In a phone conversation today I said to my mother that her (bitchy, awful) description of a friend didn't do her any favours. My mother immediately went on the defensive; meanwhile my Dad threw a book across the room and stormed out and slammed the door.
The book was one I'd written and given him - really really expensive academic literature - it hit the wall and the spine ripped. It is now in the bin.
He does this kind of thing all the time.
yes my Mum's a pain in the arse, but how can I deal with my father behaving like a child?
Any time anything upsets him he does this kind of thing. So if I am at home and take too long to get up in the morning (i.e. am in bed past 6am - at the age of 34) he will noisily unload the dishwasher and slam plates down hard until he breaks them. Or go out into the garden and rip up plants that have been givn to him by someone he now doesn't like.
His life seems to be one long series of pursed lips, glaring, and breaking things - usually because someone else is doing something he doesn't like...
I have felt sorry for him most of my life, always seeing his point of view, always thinking hte other person is the bastard; but only after living away for 10 years am i beginning to see that his behaviour is really unpleasant as well.
It is all really complex and tangled and horrible. Arggh.
He is married to an outspoken, controlling, nasty person with basically no empathy or insight into other people (my mother).
He got into this relationship 44 years ago after a home life with saintly types who didn't speak ill of others - his mother was a rigidly rule-following catholic who went to church every day and did exactly as the bible told her; his father was a country GP who didn't say anything if he didn't have anyhing nice to say - so basically never talked about people, since he knew all the awful private stories of all the local community.
So he has had an upbringing that would have worked had he been inclined to follow church rules on how to behave, but my Dad thinks my mother is very clever and insightful about people (not least because she tells him - before embarking on another bitch-fest). So he doesn't follow church rules, because she doesn't like catholics.
So his whole upbringing is negated and replaced with my mother's outlook - which is so hideously negative that they both constantly feel besieged - so he seems to spend most of his life being aggressive towards others, either passively or openly.
Groan. 