Father
Steven’s father is a recurring figure whose physical, financial, and emotional absence shaped Steven’s psychology. He appears primarily in the therapy transcript and context document. Steven did not name him in any source.
Profile
He was physically imposing, at 1m86 and muscular. He was a former entrepreneur who was financially comfortable at Steven’s birth, then lost his business when Steven was young. He spent 10 to 15 years trying to rebuild through a series of failed ventures. He maintained a stance of being right, being best, and never being at fault. During COVID, he became a conspiracy theorist.
He later described himself as becoming more intellectual and philosophical. He joined Freemasonry and read extensively. Steven noted the incongruity: “il est tombé un peu plus dans un aspect intellectuel de la chose… mais en parallèle, pendant le Covid, c’est le premier à être complotiste.”
Steven recognizes some of his own internal patterns in his father and explicitly dislikes this: “je reconnais beaucoup de certains de mes schémas internes en lui, chose que je déteste d’ailleurs.”
Relationship dynamics
He was emotionally cold and “très dur sur tous les aspects.” He was physically violent toward Steven’s mother when Steven was young. Steven did not learn that until he was older. His manner was intimidating. He applied a meritocratic, American Dream framework to parenting and framed hardship as character-building: “il m’a toujours un peu fait miroiter… l’enfance très difficile qu’il avait eue, et du coup, il menait la vie dure pour me forger, alors que ça n’a pas fait l’effet escompté.”
The gay discovery incident
When Steven was approximately 16, his father forcibly searched his phone and discovered he was gay. Contact ceased for nearly a year. Eventually he accepted it, intellectually if not emotionally, as “non, tu ne vas pas mourir.” The incident is a clear inflection point in their relationship and in Steven’s experience of concealment and fear of judgment.
The COVID break
During the first COVID lockdown, after Steven had just moved to Paris and lost his income, he asked his father for help with rent. His father had recently found a well-paying job and had spent Steven’s life promising to help “quand il serait enfin disposé.” He declined. Steven described it as “la goutte d’eau qui a fait déborder le vase.” Steven told him to go to hell, “l’ai envoyé chez Jean-Noël,” and they have not had regular contact since.
Steven explicitly wants to address this eventually, not as a priority but as something he “compte régler un jour.” He wants to tell his father what he thinks about the parenting, “sans les promesses comportementales prématurées, sans deflection.” The language mirrors almost exactly what he later used to describe his apology message to Thibault.
Psychological legacy
The father wound runs through Steven’s themes of:
- Fear of external judgment, rooted in early experience of being “bizarre” and his father’s rigidity
- Discomfort with self-appreciation, “je me sens interdit de me trouver beau publiquement”
- Alexithymia and emotional disconnection, “je ressens pas mes émotions”
- Pattern-recognition anxiety, noticing his father’s patterns in himself
In therapy, Mathias (Therapist) noted that the father “a joué un rôle dans vos schémas de fonctionnement,” specifically in Steven’s self-perception.