I really don't want to lose my relationship with him, and I feel like I'll regret it later in life if I don't continue doing everything I can to salvage my relationship with him.

You won't. My parents 'disowned' me for the exact same reason at your age. They were always very religious and active in their church. They felt I was making a bad decision, and it would come up every time I talked to them. I told them straight out that if they couldn't drop it, I would just stop talking to them altogether.

I think it was my mother who said 'I'm not going to bow to an ultimatum'. And I replied with, 'it's not an ultimatum, it's a simply a matter of reality. I'm doing this (live with my girlfriend) whether you approve or not. You don't have any say in what I do, other than that of a friend. I don't have any friends that constantly second guess me, or make demands as to how I should live my life. This isn't about me rejecting you or your faith. This is about you, and whether or not you can make the choice that allows us to remain friends.'

And they couldn't. So we didn't talk. Every once in a blue moon around the holidays my mom would call. As soon as the topic of my living with my girlfriend came up, I would excuse myself and hang up. If she could talk without going there, I would have a conversation until it did. It didn't take long before the conversations lasted a few minutes. Enough to touch base, nothing more.

It was around six years later when my cousin died. He was gay, disowned by my uncle for being so, and as such lived some ways away. It rocked my uncle to his core, and it was only then he realized that his stubbornness had cost him everything that could have been with his son. My father, witnessing the impact, had a change of heart.

Now it should be told I didn't miss my father very much- both my parents were often absent, and he didn't approve of me much even before I moved in with my girlfriend. I spent so much of my childhood trying to be good enough for him, and never quite made it.

Winning that approval was something I desperately wanted. That need was so big, and so vast to me. My dad was the barometer of the world; it wasn't just about being someone he would like, it was like his approval was the entire measure of whether or not I was a good person. Whether or not the entire world would approve or disapprove of who I was. Those two things were connected far more deeply than I ever realized.

As much as I wanted to scream at him, to tell him he was wrong, a hypocritical backwards asshat who needed to wake up and become part of the modern world, it was still him I needed to change. Somehow, I believed, that if he opened his eyes, and took in how the normal world works, he would come to the same conclusion I would, and that would make me 'okay'.

When I finally broke free of him, his lifestyle, his thinking, his constant need for control, I began to realize just how different we really were. That he would never come to the same conclusion, because he was built differently. Raised differently. He's just another person, living out their life. He was my whole world. With distance, it became clear that he is only a fraction of much bigger picture. I need to be good in my world, not his. And I didn't live in his world anymore.

At that time I had broken up with the original girlfriend, and came back as though he was giving me a second chance. I didn't take it. I told him I made the right decision, and it was mine to make. A few months later (I had been living with my next girlfriend for about a year) he tried again, and I told him again, that he could either respect my decisions as an adult, or I would simply remove him from my life.

At some point, he must have decided that he could still be right, and that I could make my own choices because he stopped bringing up my living conditions. We chatted about weather and work, and to a certain extent, that is where things still remain.

I don't have deep conversations with my dad. They don't understand who I am as a person, or why I choose to do the things I do. And that's okay. I don't talk them out of their lifestyle either. But we sit, we chat about life, we eat food, we catch up. We're still family.

All told, that silence lasted about ten years. It had to be done. I had to be able to sort out the terms of my own life without trying to fit some half-baked ideal. Succeed and fail on my own terms. I did a great deal of both.

I've never regretted doing that, and if they'd never come around, I still wouldn't regret it- they wouldn't be people I'd want to be around. They had to find a way to get along with someone they disagreed with- which isn't that big of a fucking deal when you think about it- and I had to become the person I had to be for me. Not my dad. Not even the world. None of those people live my life; I do. It has to be meaningful to me.

I hope you find a way to make peace with the decision to be your own man. I hope your father finds a way too. It'd be easier. But sometimes it isn't, and that's okay too.