How to deal with strong split feelings about my dad

[doggiepurple]

He's a narcissist - he's been abusive to my mother my whole life. He's threatened to kill her, he's hit her.

He made mine and my sister childhood pretty traumatic. But as is always the case with people like this, it's not all bad in the sense that he's quite wealthy and paid for my education, house deposit and part of my wedding.

He has an extreme temper and recently threatened to kill my sister and picked up a knife.

I can't even hold him to account on this as he will tell me to fuck off. Apparently it's her fault as she was disrespectful and we have to respect him, whatever he does. As we owe him everything in our life.

I've recently stood up to him about his treatment of my mother and sister and he told me if I ever bring it up again, he will cut me out of his life entirely and that I'm disrespectful after everything he's done for me.

Some details are changed as this post is quite outing. How to deal with someone who is this destructive but takes zero responsibility for anything.

You canot deal with people like this. Th eonly thing you can do is distance yourself.

The thing you control in your life is what boundaries you have. You cannot make people change, you can't make them react a certain way or do something.

What you can do is decide what you will put up with, what are you willing to accept?

Is the money element enough to let him treat you badly? Does it not matter? Does the "promise" of future funds enable them to give you endless shit? The future is never certain, just think, you could put up with shit every day for 20yrs on the promise of an inheritance and on the day of the reading, it's all given to the RSPCA.

Don't accept bad behaviour on the promise of anything in future.

I don't think I'll get any inheritance anyway. He doesn't want me to be wealthy and waste the money.

I don't think it will go to me or any of us.

Then if that’s the case, have the pleasure of cutting him off.

Your OP is incorrect - no, with people like this it is always the case that they are all bad. Even his ‘generosity’ is toxic - he’s used the fact that he’s wealthy to control you.

Please get him out of your life, especially before you have children.

You distance yourself either physically or emotionally or both.

There’s no point telling them how you feel - they don’t care. There’s no point trying to hold them to account as they don’t feel guilty.

Grey rock is the only solution & quietly wait till they die so you can have your peace.

So in that case, what's your benefit from putting up with his toxic?

Nothing. Nothing now, nothing in future, relish in snipping the toxic from your life.

Guilt tripping I guess is what keeps me stuck in a relationship but it's so fake.

There’s a book I read recently by David Celani called Leaving Home. He details how many abused kids end up with a wounded angry inner child and a hopeful more positive inner child who holds onto good memories and still believes in our parents. This makes it difficult to work out how we feel about our families because we keep moving back and forth between anger at what happened and hope that we can make them change.
I would recommend you read it because it’s helpful to clear some of the confusion and take stock of some of the emotional baggage you’ll be carrying.

I think having experienced this type of childhood and relationship with a parent means that I accept a lot of shit from people and always have. I am very forgiving of bad behaviour if there's also good behaviour in the mix. I'll check out the book, thank you.