Rihanna. (REUTERS/Olivia Harris)

Singer Rihanna forced herself to make amends with her abusive father in order to make peace with her violent ex-boyfriend Chris Brown.

The We Found Love hitmaker broke up with Brown after he left her battered and bruised on the eve of the 2009 Grammy Awards.

The 24-year-old's physical injuries healed, but she struggled to overcome the emotional pain she suffered - because the incident triggered many horrific memories of her dad, Ronald Fenty, beating up her mother Monica.

During an interview on U.S. show Oprah's Next Chapter, which aired in America on Sunday, she said, "I was so angry at him (Ronald), I was just angry about a lot of things from my childhood. I couldn't separate him as a husband from him as a father. I felt like (if) he was a bad husband, he was a bad father."

However, their scarred relationship had a lasting affect on Rihanna's love life, and the singer realized she needed to repair her bond with her dad in order to stop seeing men as the source of all pain and suffering, as well as move past her own brush with abuse.

She added, "I remember just one day thinking, 'Why can't I come to a place where I let somebody in? Why can't I love?' I would talk to guys and I would like them, ...then I was like, 'Don't even call...' And I wanted to know why... I wasn't able to connect with a man, past a certain point... and it was because I wasn't having a relationship with my father... And I had to come to terms with that."

Rihanna and her father have since grown close again, with the beauty taking him to Japan last week to celebrate his birthday.