Ever since coming out to my dad, the relationship between me and him got very strained because he's not accepting of it. Over the past 1.5 years we slowly drifted further and further, to the point of us being minimal contact. Up until recently, he sometimes invited me to smaller family gatherings (with my siblings who I'm on good terms with) but most of the time, I didn't come. Most of the time I had a proper reason but I could have also made it work if I would have wanted to.

A few months ago in the car ride back from some family gathering, we made a temporary solution to how we could communicate without him dead naming/misgendering me. The solution was pronouns: it (there's no "they" in German), name: a nickname from my childhood which was completely disconnected from my dead name. We explicitly said that it's a temporary solution until we had a proper talk. That talk was this week...

Most of the talk was just us trying to understand the views of each other and me explaining just how dire my situation before transitioning actually was. We basically got stuck at: we just have a fundamentally different world view and we can't change each other's, no matter how many scientific papers I can bring up (Yes he doesn't agree with science there which bugs the hell out of me).

One of the last things he said towards the end of the conversation: "I love you as a human, but you're -Deadname- in my heart. Do your thing, live your life, I see you the way I see you, isn't it completely irrelevant? I think that the tattoos and piercings of your sister are terrible and she ruins herself with them but I still love her as a person."

My thoughts are just a mess on this whole situation.... I guess I just wanna know if you had similar experiences with family and how did you manage them?

I probably won't respond to any comments...