I feel emotionally wrecked by my father's gruef

[InkHeart2024]

I have been trying to process this for days and it's still driving me mad. Maybe this will be a good place to get it out. My mum died in October. She was with my dad for 50 years. She was a truly wonderful person. Didn't suffer fools but was so kind and patient and just great. Many times through my life I thought she should have left my dad. He was at times emotionally abusive, though he was also very loving a lot of the time and loved my mum a lot.
My dad is a complicated and difficult person. I've had countless arguments with him throughout my life and he is responsible for a lot of the unhappiness I've experienced in my life. But again, he can also be fun, loving and supportive. He had a crap childhood but has no insight into how that affects him.
Anyway since mum died my siblings and I have rallied around him. He's barely been left alone. I've taken less responsibility for spending time with him than my 2 brothers as they have less fraught relationships with him but I hosted Christmas. Usually mum and dad would host. So I did it, at great effort, to try to make everyone happy, especially my dad. In doing this I fucked up and let my husband down. He's ND, burnt out from working too much and was never going to cope with so many visitors and people in our house. Also my dad swapped his staying arrangements with a brother without telling me, done with good motives but it meant he was in my spare room for 5 nights. I've not spent 5 nights in the same house as him since I left home 25 years ago.
basically my dad developed a problem with DH. DH didn't do anything apart from be ND and detached from the group. But dad doesn't get ND and there must have been some other stuff going on in his motivation too. He was angry with my DH and picking at him about something. Maybe money (he brought up my will a day or so earlier) or maybe as my DH thinks it's jealousy that he has his wife (me) and my dad lost his. It resulted in my DH leaving the house for 2 days and not saying goodbye to dad. Dad feeling remorseful but incapable of apologising. I don't want DH to have to spend time with someone who makes him feel bad but I also want him to be the bigger man and put it past him. And underneath all of this is a crushing sadness and shame and responsibility for my dad being so lost and miserable. He's a sad, lonely, grieving old man. He's out of his depth in the world without mum. I have been trying for days to work out why I feel responsible for my dad's feelings. I don't understand it. But it's triggering so much for me. Related to childhood, my emotionally abusive previous marriage, and my own grief. I don't know how to resolve this or how to stop feeling so desperately sad and crushed about my dad's sad face. One sibling is going to stay with him tomorrow for 2 weeks so I will have a reprieve from the guilt I feel about him being by himself. But after that I don't know. And my Dh doesn't want to see him, which I know is fair, but also feels like he's not supporting me when I need him. I feel so dreadful about all of it.

I don't really expect any answers from anyone. Thank you for reading if you have. I just need to process what I'm feeling and I hope that by writing it out I might make some sense of it.

It's not clear what happened between your DF and DH. Your DH was not wrong to go and get the peace he needed. However it's you and your Dad that are grieving, the loss is so recent and it was the 'first' Christmas - I don't think you're unreasonable in hoping your DH could let curmudgeonly behaviour slide this time around. It sounds like potentially you've accommodated his ND previously and I don't think it's unreasonable to expect some grace in return in the most acute stages of grief.

At the same time I think PPs points about FOG and not eroding your boundaries are right too. I don't think you're centering your own needs enough, basically.

No, you're absolutely right. Nobody needs to do anything now. I realised I'm feeling a bit suffocated by the expectations on me to spend so much more time with my dad than I'm used to. And it was always my mum I looked forward to seeing. Dad was always rationed and shared between others to minimise the impact. I need to assert myself with my siblings that I won't be driving down there every month to spend the weekend. I just can't. If they want to do that that is their choice.

Thanks. You're probably right. My DH is a really good egg though and he does support me loads. He doesn't ask for much by way of accommodations but I should have encouraged him to spend time by himself without feeling he had to be home all the time being social. Plus he had his kids more this year than usual so had to be home really with them otherwise they would have been wandering the cold streets or spending £££ doing activities indoors! Next year I won't host and I won't expect DH to come if he doesn't want to. It's all about adjusting expectations now and making a new normal that works for everyone.

What happened was that DH was quiet and withdrawn, dad picked up on this and kept putting him on the spot to chat. I didn't notice at the time but DH said afterwards that he was asking questions about DH's family which made him really uncomfortable. Dad wouldn't have thought he was doing anything wrong. But it came to a head when DH was blatantly trying to shut down a conversation and dad said loudly that he was going to go home early as he didn't feel welcome. As it was my mum's birthday the next day I panicked and felt this had to be avoided at all costs. I didn't have my DH's back in that moment. FOG. DH then internalised the criticism (as ND people often do) and felt like crap for 2 days until he processed it. It also affected his time with his kids who were present, which upset him even more.

Men are often wired to centre themselves first in their own lives, and women often feel responsible for the emotions of the men in their lives. This is an unfair burden on women. Let your brothers do more. Detach a bit to protect your own peace. You cannot fix them, it is not your responsibility, you must find your own boundaries and try to be "selfish" and do what is good for you

A good point and pertains to many circumstances I think @MySweetGeorgina.

Listening to you describe your Dad is a lot like mine was...
But we never doubted he loved us all..
Broke our hearts what happened to my wonderful intelligent kind Mum... Alzheimer's is such a cruel cruel disease...
Dad tried so hard to care for her but

I understand that small talk probably is your DH idea of hell and that the situation was hard for him (and that having to do small talk all the time may be to his detriment as an ND person). But could he not also have prepared a few scripts in his head for small talk for the short term with your Dad, and better recognised your Dad's prickliness was coming from a different place? I think you're being really perceptive in learning from the situation and organising differently to balance all the needs.

If you'll forgive the speculation, it still comes across in your reply that you need both of these men to feel comfortable to your own detriment. I think it's ok to need things from your DH at the same time as recognising his ND needs and it's ok to be keeping some energy for yourself for your own grief and not spend it all on your Dad xx

You are doing exactly what your mum found herself doing. You have picked up her role, her burden, where she left off. You are trying to manage your F and even roping in your H in this endeavour.

You were very much trying to manage your H's response to your Dad, hoping he would fall in line with the family pattern you have slipped back into with your mum's death.

You accepted your dad's imposition of himself on your family for Christmas without a murmur, and you hoped you could rely on your H to perform the role you've assigned to yourself (to be 'the bigger person' / manage your dad by nodding and getting along), and you got frustrated with him when he claimed his own personal peace instead. This is evidence of lack of appropriate boundaries on every level.