I’ve posted before on my parlous relationship with my father, but please indulge me while I vent.
I went to my parents’ today for lunch. And the conversation turned to selling my mother’s paintings and advertising them on the internet. Not a problem - set up a website with a gallery, send cheques to my mother, beware of packaging costs, tax issues, etc. Fancier solutions available. But he would not let the subject go, not listening to half of what I said and nihilipilificating the other half, and continually refusing to move on to other subjects. This became very distressing for me, so I simply upped and left, apologising to my mother.
I’ve walked out on my dad a couple of times, personally. Normally I love the guy. I love him every single day and we do not have a tense relationship. But every so often he just gets to be too much to handle (he takes a lot of painkillers AND drinks, so he turns into Not Very Dad Anymore after a certain hour), and I have to just up and leave.
Personally, I leave because I know if I stay I am either going to A) Say something I can’t take back that will permanently scar our relationship or B) Take a swing at him.
Hopefully for you, you left before anything horrible got said and it will all blow over. Sometimes it depends on mom to help smooth things over. I’m hoping that the incident will just get swept under the rug and you all can go back to “normal.” Good luck!
Family can be amazingly annoying, can’t they? I hope this passes, and your father doesn’t act like such a dick the next time you see him. If you can, try to develop strong boundaries with your father so his comments slide off your back. Sometimes I have to work like hell to make myself recognize that my mother’s comments have more to do with her issues than any inadequacy on my part. It helps to have good friends to reinforce your self-esteem.
I’ve resorted to walking out on my (widowed) mother a few times. IME there are some parents who never let you grow up. They’re the adult, you’re six years old, and they’ll discard your ideas that don’t fit their notion of how things should be. They forget that you are a “little” more current on the net, technology, etc.
Drives ya bonkers, doesn’t it? :smack: I wouldn’t beat yourself up too badly about it, though. When people aren’t really listening, what other recourse is there?
I’ve just had a week of my mum (72 and a half) staying with me. She wants to use her computer. No problem - I’ve got broadband. Oh yea, she’s got that at home - you just plug in the phone line. No, mum, it’s broadband, I’ve got this Cat5 cable to plug in, it leads outside to the dish. I show her the cable. That’s just the phoneline. No it’s not. Well, that won’t plug in to my laptop, it’s not a phone jack. I plug it in. Don’t worry I’ll just go to an internet cafe. Where’s the nearest one? I don’t know - because I’ve got broadband HERE at my home. You’ll have to set it up. No problem, I’ll call the incredibly efficient helpline. Don’t worry, I’ll go to an internet cafe. Where’s the closest one? I don’t know and I’m on the phone getting you hooked up. I get her set up. This is all very well, she says, but I could just have easily gone to an internet cafe - you didn’t have to do all that. Anyway she still manages to go to an internet cafe just for fun … then tell me how terribly slow the service was and how expensive too.
I couldn’t walk out of my own home, but it came close - so sympathies to you. At one point I did retreat to my bedroom and I could hear my daughter explaining … granny, we’ve captured the internet right here in this room, hotmail and everything.
The best thing is to have a good laugh about it with some understanding friends. Once she gets clamped down on something, she just won’t let go.
Just wait untill he gets a hearing aid - then refuses to turn it up loud enough to have any effect.
I was just saying to my wife today that if my parents could understand that I am 46 instead of 16, we might actually have the basis for a conversation. Given that they don’t, we don’t.
I hear you. I was all comfortable just going to school, hanging out with my buddy, making out with the girl, tossing rubbish off the ramparts at the guards, et cetera, and then my father shows up in ghostly visage and tells me to kill his brother in revenge for his assassination. What the hell do I care, says I? He was no fellow of infinite jest to me, always consumed with invading Norway, fighting off the Poles, blah blah blah. I’d much rather just hang out and have a few brews but he just wouldn’t leave me alone. Now my girl drowned herself, I accidentally killed her father and brother, my mother drank poison, and I’m laying here looking up at the stars while somebody is saying “Goodnight, sweet prince,” like I’m a six year old. Thanks, Dad.
What should you do when you are the annoying elder and your parent is still alive? She is 96 years old, about 4’10" tall, and such a pain in the butt that her own grandson – a grandfather himself – refuses to go near her. (We are talking about a retired policeman that has thrown up his hands.)
This is the great-great grandmother who hit another resident with an umbrella at the assisted care facility for calling her a hussy. Then days later, she asked me what a hussy is.
Please, I want to enjoy my days in the sun as a crabby old crone. I’m down to one visit a year and that visit is overdue.
Of course I love her. And I hate her. Truly. And much of it at the same time. She put on a front for others for most of her life and I got the cruel side of her. Now that she is drifting into dementia, her false front is melting and everyone can see her for what she is. Even me.
Yet she could do some outrageously kind things and still does. Just not to me.
