I cut contact with my father at 35 - these 9 behaviors finally made me walk away

I was 35 when I finally blocked my father's number. Not in a moment of rage, but on a Tuesday afternoon while sitting in a Venice Beach coffee shop, watching the cursor blink on my phone screen for what felt like an hour.

There was no final blowup. No dramatic confrontation. Just the quiet realization that I'd been carrying the weight of our relationship like a stone in my chest for decades, and I was tired.

Walking away from a parent isn't something anyone does lightly. It's messy and complicated and comes with a lifetime of guilt that creeps up at random moments. But sometimes the healthiest thing you can do is admit that a relationship, even with a parent, is doing more harm than good.

Here are the nine behaviors that finally made me understand I needed to step away.

1) He never took responsibility for his actions

Every conversation felt like trying to nail jelly to a wall. Anything that went wrong was someone else's fault. My mother's. Mine. His boss's. The traffic. The economy. Literally anything but his own choices.

I remember trying to talk to him about how his drinking affected us growing up. He looked at me like I'd accused him of murder. "I never had a problem," he said. "You're just too sensitive."

When someone refuses to acknowledge their role in causing pain, you can't move forward. You just keep circling the same conversations, hoping this time will be different. It never is.

2) Conversations always became about him

I'd call to share good news about a writing project or a trip I was excited about, and within three minutes, we'd be talking about his latest grievance with a neighbor or his theories about why his life turned out the way it did.

It wasn't just that he was self-centered. It was that my experiences, my feelings, my life didn't seem to register as real to him unless they somehow related back to his narrative.

After a while, I stopped sharing anything meaningful. What was the point?

3) He used guilt as a weapon

"I guess I'm just a terrible father." "After everything I've done for you." "You don't know how hard it is to be rejected by your own son."

These phrases came out whenever I tried to set boundaries or express hurt. It was a script designed to shift the focus from his behavior to my supposed cruelty for pointing it out.

Guilt is a powerful tool. It kept me engaged in the relationship far longer than I should have been, constantly trying to prove I wasn't the ungrateful child he suggested I was.

4) He dismissed my feelings as overreactions

"You're too sensitive." "You're making a big deal out of nothing." "That's not how it happened." "You're remembering it wrong."

This one messed with my head more than almost anything else. I started questioning my own perceptions, wondering if maybe I was the problem. Maybe I was too sensitive. Maybe my memory was faulty.

It took years, and honestly some therapy, to recognize this for what it was. Gaslighting. My feelings weren't invalid just because they were inconvenient for him.

5) He competed instead of supported

When I told him I'd landed a freelance gig with a decent publication, his response was to tell me about an article he'd written for his company newsletter that his boss really liked. When my partner and I moved to a nicer apartment, he made sure to mention how much square footage his place had.

Parents are supposed to celebrate your wins. Mine felt threatened by them.

There's something particularly soul-crushing about realizing your parent sees you as competition rather than someone they're proud of. Every achievement became tainted with the knowledge that sharing it would trigger comparison rather than joy.

6) Apologies were always followed by "but"

"I'm sorry you feel that way, but you have to understand my perspective." "I apologize, but you weren't exactly innocent either." "Fine, I'm sorry, but you're being dramatic."

These aren't apologies. They're deflections dressed up in apologetic language.

A real apology acknowledges harm without immediately pivoting to justification. It creates space for the hurt to be real. His apologies always came with an escape hatch, a way to avoid actually sitting with the discomfort of having caused pain.

7) He violated boundaries repeatedly

I told him I needed space. He showed up at my apartment unannounced. I asked him not to bring up certain topics. He brought them up anyway, then acted shocked when I got upset.

Setting boundaries with him felt like building sandcastles at low tide. No matter how carefully I constructed them, they'd be washed away by the next wave of his needs and demands.

At some point, you realize that someone who consistently violates your boundaries isn't going to suddenly start respecting them. They've shown you who they are.

8) He punished me for having my own life

Moving to Los Angeles in my twenties was treated like a personal betrayal. Going vegan eight years ago became proof that I thought I was better than him. Having my own opinions about politics or life choices was seen as rejection rather than growth.

My grandmother, who raised four kids on a teacher's salary and still found time to volunteer at a food bank every Saturday, once told me that loving someone means wanting them to become themselves, even if that self is different from what you imagined.

My father wanted me to be an extension of him, not my own person. Any divergence from his expectations felt like an attack to him.

9) The relationship was making me physically ill

This was the final straw. I started getting tension headaches before our scheduled calls. My stomach would knot up when I saw his name on my phone. I'd feel anxious for hours after our conversations, replaying everything I'd said and wondering what I'd done wrong.

Your body keeps the score, as they say. Mine was screaming that something was wrong.

The week after I cut contact, I slept better than I had in months. The constant low-level anxiety I'd been carrying around eased. I could breathe deeper.

The bottom line

Cutting contact with a parent is one of those decisions that people judge from the outside without understanding the weight of what led to it. They imagine a single terrible incident, not the accumulation of a thousand small wounds over decades.

I don't share this story to encourage anyone to cut off their parents. That's an incredibly personal decision that depends on circumstances I can't possibly understand from the outside. But I do think we need to be more honest about the fact that sometimes the healthiest choice is to step away.

The guilt doesn't disappear. I still wonder sometimes if I did the right thing. But I also know that I'm healthier, calmer, and more present in my other relationships than I was when I was constantly managing the fallout from ours.

Family isn't just about biology. It's about the people who see you, support you, and create space for you to be yourself. Sometimes that doesn't include the people who raised you, and that's okay.