A confusing and horrible mess

[JOW87]

It is very difficult to know where to begin so everything will make sense.
I will start at the event which has caused the horrible mess then fill in the details etc from before and after then.
On Saturday night on the way home from a night out my mum told my dad that she didn?t want to be with him anymore and he went ballistic and choked her until she passed out.
In the few weeks before this has happened my mum has started to get distant with all of us and saying nasty and upsetting things to my dad.
On his part he has grown over the last few months from being a very placid man into having bouts of anger and road rage totally out of proportion for what was involved.
She works in a local workers club four times a week and when not working dad will also go in there but he has been becoming more unhappy about going in over the last few months due to the type of people mum has gotten very friendly with, i.e., young mothers who drink all day with their children sat in the pushchair, parents who have 13 year olds sat in there at one in the morning while they drink, glasses of whiskey at 10 in the morning every morning, etc. The sort of people she would not normally give the time of day to.
Dad hates them and we have all seen the change in her over the last few weeks as she has become friendlier with them and makes up any excuse to stay in the club.
One thing which I do have to point out is that with his support over the last 18 months she has gone from size 24 to nearly size 14 and she does look good for it.
When she told him that she didn?t want to be with him anymore, he asked her if it was because of her weight loss and she thought she could do better and she told him that she could do far better than something like him. He says he cannot remember what he did and has no memory of what happened until he was picked up walking along in the middle of a dual carriageway by the police trying to get hit by a lorry.
He has been charged with assault by beating and has to wait a few weeks until it goes to court.
He went to the doctors on Tuesday to get anger management and he has bad depression and has apparently had it for at least six months which has been causing his anger.
We know mum is going through a depression, she gets the same thing every five to seven years where she wants none of us and to be single and no one means anything to her. Everything and everyone she would at any other time value and love is rejected.
They have been married 25 years next month and over all that time they have been a very loving couple. They never call themselves husband and wife; they are soul mates and best friends. And the marriage has always been a partnership. They have had their arguments and a few times have not talked for a few days but that?s only human. But there has never been any violence of any sort before.
She is staying with our Nan while he is at the house and she says everything is over, he cant talk to her due to bail conditions but we can all see its not mum talking its her depression. I can understand how she is feeling at the moment with dad but she is also being like it with everyone. Saying she has no one in her life now which isn?t true.
Dad is devastated by his actions; it has broken him to a shadow of what he was. A solicitor phoned up this morning to offer him a defence solicitor and he has told them to p**s off as they wont be needed as he is pleading guilty and will take whatever is given to him for what he did.
My question is this, should my sister and I with the rest of the family support them both to try reconciliation?
As I said earlier, they are truly soul mates. As a daughter it is embarrassing walking around with them as they act like teenagers in love where ever we go. They are both good parents and have brought us up to know right from wrong. Dad know what he did was wrong and it is destroying him, mum wants nothing further to do with him. Should they just part or should we get them mentally stable first so they can decide with clear minds?

What an awful ordeal for your family.

I assume your Dad has had some type of psychotic episode, if his actions to your Mum were so out of character?

Has your Mum recognised that she gets these depressive episodes regularly, and that she comes out the other side usually?

I guess that as your Mum wants nothing to do with him at the moment, you have little choice but to wait it out and see what happens when they are both feeling mentally better.I'm sure that will be a very difficult thing to do though.

All horrible but you need to put aside your feelings and wants and let your mum have the freedom she needs. It's not your relationship to fix. She clearly wants some space and I'm sure she will come to the right decision for her by having this

I recognize your Mums feeling of wanting to get away from everyone, and all responsibilities, when depressed. It its really trying to blame everyone and everything around you for how you are feeling, when in fact it is internal.

I finally realised that wherever you might go, you can't escape from yourself, so in the end you are better of fixing yourself then deciding what to do about your life. Can you suggest that sort of thinking to her?

Agree with poster above about reminding your that she has come through this before. Could she get treatment for the depression and not make any decision on her marriage for 6 months?

So sorry you and your family are going through this, remember to look after yourself add well as your parents!

Mum never realizes she is having a depressive episode until dad forces her to go to see the doctor and gets medication. She does come out the other side and she then recognises where she has been mentally. Dad can't do that this time as he is not allowed near her and knowing there are scumbags (my words not his), it that workers club who would happily ply her with drink and take advantage of her mental state is not helping him either.
She understands that she gets them and after the last one which was very bad and where she said some very cruel things to him she made dad promise that no matter what he would stand by her and fight for her if she had another one. That?s what he intends to do. If when she is well she still doesn?t want to try and make it work he has said he will go but I know that would finish him completely.
I have found out something this morning from my aunt which I never knew. When they were first married (about 25 years ago), my dad had just left the army and he hit her one night. What no one knew was that he was suffering from PTSD quite badly and during an argument he had lashed out. He spent six months in hospital and nothing like it has happened since.
I love both my parents and know they have to make the decision themselves but it is so upsetting to see my father who is such a proud man being destroyed due to her illness. He worships the ground she walks on and for the first time in 25 years not being able to talk to her every day is killing him.

Good lord no you should not try and encourage a reconciliation and you should not get involved with you parents' relationship.

You sound as though you have made up your mind your mum should have been happy with your dad and so she is a bit batty. Her repeated depressive episodes will very likely have a cause the fact he was "placid" until she started having her own life which he then did not like and tried to control ultimately culminating in him strangling her when she tried to leave has all the hall marks of an abusive relationship which you, as their child, are not best placed to spot. She may feel she has no-one because your dad has got you involved in attempts to control her.

Try to get some distance from him and please think about supporting your mum to stay away from him.

And having PTSD is no excuse for violence. Strangling is often done by sexual abusers and although this may be a shocking thought about your own father it is not necessarily a type of abuse you would obviously see as their daughter.

Has your dad seen his doctor? It does sound like he too has some sort of mental health issues.

You have no idea what has been going on in their relationship - his tendency towards violence is possibly something she has lived with for years, only now getting up the courage to leave. She may have been afraid that if she left earlier he would do something violent to you and then kill himself. I read a message on here from someone who stayed with a supposedly "lovely" husband who would comment on TV reports of "Family annihilators" (men who kill their children and then often commit suicide to punish the mother) that "he knew exactly how they felt and would probably do the same if she ever left him" . She stayed and tried to make the best of it because she believed he would do that .

As Offred says, stay out of this and remember he is the one who has committed a violent act.

Your Mum obviously needs help with her depression.

Your Dad tried to strangle her, after what sounds like a period of time when she started to gain loads of self confidence and became friendly with people your Dad does not approve of

They should not be together

I really feel for you, but you should not try to 'fix' their relationship. You need to support them apart from each other

Offred speaks sense- and I say that as somebody who went through a similar thing with my own parents. When my mum left my dad, he was convinced that she 'went mad'. She didn't, she'd just had enough.

As their child, you cannot know the dynamics of their relationship. Children often normalise unreasonable behaviour by parents, I know I did.

Look at this sentence in isolation:

"Mum never realizes she is having a depressive episode until dad forces her to go to see the doctor and gets medication."

That's concerning. Every time your mum wants to leave your dad he forces her to get medication?

The thing is, we can only go on what you've said- objectively, this looks quite different to how you think it does.

This is really awful for you, though, regardless of who is or isn't at fault. How old are you and your siblings? Are you able to support each other?

My mum is not a placid person in any description of the word and she has always had her own life doing her own things away from him, nights out with the girls from work, etc.
He has seen his doctor and he has bad depression brought on by the stress of mum?s illness. It nearly destroyed him last time.
My mums family lives all around us and if there had ever been any other violence she has three brothers with a great tendency to violence who would have soon sorted it out and ensured he never went near her again.
Even they have seen how different she has become and told her to get to the doctors but she refuses.

And I think you should check what PTSD is before saying my father is a sexual abuser! He was a soldier and saw active service seeing many disturbing things. Whenever they argue my dad will be the one to walk away while she carries on shouting. He is a very placid person even mum has said it and if it?s been going on for so long we would have seen something over the years.
I came on here to get some serious advice and from most I have had mature answers. But a couple seem to be filled with paranoia that she has been in an abusive relationship for years which is not the case. As I said, she is part of a large family and we have a close knit community which would not tolerate such things. If I believed otherwise I would not be in this house with him.

The people she has become friendly with are people she would never be friendly with at any other time. Drunks, druggies and people who don't look after their kids properly. They are people she has always detested.

Sorry but I agree with everyone who thinks that actually your father has been abusing and controlling your mother for years and that this has been concealed from you or you have normalised it.

Firstly, you need to stay out of the current mess. Do you want to look back and realise that you enabled and colluded in the serious abuse of your mother by pressuring her to return to your father and submit to his control?

Secondly, I think you should look into getting some counselling regarding relationships and your family history. You may not want to discuss it on here but I wonder what your own sexual/romantic history has been like - whether you have had abusive or controlling partners yourself?

'Close knit' communities are nearly always hotbeds of abuse, because close-knit means closed-minded.

I didn't say he was a sexual abuser I said strangling is often associated with sexual abuse.

I know all too well what PTSD is thanks very much.

Stick your head in the sand if you want but your own description is that he was placid until she started this job and got friends he didn't like, that she says horrible things to him and he marches her down to the doctors and then she stops, that he hit her in the past and to be honest the fact you apparently do not understand that whatever the past history when someone strangles you you should never ever go back is worrying along with the fact you are siding with your dad when at the very least you should not have any involvement in their relationship no matter what your opinion is of what is going on.

Just why is it you don't see you mum as the victim after he strangled her?

On one hand you have a very idealised picture of their relationship (soulmates) on the other you paint a picture of a very disfunctional set up.

You also seem to be willing to overlook any 'fault' in your dad and lay the blame at your mom and her 'depression'/difficult behaviour.

Your dad committed a very serious assault. I can understand you feeling conflicted but would YOU reconcile with someone who had throttled you?

I am so sorry but I agree with the other posters: even though you lived with your parents for years as a child, you cannot really have known what was going on in their relationship (you may even have normalised it). If your DM has brothers with a tendency to violence then she may herself have been brought up to accept a certain level of violence and control as normal, and so accepted it from your father. Do support both your parents separately but do not be involved in trying to reconcile them. They will do it on their own if that is the right thing.

One last thought: if indeed your DF's character has undergone a radical change in a short period of time, has he had the possibility of a brain tumour investigated? I understand that pressure on the frontal lobes from a tumour can cause the most placid of people to suddenly become aggressive (and is usually operable I believe - I'm not a doctor though!)

This must be awful for you OP but as the others have said I believe your mum has been controlled for years.

She has had many other jobs and there has never been any problems. The people in that club are not nice. Mum wants nothing to do with any of her family since it happened including her children. She just hangs about with her drunk friends and says she don't need us anymore. She won't talk about it or get any help for it from anyone.
And for myself, I am 19 been with the same boy since I was 14 and have a caring and loving relationship and there has never been any violence.

Your dad strangled your mum and you want her to go back??

He could kill her next time.

JOW87 This does sound like a horrible mess and I am so sorry that you and your family are going through this.

I honestly do not know what I think about this or have any advice to give, except that you really need to make it clear in your head where you stand in this. You now need to think about what you need and want. Probably one of those things should be 'to not be screwed up or damaged by what is happening in parents' relationship'.

Also (sorry MN!) if I were you I would probably get off this thread and go and talk to someone from Relate or the Samaritans. You really need someone who has more of the picture (and none of their own agenda) in the real world to discuss this, asap.

Whether you or your father agree with her having friends with any particular kind of lifestyle or not it is her choice. My DH has a friend who cheats on his wife, takes coke and visits strip clubs, it is his choice to be friends with him not mine.

www.relate.org.uk/home/index.html

www.samaritans.org/

Good luck and look after yourself.

Are you living at home with your DF?

Years ago I knew a man who strangled his wife to death one night in bed.

He admitted it. Went to jail leaving his gorgeous little toddlers to be brought up by the grandparents.

What a bastard..... Actually he wasn't. He did something unforgivable. Totally out of character. Killed his wife and destroyed his family. But the reasons behind it still make me tearful. The dead wife's parents forgave him on hearing the full story, when he was released early they helped him rebuild a life with his children. Even his employers kept his job open for him.

And I don't why I telling you this OP, except I do believe it's possible to commit a horrendous act and still be a good person.

I don't think you can resolve this. But you know your family. I think you sound sensible and know the history and what's going on. You might find skeletons but deal with them as you discover them.. I wish you lots of luck on this horrible journey you are on.