My dad and I have dinner together once a month. It took a great deal of hinting to make it happen (he's in my part of town once a month for a meeting, so we'd have, like birthday dinners when he was here anyway. It took a solid year or two of me going, "we COULD do this on months that don't have a special occasion..." to make it become a regular thing). I don't call on him for regular advice, but I'll occasionally call for house stuff. But, I have to commend him, he made a conscious effort to stay in our lives when he left my mom, and tries to still be present. It helps that we're very similar politically, and we're both voracious readers, so we do have things to talk about. But, as my step-sister lives on the other end of the state, and my brother and step-brothers are...men, I think I'm probably the one he's closest to.

Thanks...appreciate reading all the different perspectives...clearly there's a real range.

My dad is a functional alcoholic. Mostly we hang out. We chat, and watch baseball or football.

Dad's mostly deaf, so I only talk to him when I'm visiting my parents, which I don't do as much as I used to because my brother's moved back home. That said, I know Dad lurks on Facebook, so my main interactions now are flipping him shit there and seeing if he says something.

(I'm close to my dad. We just don't talk a lot. I once told him that, for his birthday, I was going to give him the gift of not calling him.)

My dad didn't understand how to communicate with children, but after I was about 25 we could chat at length about anything. Alas, he died when I was 30, but the time spent together as adults was cool.

I am so different from my dad in many ways. Dad is conservative, he isn't demonstrative about his emotions really well. When we were younger he would do things with my brother or things with my brother and me but not relaly with me alone.

I feel like we are close in some ways. We can't talk about politics or social issues or religion and we don't really hang out and do things. Well we've gone to football games and go fishing but mostly we talk about sports and cooking and occasionally books and stuff like that.

Back when the original Queer Eye was on there was an episode with a dad and daughters and they looked so comfortable with each other, I remember feeling a little jealous.

But we can sort of talk about some things and I know he's there for me and supports him and he has been able to tell me that in various ways

My dad was great (as you all know). We would run errands together on a Saturday, or just grab breakfast. We could talk about most things. He would tease me for my liberalism. We didnt really do anything in particular together.

I never met my dad. I was super close with my grandpa, but I never really knew him as an adult, because he passed away after my freshman year of college. We were close in a way that didn't really involve talking, though. He took me places, and on walks or we had activities together, like vegetable gardening, or he taught me things, like how to ski or fish or identify plants, birds, and wildlife. I imagine as an adult we would have had conflict because he was very conservative politically (he hated Roosevelt and Jimmy Carter with a passion) and pretty racist.

As for my dad, it's complicated. We used to be close and he had a big part in raising me intellectually. But around 20 I realized that he is sicker than I thought and understood (living with mental illness+C-PTSD), and as the years progressed I slowly and painfully understood - well, maybe still understanding - that the reality that planted in my mind as a child had little to do with the reality that's really out there. He's displaying behaviors along the lines of schizo paranoia at times, but my parents are thinking that the kids shouldn't know so much about it (even as adults)/thinking it's not as bad as it is. In the last decade I stopped being so close to him, because I needed to live and lead my own life. I am happier since, but it still sucks.

Sometimes I think my own dad has kind of an affect disorder or some other emotional problem. he used to sort of act like I could "get it right" and he would be there for me, but now I think that isn't true. Stepdad was bipolar, which could be more like you describe, Shir.