This is a long one. My father has recently been told he has incurable cancer. It is treatable at present and not at a terminal stage. We are not close (my parents divorced at a young age) and although I now have a civil, even superficially friendly relationship with him we are not close and I don't feel particularly sad about his diagnosis, although im obviously sorry for him on a human level.
He lives a 7 hour drive from me (he moved to a remote part of the country when I was young) and so in person contact has only been a couple of hours to catch up maybe twice a year since i was a teenager, although we speak about once a week on the phone. Im in my 40s now.
He has the potential to be nasty, manipulative and vengeful although he has rarely directed this behaviour towards me or my sister. He directed a lot of this at my mum who I adore and she suffered a lot as a result of this. I cannot forgive him for this and keep him at arms length for that reason.
Ive been so confused about what I "ought" to be doing if anything beyond phone calls to support him and I had offered to come and visit for an afternoon and stay elsewhere as that's what i would be comfortable with. He put a tonne of pressure on me to stay at him and hus wife's house for a weekend, even though I was clear I would be staying elsewhere He continued to put pressure on me, and his wife was doing the same, sending me messages which played directly to my guilt. I couldn't cope and blocked contact entirely for a week. Im now trying to reintroduce controlled contact by text and a group call once a week but Im just so stressed about it all. I am a terrible people pleaser and cope poorly with conflict. I won't be going to visit at all now as a visit is only acceptable to them if I stay much longer than comfortable. They were clear about this as they said npr to bother coming if it was only for a few hours. I dont think my offer was unreasonable.
Am I being unreasonable to limit contact with him?