To wonder if anyone else grew up with a Walter Mitty type parent?

[AquaFaba]

By this I mean a parent who talked big, and raised their children’s expectations to an unrealistic degree in a way that could never be delivered.

Looking back, my parents were like this.
My Dad was self-employed and we lived a very precarious financial existence growing up. It caused me great anxiety from an early age as I was the eldest.

Yet despite this, my Dad was always full of big talk that now, as an adult, I see went far beyond what could ever realistically have been possible. Sounds awful, but think Del Boy “this time next year we will be millionaires”.

Example: We used to go for Sunday drives armed with estate agent particulars to look at big houses and I recall going to a Mercedes showroom to look at a car that my Dad liked.

It was a very odd upbringing. A lot of shame that we lived in a small house (was never allowed to bring friends home), yet an awful lot of talk about how it would all be vastly different ?next year?. Of course, it never was.

It really impacted on me in so many ways. For one thing, it pushed me to view financial security as a key priority (never having had that growing up) and I achieved this.
But it’s also made me very conscious now as a parent never to over-promise or raise expectations in a way that can never be realistically delivered.

Curious to find out if anyone had a similar experience.

Maybe your dad was just trying to stay positive? It's good to have dreams and goals - he wouldn't have had much control over the outcome.

How do you feel about him more generally? Is there more to this than just big dreams? The not having people round bit does sound a bit off.

Similar, my Dad sort of pitted himself against the parents of friends of ours.

They were more educated than him and had better jobs. He wanted nothing more than to be "better than John and Jane" he resented them

He regularly did the thing of gathering up sheets of the biggest houses from Estate Agents and going round looking at them.

Even after they split and my Mum moved house he said "as long as its better than John and Jane's"

It wasn't and I didn't tell him. He didn't live with us anymore and hadn't seen them in years and he still cared

It was weird

We couldn't really afford the house we had but keeping it was a big status thing to him.

@RuffleCrow
Yes, absolutely think he was trying to keep positive. But honestly now as an adult (a professional who has worked and financially achieved), I just can’t help coming back to this horrible realisation that there was such a HUGE gap between what was and what was likely to be realistically possible to achieve.

My first husband was a bit like this: a blagger, fantasist and a twat. I do understand that it comes from feelings of inferiority but, really, don't they get it that no one else cares??

I think realism keeps people down and wary of taking risk. That you are in a better position than your father just proved that positivity is contagious - because he was positive you achieved. Had he been utterly grounded in reality (or even negative) then maybe you might have gone straight to work in low paid jobs; who knows.

Yes, me. My father was very much that way. Had a very elevated view of himself that ended up alienating him from his entire family. He left school with no qualifications and got through his career (and made relatively decent money) using a combination of blagging and outright lying. Moved around a lot because his fibs always eventually caught up.

Always lived beyond his means, nothing was ever good enough and got very covetous of what other people had. He left my mother (and a succession of subsequent wives and children) when someone younger, ‘prettier’, or more well connected came along. Now he’s too old to blag using his credit cards and things he can’t afford to impress people and is a pitiful old man that no one speaks to.

I agree @GrumpyHoonMain parents teach us how to live through a mixture of their good and bad points. We learn what not to do as much as what to do (if we're lucky).

Just for contrast, I saw my dad dying inside for two decades in a job he hated but paid the bills. We lived pretty frugally - never went abroad, never had a car. Most things I asked for would be met with "we haven't got the money".

I would say I have a borderline phobia of 9-5 office jobs and when I was younger, I would just walk out when things got too much and never go back. I didn't even care whether I got paid. I found them stifling. I think it has a lot to do with seeing my shy, creative, clever dad utterly exhausted every evening, too tired to even talk to me about his day. Yes, we had stability, and I'm grateful, but at what price?

I can relate a bit. My dad used to talk about the things he wanted to do or buy and as I got older he promised me things like "I'll take you clothes shopping at the weekend, you can have £100 to spend" and come the weekend would deny having ever said it and tell me off for being materialistic. (I wasn't, and am not particularly.)

Holidays were the biggest thing and then when he got married again, having a huge house where both families of children and grandchildren could be welcome. I've never met my stepbrothers and sisters even now. A bit fantasy land.

My dad was the opposite. Very rich, with a distaste for anything that smacked of showing off. I went to a school full of showy types and would have absolutely loved it if my dad could have lowered himself to buy a shiny Merc instead of that old 70s Volvo estate!