How often do you speak to your parents? I'm trying to work out if I'm being a total bitch for wanting to try to scale things back a bit with my Dad.
My Dad expects twice daily phone calls from me (only child), once at 9am and once at 9pm, every single day without fail. He's 78 and a widower since my mum died early last year. I also go round to see him at least 3 times a week.
I'm going on holiday (only in the UK) tomorrow and he's becoming increasingly upset/depressed/sulky about the fact I haven't promised him that I'll still be phoning him religiously twice a day as 'normal'.
On the one hand, clearly the 2 x 5min phone calls don't take up much of my day and are obviously very important to him so I guess I should just carry on with them forevermore to keep him happy.
But on the other hand, I'm feeling increasingly frustrated and sort of smothered by the constant need to 'report in' to my Dad - I'm a 48yr old grandmother myself FFS!! If I don't answer his calls, he just keeps ringing repeatedly. If I continue to not answer, he turns up in a stressed panic on the doorstep!
I appreciate he's lonely since my Mum died, but it's not as if I'm the only person he has in his life - his neighbour pops in for coffee and chat daily, he goes to dinner with friends every week, he goes to the pub every Friday (also expects me to join him for this), visits my aunt weekly, visits other friends/family etc ...he has more of a social life than I do!
Am I wrong to think that him expecting twice daily phone calls is a bit excessive? Especially given we have nothing to actually say to each other? Each conversation follows a script. It probably doesn't help that we're like chalk and cheese with literally nothing in common. If we weren't father/daughter I can't see anyway we would even like each other as people.