I apologize for this being so long..
This is a lot more complex than I can represent in one, coherent post. So I'm not ignoring the wider picture, just can't explain the whole big mess in one go. I have worked out a lot of things to do with my DM, I know she has narc traits for example and that she gaslights and manipulates me, FOG etc. Being able to attach words to her behaviors really helped me personally. It helped me feel like I'm not going crazy basically. Maybe someone can tell me what some of my dad's behavior is called and what it means.
I don't think DF had a great upbringing and his dad was a disinterested, miserable so and so who died quite early on. I literally know no more than this. I think in a way some of his shit behaviour might be copying his dad and doing the "and I turned out alright" spiel..missing the point rather that his dad hasn't been around and in his life as he got older and so he doesn't know he wouldn't have fallen out with him later on. I hope that makes sense?
He worked abroad and experienced dangerous situations/saw people in poverty etc. I know for a fact he was and is very much affected by this. He has/has always had intense nightmares, used to sleepwalk, is a little paranoid and goes into intense brooding depressions. I don't know if the experiences I just mentioned caused that or just made it worse. I have sympathy for these experiences but he has never sought to tackle how it made him behave, I guess he is the sort that views therapy etc as being for crazy people or for the weak.
My mum didn't know what he was like until they got married. They are both strangely old fashioned and prudish, so I don't know if he purposefully hid his true personality or if it's just a case of going from having dinner dates with someone to all of a sudden doing the house/home/child relationship. I think my mum's family encouraged her to marry ASAP as well. I get the impression she is jealous of me and DP as we had a v long dating phase and although I;d say we fell in love quite quickly we took the process of combining our lives very slowly. Each to their own of course, I just get the impression she missed a few red flags. DF is constantly suggesting me and my mum are insane and need locking up in mental institutions etc. Maybe because on some level he realizes he's not normal.
He is racist, immigration obsessed and I mean OBSESSED with endless ranting and turning every conversation around to this topic. Misogynistic but would deny this. Homophobic. Once as a teenager I suggested during one of his anti gay rants that if he thought men having sex was so bad he could just not have sex with a man and leave it at that. Did not go down well.
Seems to find it stressful/irritating to converse with people but is CAPABLE of doing do. When other people speak he gets visibly annoyed unless it's a very brief bit of information that is relevant and useful to him. What time do you want dinner. Do you want chips with that. The toilets are over there. If someone tries to talk to him they need to keep it short, listen, agree and then go away. He avoids situations where he needs to socialize or converse. He CAN do it however, very very rarely I have seen him make a huge effort and be basically normal, say at a funeral where it would be bad form not to listen to people and make polite chit chat not rant on about politics etc. He finds these situations very draining and difficult and as I say, avoids them but it strikes me as significant that he can do it.
I am very socially anxious myself but I have never seen anyone ever react like this to being spoken to or having to speak to others. He has no friends, goes to the local pub for a pint and chats with people there..so it's not totally black and white. No family members around either as he lost touch or fell out with them. I haven't been in contact for 2 years.
The only way he's happy talking is when he wants to and then only to rant and lecture at length on topics that interest him. Only me and my mum have ever tolerated this. During these sermons you have to agree, keep replies short and look enthusiastic or he gets angry that you aren't good company but you can literally go "Yes", "mmm", "you;re so right" and never say anything else and it's like he doesn't twig that this isn't normal.
I would say he is naturally a very angry person. He always kind of claims his getting angry is someone else's fault somehow but really he is just an angry person. We don't go on holiday as he gets so pissed off all the time. We went away for a week about 15 years ago and it was awful, he got drunk and ranted and raved about immigration to some random guy in a restaurant whose face was just like stone all the way through. Again, I am very socially awkward but I don't know how the message "leave this man alone" didn't get across. He then went into a bar and started shouting the N bomb at some black bar staff. Awful. Back at home he is far less arsey going out for a meal which is all he likes to do but I was always on edge because it;s like that side of him is never far away. During all these angry outbursts me and my mum just sit silently as we have been conditioned to do. We must look absolutely fucking ridiculous.
That anger always seems to be bubbling over something. Over time I have just given up trying to avoid incurring his wrath because he will get annoyed about odd shaped plates or the color of stationary.
This is a big one, he gets obsessive ideas which make little sense and have no relevance and then kind of implements them. A relative of his grew up with a tv in their room and also failed their exams in school. He felt that the poor exam performance was due to the tv. He became convinced I was watching tv via my computer (I was mid 20s and lived at home at the time). He wired the house up to block anyone but him watching tv. I have no idea if this worked because I wasn't downloading tv and he was the only one who watched tv in the living room...for hours and hours and hours every night. Every night he would turn the TV off with great ceremony and then rant on and on about how "that was enough" and too much tv is bad for you.
Eventually my mum lost it and told him that he clearly quite liked watching tv as he did so for hours per day and that no one else watched any. She said that was fine but could he maybe stop ranting on and on about it. He was in a sulky silent rage for a week, then took the wiring down and kept trying to suggest that me or my mum should watch some tv. It was this u-turn after that makes me think this behaviour is coming from something he can't fully control.
So, he gets these odd ideas often the tv thing is just a clear example of it.
Verbally abusive, emotionally abusive and more than a bit controlling. Its like an odd mix of controlling and disinterest. Very jealous of me because he thinks I've had an easy life lol. Also has the idea that women are virgins (progressing to old maids), dumb housewives or slags. Since I have a long term partner and am not married you can guess which one I am. On some level I think he approves of places in the world where women basically work like dogs, do as they're told, get devalued as soon as they're not young and pretty and are grateful at the end of it all for a pampered bloke to not smack them in the face and send them out on the streets. That's my impression anyway. So me having an OK job (he of course thinks I am a total failure and loser who can't earn anything decent), quite a bit of freedom and an equal relationship that I'm not trapped in probably rubs him right up the wrong way.
Here is a point though, he tries to avoid calling me names to my face. He does it so I can "overhear him". But it's obvious that I will. Somehow I get the impression that this is because he's afraid I will say something back. Like if I go into the next room and say I overheard him that's one step removed or something. The other reason might just be that he has these very firm lines he won't cross and maybe calling his daughter a slag to her face is one of those things he doesn't want to be. He's called my mum loads of names and treated her like an idiot in front of me many times. He likes to put her down and call her useless and stupid, belittle stuff she has done etc.
Hates occasions that are focused on someone else. When my parents took me out for dinner to celebrate getting my GCSEs and landing a really well paid summer job he went into a complete rage, he ended up walking round the restaurant tables, pint in hand "looking for some decent conversation", pointing me and my mum out to all these mortified people. He even declared that "his" GCSE night had been ruined. He has trashed many an event over the years. At my graduation he did the same. The thing is I didn't care about my graduation and didn't want to celebrate it so I kind of got to observe his behaviour from a pretty unemotional POV. He had insisted on attending and "celebrating", I would have just had the certificate in the post and then he was a real twat all the way through. Months later he brought it up going "remember your graduation and what a disaster it was, do you see the funny side of it though" then he laughed in a really nasty way. I told him I did not see how it was funny and he chuckled and pulled faces to himself. Viewed dispassionately it's hard to think there's not something wrong with him beyond being a pompous, bullying tosser. This is a guy who feels like he is missing out because I won;t be having a wedding. When he comes out with stuff like that I tend to think "...do you really not realize what you're saying.."
In a way the holiday and similar moments are kind of a relief because I know it's not me, it's him. Even when he's not full on kicking off people have these terrible reactions to being around him for like 1 minute and I think, well, maybe there's not something wrong with me, maybe I am reacting normally to an extreme situation.
He can do silent rages for days or weeks at a time, often over fuck all. If something REALLY goes wrong, he can be a cunt about it for years. It's not uncommon for him to not enjoy a restaurant meal and not speak to my mum for a week and be nasty and moody when he "comes round" for a bit longer after that. It's like he has no proportional sense of negative emotions. He VERY easily takes offense but dismisses bad reactions to his saying anything he wants with absolutely no fucking tact as some sort of virtue and anyone who gets upset is "too sensitive".
The last thing I will mention is he views birthdays and xmas in a very weird way. For years he's gone out to go round the pubs by himself, come home and sat up drinking until late into the night. Most of the time he wouldn't want company and would sit drinking and talking to himself until late into the night. During these long sessions his mood could turn and he would start loudly shouting insults about my mum, me and how he hated his life and everything was terrible. This made for a very oppressive atmosphere in the house as he could start as early as 2pm and go on as late as 11pm. During these sessions me and my mum had to keep out of the way because even seeing us walk past the room he was in would trigger a kind of black mood and he would snarl and rant and shout for the rest of the session. He would feel justified doing this and when I was younger I kind of felt I had caused it but now being 38 I know that most people myself included don't have a huge performance like this over minor things. He was late 30s when he married my mum so hardly a young and inexperienced person.
Sometimes though, he would want company. This was either on Sundays or Xmas. He would kind of insist on family time, even though sometimes he clearly wasn't enjoying it and was being as nasty as possible. Tbh it's like people down the pubs were saying "I'm going home now to spend time with my family and have a nice meal " and so he rushed of home to do the same...while not really wanting to or knowing what to do when he got there. The same with xmas really, which he usually ruined. In the end me and my mum actually said to him, why do we bother celebrating xmas since you hate it and resent the cost and say it;s a load of bollocks anyway. No, he insisted we did it and then was a cunt about it. In a way it's like he wanted to enjoy it but hated the fact that we might, so he had to be horrible to do that.
He doesn't give a fuck about other people's birthdays but his own is like some sort of global event. For many years he has always done whatever he wanted for his birthday (fine) but often (not every time) been a total arsehole with it at the same time. It's almost like he knows people have to be nice to you on your birthday so he goes all out to be a cunt. Basically after a day of trying to make it perfect for him he would often basically TRY and make it go wrong so he could sit back like a pompous ass going "my birthday is ruined" ...like a little kid.
He can actually be very generous with money. My Ps are not rich but comfortably off despite being from very poor backgrounds. He is very honest, I don't know of any lie he has ever told. He can on rare occasions be nice, thoughtful and helpful.
Well if you got through some or any of that then thank you for your time. If anyone has any idea what this is or if they have known similar people it would be really helpful for me to hear about it. 