I can forgive my mom but not my dad
Hey there. So. I (F21) am a university student and live off of insurance money. In my country you get disability percentages and I'm 100% mentally disabled, so i get enough money for food and rent without relaying on my parents. However, i think I'm living a relatively safe and stable life. I have friends and go to therapy.
My ptsd mostly stems from my time at the psych ward and a mentally abusive relationship, but again and again I discover in therapy how badly child abuse affected me. My mom used to beat me a lot as a kid, my sisters too. She didn't bruise me, I mostly remember being hit on the head where you can't see anything. Sometimes we would have bumps though. She also threw things at me, and broke my phone twice. She was a stay at home mom back then, and my dad was and still is a misogynistic prick. Also I'm fairly certain he doesn't know about the abuse or at least doesn't think it's bas enough to care about. My mom's korean, so she doesn't speak the language here as well as me. My dad never bothered to learn korean, so theor fighting was a confusing mess of three languages (english is not our native language and neither of them are fluent at it). But she does well enough to be able to get a good paying job, so that's what she did.
When I was around 13, she got a job and was less at home. My best guess is that's where it stopped. My memory is very blurry about it, and I completely forgot I was abused until I was around 17. Apparently I have been self harming by hitting myself on the head the same way my mom beat me. And I only noticed when my therapist asked me how she used to hit me. So I did a similar motion, and oh my god, the look on his face. It was only then that I realized how bad it was.
It seems my therapist is reluctant to bring it up a lot. I feel like he clearly knows things I don't. He was quite hesitent when he suggested that her abuse made me more ceceptable to abuse later in my life.
My dad, however, is just an asshole.
The way he talks about women is disgusting, and that bleeds into the way he talks about my friends and my sister's friends. Even when we were minors. He can never admit that he is wrong. I used to have screaming matches with him when I was a teenager, and he would cut off my sim card in retaliation. His politics are bad, his misogyny is bad, and overall he's an insufferable person that refuses to get better no matter how hard my family tried he will never admit that he's wrong. He's like a child. He gets jealous of out fucking cat when we pay attention to her and not him. He's very bad at acknowledging the misogyny and racism me and my sisters experience as asian women and girls, so it just makes me more detached from him.
Meanwhile, my mom changed a lot. She apologised for her ways, even if she wasn't very direct about it. She doesn't fat shame me anymore, never evet hits me, and is always very supportive. She still has work to do but I can confidently say I'm happy to have her in my life. And I always prefer my extended family on her side rather than my dad's.
Me living without them did wonders for my mental health. I do go back once in a while, but it usually takes about one week for it to become unbearable. And I'm constantly reminded how disgusting my dad is.
TLDR: My mom was the one who physically abused me but she made a lot of improvements and I'm willing to forgive her. But my dad is a misogynistic jerk who refuses to make any significant change in his mentality, and probably is partly to blame of why my mom used to be that way. So I can't let go of my grudge against him.
Can anyone relate?
Posted Jul 11, 2026, 9:02 PM UTC