My mum is great. She's in peak health, fit,active, intelligent, of sound mind. Will travel and try anything despite her age.
Loves life.
My Dad has always been very bad tempered, spoils for arguments, aggressive and has violent tendencies.
I studied MH and social science subjects and I see right through him now, he had a bad upbringing and is essentially a traumatised child in an(unfortunately large strong) adult male's body. He's younger than her.
For years maybe even decades she's shielded me from a lot. I've expressed concern about their relationship because he had acted like he's hated me since I was very young,my very first memories of him have been fear-based.
He's tried with me over the years to develop a bond (while I was a young adult) but it was all too little too late. When I was a small child he was loud, aggressive, quick to anger and that just cannot be fixed. I feel sorry for him, and I'm civil with him but there's never going to be a loving parental relationship for me.
Anyway my mum has always perpetuated that she's happy and that their marriage is good and he's a different husband to the man he is as a parent..don't get me wrong there have been times where things have escalated (a few years ago he monumentally crossed a line with me at Christmas and I left the celebrations and went home over which I know they had a week or so long argument resulting in him being awful with her, for one of many an example) but overall she's implied that she's happy.
A week or so ago I was at their house. My phone was dead and I needed to look something up and she passed me her phone. It was open on a reddit post page. She'd left the room and I just started reading it. I realised after a couple of sentences that it was her posting in a relationship advice subreddit about how awful hes been, about how their only child lives nearby but is still estranged from him, he blames her and he says she's ruined his life and it is all her fault her child doesn't like him (It's his bloody fault!!) And then he'll come back saying he loves her and then it'll start again.
It was so sad. I've tried to forget it, she got some good advice. But I read it didn't I? I am probably not going to tell her I read it. I mean, it was literally the page open on her phone. But it just makes me feel so upset for her.
I guess I just needed to write this and see if anybody has anything at all to say about it. She's 82 and he's mid 70s. But if you had a summary of them both without knowing or even saw a photo, you'd assume he was the elder. He's overweight, of ill health, can't be bothered doing much most of the time. She's fit and active and glamorous.