Forgive me if this is a bit long and disjointed but I have a one year-old with me. And, I have name-changed.
So this has bothering me for a long time now, ever since my wedding three years ago really. My dad is a good man, and I admire him in all kinds of ways. He wasn't such a good husband to my mum, but a good dad to me and my brothers. Now I am a parent, I can see all kinds of things that he gave me that I hadn't seen before, and I have some lovely memories of my childhood with him.
But, he has a tendency to put me down. He does it in a jokey sort of way, but it's relentless. I hadn't really realised it until my wedding, until his whole wedding speech made jokes at my expense - no mention of pride, or my achievements, or my abilities, but lots of comments about my age, my pregnancy, my faults... Since then I've noticed that he gets a jibe in almost every time he sees me - and he does the same with my brothers too. I am almost 40, and have two small children, and that is his latest issue - how old I am and how my children have an old parent.
As I said, he does it as a 'joke', and I know he is proud of me (he is a man who shows things through actions rather than words - he has always been crap at emotion). However, I don't have great self-esteem at the best of times, and spent a lot of my 20s almost crippled by it. I've made huge efforts (thanks largely to amazing friends) to overcome this, but now realise that a lot of it must come from the way he talks to me about me. I can brush a lot of it off, but I've been waking up in the morning feeling hurt and angry about it and wondered what to do.
Do I confront him next time he does it (I'm rubbish at that kind of thing, usually cry and there's the risk that the kids will be there so won't want to if they are), do I write him a letter telling him how much it hurts, or do I do nothing? (There's also the added element of his wife, but I won't go into that!)