Dad Issue

LegacyUser

My father seems to have stopped speaking to his family....

I'll give you a bit of background to this. A couple of years ago my brother got into trouble and was away for about 2 years, at the same time I moved out of home leaving my parents on their own. This was a massively stressful time for my family and I'm sure put major stress on my parents relationship. They seem at that time to only speak to each other when they needed to "What do you want for dinner?" "Are we going to your _____'s party?"

When my brother came home after 2 years I thought everything would get a little easier but it didn't. Since then my dad seems to have shut down all together. He will not speak to my mother and his brothers and sisters have noticed a change too. He will speak to me and my brother but makes no effort if we don't. He seems to have fun with his friends and will chat away with his work colleagues as before.

My mother has tried to talk to him about it but he will not speak about it or acknowledge that there is a problem.
Last year she spent a lot of money on house renovations and didn't talk it over much with him. I know he was not happy she spent so much money.

He has a good job and a beautiful home with no money problems I know about.

Recently he decided to go on a holiday for 3 weeks over to my cousin (closer to my dads age then mine). He didn't tell us when he booked the flights and never told my mother when he was coming home. While he was there he had no contact with my mother and maybe text me and my brother a handful of times. While he was away my mother went to his colleagues birthday party and people were asking her how he was getting on and how he had been texting them telling them how much fun he was having. (I know he would not have done this on purpose knowing they would have told my mother.)
Her birthday and wedding anniversary went without him saying a word. I really have no idea how shes staying at home in a silent house.

This has added to my anxiety attacks and I find it very difficult to go home when they're both at home. I do not know how to breach the subject of him without shouting "WHATS WRONG WITH YOU!" He's a very proud, stoical man who does not believe in talking anything out.

Has anyone out there been in a situation like this or have any idea how to deal with this.

Beruthiel

PinkGoldfish wrote: »

have any idea how to deal with this.

Honestly PinkGoldfish, there is not much you can do here. It is not up to a child to tell their parent how to run their relationship.
All this is down to your mother.
Instead of turning around to him and insisting that he treat her well and with respect, she has decided to put up with it.
I have no idea why and there maybe a lot more going on here between them than you know.
Either way, your mother is the one who needs to put the foot down.
Perhaps she is unable to?
Were I in your shoes, maybe gently try and suggest she see a professional and talk it out with them.

curlzy

That is so lame *hugs*. I agree with Beruthiel, get your mum to see a councellor, so at the very least she has some support. I'd also call round to see her more often and bring her out too, that's about all you can do.

Best of luck.

LegacyUser

PinkGoldfish I really feel for you, its such a brutal situation to be in. I have experienced this with my own father to a far lesser degree and I found it really traumatic.

What seemed to be the pattern was that in recent years when my father was experiencing high levels of stress ( and I would think worry though he didn't talk about it), he would fall out with my mother over the stupidest thing and then go into a silence.. maybe for as long as a few weeks. In the first few episodes we as siblings didn't really feel that it was our place to interfere, that daddy would respond well to it etc etc. However in the last one or two it just got too unbearable to put up with. I could not watch my mother so hurt, trying to make healing advances only to be rebuffed. In the end up we made tried to alert him to the fact that we were very aware that something was amiss, that it was affecting us all greatly and that we were concerned about them both, in as diplomatic a fashion as we could. We found this did speed up his process of coming out of these silences.

Thankfully it is a good few years since it has happened... if it did happen again and this didn't seem to bear any fruit then I would be softly persuading my mother to talk to a counsellor/ trusted friend etc as I did feel very awkward at times talking to her about these silences/ huffs and felt it wasn't really appropriate/ fair in the whole parent/ child dynamic with ourselves/ her/ my father.

best of luck x

PK72

Hard to know what to say - booking a holiday and heading off without his wife is bang out of order. Was this some sort of response to your Mother spending money on the house renovations? At some level it sounds as if he doesn't want to be married anymore in which case your Mother will have to address the issue. It could be stress, it could be depression, it could be that he simply is no longer in love with your Mother - hard to know from this distance. What's your gut feeling?

IrishEyes19

Beruthiel wrote: »

Honestly PinkGoldfish, there is not much you can do here. It is not up to a child to tell their parent how to run their relationship.
All this is down to your mother.
Instead of turning around to him and insisting that he treat her well and with respect, she has decided to put up with it.
I have no idea why and there maybe a lot more going on here between them than you know.
Either way, your mother is the one who needs to put the foot down.
Perhaps she is unable to?
Were I in your shoes, maybe gently try and suggest she see a professional and talk it out with them.

Whilst I agree its not fair to burden anyone with your problems and make their lives miserable. Sometimes people cant and sometimes they do need help and its no harm for the adult children to at least attempt it.

Why not talk first to your father, I understand he is not being particularly outspoken but perhaps an intervention style chat might just be beneficial. fair enough if the marriage isnt rosy and he isnt happy. But to be honest his behaviour sounds mean and childish.

Fenian Army

Your poor dad sounds very unhappy

The Corinthian

Fenian Army wrote: »

Your poor dad sounds very unhappy

Yes. It very much sounds to me that the OP's father has carried the load financially for decades and is both disappointed with the result and the apparent way it has been taken for granted.

The two examples you give are your brother, whom I suspect he spent a lot of effort and money to raise right, only to find him squander these advantages, culminating in his getting 'into trouble' (I presume this is an euphemism for prison). Meanwhile his mother, has no problem spending big chunks of money he's worked for, without really bothering to get his input, let alone agreement to do so.

I'm sure there's more to it that that, but from the limited information the OP gave, it sounds like that.

So now, in the end, he's fed up. He's had enough. And either he does not want to break up with your mother and start afresh (or cannot afford to, thanks to Irish divorce laws) or is working up to it. Thinks like holidays away are simply examples of where he's doing things for himself, because he's fed up carrying a bunch of ingrates (from his perspective). Meanwhile everyone can see there's a problem, but oddly enough there appears to be very little self questioning over it.

@OP: Ask your father what he's unhappy about and with whom. Then maybe talk to them and ask them to question themselves in relation to your father.