When a father who loved his son couldn't figure out how to reach him.
After Shabbat services one evening, a father I'll call Peter approached me after seeing me with my adult daughter.
“It's clear that you and your daughter have a loving relationship,” he said. “My son fucking hates me! We haven't said more than two words to each other in six months.”
His son was still in high school.
Peter loved his son deeply, but their relationship had deteriorated to the point where they could barely speak. As we talked, it became clear that Peter's own experience of being parented was shaping how he approached his son. His father had beaten him with a belt, and Peter had grown up with ideas about strength, authority and vulnerability that he was carrying into his own relationship with his son.
The problem wasn't whether Peter loved his son. It was whether he was expressing that love in a way his son could receive. We spent time looking at the relationship from his son's perspective and considering how Peter's words and behavior might land differently than he intended.
Peter also struggled to say what he actually felt - love, fear, disappointment and regret. Authority and defensiveness came more naturally. We worked on the language and role-played conversations he was reluctant to have because speaking openly about those feelings made him vulnerable, and vulnerability felt like weakness.
I suggested Brené Brown's Daring Greatly, which gave us another way to talk about vulnerability. I also recognized that Peter and his son could benefit from expertise beyond what I was providing and referred them to a relationship coach.
The real change came from Peter's willingness to question some deeply held assumptions and try approaches that initially felt uncomfortable and unfamiliar. That changed how he approached his son and made conversations possible that hadn't seemed possible before.
Today, father and son are talking again. Their relationship is back on the rails and moving in the right direction.
Peter couldn't control how his son would respond. He could change the way he saw the situation, better understand what it might look like from his son's perspective, and choose how he showed up for the next conversation. Sometimes changing a relationship begins by seeing it differently.
Privacy Note: Names, identifying details, places, and certain circumstances have been changed to protect confidentiality. This case is based on an actual engagement and is presented to illustrate the nature of Resolve Advisory's work.