Healthy forgiveness doesn’t mean that you have to make nice with the person who hurt you. You can have compassion for them but if their behavior continues to be destructive, you’re not obliged to have anything to do with them. Healthy forgiveness doesn’t mean not getting angry. Healthy forgiveness at least partly means not letting that anger destroy your life. The author is trying to channel his anger into being a better father than his own father was. That part is an entirely appropriate use of anger.

As for being grateful, the author is already doing that by trying to get along with his father.

Additionally, if someone does shitty things to you and you call that person out for each of the things, does that mean you have a “trait of lifelong blame and self-imposed victim-hood”? Obviously not. Just because the author holds his father responsible for the misdeeds the latter committed doesn’t mean he blames the latter for all of his problems.

You have been very quick to judge here. In addition to the things I’ve mentioned above, how do you know the author didn’t pursue legal action regarding the mortgage? You don’t. Plus, claiming that the author shouldn’t be pissed off at someone who violated his consent is ridiculous. He is pissed off and he is expressing his feelings in ways that don’t harm others—this is a very healthy thing to do. Secondly, the editors say he chose anonymity to protect his family members. What makes you so sure that a lack of personal accountability is the reason instead? Choosing anonymity may be consistent with the hypothesis of lacking personal accountability but it’s also consistent with many other hypotheses that are more plausible in my opinion.

I encourage you to think about why this article made you so angry. It seems you’re carrying a lot of repressed anger (at one/both of your parents and at yourself) which you’re expressing by lashing out at the author.

Finally, here’s another example of how anger can be healthy. I was angry at your comment. The anger gave me energy and I used it to write this comment in response. And at the end, that enabled me to access compassion for you. Writing the article must have helped the author access compassion for his father or at least progress towards that goal. Talking about it is very important, it’s one of the faster ways to move past the cause of the anger.

He takes out a mortgage in your name? That can be systematically remedied by legal action. You sitting there crying about it makes you look weak. And you are weak.

This guy now has kids, a family.

I really wish he would stop complaining about his dad and acting the victim. Clearly, this guy knows nothing about forgiveness, and the demonstrated fact that he will run around in this circle of lack of manliness by not forgiving his dad.

It seems like a hard thing to do, but the alternative, the states that this guy lives in, are worse. I will make a strong bet that this guy suffers from one or more disorders and is now passing them on to his kids, unknowingly. This guy had a better childhood than many people do.

I know this because I am faced similar but worse circumstances And it is immediately clear to me that to continue blaming your father just keeps some related undesirable character trait alive in yourself.

At least your dad funded your house and home, you ungrateful son. And, even while he had an affair, he kept your mom not having to work so she could spend her time raising you. Maybe your Dad and mom just couldn’t get along, and instead of leaving your Mom and you and your siblings poor and without a home (which many Dads do, if you haven’t ever raised your head of of your own self-pity), he handled that while trying to make his own life something livable.

The more I reread this article, the more I see the author as an ungrateful child that will create weakness and poor character traits in his own children, while running around looking foolish, as he did in this article, by playing the victim.

You really want to be a good dad? Show your kids about forgiveness, so that they don’t adopt your trait of lifelong blame and self-imposed victim-hood. Choose not to do that, and you perpetuate your father’s shortcomings for generations to come, weakening not only your bloodline but society in general.

Choosing anonymity is another sign of lack of personal accountability.