Dear Luke:

You wrote about your father: “He’s always been pretty overbearing.  I’ve always just receded to keep the peace and just do whatever he wanted for the most part“-

-having read your previous threads, this is how you operated with  your now estranged wife, with her too, you did whatever she wanted for the most part. She wanted to party without you into the night and early morning, proceeding from clubs to people’s apartments, to continue drinking and dancing and whatnot, and you went with it, you agreed to this kind of behavior.

It is most important that you no longer do or go along with whatever someone else wants to do. It is time to set strict boundaries with your father, to not give in to  him anymore. Start there and expands your assertive, proactive behavior with everyone else in your life.

anita

Dear Luke:

“I never wanted stuff I just wanted a connection” is a powerful statement that you made to your father, loud and clear. Clearly, you don’t want to go back to .. his same-old  normal, or your sister’s or anyone’s. Seek your normal, which is an honest, trustworthy, loving connection with another person.

“he has always worked hard for us and given us a lot” of material stuff. What does the song say: “All we need is love”? Sure money is necessary, food, shelter, clothes, but outside the very necessities we need simple, honest  love (that connection you mentioned) more than anything. Without love, we are very sad well fed, clothed and sheltered people.

anita

Dear Luke:

Interesting, the way you put it, that you prefer to “take off to the mountains” to be alone rather than “sit in the living room” with people (family members) who disregard your feelings, sweeping those under the carpet. It’s distressing, isn’t it, that odd feeling, to pretend with others that nothing is going on when there’s so much going on in your mind and heart.

Is this how you feel?

anita

Dear Luke:

“It feels like I’m amongst these volcanic islands that sometimes erupt and I get the shock-waves all the time. I have never had an eruption myself”- profound, intelligent, creative (the writer in you).

“Feels like I have to pretend that everything is okay to keep the peace”- that’s you absorbing others’ shock waves, isn’t it (quote above). I see the following equation here:

“pretend that everything is okay to keep the peace” = “I get the shock-waves all the time”.

But whose peace are you keeping; who is enjoying peace because of your sacrifice?

anita

Dear Luke:

I read all your posts on this thread this morning. I will retell some of what you shared here and comment (my comments follow the *s):

March 2019, your father told you that he went to a party with work friends, got drunk and “slept with a random woman he met there”. A few months later, your mother found out some stuff on his laptop, and he confessed to that night. He told you that the woman he slept with blackmailed him “into buying her goods”, threatening him with telling her husband about that night.

* She didn’t threaten your father with telling your mother about it, but threatened him with telling her husband. Very strange, I would think she wouldn’t want her husband to know, that it would be against her self interest to tell her husband.

“I have no idea if that is what was actually happening”-

* It doesn’t ring true to me because of what I wrote above, and because it is more likely that he had a longer term affair with this woman, not a one night drunken affair.

* Remembering your previous thread, it is quite interesting that your now estranged wife, while married to you, and with your consent, used to go partying and drinking at night, into the morning in clubs and in random people’s apartments after the clubs- and yet you were quite confident that she didn’t have sex with anyone during those nights out.

You wrote about your now estranged wife: “They (your parents) didn’t like her too much. They seem to have an idea of the way things should be and don’t want to deviate at all”-

* I too don’t like your wife for the fact that while living with you as a married woman, without an open marriage agreement between the two of you,  went out clubbing and proceeding after the clubs to random people’s apartments to drink and party into the early hours, while you were home alone. I too have the idea that this behavior shouldn’t be, and I don’t see myself deviating from it.

Your parents, having been married for over 30 years, attended something like marriage therapy for a couple  of months and then decided to get divorced. A month later, your wife left you. As those things happened, you talked  to your father, told him that the relationship between the two of you “is  now not good”, and brought things from the past to him, “letting him have it”, “yelling at him that I never wanted stuff I just wanted a connection”, and you told him that he “has needed therapy for probably decades and that I can’t take this stress level anymore and he agreed to go to therapy”.

You wrote that your father was a carpenter, but “always wanted a better life and wanted to be doing something else”, but he had to provide for his family. His father in the UK died a couple of years ago, and your father, living with his wife and you in Canada, wasn’t there when it happened.

You wrote that your father has “always been pretty overbearing”, and that you’ve “always just receded to keep the peace and just do whatever he wanted for the most part”-

– again, remembering your earlier thread, you did the same, receding to keep the peace and just did whatever your wife wanted for the most part, agreeing that she does whatever she wanted, so to keep the peace.

Your sister too has issues with her/ your father, “and no-one wants them to resurface”. Your father buys her things in his efforts to “sweep everything under the carpet”.

You wrote that “it seems to be a thing in our family of not talking about something until it becomes a huge matter, everyone gets upset and then it blows over and goes back to ‘normal'”

You wrote that your sister and other family members “always makes the point that (your father) has always worked hard for us and given us a lot”, and that he messages you “at least once a month saying he’s thinking of me and to let him know if I need anything”. You anticipate spending this month Christmas with your parents and sister, and that your father “will try to give me a bunch of money or stuff for Christmas.

* The rest of input and suggestions at this point:

1. You referred to your father having had a sexual affair with another woman while you and your sister were adults, as his betrayal of you. But his affair was not a betrayal of his adult children.

You don’t know enough about the nature of the relationship between your parents over the years, and really, it is not your business what he has done in the context of his marriage since you and your sisters have been adults.

His affair and their divorce is a matter between your father and your mother. Treat the issue as that: none of your business.

2. The dynamics between your parents, and between your parents and you and your sister, these dynamics (sweeping issues under the carpet, and so forth) are very well established. You can’t change them. You telling your father that he should have therapy, that’s a very, very long shot at changing these decades old established dynamics, very unlikely.

If you think that you can change these dynamics yourself (outside let’s say a long term professional family therapy where all people involved are motivated to changed these dynamics) by saying anything to anyone involved, again, I think that it is very, very unlikely to happen. Don’t bring anything up over Christmas/ future get together events with your parents, don’t let anyone have  it, don’t rock the boat with them.

It is only in your personal life, away from your parents, and sister and estranged wife, that you can establish new and healthy relationship dynamics of your choosing.

3. It is admirable, that your father sacrificed so much so tp materially provide for his family. Let him know you appreciate it very much. You don’t have to accept any more money and expensive gifts from him anymore, but let him know that you appreciate his decades long physical work to provide for you that way.

anita

Dear Luke:

“It kind of stand to reason that he should see a professional to learn how to deal with things like a normal person. Or should we just keep going like it always has and then the next thing happens”-

– depending on what the next thing is (the italicized). All you shared so far is that he cheated on your mother (one event,  likely more than one), kept it a secret and later lied about it. You didn’t share yet what it is that he did and still does wrong to you and to your sister and to your mother. In your most recent post you suggested that he hit your mother (“hitting my Mum”). You didn’t share that before. Do you mean that he physically hit your mother?

Clearly if he sometimes hits your mother or you, or your sister, neither one of you should be in his physical presence, whether he goes to therapy or not, and you shouldn’t be in his presence (talking to him about no longer hitting other people).

So what is it that he did and is likely to be doing against you and others during Christmas let’s say, the next time you plan on spending time with him in his home?

anita

Dear Luke:

I read  your recent post and re-read your previous posts. Two things occurred to me:

1. You are not afraid of your father and you have no problem asserting yourself with him. When you found out about him having had an affair, you “laid into my Dad and told him how I was feeling and that our relationship is now not good.. I let out at him which I think was needed.. I made it clear when I was letting him have it that he has needed therapy for probably decades and that I can’t take this stress level anymore and he agreed to go to therapy”-

– you let him have it, told him he needs therapy and he agreed to go to therapy- an aggressive father would have not stand for you letting him have it; would have told you something like: how dare you tell me that I need therapy! An aggressive man/ father would have ended that exchange with you quickly.

“When I blew up at him I mentioned that he just doesn’t have the emotional vocabulary to deal with other people  in a decent way”- you talked to him as if he was a child and you were the parent scolding his child for misbehaving, or for not using words correctly.

If you were a child who grew up scared of his aggressive father, you wouldn’t have felt comfortable doing what you did, and he was a scary father, he wouldn’t have submitted to your demand that he goes to therapy.

Thing is, you didn’t assert yourself with your wife, which leads me to think she was not passive and submissive. So it is not that you learned to be assertive with all, including with a scary father; it is that it is easy to be assertive with him because he is.. passive and submissive, at least in personal relationships within his family.

2. Your empathy is with your mother and not with your father. You blame him for everything and she gets none of the blame, he was the one “cheating on my mother, telling her and us a bunch of lies. Insulting my Mother by going behind her back”-

– but what is it that she did to him?

I suppose you heard her blaming your father for cheating on her, telling a bunch of lies to her and to his own children… and insulting her by going behind her back. It may be that you are simply repeating what you heard her say to him, when she fought with him, or to you when she told you what happened.

It is possible that you heard her blaming your father for and belittling the positive he did for the family throughout the years (scapegoating him), and you believed her. Children believe what they hear over and over again, and often enough what children hear one of the parent say about the other is not true.

I suggest that you re-think your beliefs about your parents- question your father being the-bad-guy, the Guilty One,  and your mother being the-good-guy, the Innocent One.

anita