Please bear with me; this is long.
I’m a 35 year old woman, married with two DC. My parents are in their early 70s and still together. I am an only child.
My Dad has a 25 year history of major depression, kicked off by the death of his own father with whom he had a very bad relationship (from what I can tell, my GF was a vicious bastard). Since then, my Dad has had extremely bad depression (had to give up work at 50) and my Mum was the breadwinner throughout my childhood (and worked very hard in a very senior job).
Throughout the rest of my childhood (so 10 until I left for uni at 18), my Dad alternated between completely ignoring me and being extremely angry with both my mum and I (eg at the age of 12ish onwards I would come home from school at 4pm and he would completely ignore me until my mum got home at around 7). He saw many counsellors but refused to ever try any medication. I also developed bad depression and anxiety with self harm (the latter for a couple of years) and have only got on top of this since I had my DC, with counselling and medication. As an adult, I managed to deal with my anger towards my Dad in a variety of ways but things would always blow up every so often. He has continued to be ectremely short-tempered, critical, controlling and negative. I have a pretty good relationship with my mum and we are close. We see both my parents regularly.
Fast forward to a year ago, when I’d just had my second child. My Dad's depression and general nastiness has been slowly getting worse and, on the first day we brought our baby home, my Dad insisted, despite my getting angry with him, on carrying her across a messy floor (older child’s toys) and nearly tripped. I was incandescent with rage, told him I wanted nothing more to do with him and made him leave. At this point, my mum gave him an ultimatum and actually moved out for a few weeks. She was in a terrible state all summer and I was supporting her.
After a couple of months he agreed to go to the GP, to ask to try medication and to be referred to a counsellor. He started on Sertraline and started seeing a counsellor who appeared to really help him. The change in him was massive (although he had bad physical side effects from the meds; he was like a different person. However, after a couple of months he decided to come off the meds because of the side effects, stop seeing the counsellor and refused to give any other meds a go.
A week ago something clicked and I realised I’d had enough of trying to accommodate him. I have told him being around him makes me very unhappy and I feel like it’s putting my own mental health at risk, and that I don’t want to see him in his current state. His response was “well, I’m not perfect, but neither are you.”
So, to get to the point, AIBU to stop seeing him.
Thank you