To have brought this up with my dad?

[purpledaze24]

My dad is a wonderful person in so many ways- kind, generous, thoughtful, wonderful granddad. Unfortunately though he believes he still knows best for me despite the fact I’m 38 years old. He criticises anything I do that he doesn’t believe in, low-key makes fun of me esp in front of my sister & brother in law but it’s all under the guise of “having a laugh”. He treats me like an idiot that can’t look after herself. I’m a single mum of a 4-year-old boy and have my own home. Usually I grit my teeth and put up with it cos he has zero emotional intelligence and is unable to talk about anything emotional at all. This time however, I cracked. He’s been staying with me for a few days and I drove him to the train station today. I stopped outside and he goes, “you can’t stop here” (he’s never been to this train station, I go all the time and I know where you can stop) so I say yes I can. He looks behind and says “there’s a queue of cars behind you, you’re holding them up, move over there”. The “queue of cars” was a bunch of parked cars with no drivers, not behind me but to the right of me. I just snapped and said “you’re always criticising me, I feel like you treat me like and idiot who can’t look after herself. It really upsets me.” I wasn’t shouting I was just telling him. Obviously it didn’t go down well. He got out the car angry and started getting his bags to storm away, not willing to have a conversation. I said, I’m just trying to tell you how I feel. He looked absolutely raging and just said “it always has to be an argument with you” (not true, I never pick arguments with him cos I know this is what he does). And stormed off. I did get angry at this point and shouted after him “ok i’ll never try to tell you how I’m feeling ever again.” I regret shouting, I shouldn’t have done that, I just got so angry. I feel like I should’ve known better and kept my mouth shut because I knew this was how he’d react. He can’t handle being criticised or having any kind of conversation about difficult feelings. I just snapped. I wish I could just concentrate on the wonderful parts of his personality and accept the difficult ones like most people probably do. Now I feel guilty that I’ve upset him and don’t really know where to go from here. Any advice would be much appreciated! X

I feel for you. I've been there. From experience, there's nothing to be gained. He's not going to see your point of view. He's not going to change. You'll have to apologise in the end but there's no harm in taking a little breather before you do that. 💐

You absolutely do not have to apologise.
He is picking on you op and just because he is your dad doesn't mean he shouldn't have his shitty behavioir pointed out.
If you apologise he will take it to mean you are completely in the wrong and you're not.

I agree that whatever you say, he will not change. So, you're left with having to apologise (although I agree this was all on him) or cut contact.
To be honest, although you say he's wonderful, he doesn't sound it.

I wouldn't apologise either. He's too used to getting his own way.

Don't apologise to a bully!

Barbarahunter i do believe parts of him are wonderful - he travelled a long way to come and stay with us to spend time with us on my son’s birthday, brought him lots of presents, cooked us all dinner while he was here, read my son stories etc. I’ve no doubt that he loves me and my son a lot, I think this makes it much harder to deal with the criticising, mocking and control because it’s not black and white. I can’t just be like well he’s and arsehole and that’s it. Confronting him about it and even feeling angry/resentful towards him makes me feel really guilty because of how good he is the rest of the time

I think I know what you mean OP, maybe your father has a problem with women, does he speak disparagingly of women in general?

How was he treated by his own parents?

It seems that this kind of piss-taking, critical style of relating to family members, especially one’s children, can be passed down in families. In which case he may never have learned a different way. That’s not an excuse or reason for him not to listen to you now, though.

You do not have to apologise to him for what you said. You may have to say that you're sorry if he picked it up incorrectly (so a sorry not sorry type conversation) but I'd have a few more examples ready for him and start by saying that you understand that it's difficult to adjust from being the parent to seeing your child be the parent (it'll happen to you too) but that you are a fully fledged adult and you want him to start treating you as such.
Nothing more. Nothing less.
He wouldn't go on like this with the daughter of a friend of his so why is he doing it to you? You're also showing your own child that if they don't like what their parent is doing/saying about them, they most definitely have the right to stand up for themselves.

You will have to have a conversation with him to clear the air. Don't back down and don't accept responsibility for his actions, his words. Say words like "You're entitled to your opinion but I don't have to accept that as gospel now."
This is a seismic shift in your relationship. You're trying to move from the adult-child relationship to the adult-adult one and gain the respect that it affords.

Best of luck to you.

Barbarhunter he’s 70 so he’s part of the generation of casual sexists (I know not all men this age are like this but from my experience a lot are). He’ll give my brother-in-law a bigger dinner portion cos he’s a man, can’t work a washing machine, think men are better drivers than women etc. So yes, if I was his son I think he’d probably have more faith in me as a person

Aterrorofleftovers I really don’t know how he was raised cos he barely talks about his life or past. I know his dad was a very quiet, gentle man and from what I remember his mum annoyed the hell out of him. He still forced himself to visit her every Sunday though (bringing my sister and I with him until she died when I was 15). The strained, deadly boring conversations about the weather used to kill me. They never talked about anything real and it was like he was constantly gritting his teeth waiting for enough time to have past that leaving wouldn’t be too rude. It was all him though, my nan was a lovely, warm emotional woman but any time she tried to talk about anything emotional he’d shut it down or used to get angry at her for crying after my grandad died. I worry that mine and his relationship’s going the same way. Aside from the criticising he never asks me any questions or attempts to strike up a conversation about anything at all apart from my son or things that need fixed around the house. When I try I just get one word answers with no elaboration on anything. It’s exhausting.