Selfish Dad

LegacyUser

Hi. I just wanted to get this off my chest and ask other posters how I can get my message across to my father without getting too upset.

My father is 64. He has always tried to provide but had issues with alcohol for a long time and the truth is that we were a poor family, even in the 70s/80s when everyone was poor. We alway had food but luxuries were fantasies and basically talking to my brothers and sisters we were all a little damaged by the fact that we had nothing while my father always seemed to have money for a drink. We were well loved, and I do love my father, but at in my 40s I have realised what a selfish man he is. He loves my mother but is very lazy and will never go anywhere with her. She does everything around the house like cooking and cleaning and he never gives her anything nice or does anything nice for her.

2 years ago he was diagnosed with prostrate cancer. It was still in the early stages but he refused adamantly to get the surgery. My mother confided in me at the time that he didn't want to have any of his what I can only say "man parts" affected. I understood this, but don't understand why he refuses to talk about anything to do with cancer or even how his illness will affect my mother. She is very healthy and will become his main carer (he refuses to go anywhere but home if gets very ill) and in recent months the cancer has become aggressive and now my mother says that surgery is no longer even an option. We are waiting for the consultant to say when chemotherapy will begin.

I am so so angry with my father. I want hime to treat my mother better and feel like he owes her after all the drinking years and now he just expects her to wait on him while he is ill, but won't even buy her flowers or make her a cup of tea. I was so upset last Friday I couldn't go and visit them because I didn't want to hear my mother getting upset at the thought of the care that is going to come and how she feels like if it was her he would ask one of us the children to come home fot the care. I am just so upset.

username123

Hiya,
Well first of all, booze is a b*tch - I lost my father (as in I lost the person he was) to it a long long time before he actually died. My mother was totally codependant on him so overall it was all pretty dysfunctional.

I hear ya on the money thing. I was told we couldnt afford for me to go to college - but my Dad could go to the pub every night.

The only way I could come to terms with it all was to see the addiction to alcohol as a disease - a disease that robs a person of any proper personality and just makes them a selfish g*t.

Anyway, back to you. People have choices and while you may not agree with those choices, you cant live anyone elses life for them. You have to respect what they choose to do. Your father has chosen a death sentence and wants your mother to suffer alongside him. Your mother has chosen to agree with this. You dont agree with any of it. I dont blame you - but you must respect that they are entitled to make their own choices. Your mother has the choice to refuse to care for him, to leave him, that choice was there all along and she chose not to take it - there is little point in you also being made upset by it. You did the right thing not visiting while you felt emotionally fragile about it.

If I were you I would try to look after myself, only deal with what you are able for, dont visit if your not up to it. Listen to your mother and offer her comfort but not to your own detriment. Best of luck.