Hello,

This forum seemed such a nice place to ask for an advice and to share a little bit of my problem. People here seemed genuine to me so I just thought I’ll give it a try.

I don’t really know where to start from, because this is a problem as old as me, but in the last three months some things happened that made me analyse everything over again. I’ll try not to take to much of your time.

Starting with a little bit of background, I have to mention that I suffered of depression in the past 8 years, maybe more if I count the years before I was given the diagnosis. I was suicidal and I also suffer from agoraphobia, social anxiety and an avoidant personality disorder.

So, my issue is with my father. My parents are divorced and although they’ve been married I’ve never saw them together as a family. I know for a fact my father did not wanted me and I was that “thing” that he never wished for. After they had me, my parents were kind of forced to get married by their parents, so it wasn’t a marriage out of love, which ended up with a lot of cheating coming from my father’s part, a lot of blaming (on me mostly), a lot of anger from both parts directed straight to me and a lot of abandoning throughout the years (from both of my parents, who seemed to play ping pong with me, sending me back and forth from my mother to my grandparents, whenever my mom didn’t want to take care of me, and from them back to my mother). Me and my mother went through a lot because of my father because he is manipulative, emotionally abusive and he lyes a lot. For him, lying is more like a disease, because he just can’t say two words without one of them being a lie. The emotional abuse is just what he does as an after effect of his lying, blaming others for his behaviour, turning things around to suit him even if that means that he will degrade you as a person in front of other people, starting fights on the street because he knows it’s the only way he will win the fight because you’ll just feel to embarrassed to say anything when hundreds of eyes are watching you etc.

Throughout my life I’ve been constantly lied by him, even in matters that he knew were important to me and I have also suffered tremendously as a result of his lies and actions. I was judged, critiqued, called names, looked at like I was at fault, almost kidnapped and abused by two teachers (if you can call kidnapping the fact that they’ve forced me into their car and they didn’t want to let me go, but physical and verbal abuse did take place during the time they kept me). The thing is, since I was fifteen he supported me financially from time to time and for him that seems to be equal to me not having the right to speak for myself in front of him. He told me multiple times, whenever I tried to say anything regarding his lies and the impact they had on me, that I am never allowed or that I don’t have any right to answer him back, even if he insults me, yells at me and puts me in difficult situations. He is disrespectful with me in ways I can’t even comprehend, because I still don’t understand how a parent can do these kind of things to their child, wanted or not. One thing that I have to mention is that I have always been respectful to him, maybe even more than I should have.  In the last three months he insulted both me and my husband numerous times, mocked us, even in front of other people, told lies about us and made us look like we are the “bad guys” in everything that happened in the last 3 months. I don’t want to get into too many details, but his behaviour is just out of proportions.

What I am actually confused about, is that he makes me feel very very guilty and although I decided to cut him out my life, he always finds a way to come back. I used to do this a lot with my mother, before they eventually got divorced and even after that he still found a way to come back into my life. I’ve changed cities, addresses, phone numbers, but he was still there, like a shadow waiting to show his face. The thing is, he is the kind of person who believes that he can buy your dignity and everything you stand for with money and expensive things. I’ve never been one for any of those and I’ve never been after his money, although the last time we spoke he told me I was a money-grubber. I’ve never asked him for anything. Anything he gave me, he gave because that’s what he wished to do, not because I asked for it. But he still told me so many things that weren’t true and made me feel guilty and put the blame of his behaviour on me. For a long time, because of him I thought I did not have the right to live, to breath, to express myself. I’ve become socially inapt. A few years ago, my psychiatrist at that time gave the advice that if he’s such a toxic person, I should break any ties with him and I did tried that, moved to another city and so on, but he still managed to slip back into my life because he knew I was in a difficult situation where I needed money to support myself (at that time I was still suffering of depression, barely could get out of the house because of my agoraphobia).

Now I am again in that position. I have cut ties with him, change my phone number, but he still does a great damage to my life through other things. I just don’t know what else to do. I’ve tried talking to him. I told him the only thing I wanted was for him to be honest with me and just stop lying. I told him these with as much as respect as one person can say something. I’ve tried to get closer to him and even understand where all that damage he has comes from. I’ve tried understanding everything, even when he asked me to do things for him I didn’t want to do, like also lie his second wife when he was on trips with his mistress, that he was visiting me. I did everything I could just because I wanted to feel accepted by him. Now, I just know I want him out of my life and I want all the lies, the deceptions, the manipulation, the emotional abuse to stop… But he makes me feel so guilty because I want to do this. Emotionally I am a wreck, my depression is relapsing, my panic attacks are becoming worst (now I have them even just by going out of my room).  I took a time apart from his family because most of them are only intrested in the gossip and have ulterior motives in everything (mostly) they do and say (his siblings-they are more or less like him, cousins and even my grandmother- his mother, who I love dearly but I couldn’t lie to her because she always knows when something isn’t right and I just couldn’t call her anymore because I was to afraid of what I would end up telling her about my father). A few days ago he sent me an email, telling me to call my grandmother and I know she probably misses me and I miss her, but I can’t just bring myself to talk to anyone except my husband. And especially after I heard a conversation in which my father spoke with so much hatred about me and my husband, although we’ve done nothing to him. I know we also have our own fault because it got to this situation, because we trusted him and believed that he would help us with something important to us, but even so, even if I feel I brought this on myself and that maybe I deserve this lesson in life (it taught me he will never change and that he is the same bad person that he was years ago, and a lot of other things about myself), is this really something I have to feel guilty about it? I just don’t know… I’m kind of messed up right now with everything that happened. I’ve started having these horrible thoughts again. My brain keeps telling me I don’t deserve to be alive, that I’m actually the cause of all this just because I was born. Does that make any sense? So, how to you separate yourself from a person like this? How can you stop the manipulation that goes into thinking you are at fault for their actions? How do you stop the emotional abuse when there doesn’t seem to be any solution to it? Cutting ties just doesn’t seem to work, although I told him I don’t want to speak to him anymore, in a diplomatic way, but still, I told him… And apparently it doesn’t work. Be it mail, be it a text or through other people, he finds a way to enter my life over and over again, sometimes only to make me feel bad because I want to put an end to all of this.

Well… I ended up writing more than I intended, but how could I say all that in a shorter version? I hope you will forgive me for such a long post… But your advices or opinions will be gratefully appreciated. Thank you!