To wonder if I just can’t fix this

[Notagoodtime]

My mum and dad have been married for 50 years. For all of their marriage my father has bullied my mum. It’s mostly been mental abuse. He criticises her, belittles her and controls everything. He told her that she was fat and repulsive 2 weeks after giving birth and 7 stone. I grew up always wanting to be able to protect my mum. I would be the one that held her hand as a little girl when my mum miscarried and my Dad would ignore her. She suffered several breakdowns and each time I have nursed her back to health. To everyone else my Dad can be charming, generous and makes out my mum makes the decisions. He has this ability to fool most. My mum stayed with him for me and my siblings. Over the years I have tried to encourage to break free but she thinks she won’t be able to cope financially by herself. It has a huge impact on my life and my mental health. Should I make peace with the fact that I can’t fix this? Or should I be doing more. Any conversation my Dad is pointless. He has a very Jekyll and Hyde personality and suspect he has some sort of autism. He has always bern successful in business and has no money worries.

So sorry OP -

You can't fix it unless your mum wants it fixed. You could have a consultation with a divorce lawyer to find out how to get the best financial deal, and present that to your mum. You could also talk to women's aid if she is worried your Dad will make her life difficult - info from them would reassure her he can't.

If she's been at home and he has a successful business she should do well out of it - but don't give him any warning time so he can start hiding money. If she does decide to proceed it may be worth doing a dossier of his controlling behaviour - it's not going to make a difference to the money etc, but it may be useful to put him off making a fuss.

I really feel for you and I wish some of the mums who are worried about leaving mentally abusive partners would read this and understand the effect it has on children.
I think you do need to accept that your mum is the only person who can make that choice to leave your dad and rather than put all your efforts into trying to get her to do that I’d put that some work into trying to make peace with it.

You can't fix it. Once you have helped your mum see that she can leave if she wants to then it's up to her.

I have friends with parents as you describe. They have a relationship based on co-dependency and they will never leave despite saying they want to, having the means to and even talking over plans to do so.

All you can do is be supportive as you would be for a friend, but you will be happier if you accept that it's not your place to fix it and you can't make someone leave. Your mum knows that you will help her and support her and that's all you can do really.

We can't change other people. All we can do is change the way we react to situations.