I have a really bad relationship with my dad and it’s destroying my mom

I have a really bad relationship with my dad and it’s destroying my mom

Male, mid 20s

Unlike other posts on here, my dad has never been abusive, cruel, hit, anything but generally a kind human being.

His biggest sin is an extreme version of being the guy at the bar who has an opinion on everything. But that’s just it.. I can’t stand it.

We’ve gotten in fights over the years, and while they’ve been bad… I don’t even remember what they’ve been about. At this point I am indifferent to speaking out towards him, or even telling him anything about me. He knows nothing about me and I keep myself extremely guarded and never show emotion around my parents.

This has extended to my mom. My mom is an incredible human being, and I don’t give her enough love because of my dad. I go home maybe once per month, but because my mom and dad live together I don’t say much at dinner, and the only time I talk to my mom is when I go run errands with her.

She’s so lonely and every six months or so she calls me asking me what she’s doing wrong that I shut her out. She says she will always forgive me but she hopes I don’t treat others like this, because she doesn’t want me to be alone.

Isn’t that fucked up of me?

She is being hit by shrapnel from my relationship with my dad. I can’t take him, and it’s affecting her. As far as she thinks, I’m cold to both of them and she can’t figure out what she begs me to tell her what she did wrong. Stories she makes up why I don’t talk to them play in her head probably every night. I don’t know how to communicate that she isn’t the problem.

To get a little more granular, it’s my dad’s hypocrisy of his statements, pretending to be a leading expert on every subject. Wether it’s covid, or China, or non political topics like why the kardashians are so popular. And these topics might seem relatively tame.. but it’s perpetual extremes on every hot take. For example, referencing violence in a high crime city near us he said, “I hope I get jumped so I could shoot the guy.” I don’t think he even owns a gun. If he does, it’s not in the house.

And while that’s a recent extreme case, It’s just stuff like that. Every time I hear him speak. He’ll shit talk a trendy diet, then six months later he’s doing the diet and saying how unhealthy normal Americans are while he’s the only one in the family that’s overweight with heart problems.

My mom and dad live together, but haven’t slept in the same room for as long as I can remember. She emailed me today a video link to a pastor talking about marrying the wrong person. She wrote:

“Please watch. My biggest regret is not showing you guys (us kids) what a happy marriage looks like, but worse, being an example of a bad one.”

For all the shitting I’m doing on my dad right now, he genuinely is a really kind hearted human. One of the most kind hearted I know. I see a lot of myself in him. And in that way, he’s been a role model. Not a positive role model, but a “don’t let this happen to you” type of story. Because I get to observe him, I’ve learned that I’m capable of being the same belligerent person, and learned how to control that side of me, and get to the root of why that would ever come out to begin with.

He’s had a lot of hurt in his life, and doesn’t have many people to listen. If he had, he wouldn’t try so desperately to speak.

He’s that way because he’s lonely. My mom’s extremely outwardly lonely and that fucking hurts. I don’t know what to do or how to handle this situation.

Tl;dr: I’m cold to my dad for reasons. But that behavior is bleeding onto my relationship with my mom. Don’t know what to do

Submitted January 13, 2022 at 11:18PM by tankingthrow https://ift.tt/3FEtLOV