Originally Posted by Amlyn
First some background. About a year ago, my father and my step mom separated on extremely bad terms. Totally cutoff from her due to a number of reasons, but along with that, his entire life outside of his job got cutoff too. All his socializing was at the hand of her and so he is back to his bachelor days like when I was a kid and he divorced my mom.
I haven’t lived with him since I was 9. From age 9-15 or so I’d see him on weekends, but very awkward cause he had no clue what to do with a daughter and his son. Basically I learned everything I needed to know about baseball and football in those years cause that’s all we did. Needless to say, he was present in my life, but not on a day to day basis or on an emotional level. My basic needs were always taken care of, but I never felt comfortable being with him because I felt so distant emotionally. We were stuck in this basic/primary state and couldn’t develop a deeper relationship. Later on in my late teen/early college years, I saw him even less. More cause I had such a need to be with my friends than anything, cause that’s what you do when you reach the age where you can drive and work and start to cultivate your own life.
Well, when I was 20, my father remarried and since he was now living with my stepmom and stepsister just as she was entering her teenage years, over time he was able to relate to women better, and me especially since I think watching a girl grow into a teenager and young woman on a day to day basis was missing with him and me. And in the long run it benefited me because for most of my 20s and early 30s, he and I asked developed a decent adult daughter-father relationship. But with well-defined boundaries and a pretty solid expectation of when we would communicate/see each other. Meaning we’d speak 1-2x a week by phone, maybe had a dad-daughter dinner3-4 times a year and then I’d see him 6-8 times a year for birthdays, bbqs, etc. Bottom line, we had very scheduled visits, didn’t regularly talk on the phone outside of work hours and all his free time was consumed by my step mom. And guess what. After 15 years of life like that, it was the norm for me and I got very accustomed to that.
Ok, so now my back to present day and my father is living by himself, bored out of his mind. He’s not willing to get out there to try to meet anyone cause he’s trying to win my step mom back. And unlike the first time with this living by himself stuff, he doesn’t have his kids to occupy him on the weekends. We’re both grown, and in fact my brother lives 5 hours away so that makes me the accessible one.
Here’s the crux of my whole issue. My father is now calling me on weekends and expecting me to just be readily available to talks to him, call him back, come down to his place, etc. And it’s not sitting well with me. Remember, for most of my adult life, we scheduled each other in. And after living on my own for 14 years, I’m pretty used to my independence and when he calls me and leaves me messages like, call me back so I can find out if you can come down and when I don’t call right back he calls me back and says, “I’m so worried you didn’t call me back” or “I called you yesterday and why can’t you pick up your phone?” and other variations on that theme. Now I know it’s probably coming from a good heartfelt place, but to me, I can’t deal with this type of scrutiny on my time or lifestyle. Up until now, if he called me on the weekend, we were either firming up family plans or someone died. We did not shoot the breeze. Honestly, I don’t think he even thought of me much on the weekends cause he was always preoccupied with my stepmom. And again, I was fine with that. He had his life, I had mine and from time to time our paths crossed. It may not be your textbook definition, but after so long it worked beautifully for us.
So I got another one of these calls yesterday. This is like the 3rd or 4th time this summer. I was away all day yesterday since the wee hours of the morning and I missed his call and when I got home in the evening, I didn’t feel like talking to him last night. And today I wanted a me day. I didn’t want to talk to anyone. SO he calls me about an hour ago and I decided to pick up the phone cause I knew I was going to get the “lecture” about being incognito and just wanted to get it over with. Which is exactly what happened. And I say hello and he goes into this whole diatribe about how it’s been 24 hours and he didn’t hear from me and how he was so worried something happened to me and blah blah. Of course since I’m sick of this sort of in your face and honestly I feel intrusive communication, I said, “Dad, you can’t keep doing this. I didn’t call you right back. It’s ok. I was busy. And I’m 36 and I feel like this is checking up on me and I don’t want or need that. I was going to call you back. You didn’t say anything was urgent. I just wasn’t able to do it. It’s all ok.”
Well he wigged out on me, about hung up on me and makes me feel guilty for something I didn’t initiate. I mean, he can’t let me have a reaction to anything he says or does without throwing it in my face. So of course this makes me want to talk to him even less. And I think to myself, if I was married, would he treat me like this? Well I learned today he did the same thing to my brother, who is married, so I guess yes. Which leads me to think that this whole need to just get us at the exact moment he feels needy is really going to get out of hand.
He is just in a miserable place and as much as I should want to be sympathetic towards him, all I want to do is run in the other direction. I know I sound like a brat cause I’m sure there are many people who would give anything to just have one more conversation with their parent, but that’s not the situation I’m in now and I don’t want this to lead to a situation where I just really cut him off for my own sanity. I don’t really see myself doing that, but I need to get passed this obstacle with him. I’m stuck and don’t know how to get him to a point where he can even appreciate why I feel these calls are a bit ridiculous to me.
Bottom line, I feel like my whole relationship that I’ve built as an adult with my dad has completely unraveled these past 12 months. I feel that sure, I could step up and be more empathetic at times, but he’s not willing to take one iota of responsibility for things going awry. He’s in the situation cause he messed up. Yet, I’m the one sitting here pondering this.
Help!!
Oh and PS, yes, I do make time to see him. I've seen him pretty much 1-2 a month since January and it was a lot more before that since he separated. So it's not like I don't include him in my life.
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