My children's father has almost no empathy to an extraordinary degree. He also has a strong belief he is always right. He is unable to understand other people's thoughts, feelings or behaviour. He doesn't hold other people in mind, at all. Not even his own children. This has all sorts of implications. He won't, for example, keep our youngest safe from cars as he just forgets he is meant to, and gets distracted by his own thoughts, leaving the youngest to wander into the road. As he is always right, he never learns from these times as he will never admit to making a mistake. He will actively deny demonstrable and provable reality to insist he is right. He appears to genuinely believe his blatant lies.
He is unable to read his children's emotions properly. So if one of our children has become emotionally overwhelmed, often by something his dad has done, their Dad will not calm his own emotions to deal with the child, but instead becomes emotionally overwhelmed by the child's anger or upset, and kicks off himself, making the child utterly distraught. Or if our toddler is upset, and he goes to comfort him and the toddler says, 'I want Mummy', he will respond by becoming angry and shouting ' Fuck this shit, what's wrong with me? Why don't you want me?' and storming out of the room, slamming the door. This is because he can only understand his own emotions.
He wants the emotional reward from his child being comforted by him and he cannot cope with rejection. He can't see the hurt child, he can only see his self and his own feelings.
Since having children I can really see that his behaviour is like that of a toddler - poor emotional regulation due to not being able to empathise with others.
I have asked him to go to GP for an assessment and see if there is any treatment- I have read about specific treatments for people who sound like him. I don't know if he will. And even if he does, he is completely unable to accept he has a problem.
I know people will helpfully ask why I had children with this man. Of course I regret it and is causes me deep pain that this seriously dysfunctional man is their Father. I didn't realise how bad he was till we had children. We had our own separate lives and got on well and there just weren't many things to bring us into conflict.
When things are calm and well he is fine, he is loving and affectionate (or appears that way, I realise now that these feelings are not real selfless love but him enjoying the feeling of being in love). But having children has caused stress he can't cope with and a need for attunement and othering someone else that he just can't do.
I don't know how to handle this anymore.
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Relationships
Anyone else parent with someone with no empathy? How do you cope?
notaprettygirl · 30/05/2020 16:30
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