I am childfree because my father is a piece of shit

My dad was a shit man. A complete, utter, asshole who never did anything but make my life more difficult. The only good thing he ever did was pay for my college, and the stipulation was that I was to stay in contact with him and remain his “friend.” A stipulation which I am about to break. <br><br>He was a terrible alcoholic who died young. He called me at four in the morning once crying because my mom had left him. I was 12. He called me at four in the morning crying again because he lost his other “soul mate” of only a few months. I was 15. My mom would say “his life is your fault” and that she would never have stayed with him if it wasn’t for me. He would say that I was the only person to ever love him. He would try to kiss me on the mouth. <br><br>I got chicken pox, he didn’t believe me. I was very sick, fevered, and blistered. His girlfriend said “she’s making it up. She’s just depressed.” I was a little kid. <br><br>He said that I wasn’t to break curfew because he would worry, but would never fucking show up to pick me up from anywhere. He would regularly show up at my mom’s house, blow his whistle and call me out in my underwear on a Sunday morning. Where I was to go, I don’t know. He wasn’t even clear on that part. <br><br>He would go on vacation with his new wife and not tell me where he was. Stop answering calls. Say he didn’t have money for Christmas so he wouldn’t get his daughter a gift. Then I would see pictures of him and his other kid in matching outfits. <br><br>He treated his other child like she was the golden goose, and I was the dirty little secret. He met her mother while I was with him. He went on vacation with her mother while I was with him. I guess he forgot he was my dad too, when he fucked his new girl while I was in the next room and called her “my baby.”<br><br>He was a piece of shit dad and an even shittier person. I grew up angry, and understanding that this was the model of what family was. <br><br>Then I grew up. I looked back, and understood that him being my dad was his fault. Not mine. I see people talk about how to motivate your partner to get treatment for depression, or how to show your partner how they hurt you, or how to give your partner permission to open up, or how to try harder to connect with your partner. I see couples fight on here about who does/doesn’t do more. I see couples who have turned their partners into a project, or a burden, or a chore. I refuse to be a partner for whom family is such a burden. <br><br>I am happily married. I am married to the person of my dreams. But I see the way he treats his other baby. The bearded dragon. I imagine him doing for our kid what he does for that dumb asshole of a pet. I imagine the costume he would pick out. I imagine how he would brag about how he does it all. <br><br>I’ve seen the way my husband treats his pets, his friends, his family. I see how he talks down to other people, how he talks over them, how he talks about them. IT will be the same for our kid. I don’t want to be on this board with some long, sad post about how I made the mistake of further persecuting a poor little soul who is now nothing but a burden. I don’t want to be on this board with some long, sad post about how my husband did this, or didn’t do that. <br><br>Right now, I get to choose. Right now I get to decide that I don’t want to do that. Right now, I don’t.