And then there are the captions: “My hero”, “My first teacher”, “My pillar” and “Thank you for always being there”.
Beautiful words, really.
And sometimes I look at them and think: Good for them.
And then another, slightly less generous thought arrives: What would it have been like if I had that?
That is the part of Father’s Day that nobody really talks about.
For some people, Father’s Day is a celebration of a relationship they are grateful to have. For others, it is a reminder of a relationship that has become complicated, distant, strained, fractured or simply never became what they had hoped it would be. And for some of us, the easiest thing to do is nothing.
I do not celebrate Father’s Day.
It is not because I have decided that fathers are terrible. It is not because I believe children should abandon their parents. It is certainly not because I am trying to campaign for some grand philosophy of being unfilial. My relationship with my father is strained. And because it is strained, I have learnt that sometimes the kindest thing I can do for myself is not to force a celebration simply because the calendar tells me that I should.
There is a difference between refusing to love someone and refusing to participate in a ritual that makes an already difficult relationship more difficult. For me, Father’s Day is the latter. Perhaps that sounds selfish. Perhaps someone reading this will think, “But he is still your father.”
I know.
That is precisely why it is complicated. The word father carries an enormous amount of cultural weight. In many families, particularly Asian families, the parent-child relationship is not merely understood as a personal relationship between two individuals. It is tied to duty, respect, sacrifice, gratitude and family identity.
We are taught to honour our parents. We are reminded of what they sacrificed. We are told that they raised us, fed us, clothed us and sent us to school. And these things can all be true.A parent can have sacrificed for you, and you can still have a difficult relationship with that parent. Both things can exist at the same time. This is perhaps one of the hardest things to accept about adulthood: relationships are rarely as simple as deciding who is good and who is bad.
Sometimes someone can have done good things for you and still be someone you need distance from. Sometimes you can be grateful and hurt at the same time. Sometimes you can love someone and not want to be around them. Sometimes you can wish things were different without believing that you have the power to make them different. And sometimes the most peaceful relationship you can have with someone is one with a little more distance than either of you might have imagined.
Father’s Day has a peculiar way of exposing all these contradictions.
Because the day does not merely ask, “Do you have a father?”. It seems to ask, “What kind of relationship do you have with your father?”. And if the answer is complicated, suddenly a perfectly ordinary Sunday can become an emotional examination paper you never asked to sit for.
The first reason Father’s Day can be depressing is perhaps the most obvious: it reminds you of what you do not have. We understand this instinctively with other occasions. Christmas can be difficult for someone who has lost a loved one. Weddings can be difficult for someone who desperately wants to marry. Mother’s Day can be difficult for someone whose mother has died, or whose relationship with her is complicated. Birthdays can be difficult for people who feel lonely. The occasion itself is not necessarily the problem. The problem is what the occasion represents.
Father’s Day represents fatherhood as an experience of closeness, gratitude and celebration. When your own experience does not resemble that picture, the gap between what is presented and what you have lived can become surprisingly painful.
The British bereavement organisation Cruse makes this point in its discussion of grieving on Father’s Day. It notes that complicated relationships can make the day particularly confusing because society tends to assume that parent-child relationships are loving and close. When that has not been your experience, grief and other emotions can become much more complicated.
And notice that word: complicated. Not necessarily angry. Not necessarily sad. Complicated. That is probably the word I would use for my own relationship with my father. There are things I wish had been different. There are things I have accepted. There are things I still do not understand. There are things I have stopped trying to understand.
And there are things that, frankly, I would rather not revisit every year simply because Hallmark, social media and the calendar have collectively decided that today is the day I should think about my father.
The second reason Father’s Day can be depressing is comparison.
This one is particularly difficult in the age of social media. Before social media, you could perhaps get through Father's Day without knowing what everyone else was doing. Now you can open your phone at breakfast and receive thirty-seven photographic demonstrations of other people's father-child relationships before you have even finished your coffee. There is Dad at the restaurant. Dad at the beach. Dad receiving flowers. Dad laughing with his grandchildren. Dad pretending not to cry. Dad crying anyway. Dad wearing the matching T-shirt his children bought him. And somewhere in the comments, somebody writes, “We are so blessed.”
Perhaps they are.
I am genuinely happy for people who have loving relationships with their fathers. But happiness for somebody else does not automatically prevent sadness about yourself. That is an important distinction. Sometimes we imagine that if we feel uncomfortable seeing other people's happiness, we must be bitter or jealous.
I do not think that is necessarily true. Sometimes another person's happiness simply illuminates something that hurts inside us. If you have lost a parent, seeing somebody celebrate with theirs can remind you of the parent you miss. If you are estranged from a parent, seeing another family laughing together can remind you of the relationship you do not have. If you never had that relationship in the first place, somebody else's photograph can make you wonder what it would have felt like. And that question can be surprisingly painful.
What did I miss?
That may be one of the most difficult questions Father’s Day asks. Not “What did my father do wrong?” Not even “Why don't we get along?” But: What would my life have been like if we had been closer?
There is no answer to that question. And perhaps that is what makes it so uncomfortable.
Psychologist Pauline Boss has written extensively about what she calls “ambiguous loss” — situations in which something important has been lost without the kind of clear ending that usually accompanies loss. Her work originally developed around experiences such as having a loved one physically absent but psychologically present, but the concept has also become useful in understanding complicated family relationships and estrangement.
The difficulty with ambiguous loss is that there is no obvious ceremony for it. Nobody sends you flowers because you have lost the father you wished you had. There is no funeral. There is no official announcement. There is no socially recognised moment when everyone gathers around you and says, “We are sorry for your loss.” The person may still be alive. You may even speak to him occasionally. You may know where he lives. You may know what he eats for breakfast. You may know his birthday. You may even send him a message from time to time. And yet something about the relationship may still be absent. That is a strange kind of grief. It is grief without a funeral. And Father's Day can be particularly good at poking that wound. The third reason Father’s Day can be depressing is guilt.
This is where things become particularly interesting in cultures that place a strong emphasis on filial responsibility. There is often an assumption that if a parent is your parent, then you owe them a certain emotional response. You should call. You should visit. You should buy something. You should post a photograph. You should write a loving message. You should say thank you. You should forgive. You should reconcile. You should make peace. And perhaps, in some families, these things are completely natural.
But what happens when doing them does not feel natural? What happens when a phone call is likely to create conflict? What happens when a visit leaves you emotionally exhausted? What happens when writing “Happy Father's Day” feels dishonest because the relationship is anything but happy? This is where I think we sometimes confuse respect with access.
I can respect that someone is my father without giving him unlimited access to my emotional life. I can acknowledge the fact that he played a role in bringing me into this world without pretending that our relationship is something it is not. I can choose not to create unnecessary conflict. And I can decide that Father's Day is not the day on which I am going to resolve decades of complicated feelings.
That is not necessarily disrespect. Sometimes it is simply boundary-setting.
Research on parent-adult child relationships supports the idea that family ties are not automatically healthy simply because they are family ties. A 2024 study by Rin Reczek, Mieke Beth Thomeer and Christina Bijou, published in the Journal of Marriage and Family, examined different kinds of parent-adult child relationships and found that socially negative and estranged relationships have different associations with health and well-being across generations. Their findings are a useful reminder that the quality of a family relationship matters, not merely its existence.
That is an important point.
“Family” is not a magic word that makes every relationship emotionally safe. And yet neither does a difficult relationship automatically make somebody evil. This is where I want to be careful. I am not writing this article to demonise my father. I am not interested in putting my father on trial in public. There are enough family disputes on the internet without me adding another episode to the season.
This is my experience.
That distinction matters. Because when we talk about difficult parents, there is sometimes a temptation to turn the conversation into a courtroom. Who was right? Who was wrong? Who was the narcissist? Who was toxic? Who should apologise? Who should cut whom off?
But life is rarely that neat.
And I think sometimes healing begins when we stop trying to win the case and start asking a different question: What do I need in order to be okay? That brings me to the fourth reason Father’s Day can be depressing: it can make you feel as though you are responsible for repairing the relationship.There is something about family celebrations that creates this expectation of reconciliation.
Christmas. Hari Raya. Birthdays. Weddings. Mother's Day. Father's Day.
The calendar becomes a collection of opportunities to say, “Surely now we can all just get along.” But sometimes we cannot. Sometimes the relationship needs time. Sometimes it needs boundaries. Sometimes it needs a conversation. Sometimes it needs counselling. Sometimes it needs forgiveness. Sometimes it needs distance. And sometimes we simply do not know what it needs yet. That uncertainty is difficult.
But uncertainty is not failure.
One of the things I have had to learn is that I do not have to solve every relationship immediately. There is a peculiar pressure, especially as we grow older, to have everything figured out. You should know what career you want. You should know who you are. You should know what your relationship with your parents is. You should have forgiven your childhood. You should have made peace with the past. You should be emotionally mature. Apparently, adulthood comes with a user manual that nobody gave me.
The truth is that sometimes we are still figuring things out. And that is okay.
The fifth reason Father's Day can be depressing is that it can make us question ourselves. Maybe I am the ungrateful child. Maybe I am too sensitive. Maybe I should just let it go. Maybe other people have had worse fathers. Maybe I should call. Maybe I should send something. Maybe I am making too much of it. Maybe I am the problem.
This internal conversation can be exhausting.
And this is where I think mental well-being matters. We often talk about taking care of our mental health as though it means bubble baths, meditation apps and taking a day off work. Those things can be wonderful. But sometimes mental well-being is something much less glamorous. Sometimes it is deciding not to enter an argument. Sometimes it is not answering the phone immediately. Sometimes it is leaving a conversation before it becomes destructive. Sometimes it is acknowledging that something hurts. Sometimes it is telling yourself, “I don't have to deal with this today.” Sometimes it is allowing yourself to have a quiet Sunday while everybody else is posting photographs of brunch with Dad. And sometimes it is accepting that protecting your peace is not the same thing as punishing another person.
This is where the concept of self-compassion becomes useful.
Psychologist Kristin Neff, whose research has focused extensively on self-compassion, describes it not as self-indulgence but as responding to our own suffering with kindness, while recognising that difficulty and imperfection are part of being human. Her research and subsequent work in the field have linked self-compassion with psychological well-being and resilience.
There is something very simple about that idea that I find useful: I do not have to make myself suffer simply because somebody else expects a particular emotional performance from me. I can acknowledge that Father's Day is difficult. I can acknowledge that I have complicated feelings. I can acknowledge that I am disappointed about things I cannot change. And I can still choose to be kind to myself. Perhaps that is the real alternative to celebrating Father's Day.
Not hatred. Not revenge. Not bitterness. Just self-compassion.
There is another thing I think we should talk about: the strange feeling of being left behind. When everyone else seems to be celebrating, it can feel as though you are standing outside a room looking through the window. Inside, everyone is laughing. Outside, you are wondering why you were not invited. But perhaps the room is not really as perfect as it looks.
This is not to dismiss the happiness of people who genuinely have loving relationships with their fathers. I know many people who are sincerely grateful for their fathers, and I think that is something worth celebrating. But photographs are photographs. We see the moment chosen for public consumption. We do not see the argument that happened before the photograph. We do not see the years of misunderstanding. We do not see the complicated conversations. We do not see the silent dinner. We do not see the things people have chosen not to post.
This does not mean that happy families are secretly unhappy. It simply means that we should be careful about comparing our private reality with somebody else's public highlight reel. And perhaps this is one of the reasons Father's Day can be so difficult for people whose relationships with their fathers are complicated. The day creates a very specific image of what fatherhood is supposed to look like. And when your life does not match that image, you can begin to wonder whether there is something wrong with you.
There isn't necessarily.
Families are complicated. People are complicated. Parents are complicated. Children are complicated. And sometimes two people can occupy the roles of “father” and “child” while still struggling to understand each other as human beings.
I think this is particularly important when we talk about filial piety. I grew up understanding that respecting your parents matters. I still believe respect matters. But I have also learnt that respect does not mean pretending. There is a difference between filial responsibility and emotional self-abandonment. There is a difference between caring for somebody and destroying yourself trying to keep the peace. There is a difference between forgiveness and reconciliation. There is a difference between wishing somebody well and wanting them close to you.nAnd there is a difference between being unfilial and simply recognising your own limits.
I think we sometimes forget that children grow up.
We remain someone's child biologically, but adulthood changes the relationship. We become people with our own boundaries, values, experiences and emotional needs. The relationship between parent and adult child therefore has to become a relationship between two adults. That transition does not always happen smoothly. Sometimes it never happens at all.
Research on parent-adult child relationships has shown that conflict is not unusual, and that estrangement can occur for a variety of reasons. A large U.S. longitudinal study by Karl Pillemer, Megan Gilligan, Jill Suitor and colleagues, for example, has documented that estrangement from fathers occurs for a substantial minority of adult children, while also showing that some relationships later move back toward contact. In other words, estrangement is not always a permanent state, nor is it a single, simple experience.
That is comforting in an unexpected way.
Because perhaps we do not need to decide today what the relationship will look like for the rest of our lives. Maybe today can simply be today. Maybe this Father's Day I do not celebrate. Maybe another year I will feel differently. Maybe I will not. Maybe one day the relationship will improve. Maybe it will remain distant. Maybe I will understand something I do not understand now. Maybe I will simply become more comfortable with the fact that I do not understand it.
I don't know. And I am learning that “I don't know” is sometimes a perfectly respectable answer.
So, if Father's Day makes you uncomfortable, I want you to know that you are not the only one. If you scroll through social media and feel a strange heaviness in your chest, you are not necessarily a bad person. If you see somebody hugging their father and find yourself wondering what that would have felt like, you are not necessarily bitter. If you miss your father even though you know you cannot have the relationship you wish you had, that contradiction does not make you foolish. If you are angry, you are human. If you are sad, you are human. If you feel nothing at all, you are human too. And if you decide that the healthiest thing you can do is simply let Father's Day pass quietly, that does not automatically make you unfilial. It might simply mean that, for one day, you are choosing not to put yourself through an emotional experience that you are not ready for.
There is something else I want to say, particularly to people who have spent years feeling guilty about this.
You do not have to perform gratitude. Gratitude that is demanded is no longer gratitude. It becomes performance. And I think there is enough performance in our lives already. We perform happiness on social media. We perform confidence at work. We perform competence when we are actually terrified. We perform adulthood while secretly Googling things our parents used to know how to do. We perform being okay. Perhaps Father's Day does not need another performance. Perhaps it can simply be a day when you acknowledge the truth.
“My relationship with my father is complicated.”
That sentence does not contain hatred. It does not contain disrespect. It does not even contain blame. It simply contains truth. And truth can be a form of peace.
I also think there is something important about allowing people to celebrate Father's Day without resenting them for it. Their happiness does not invalidate your pain. Your pain does not invalidate their happiness.
Both can exist.
The father who is adored by his children can be celebrated. The father who has a distant relationship with his children can be mournful. The child who has a wonderful relationship with his father can be grateful. The child who has a difficult relationship with his father can protect his peace. There is room for all of these experiences. Perhaps that is the kindest way we can approach family. Not by insisting that everyone feel the same thing, but by accepting that the same day can mean completely different things to different people.
For some, Father's Day is about celebration.
For some, it is about grief. For some, it is about gratitude. For some, it is about regret. For some, it is about reconciliation. For some, it is about distance. And for some of us, it is simply about getting through the day without reopening wounds that have taken years to close.
And that is okay.
I used to think that protecting my mental well-being meant I had to arrive at some grand conclusion about my father. I thought perhaps one day I would understand everything, forgive everything, resolve everything and emerge from the experience with some beautifully packaged lesson about family. Life, unfortunately, does not always provide beautifully packaged lessons.
Sometimes all you get is a little more understanding than you had yesterday. Sometimes you learn what you can tolerate. Sometimes you learn what you cannot. Sometimes you learn that distance can be kinder than confrontation. Sometimes you learn that silence is not always cowardice. Sometimes silence is simply the space in which two people stop hurting each other. And maybe that is enough.
So no, I will not be celebrating Father's Day. At least not in the traditional sense. I will probably see the photographs. I will probably read the captions. I will probably smile at some of them. I may even feel a little jealous of the people who have the kind of father-child relationship that makes those photographs possible. And perhaps that jealousy will tell me something about myself. Not that I want their father. Not that I resent their happiness. But that somewhere inside me is still a person who wonders what it would have been like. And I think I am allowed to wonder. I am allowed to grieve the relationship I wanted. I am allowed to appreciate whatever good existed. I am allowed to acknowledge what hurt. I am allowed to maintain distance. I am allowed to change my mind.bI am allowed not to know what comes next.bMost importantly, I am allowed to take care of myself.
Because perhaps this is the part of Father's Day we forget when we become obsessed with the celebration. Before we can take care of other people, we have to learn how to take care of ourselves. That does not mean putting ourselves above everyone else.
It means recognising that we are also people worthy of care. And perhaps, for someone who has spent years trying to be the good child, that can be a difficult thing to learn.
So if Father's Day is a happy day for you, celebrate.Call your father. Take him out for lunch. Buy him something ridiculous that he will pretend he doesn't like before secretly using it every day. Take the photograph. Write the embarrassing caption. Tell him you love him.
Those moments matter.
But if Father's Day is difficult for you, you are allowed to step away from the noise. You do not have to manufacture a celebration. You do not have to explain yourself to everybody. You do not have to turn your pain into a public statement. You do not have to reconcile simply because a particular Sunday appears on the calendar.And you certainly do not have to hate your father in order to admit that your relationship with him hurts.
Perhaps the most important thing is simply this: Take care of yourself. Not because your father does not matter. Not because family does not matter.
But because you matter too. And maybe that is not an act of unfilial behaviour. Maybe it is simply an act of being human.
Written by: Adi Jamaludin
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