Have just got off the phone with my father (74) and feeling drained and bemused.
My husband is a dancer and needed to visit the one store that does bespoke tailored suits so is going to get measured next Friday, a 6 hour drive away. My father lives en route some 4 hours drive away so I suggested I would travel down separately after work by train and we could all meet there at his and have a weekend before me and my husband travel home Sunday morning. All arranged and he even mentioned booking a local restaurant. Then just today he has called me out of the blue, angrily asking how much the suit is costing, why I need to travel down etc. He now wants only my husband to travel down and stay Thursday and leave first thing Friday. If he had other plans, fair enough, but he doesn’t so it makes no sense. He just said ‘I decided we would come and see you in April so no need to see you next week!’
The last time I visited before Christmas was trying. My Mum died 23 years ago and he met another woman 15 years ago and remarried 5 years ago. My Mum was intelligent and gentle - his new wife is the opposite and brings out the worse in him and his traits.
He just seems to be bored and angry all the time. No friends, no hobbies. We went out for a meal the evening I arrived. He took the taxi driver to task for being 15 minutes late (in rush hour on Friday!), someone was sitting at ‘his’ table at the restaurant when we arrived ( they were finishing their drinks and we were invited to the bar whilst they finished up) and got so angry the owners daughter threatened to ask him to leave until I stepped in and took him outside for a talking to, and fell out with the taxi driver on the way home for taking a wrong turn!
It’s exhausting… his new wife even mentioned she gets worried travelling with him because he always falls out with airport security!
My brother and his family don’t speak to my Father or his wife now because, despite repeated requests for his wife not to do so, she kept saying that my youngest niece was ‘her favorite ‘ and would buy 3 gifts for every one she bought my nephews. There is a continued fall out with her own son , I suspect because she told him to his face that she was always disappointed not to have a daughter and wished he was gay so that she ‘could go shopping with him’ .
Other relatives have fallen by the wayside over the years and I seem to be the last one standing! My brother has said life is so much easier without my Father but I feel like I’m the last link. He also keeps threatening to change the will, is taking less and less interest in my life, and becoming very tight with money; he has a 5 star budget thanks to an amazing pension scheme he is on, but stays in 2 stars. For my fortieth birthday he didn’t buy me a present and just turned up with some old meaningless photos he had found down the back of a drawer. We walked past a local artist gallery and I mentioned I liked the one in the window ( around $50 in price) He said wait there, and went in and bought two for his wife!!! And then heavily complained the restaurant was ‘expensive’ because the mains cost $40 later that evening and tried to convince my family to eat at the bar opposite.
I stood up to him in my early 20s - often in blazing rows, so am best equipped in the family probably to stand my ground with him. In fairness, for the last 10 years relationship has been ok, but for last 2 years I feel he is just getting more angry and irrational ( no dementia or alcoholism suspected) and equally I think his wife is poisoning his ear and making him paranoid - we used to at his behest speak a lot about his will and finances; for last year he hasn’t initiated any such conversation.
It has been quite therapeutic writing all this down and sorry if I rambled a bit! Just wondered if anyone was in a similar situation or had experiences to share? He won’t see a counsellor, therapist and has a ‘take me or leave me attitude’ - always has. So am at an impasse now. Can’t change him so just ‘smile, keep calm and carry on’ or take a different approach?