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[quote=Anonymous]Dad [i]never[/i] calls me. Since I'd like to maintain a relationship, I call him usually once a week. I should also note that if more than a week or so passes where I don't call him, then the next time I talk to him he'll ask me why I didn't call the previous week, so I do think he wants me to call. However, this is often unclear from our conversations. When I call him, he talks about himself for about 10 minutes or so (he's retired and his entire monologue is just about what chores he is doing around the house, what errands he has to run, what he and my mom had for dinner, what tv show/movie they watched) Once he has run through all of this, he just will say something like 'well, that's about it' or 'I'm through.' And then either there will be a long awkward pause, he'll say he has to go do xyz or else I will just start telling him about myself/my family unprompted (he never asks me any questions about myself or my family) but whenever I do this, as I'm talking I just feel like what's the point of this if he doesn't even care about me/my life enough to make any effort to ask me any questions/seem the least bit interested in me. I usually get off the phone w/ him feeling annoyed.

I have tried to express the way I feel to him about this many times. I have said I'd like for him to call me sometimes but he just says that he never knows when a good time for me would be (I work-part-time- and also have a young infant who naps/eats often so this is somewhat legitimate) so it's better for me to call him. My dad is extremely sensitive and he's been really defensive whenever I've brought up anything about him not asking me questions during our "conversations"...he seems really offended by this for some reason...I guess he just is offended at the implication that by not asking me questions, he's showing he doesn't really care much about my life. Why he won't just change his behavior rather than getting defensive, I don't know.

I know I should probably just get over it but I do love him and want to talk to him, I especially want to maintain a relationship w/ him for the sake of my son, who is also my dad's only grandchild. I guess I just wanted to vent, mostly. But if anyone here has any suggestions for how I could improve this situation, that'd be great too.[/quote]

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