Saturday was the only day that he had available to cut and maintain the lawn. However, if I was able to get the lawn work done to his satisfaction by Saturday afternoon then we could all enjoy the rodeo together.

Instead of becoming friends and bonding as a family should, we became enemies. We wasted a whole decade fighting. And if one of us had not given up, we would probably be fighting still.

Is that how you want your life to be? If not, learn from our example. Do your best to see things from the other person's perspective. And once you do, find ways of compromising, so that it is mutually beneficial for the other person to do what it is that you want.