I wish my parents just didn't exist

[Sleepybeanbump]

Long looong history. In brief, abusive (emotionally and physically to me as a child) narc mother, distant generally rubbish father. Parents have hideously unhappy marriage but have never divorced.

My father now has memory problems and my mother used it as a tool for drama / abuse. She still expects him to basically be her butler, but he's not up to it and everything keeps going wrong. At which point she blames him and holds it against him. I have firmly told her she needs to just do / double check stuff herself (booking stuff, online shopping etc) but she just doesn't. She has far too much fun waiting for him to mess up and then making a massive fucking drama out of it.

Their lives are getting more and more chaotic. They live in chaos (hoarders) but refuse all help. Mother rampages around all night and sleeps all day. Is totally dysfunctional and cannot engage in normal life at all anymore.

Separately, my mother has successfully emotionally blackmailed me into living really near her until this year when I just couldn't stand it anymore. She doesn't bother to see me much, just wants me there as a mental comfort blanket. We thought we'd found a house a few months ago but it fell through.

Now I'm pregnant. I keep putting off telling them. Every single other normal milestone in my adult life that I've announced to then they've been unbelievably weird about. They're never happy about anything. They never bring any support or positivity to anything. They will be useless awful grandparents. At the moment I just can't even be bothered to tell them.

I'm also heartbroken that we won't be moving house before the baby arrives, and am seething with resentment over this as if I'd never let her control me over this before, we'd be settled where we want to be by now.

I just hate them, and hate having them in my life. They're nothing but a drain and a burden and have never ever given me anything enjoyable or positive.

Sorry. Needed to unload.

[cuntycowfacemonkey]

Sometimes it's OK to give yourself permission to walk away completely

[Sleepybeanbump]

I can't. They're old and ill. I'm an only child, there's no other family. I couldn't live with myself.

But I have started to give myself permission to withdraw, and hate them, and refuse to play happy family shit.

[Baddz]

I suggest you read up on toxic parents and give yourself permission to have a happy life.
Your parents will not get the help they need if SS think you are there to pick up the pieces.

[logicalfallacy101]

Hi sleepy...one disfunctional dp is bad, but 2!!! If your df is having memory problems that's worrying for you. Can you speak to your dm and plan long term, would she listen? Please look after yourself and the baby your carrying. Is it possible to ignore her emotional blackmail and appeal on the basis of her being practical?

[Hussarsataparty]

Firstly, congrats on your pregnancy! Re your parents, I'd maybe contact their GP or the local authority to see what support might be available to them - especially if your dad has memory problems. You can do this anonymously.
I say this kindly, and as a fellow singleton: you aren't responsible for them, or for being an only child. Enjoy creating your own family, with new rules, and a happy house. Yes, visit your folks when you need to, but engage as little as you can.
Good luck

[ApeMan]

Organize a home help for them.

Do not allow your life to be dominated by an NPD parent. You do not owe that to anyone.

[AttilaTheMeerkat]

Congratulations to you on your pregnancy.

It is not your fault your parents (I use that term advisedly) are as dysfunctional as they are; you did not make them this way.

You can and should actually now walk away, you still have a choice here re your parents and you do not have to look after these two dysfunctional people in their dotage. I would let Social Services deal with them, tell them that you are estranged due to their past abuses of you and so you now have nothing more to do with them. Do not let your life be any more dominated by these two people (who have never apologised nor shown any responsibility for their actions). Have they ever cared about you really, no they have not. You owe these two precisely nothing and this pair of misfits stayed together for their own selfish reasons.

Do not let your fear, obligation and guilt (three of many legacies that such disordered of thinking people leave their now adult children) bring you down any more. Guilt is a useless emotion, they after all do not feel at all guilty for how you've been treated. Let them mess up, they do not want your involvement anyway because they are also not listening to you.

Re your comment:-
"But I have started to give myself permission to withdraw, and hate them, and refuse to play happy family shit".

This is good progress, you do not have to expose your as yet unborn child to their manipulations either. They were not good parents to you and will be deplorably bad grandparents to your child. The best thing for you to do here is to go no contact, your child does not need to know them because they will damage her in similar ways to how you were.

Do read "Toxic Parents" written by Susan Forward and post too on the "well we took you to Stately Homes" thread on these pages.

[Sleepybeanbump]

Logical-

No, DM expressly refuses to plan for future. I have tried to get her to discuss fact that dh and I plan to move, and that soon she and DF will need to move, and should move now. (Massive house they can't cope with).

She stuck head in sand, so I asked her what would you rather? Plan now and make an informed choice with options, or be forced into a decision when everything goes wrong, probably with few or no choices.

She chose the latter. Not joking.

Because when it happens she'll just rant and race and blame everyone else on the planet for life not going how she wants. That's what she always does. She'd rather do that than lift a finger to ever make sure anything goes right for her.

In terms of dealing with df's memory issue, that's a whole separate issue. Her ideas of dealing with it are to read up crackpot alternative health remedies and enforce them on him. She also thinks it's entirely self inflicted. Ie if he does enough 'memory excercises' he will get better. He won't do them to her satisfaction. She's totally obsessed. It becomes a massive bone of contention and she blames him and rants and raves and they fight about it all the time and I have to listen to her moaning about it.

It's fucking exhausting.

[AttilaTheMeerkat]

You need to completely detach and disengage mentally as well as physically from these people. Let their GP (they may well be not registered with one though) and Social Services deal with them instead. They will continue to mess with your head otherwise.

They have and continue to fail you abjectly here; I would have nothing further to do with them. That is easy for me to write I grant you but you really do owe these people precisely nothing.

Deal with your understandable feelings of fear, obligation and guilt through finding a therapist (and one who knows an awful lot about the workings of narcissistic family structures). Such people are like shoes, you need to find someone who fits so the first person you see may well not be the right one. BACP are good and do not charge the earth.

[KingTut]

Don't tell them about the baby.

You poor thing feeling so full of anger and hatred towards them.

[Joysmum]

I'm an only child so understand your perceived obligations from that viewpoint.

I also took the main responsibilities regarding my FIL who had vascular dementia and so understand a lot of the emotions around that.

However, I want you to understand you can detach, you can't change them and you may not be the best person to give them the help they'll need. If you you withdraw, sooner rather than later they'll appear on the radar for additional help and monitoring.

Speak to their local adult social services team and write to their GP to put things on the record.

You'll have to be able to detach because it'll tear you apart trying to juggle a baby and your parents and you need to put your own household first as they've made their own choices over the years which you can't change or be responsible for.

[Sleepybeanbump]

Thanks everyone.

I'm supposed to be going abroad with them in a few weeks (4 days). Long standing annual thing. Dreading it. It's awful every year. But the guilt-tripping from not going would be worse so every year I go.

I just want a normal family. I'm terrified I won't know how to make one.

[Skiptonlass]

You will have a normal family of your own because you are AWARE of how messed up your parents actions are. If you weren't aware, and thought it was normal, you'd be headed for trouble.

Dementia is difficult even with a strong and loving family. I really suggest you get in touch with your local dementia Support charity who will be able to point you to resources locally.

Sadly, your father may need substantial care - can I make one plea to you? People like your mother do one of two things : they either demand you practically move in with them/give your life up to care for the partner or they put the partner in a care setting then look for a new live-in/inseparable support.

Do NOT let her move in with you. Do not move in with her and do not get sucked in to becoming a carer. If she tries to force any of these on you, you need to make it absolutely clear that with the best will in the world, you cannot provide the level of care he will need. Looking after demented patients is no easy task and you are not a specialist! Make sure you frame it in those terms, so,

"You don't love us, you want him to go in a home" becomes
"I can't provide the specialist care techniques he needs. I would be failing him if I even tried."

[Sleepybeanbump]

Thanks skipton. You know I have real trouble envisaging WHAT my mother thinks is going to happen. Much as the current set up worries me, I dread the day when he can literally no longer give her what she needs. All the guilt and expectation will suddenly be turned on me no doubt. She's adamant she's 'too young' to go into a home (she's in her 80's and has a mindset which is 'older' than everyone I've ever met even much older than her!), but she's totally helpless. She's agoraphobic, and has no idea how to look after herself because my dad has always waited on her hand and foot. She can't use a computer, or pay a bill.

I worry that she's going to essentially withhold the necessary care from my dad until complete disaster strikes. That said, I've tried over the years to defend my dad from the worst of her behaviour, even before he started having issues, and he's never thanked me. And he turned a blind eye all through my childhood, so I don't know why I feel so guilty.

[KingTut]

Op with you having your first child, your parents being in their 80's and you being an only child. Are you sure they are your biological parents?

[Sleepybeanbump]

Yes. I was very late. Physical similarities are v obvious.

Unfortunately.

[pocketsaviour]

I worry that she's going to essentially withhold the necessary care from my dad until complete disaster strikes.

Yes, if allowed to, she will deliberately endanger your father's health in an attempt to manipulate and abuse you.

She is no no longer capable of being physically abusive to you, so she has switched to emotional abuse instead.

Re this trip abroad - if you can't face cancelling it (which I definitely would) can you fake a sudden horribly infectious illness? Something like norovirus would be ideal (so to speak!) as you're supposed to effectively quarantine yourself.

[Sleepybeanbump]

Pocket - the issues with my dad's health is 99% about abusing and manipulating him, not me. The emotional abuse of me is incredibly peripheral (to her) and is really limited to just using me as sounding board for her endless, endless whingeing and complaining, and the 'oh I can't bear it if you move away, I have no one who cares about me' crap. And absolutely nothing compared with what I got as a child. Basically she just CONSUMES the people she lives with. Used to be both of us, now it's just him and I get the fallout.

I dunno. I'm considering cancelling it on some pregnancy-related excuse. But the endless, endless 'oh, I'm so disappointed, oh we were looking forward to it, oh your father's already ruined everything and now the only thing I had to look forward to is taken away, oh I don't know why I carry on' is even worse than just doing it!

[WashingUpFairy]

It would only be worse if you listened to it.

Don't.

[PeppermintCrayon]

It must be so hard feeling all the obligations fall to you; you are allowed to walk away but it's not that simple by the sounds of it.

Do feel free to join the Stately Homes thread, lots of people on there will relate to what you're going through

[Sleepybeanbump]

Getting this off my chest has helped so much. Massive drama today which culminated in two hour phone call this evening.

Practical shit to sort out which I can barely think about at the moment. Looks like dad is racking up unpaid credit card bills. Unless mother seriously gets her arse in gear to find paperwork (she's already laying the ground work for not doing this...'oh I can't possibly do anything before we go away'), or accepts my offers of helping to or doing it myself (refused) it just won't get sorted out. That'll be fun.

But I made a total breakthrough. Normally I either umm and aah and pander to her while hating myself and getting more and more stressed, or I burst and have a massive fight with her which just ends up giving her ammunition for having a massive drama queen moment about me being so cruel and horrible to her.

Today I felt like someone else was talking.

'Im not being horrible to you, but I don't agree with your worldview that it's all his fault. You have your emotional reaction to the situation and I have mine. This is mine. I can't give you the reaction you want, but I can offer practical help, which is what I'm doing. If you won't accept it, there's nothing else I can do or say.

Your behaviour is very frustrating and I find it very difficult to deal with. That's why I sound exasperated. Just because you don't like it doesn't mean I'm being horrible to you. I can't give you the emotional response you want. You expect me to deal with your emotion, and these are mine. I'm sorry if it's not what you want but there's nothing I can do about it.

Felt bloody good.

[Sleepybeanbump]

Still haven't told them about pregnancy though.

I mean, there's no room for it amongst the constant endless litany of stress and shit. I'm not just sneaking it in amidst all the constant stress and anger and negativity. I want more than that. Might be waiting a while

[Charley50]

It sounds awful. Well done for sticking up for yourself. I would distance myself as much as possible and I definitely wouldn't go on holiday with them. You're not a child any more they can't make you go.
Congratulations on your pregnancy. Don't rush to tell them.