Friday, Sep 5, 2008
How do I deal with the loss of a father who's not really gone but just changed?
Aug 3, 2005 | Dear Cary,
Basically the sad saga begins with the divorce of my parents, about four years ago, after 40 years of intermittently happy marriage. Fast-forward to two years ago. My father tells us that he's dating a woman 20 years younger than he. (He is 65 at this point; she is 45.) Her story seems a little hazy: She's a professional pet sitter who recently moved to town, I'm not sure from where; further, she is about to be evicted from her apartment (something to do with the pet-sitting business); and so after they've been dating a couple of months my father announces that she's moving in with him.
I'm skeptical, and concerned for my father, as are others in the family, but I try to be supportive. We meet the girlfriend and, although she is flaky, she seems well meaning, and we all get along reasonably well. They come over and help my wife and me with some house projects, like painting, and we all have an OK time.
After that, things get truly loopy. We find out my wife is pregnant. Obviously we are delighted, and my dad's girlfriend (we have probably met her a total of four times at that point) seems to show what I consider an excessive interest in the pregnancy: She buys a video about how to calm infants; she creates this creepy pregnancy book featuring a picture of my wife that she has painted flowers and fertility symbols on; she wants to play a lead role in organizing a baby shower for my wife; she e-mails each of us once or twice a day with quotes and observations.
In retrospect it all seems creepy. But at the time I just figured that she was a bit needy -- that, having no children and being estranged from her own family, she was trying a bit too aggressively to latch onto ours. However, that benevolent interpretation soon changed. At one point, in a conversation with my father, my wife referred to his girlfriend as "his girlfriend," and the girlfriend lashed out with this paranoid e-mail spelling out why this was an enormous slight to her. At the baby shower she made a point of telling my wife that my sister (who had come up with the idea for the shower, and had flown in from the opposite coast for the occasion) had nothing to do with the shower. Afterward she called us to berate us for not thanking her and my father enough for the shower.
At that point I wrote my father a nasty e-mail saying I thought there was something seriously wrong with his partner, and my sister got in a heated argument with him about the situation. In response, my father and his partner wrote me, my sister and my wife a series of bizarre letters in which we were berated for abusing them and shunning them. Particularly galling was the fact that the girlfriend wrote my mother a series of hostile letters, apropos of nothing, attacking everyone in the family.
At no point did my father ever step forward to suggest that this activity was inappropriate or acknowledge that it was hurtful. Every time I met with him, including in several therapy sessions, he defended his partner's behavior and insisted that all the harm had been done on our side -- and make no mistake about it, the "sides" were well ossified at this point. After that I decided that not reaching out was best; every interaction with them seemed to lead to intense pain. We got another long letter in which they demanded we give back a number of gifts they had given us over the past few years. And they wanted us to pay money for the time they had spent on our house projects. I didn't respond to any of it.
Finally, several weeks ago I called my father and asked to get together. Up until this point he had never seen our baby (now 14 months old), nor expressed any interest in seeing him. My main goal in seeing him the hope that, in some constellation, we could all get together and he could get to know his grandchild. He and I met, and we had a good, emotional conversation in which we both expressed a strong desire to reconcile. He also told me that he's moving to the other side of the country, so this desire for reconciliation took on increased poignancy. I apologized to him for my part in the whole scenario, and offered to apologize to the girlfriend. The next step, or so I thought, was for him to call and set up a time to meet the baby. Needless to say, that never happened. He asked for a second meeting, at which point he reiterated that we needed to return all the items delineated in the letter. According to him, reconciliation could take place only once we took that step. I left in the middle of our conversation, furious. This type of reversal on his part -- first expressing a desire to reconcile, then coming back with a series of embittered demands -- has become characteristic of my dealings with him.
I packed up all the items he requested (all except a few things we had since gotten rid of) and dropped them off at their house. The same day, we received five hysterical messages from the girlfriend naming all of the items she felt we still owed them.
That's about the gist of it. I've left out a few excruciating episodes for the sake of brevity (not that I've been all that brief). It's hard for me to imagine ever having any kind of a relationship with my father as long as he's with this woman. On the other hand, she seems to have crawled inside his very soul, to the point that I no longer even recognize him as the kindhearted person I used to know.
Heartbroken and Angry as Hell
Dear Heartbroken,
Darn, man, that's a tough situation.
When a family member, particularly a parent, begins to act unpredictably, it's deeply upsetting. One can neither please such a parent nor cogently defy him. Meeting his demands will not necessarily bring harmony, nor will defying him result in principled disagreement. He has become a moving target, a cipher. The man you thought you knew has disappeared. In a sense, you have lost your father.
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