Miserable, bitter parents who hate each other - how do you manage as an adult?

[oshawott]

Not even sure what I’m asking for here. Advice or support or just a place to hear if anyone else has dealt with this sort of thing and kept their sanity!

My parents separated six years ago after 30+ years of marriage. This was mostly my dad’s fault. They were always very dependent on each other and since they have split they have both been miserable. And they have been making their children miserable too and I am so so tired of it.

Me and my siblings were in our 20s/30s when parents split. We sided with DM I suppose because DF’s behaviour was just so so awful, to us as well as to her. (It is a long story but he had some sort of mental health crisis when he retired, huge personality change, decided we had all ruined his life.) So in the immediate aftermath we helped her go through her finances, work out housing and bills etc, got her set up with lawyers when the divorce started.

That felt appropriate in the immediate crisis but then it dragged on for YEARS. She kept us up to date with every minute of the divorce case (even when we outright said “Mum please, I don’t want to hear this”).

The situation now:

• my DF is living alone, not eating or looking after himself that well, but has since seen a doctor and got antidepressants or something and is at least functioning. He seems pretty regretful about torpedoing his life (and has only himself to blame for that). I am back in contact with him but pretty low-touch and he sees my DC a couple of times a year.

• My DM is living alone, is utterly miserable, has no social life, refuses despite YEARS of chivvying (from my siblings as I have now given up) to take up hobbies, call her friends, go back to her church, see a counsellor, see her GP etc. She lives in a big falling-apart house she can’t afford the cost or effort to fix but refuses to leave because she fought so hard to keep it in the divorce. Me and siblings take it in turns to visit for a weekend of odd jobs and maintenance work.

And they hate each other, particularly my DM. She will not hear his name spoken - she will literally get up and leave the room. She hates that we adult children have any contact with him at all and makes it clear that she feels we’re letting her down after how horrible he was to her.

And I have tried SO HARD to be a good dutiful daughter. I have worked like mad to keep an eye on my DF when he was absolutely spiralling and spent years carefully prodding him towards seeing a doctor. I have gone to lawyers with my DM, I have sorted out her budget for her, I have looked up classes and social activities for her, I have sat and listened as she talked at length about how my DF had ruined her life. I have a shared photostream for my DC that she sees where I have kept all mention and photos of my dad off, and a separate one for him with the same setup. I have never once asked them to be in the same room together. I have tried and tried and tried.

Result: my DM is utterly miserable, just seems to spend all her time moping, refuses to get help or get out of the house or anything. And most recently, she actually refused to let one of my children bring a toy into her house because she worked out that my DF had given the toy to DC. My DC is six years old.

So now I have had ENOUGH. I am not passing this fucked-up situation on to another generation.

I wish I knew how to keep my own DC away from all of it while still getting to see both their grandparents, though. And I wish my mum was not so miserable, I hate that her life seems to mostly revolve around feeling depressed or seething about my DF.

It’s all just so horrible. Is anyone else going or has been through similar? What did you do to cope?

I am sandwiched in this situation. Parents divorced. Mother bitter. She entirely capable until she is in my presence and then becomes a needy child. When she doesn’t get her way she becomes violent and abusive. I stepped right back believing that she would sort herself out and she has. I am very low involvement now and like any petulant child she is getting on in her own cantankerous way. The manner in which she does this is not my business. She is all grown up.

And then I am now going through a nasty divorce where children have been affected. I am soooo tempted to be absolutely no contact with XH to the extent that I am tempted to absent myself from DS’s graduation rather than being in the same space as XH; I just can’t tolerate his I indifference after 30 years together. I am so torn between being present and creating an atmosphere and being absent and creating an atmosphere. It’s a mess.

But I can just imagine my own DC post if they were on here.

My advice to my children, and any child whose parents are divorcing, is to leave me to in my self pity. And I, as a parent, need to get a grip. It is difficult but at any time of our lives only we are responsible for our feelings. Often life is not fair. Relationship failure is another example but get a grip.

How horrible for your DD to be having to factor that in for her own birthday celebrations @Whatnametoday5.

It definitely feels with my DM like she feels she has to be this unhappy in some way, that her life has to be visibly crumbling apart as a real-life memorial to how much my dad hurt her otherwise somehow it counts for less. And if we're trying to maintain a relationship with him of any sort it's because we don't believe or appreciate or care about how much he hurt her, so if she just reminds us... etc etc etc.

@Strategicchoring interesting it's around the same age. I found it easier to juggle family dysfunction around my DC when they were babies/toddlers and happily oblivious.

@TorkTorkBam ah, I don't think I'm quite there yet, although the siblings do know that I refuse to participate in any more looking up of activities or counsellors or groups and so on for her because she's perfectly capable of doing that herself if she wants to. In the same way I suppose she's perfectly capable of looking after her home and finances, she's been pretty brilliant at it most of her life, but it does feel more urgent somehow when the latest sibling text is about seeing her living in whatever form of miserable conditions it is this time. (I know depression can make it harder to take charge of basic life tasks, I really do, but all the same.)

Tork’s approach would be good - you could outline it to your siblings and follow it yourself, even if they don’t follow suit.

It FEELS urgent, but no action is actually required. Unless / until your mum isn’t capable of living independently.

Maybe you need to respond differently to those sibling texts. Suggest ^Let's leave her to it for a few more weeks. Let's not rescue too quickly. Let's see if she decides to go back to her old self who used to have no problem with this stuff. Give her a chance to find herself without us hovering and judging."