Discovering a whole other side to my elderly father and not in a good way

[Haricot]

My father has advanced dementia and I spend lots of time organising his care which allows him to continue to live in his own home. It’s taken it’s tole on me, as I’m sure other carers of parents with dementia can understand but I do it because he is my father. However I have never had a close relationship with him as he has always been a very self centred man with little capacity for emotion.

He has also always been a hoarder which ,while my mother was alive, was kept in hand. However since she died (20 years ago) the house has become filled with paperwork. I’m now going through piles of stuff, throwing out the rubbish and looking for important financial documents.

Yesterday among his papers I found a file which shocked me. It contained letter upon letter between himself and another woman dating back to when I was between 7 and 11 years old (and her letters back to him). His letters are very sexually explicit with page upon page from him writing about what he wants to do to this woman when he next sees her along with what he is currently doing to himself while writing. The style of writing is highly pornographic and very explicit. And when I say highly pornographic, I really mean highly. Page after page.

I feel utterly betrayed, not to mention extemely shocked. I know my mother was not happy in her marriage (my father was not an easy man to live with) and I have often wondered why she didn’t leave him. Especially now as I am pretty sure she knew about this as a few years ago my aunt (my mother’s sister) alluded to an affair.

One of the more shocking aspects of one of the later letters was that this woman expresses a desire to have a child and my father’s response to this was (after a tirade of pornographic description) basically if you want to allow this to happen through not using contraception then I can’t stop you and what will be will be! No consideration for the fact that he already had a family and what the consequences might be for her getting pregnant!

The utter failure on his part to step back at this point and realise what he was doing just beggars belief. It’s like he was living in some parallel universe where his sexual appetite trumped everything else.

I guess I’m posting as I’m not quite sure how to get past this. I have to somehow carry on giving so much of my time and energy to this man who had so little regard for his wife and children and for whom I now have little respect for. He was so highly respected in his profession. If only they knew - or maybe they did.

Any sage words of wisdom would be very helpful for me.

This must be painful for you, but you shouldn't have read those letters, they are private and you don't know if your mum knew what was going on. You say you don't have a close relationship with him, are you going to tell him what you found and how it makes you feel. Can you step back a bit from looking after him and get someone else to help, it must hurt.

Are you sure he sent the letters? After all, he still has them.

But do you? My lovely gran is in a care home. She’s got more company and is better looked after than she would be at home. What would happen if you contacted social services and said ‘no can do’

You would probably have read them when he died but that doesn’t help you now with what to do next. I get that you now don’t want to have much to do with him
You said caring for him is taking a toll on you. Is there anyway you can get help with that so that you can step back a bit. Does he have carers?
Does he know you and does he remember when you see him? You don’t say if you live with him. If he doesn’t remember your visits then it wouldn’t matter if you saw him less (I know my father didn’t remember when people visited)
I hope you can get some help

Well... they're his private letters. You shouldn't have read them.

He can't have sent them if he still has them?

I'm really sorry to hear this OP. I'm currently helping with a narcissistic father and it's bad enough without something like this added in.

It sounds like you have the whole batch of correspondence because the other person passed away, I guess?

much as it's difficult, I think I would say don't read them. You have more than enough to do.

also, it's probably more upsetting because it's the end of any kind of denial that he might have been a nice person underneath it. I know that is hard to accept; I spent a fair chunk of my 30s trying to figure that out about my dad, only to be reminded time and time again how unpleasant he is.

how involved do you really need to be in his care? Can you get him into a care home? I'm not sure what happens if people have no one, but if you call Adult Social Services and say you can't cope with the strain any more, could he then go into a home? Do you have Power of Attorney?

I recently discovered I have a half brother through a similar situation. I don't yet know what to think.

You don't actually have to organise his care for him to the extent you are.

Many thanks for your replies.
I answer to some of your points:

I know he definitely sent the letters as the file includes her letters to him in reply to his. The file also includes photocopies of his letters so it looks to me like he was rather proud of his writing and wanted to keep copies for himself (possibly for self gratification considering their content).

I don’t look after him myself (except for bringing him to my house for lunch once every weekend) but I organise his care and manage all his financial affairs to enable this. Putting him in a nursing home is something I’ve considered but it doesn’t solve anything for me as I would need to put his house on the market straightaway in order to fund the care home and that is a huge job considering the contents of it. That is one of the reasons why I’m currently trying to sort his house out so that it’s in a better state to put on the market should I have to. For the moment, the care he is getting in his own home is very good.

I know I shouldn’t have read them but on the other hand when you’re going through piles and piles of papers and come across something like this it’s very hard to ignore.

I don’t live with him and I have no idea if this woman is still alive. She didn’t live in the UK and they clearly used to meet up when he was away on business (which he was for extended periods when I was little).

@Lighthousesouth - In recent years I had wondered if my father had some narcissistic traits. Whatever his personality, these letters have certainly brought home the fact that he isn’t actually a very nice person at all.

I am currently re-organising his care package so that he has more care - this will allow me to not have to see him every weekend which can’t, now, come soon enough.

I don’t think he knows who I am anymore (no evidence to suggest he does) and part of me would like to give him a piece of my mind. Not that I would, of course, but I’d like to tell him how unacceptable his behaviour was and what a shit he is.

@Pavlova - I’m really sorry to hear that you discovered a half brother. I can’t even begin to imagine how I’d feel in those circumstances.

A big part of me just feels really sad for my mother who held on through a marriage that she should have left.

I have to go back to his house this afternoon for more sorting. I really hope there are no more surprises like this.

I looked back at some of my old stuff and I am shocked. Dont judge fully on the past x

Of course we all make mistakes in our lives but this was a full on affair over at least 4 years with letters that reveal a pretty depraved mind - they are not cheesy love letters. I feel like there’s a difference between youthful nativity, perhaps, and deliberate efforts to deceive not to mention revealing an aspect of his personality that is deeply unattractive to say the least.

Can you tell I’m angry?

OP, if he doesn't know who you are, then I don't think you should see him at all

I think shouting at him will be pointless because the man who did these things isn't in there any more.

can anyone help you with going through the contents of the house? What is the worst that can happen if you literally just shred all the paper and get someone to collect the junk? If you're reasonably sure there's no debts hanging around, I'm thinking, just shred all paper and don't read it.

actually if there are debts, they'll soon come chasing, so you could just shred all paperwork.

I’m not sure why people are focusing on the letters when it’s his betrayal, his lies, his affair and his personality that upset you. The letters confirmed what you’ve suspected.

He doesn’t know who you are. You don’t owe him anything, certainly not repayment for the love and caring he’s shown you your life (sounds like there’s none to repay.)

You could just walk away and leave his care to someone else. The state, his other relatives, etc. That is a choice you can consider, you know.

Cinna, exactly, yes, it is the confirmation.

I have been wondering what happens if family refuse responsibility. I have known one person who did it, she still got constant calls from the care home when there was a fall etc and just hung up. She kept telling them not to call but they wouldn't listen, once they had a phone number, that was it.

Thanks for your taking the time to reply to my thread.
@Cinna and @Lighthouse you’re exactly right, it’s the confirmation of everything I already knew but had nothing tangible. His remoteness as a father (both in terms of his actual presence and his emotional availability) which led me to not having a close relationship with him is now validated by what I’ve found in his papers - if he wasn’t staying late in his office writing dirty letters he was at home but mentally absent.

The letters I found suddenly finish in 1980 and then nothing. Then this afternoon in lots more paper I came across a handwritten note expressing his anger that he’d arranged a work placement abroad (where she lived) just so that he could see her after what I think was a gap of about 2 years of not seeing her and she didn’t turn up or contact him while he was there. He thought she’d just wait for him whenever he clicked his fingers and she sacked him off and he was furious. I laughed when I read that as it made me think what a pathetic excuse of a man and husband and father he was.

I also found evidence of more affairs. Downside to being a hoarder who didn’t throw anything away - it’s all sitting there waiting to be seen.

I can’t just stop organising his care, though, as there’s no one else to do it. I think I have to grit my teeth in sorting out the household contents and distance myself physically. I’ve spent so much of my time sorting things out for him over the last 4 years when I would have preferred to be with my own family. Things will definitely change now.

I just wanted to empathise as my elderly relative with dementia of the FTD kind actually confessed an affair without realising it.

Finding out that the person you love and trusted has deceived either yourself or someone else you love or loved, is absolutely devastating. It's like you didn't know the real them. I think you have just as much right to behave now as you would if as an adult, you discovered this before the dementia. You are entitled to feel angry, let down, betrayed, disgusted, sad, and anything else. What you do with those feelings is up to you. You can pull back to essential contact only, knowing that's what you would have done before.

People saying it's private - if you come across files like this you have to see what it is in case it's legal. A quick glance at dear X love X would have confirmed an affair.

No you don't have to read it all but that's a little bit like saying once you know your husband has cheated, don't read the emails to the OW just send them to your solicitor without reading. Easier said than done judging by the heartbroken posts on here.