I'm really struggling with how to deal with my parents who I believe have some very strong narcissistic traits.
When I was pregnant last year my dad went to hit my mum. DH and I jumped up to stop it and he then unleashed a torrent of verbal abuse at me and was very physically intimidating. He blames being at wit's end with my mother's behaviour which is difficult and I am apparently also to blame because is was not interested in getting involved. I was pregnant and having spent years dealing with their crap I wanted to avoid stress. My childhood was difficult, they were regularly having extreme fights and there is so much that could be said here it would need dozens of threads. My feeling was that they are adults, it's their relationship and they need to deal with it. As background, I feel he has always overstepped the parent/child relationship. As a child he would unload on me about his problems with mum, basically treating me as an adult to lean on. He also told me when he got his girlfriend pregnant. I was probably about 15. I now don't feel this was appropriate. In my opinion children should be kept out of their parents relationship problems.
Now my mother has left my father, she told him there wasn't another man but realistically it was obvious. They have never had a good relationship, it lurches from crisis to good moments and then back to crisis. They don't do anything together and spend very little time together.
I do feel sorry for him but he has gone he'll for leather painting himself as the poor victim when realistically it's both their faults. I initially let him go on about how unhappy he was and tried to input positive things got the future, like suggesting he does stuff with my younger siblings like go to the cinema but I've snapped now. He's said it's terrible how my mother has pulled us kids into her affair but he did the same. He's going complete overkill on playing the victim, sending text messages saying "can't text anymore, my hands are shaking to much" whilst taking no real responsibility for his own behaviour. I'm not doing it, I'm not getting sucked into a blame game and I feel like I'm being manipulated. He's made a point of asking me to call him as I don't tend to call him these days. He has nothing to say unless it's unkind words about others and I feel like I give him an inch and he takes mile. For example, he turned up announced last week which he's been asked not to do many times (something he really objects to). He stayed for hours despite me clearly hinting that I needed to put the baby down for a nap and that actually, I needed a bit of a lie down myself. He then rang the next day. I then decided to invite him over in the week as I did feel bad for him. He stayed for over four hours and then later came to get something he'd forgot, invited himself in and stayed for another hour. Then rang the next day. I can cope with that level of contact, I really can't. The level of anxiety it gives me is awful.
I do feel bad for him but not to the level he wants and I'm not going to play the blame game. He states he is depressed but he's been saying this for a longtime and o have recommended counselling, offering to help h find one on line but he has done nothing to help himself and I don't feel that I should take responsibility for sorting him out if he won't so himself and considering the past, I'm not prepared to have their marital issues causing me unhappiness when I've got my own family to look after.
I guess what I'm asking is am I being completely unreasonable? How do I try to manage this situation?
Things are even worse as I have a sibling of similar age in Australia who last year told me I was a complete bitch and a drama queen after I refused to speak to my father following the hitting/verbal abuse.