This is the kind of relationship I wish I had with my dad. Unfortunately he’s an abusive narcissist who I had to cut out of my life. The best we ever got along was when he woke up from a six month long coma when I was in my mid-20s and he cried to me and told me that he realized he had been awful to his kids and all the success he had wasn’t worth hurting us. When I get sad about him being essentially dead to me, I think back on those times that he was recovering and I came to visit him every day and we plotted together about how I was going to bust him out of the hospital because he just wanted to be home. That was about as close as I ever got to having the dad I dreamed about having so those are the memories I choose to focus on instead of the lies and manipulation and abuse.

So yeah dads, hug and kiss your sons and tell them you love them so they don’t grow up to be really sad middle aged men that are terrified to become fathers themselves because they’d never forgive themselves if they hurt their kids the way they were hurt growing up.