When Jacob Randers’ grandfather died, the old man left his house to Jacob’s father to do with as he wished.

Jacob’s dad decided to let Jacob, then 20, and his partner of two years have the house.

“As long as you make regular payments, the house is yours. Your ‘rent’ is the down payment,” his father told him.

So Jacob moved into the house that his father had grown up in. He felt proud his dad had entrusted him with the responsibility of taking care of it. Over the next four years, he poured thousands of dollars and hours of sweat equity into making the house his home, making regular payments to his father, as he’d promised he would.

But just as Jacob completed renovations, including new flooring and paint throughout the house, remodeling the bathroom and landscaping the yard, his father had a change of heart. He decided to give the house to Jacob’s brother.

“Your brother is getting married and will have a wife and kids,” Jacob’s father said. “He needs a house, and you don’t. You’re gay and won’t be married or have kids. You will be happy in a condo or an apartment.”

“My father told me that being gay was a lifestyle choice; consequently, I had chosen not to have the house,” Jacob says.

The experience left Jacob grappling to come to terms with his father’s behavior and with his own conflicting emotions about the man he calls “dad.” It’s a struggle many of us can identify with and that can feel particularly poignant around Father’s Day.

“As a gay son, I had struggled so hard to make my father feel proud of me. By taking over his childhood home, I felt for once I had the opportunity to really prove myself to him. Instead, I had the rug pulled out from underneath me. It was as if I had been used only to fix the house up and add the ‘gay touch’ to it, so that my brother could reap the fruits of my hard work. It was such a surreal feeling to know that my father would betray me in that way,” Jacob, now 27, says. Although he “battled” with his father for months, Jacob’s pleas fell on deaf ears. “It scarred our relationship immensely,” he says.

“When Father’s Day rolls around, I feel I should get a card or call, but I always feel like I’m the one reaching out,” says Tim, 38, of North Park, who hasn’t spoken to his father in three years.

Tim recalls two particular incidents that created a rift with his father: “When I was 21, my father and I went out to dinner, and he told me that when I was a kid he had no interest in raising me. It was one of those things that I always knew, but that I didn’t need to hear vocalized,” he says.

Tim continued to try to get his father’s attention for the next 14 years. But three years ago, he stopped. “One time on the phone, Dad was really drunk. He wasn’t listening to me. Something in me just clicked. [His behavior] was indicative of my childhood,” he says. “I haven’t talked to him since.”

In The Man I Might Become: Gay Men Write About Their Fathers, Andrew Holleran writes about the difficulties of talking to dad. “One doubts the things in this book could have been said face-to-face to the fathers who are being portrayed,” he says.

When it isn’t possible to speak with our fathers directly, either because they refuse our attempts or they’ve passed away, resolving our relationships with them is more difficult, says Bankers Hill licensed therapist Patricia Snyder, M.A., MFT. While the goal of examining our feelings about dad is forgiveness of our fathers and healing ourselves, Snyder says, “[that] isn’t possible without dealing with the parent.” In these circumstances, “acceptance or even simply coping is a more realistic objective,” Snyder says.

However, making peace with one’s “inner dad,” is the most important goal of examining one’s feelings toward him, writes Harold H. Bloomfield, M.D., in Making Peace with Your Parents. “If you succeed at least as far as making peace with the parents inside your head, you will … no longer [be] a victim in [your] relationship with [your] parents,” Bloomfield writes.

The ways in which our unfinished business with dad affects our daily lives can be complex, but for gay men there is one area in which it is directly reflected, says openly gay San Diego psychotherapist Michael Kimmel, M.A., MSW, LCSW. “For gay men, our love object is a man, so a lot of us manifest the same kind of relationship with our partner(s) that we had with our father. For example, if your father was remote, you may expect your ideal man to be unavailable and unemotional. You may, subconsciously, expect to find these qualities in all your relationships with men. You may even pick men just like your dad and then try to change them.”

“It worries me … that my romantic relationships seem, in many respects, a tragic replay of [my relationship with my father],” writes Douglas Sadownick in “My Father, My Self,” one of the stories in The Man I Might Become. “For a very long time, I wondered whether I could ever fall for anyone who didn’t in some ways … get off on hating me.”

“My relationship with my father definitely shaped part of what I find attractive in a potential mate,” says Jay, 31, of North Park. “I don’t know about physical characteristics, but maybe behavior patterns or personality,” he says.

“My dad wanted me to be a gun-toting, hunting and fishing buddy. So I think he resented me for not being that person. I could never be that person; it wasn’t me.” Although Jay says he doesn’t pick men who resent him, he says he thinks observers of his choices in previous and current relationships “might be able to identify certain [of his father’s] underlying patterns, characteristics [and] personality types … from the guys I have gravitated toward.”

There are identifiable stages of healing father-son relationships, both Snyder and Kimmel say.

Essentially, they are the stages of grief, Snyder says: “denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance. And people don’t go through them sequentially. It’s so different with every person. My experience is that most people go through each stage when they’re ready. [And they] jump back and forth between stages. It’s often a lifetime process and often there are plateaus, but each time you deal with your feelings they’re on a different level.”

Often, the first step in the process, Kimmel says, is to “tell yourself the truth about how you feel about your dad. Most of us have a lot of ambivalence. Let yourself see both the love and the anger you feel toward him. If you don’t admit and work through the anger you’ve still got hanging around, you may push yourself to ‘forgive him’ because you feel like you should. This is what I call ‘false forgiveness.’ It’s very shallow and pretty meaningless, and it doesn’t work because it’s fake and surface. It’s like putting a Band-Aid on an infected wound; it works temporarily, but you’ll never heal your father wound this way.”

The second step, he continues, is to “look at your father in context. How did he get to be the way he is? If possible, talk to other people in the family to find out all you can about his childhood and how he was treated by his father. This kind of information can help you to depersonalize how he treated you; so it’s not about you anymore, it’s really about him and his history.

For Tim, taking responsibility is the turning point. “At this point,” he says, “it’s more about me than about him. It’s about acting rather than reacting. I think about how it will make me feel if he dies and our relationship isn’t resolved. In a weird way, I’m taking dad out of the equation.”

Consequently, acknowledging that he needed to let go of his expectation that his father would reach out to him, Tim reached out to his father – writing him a letter accounting for what he felt was his own contribution to the lack of bond between them.

“I had distanced myself from him because I saw characteristics in him that I didn’t want to rub off on me: He’s gruff; I’m gentle. I’m really sensitive, and he can dole it out verbally.”

Tim’s father, he says, responded immediately with a letter in return. In essence, the letter said, “It isn’t your fault.”

“[It] made me realize that I had put a lot of stock in my hopes that he was as affected by my own actions in distancing myself, as I had been so thoroughly affected by his when I was younger, and when he said it wasn’t my fault, it made me stop and try to look at him with adult eyes, and not the wounded eyes of a child,” Tim says.

As for Jacob, he’s reached a similar truce: After battling his father to no avail for months, Jacob moved into a small apartment and out of the house he had made his home. His brother now owns the house. Jacob has never been back, and he refused to speak with his father for more than a year. “The tension was very heavy and the situation weighed heavy on me. I had horrible dreams and nightmares about the situation. When I moved I packed boxes; it is like I packed away the pain. To this day I still sometimes wake myself up at night yelling in my sleep or arguing with my father. … [However,] I slowly began speaking to my father again and we discussed what he did to me. I know my father loves me very much and I love him too. He has realized what he did was wrong. He has told me that he feels very guilty and is apologetic about the situation. Still, four years later, there is nothing that can be done about it. It changed me because I learned a lot about life during that time. It taught me to be a stronger person and also that sometimes even the ones we love the most might do us wrong.

Today, when Father’s Day comes around, Jacob says he doesn’t feel resentment for his dad. “This is just one bad situation in a relationship that has spanned my entire life. While my dad hurt me a lot, on Father’s Day and every day I’m still grateful to him. Because no matter what, he is still the man that taught me how to ride a bike, use a skill saw and so much more.”

[Pseudonyms have been used to protect the identities of those interviewed for this story.]

To begin to comprehend the extent to which your relationship with your parents affects your daily life and peace of mind, give an honest answer to each of the following:

• Do you feel free of the expectations and obligations of others?

• Can you make a mistake without excessive self-criticism?

• Are you able to express anger effectively without turning it inward or reacting with blind rage?

• Are you good at both nurturing yourself emotionally and supporting yourself materially?

• Are you comfortable with your sexuality?

• Do you work well with bosses, teachers, landlords or other authority figures?

• Are you free from paralyzing fears of rejection, disapproval or abandonment?

• Have you overcome your fears of being trapped by a committed love relationship or marriage?

• Are you free from excessive striving and unrealistic expectations that make you a slave to your work?

• Are you good at setting limits for people who impose upon you?

• Do you appreciate and love yourself fully?

• Do you feel fulfilled by your current home environment and family life?

• Do you enjoy being responsible for your own happiness , emotions and the quality of your life?

Source: Making Peace with Your Parents, Harold H. Bloomfield, M.D.