I (26M) don't know how to talk to my dad (61M) anymore, and don't know if I should.

As an aside or really just an initial observation about my dad--he is extraordinarily manipulative. He obeys laws that suit him and completely circumvent those that don't. He will always try to get the 100% best possible outcome for himself regardless of who it screws over in the process. He is also verbally abusive to anyone who he disagrees with. He has a superiority complex where he absolutely has to have the best story--to the point that I frequently catch him in lies. He likes to say that he is religious and will openly profess he believes, but he hasn't been to church in ~10 years that I know of. He (at this point in time) shares a very "conservative" political stance, but when ever pressed on facts he says (that is just what the left-wing media wants you to think).

So a whole lot of backstory first:

My relationship with my dad has always been tenuous at best. He worked all the time when I was little as an engineer. It was a very good job paying an insane salary from what I can interpret from the house we lived in (my mom was fresh out of the army and working on an entry level hourly wage with the post office). My parents separated when I was young (Mom claimed he turned into a completely different person--he went from being the perfect gentleman to impatient & controlling / prone to angry outbursts; something I am ashamed to admit I also am guilty of). He was in the military for about 13 years before separating. He has 5 children to 5 different women in 5 different states. My mom was the only one he had married before having a kid. During the divorce period my half brother used the tumultuous affair happening (moving furniture / all the court dates that we had to attend) to vent his anger on me. It started as him yelling at me / blaming me for everything he did wrong (lying to our parents at times). Eventually escalating to full blown choking me until I passed out. I was essentially helpless because from an early age I was "the boy who cried wolf" (learned to lie a lot from my dad's behaviors), but my dad caught what was happening at one point and beat my brother severely (the only time I ever saw him actually physically punish us). After that I never really saw any of my other existing half-siblings. I don't blame my brother because he was subject to many of the same things that I was, and having an easy vent point must have helped. I do know however that those events are some of the first of many that shaped a very shaky mind-state that I possess today almost 18 years later.

So, following the divorce with my mom; my dad got involved with another woman from his work at the engineering facility. He had a kid with her, but never married. About a year into this relationship the woman's ex-boyfriend comes back into the picture claiming the kid is his and not my dad's. A whole lot of drama later (including one altercation that I witnessed at the hospital between my dad and the ex-boyfriend--my dad initiated the conflict) and my dad is accused of "terroristic threats" and attempted assault against the woman in question. Now I am under no false pretenses that my dad has clouded my judgment against this woman to an extent, but in my opinion this woman suffers from schizophrenia or some kind of mental illness. Later down the line she would accuse me of abusing the child in question / accusing my dad of also participating. She turned a blind eye to her own son who was put in prison for beating a gay man within an inch of his life--only ever saying what an angel he is. She accused me of stealing her money all the time. Money appeared in my room in random places and she would clean up and just so happen to find it. I will let others be the judge of her, but I think there is a definite middle ground between my dad's violent temper and her own marionette skills.

These accusations means my dad's life effectively spirals out of control. He loses the great job he has, and is forced into a long cycle of being hired and being laid off. This all happens when I am about 10. He starts going through a real life change after he gets laid off for about the 3rd time (I was about ~12/13)--where he starts using his hobby (remodeling projects) to be his primary source of income (general contracting through under the table deals for cash). As an already introverted kid; the time spent at his house during these years was absolutely awful. He dealt with my disobedience with lots of yelling / threats; though he never followed through--this forced me into a shell that I have dealt with for my whole life.

During this period of change he starts to lean farther and farther away from the suburbia life he had lived so far. He moves 2 hours away from my mom (who I spent the majority of my time with because she wanted me to stay in the same school system). This effectively means I see him once a month or so during this period. He starts saying how great farming is. Forces me into horse riding / training (something I disdained from minute 1). This is all pretty random information I understand, but it just shows what an abnormal shift he went through. His general disinterest in me turned into sort of frenzied / angry demands. If I didn't do something his way it was 2 hours of yelling / lectures why I should follow him because he has the life experience. At some point during this time period the rare visits from my half sister become non-existent. I didn't really realize it had happened until about 6 months in I asked what happened and he said she wasn't coming to see us anymore. During one of my monthly visits to my dad's house a special investigator arrives and starts questioning (asking me about a bruise my half-sister had on her arm). This was the start of the abuse claims that occurred earlier. I would like to take a second to say that I saw my half-sister very rarely. I can count the number of minutes on 1 hand that we were ever alone together. I have never hit her / attempted to hurt her in any way. As such--nothing was ever found; even when they turned their investigation to my dad--in regards specifically to the accusations towards the child. This was back-breaking to him though. He loses his house, loses the certifications he had started to accrue trying to go legit with his contracting job. And on top of all that he is investigated for criminal fraud for essentially having an undisclosed income of about 70K cash while he was insisting he didn't have the money to pay child support. This is when he goes way off the grid.

He starts seeing another woman--a farmer girl that is recently divorced and owns a few horses. He met her through his contracting work he did on her house. There is a lull in the drama for a while. Undoubtedly the free rent mitigated some of the financial issues he had, but things genuinely seemed better for a couple years. Until the woman he was seeing actually is diagnosed with schizophrenia this time. She goes absolutely ballistic throwing a screaming tantrum and saying how she knows I am the son of the devil (I said I didn't believe in god to her) and how my dad absolutely must be cheating on her (idk if he was). They see some counselors and she is diagnosed. She still throws him out because she refuses to take her medication. My dad is back at square one.

His situation becomes so dire that he eventually gives up visitation rights to the child after fighting for something like 6 years. The funny thing is--the second I hear he is done fighting; all the police phone-calls, and the atmosphere of doom surrounding my dad disappears. He gets his certs reinstated, his L.L.C gets re-approved etc. Life actually starts to almost normalize for my dad albeit with drastically altered norms (farm instead of a house, contracting LLC instead of engineering etc).

With that mess of a backstory out of the way:

That whole unfortunate situation lead to a very bleak mental state for myself when I was around ~16. I had awful hygiene, lost all of my good friends from grade school, went into a pretty deep depression, etc. I became a pathological liar to just cling to any chance at all of being accepted (thanks dad!). I dressed in loud colors saying I was a DJ and feigned a deep interest in techno music (bass hunter and tiesto are literally the only electronica artists I can name from back then).

As I spent less and less time with my dad I sort of vaguely piece together my feelings towards him. This all came to a head during my senior year. I was having a phone "conversation" with him, but after being harped on for about 30 minutes I finally explode. I tell him I don't want to be anything like him / I want to never have kids / I hated him. Well you all can imagine how this goes over: he drives over that night and screams at me in the street about how disrespectful I am and how I need to get my head on straight (I was literally failing every class). He eventually yells enough that I regress into my shell and agree to everything he says. I quit my job, I sign up for the military just like him etc.

During these years following that altercation; in my military service--I have battled with keeping my mental issues a secret. At least in high-school the ~2 other people I talked to could be a way to vent / come to terms with things, but now I have developed disorders of my own. Talking to myself / loud outbursts of self loathing as I reminisce about particularly embarrassing events in my past. But I have built a perfect facade to those on the outside. I was promoted relatively quickly, and by some twisted irony I was selected as a base-wide depression victim advocate / response team. This was the first point in my life where I really started to understand--in a backwards way--through what I was supposed to be looking for in others; just exactly what I was going through. I never did come forward. I was always much too scared of any career repercussions that might occur had I done so. But I was able to coherently organize my thoughts just enough to realize that I could attribute a lot of the things that I suffered from to the events surrounding my dad. The 8 years that I spent in the military were spent in a sort of semi-solitary self-reflection. Never allowing myself to get too friendly with those around me--while always maintaining the facade.

Eventually I got to the point that I am at today. I decided that serving the interests of corporate america is not a reason for me to continue serving in the military. I do not knock on those that do serve because it does teach a lot of valuable lessons / skills. The whole reason for making this already lengthy post (SORRY!) is the conversation that my dad and I had as I explained my reasons for getting out of the military.

It was a simple enough conversation. I explained that I was not happy doing the things that I was doing. I wanted to use the GI-bill that I earned through my years of service to go back to college. He argued that the military is the best thing that ever happened to me, and I should remember that last time that I was in school--what a train wreck it was. I eventually responded with an almost memorized itemized list putting him on blast (sometimes unfairly i'll admit) for the whole situation he put me through in my childhood. I blamed him for my less than stellar mental state. I told him he was an awful manipulative person etc.

I haven't talked to him in weeks and he continues to text me. I'm scared to talk to him again. I don't know if I should talk to him again. I don't know if I want to talk to him again.

He texts me things like:

"if you want to burn bridges you are going down an excellent path to doing so."

and others like it.

I know the advice on here isn't the absolute best, but I have a feeling he is turning up here tomorrow and any outside advice is better than none atm.

TLDR: Kid with bad past bottles it up for years and blows up on dad. Can't figure out how to either move on or move past it.

Submitted May 12, 2019 at 05:59AM

As an aside or really just an initial observation about my dad--he is extraordinarily manipulative. He obeys laws that suit him and completely circumvent those that don't. He will always try to get the 100% best possible outcome for himself regardless of who it screws over in the process. He is also verbally abusive to anyone who he disagrees with. He has a superiority complex where he absolutely has to have the best story--to the point that I frequently catch him in lies. He likes to say that he is religious and will openly profess he believes, but he hasn't been to church in ~10 years that I know of. He (at this point in time) shares a very "conservative" political stance, but when ever pressed on facts he says (that is just what the left-wing media wants you to think).So a whole lot of backstory first:My relationship with my dad has always been tenuous at best. He worked all the time when I was little as an engineer. It was a very good job paying an insane salary from what I can interpret from the house we lived in (my mom was fresh out of the army and working on an entry level hourly wage with the post office). My parents separated when I was young (Mom claimed he turned into a completely different person--he went from being the perfect gentleman to impatient & controlling / prone to angry outbursts; something I am ashamed to admit I also am guilty of). He was in the military for about 13 years before separating. He has 5 children to 5 different women in 5 different states. My mom was the only one he had married before having a kid. During the divorce period my half brother used the tumultuous affair happening (moving furniture / all the court dates that we had to attend) to vent his anger on me. It started as him yelling at me / blaming me for everything he did wrong (lying to our parents at times). Eventually escalating to full blown choking me until I passed out. I was essentially helpless because from an early age I was "the boy who cried wolf" (learned to lie a lot from my dad's behaviors), but my dad caught what was happening at one point and beat my brother severely (the only time I ever saw him actually physically punish us). After that I never really saw any of my other existing half-siblings. I don't blame my brother because he was subject to many of the same things that I was, and having an easy vent point must have helped. I do know however that those events are some of the first of many that shaped a very shaky mind-state that I possess today almost 18 years later.So, following the divorce with my mom; my dad got involved with another woman from his work at the engineering facility. He had a kid with her, but never married. About a year into this relationship the woman's ex-boyfriend comes back into the picture claiming the kid is his and not my dad's. A whole lot of drama later (including one altercation that I witnessed at the hospital between my dad and the ex-boyfriend--my dad initiated the conflict) and my dad is accused of "terroristic threats" and attempted assault against the woman in question. Now I am under no false pretenses that my dad has clouded my judgment against this woman to an extent, but in my opinion this woman suffers from schizophrenia or some kind of mental illness. Later down the line she would accuse me of abusing the child in question / accusing my dad of also participating. She turned a blind eye to her own son who was put in prison for beating a gay man within an inch of his life--only ever saying what an angel he is. She accused me of stealing her money all the time. Money appeared in my room in random places and she would clean up and just so happen to find it. I will let others be the judge of her, but I think there is a definite middle ground between my dad's violent temper and her own marionette skills.These accusations means my dad's life effectively spirals out of control. He loses the great job he has, and is forced into a long cycle of being hired and being laid off. This all happens when I am about 10. He starts going through a real life change after he gets laid off for about the 3rd time (I was about ~12/13)--where he starts using his hobby (remodeling projects) to be his primary source of income (general contracting through under the table deals for cash). As an already introverted kid; the time spent at his house during these years was absolutely awful. He dealt with my disobedience with lots of yelling / threats; though he never followed through--this forced me into a shell that I have dealt with for my whole life.During this period of change he starts to lean farther and farther away from the suburbia life he had lived so far. He moves 2 hours away from my mom (who I spent the majority of my time with because she wanted me to stay in the same school system). This effectively means I see him once a month or so during this period. He starts saying how great farming is. Forces me into horse riding / training (something I disdained from minute 1). This is all pretty random information I understand, but it just shows what an abnormal shift he went through. His general disinterest in me turned into sort of frenzied / angry demands. If I didn't do something his way it was 2 hours of yelling / lectures why I should follow him because he has the life experience. At some point during this time period the rare visits from my half sister become non-existent. I didn't really realize it had happened until about 6 months in I asked what happened and he said she wasn't coming to see us anymore. During one of my monthly visits to my dad's house a special investigator arrives and starts questioning (asking me about a bruise my half-sister had on her arm). This was the start of the abuse claims that occurred earlier. I would like to take a second to say that I saw my half-sister very rarely. I can count the number of minutes on 1 hand that we were ever alone together. I have never hit her / attempted to hurt her in any way. As such--nothing was ever found; even when they turned their investigation to my dad--in regards specifically to the accusations towards the child. This was back-breaking to him though. He loses his house, loses the certifications he had started to accrue trying to go legit with his contracting job. And on top of all that he is investigated for criminal fraud for essentially having an undisclosed income of about 70K cash while he was insisting he didn't have the money to pay child support. This is when he goes way off the grid.He starts seeing another woman--a farmer girl that is recently divorced and owns a few horses. He met her through his contracting work he did on her house. There is a lull in the drama for a while. Undoubtedly the free rent mitigated some of the financial issues he had, but things genuinely seemed better for a couple years. Until the woman he was seeing actually is diagnosed with schizophrenia this time. She goes absolutely ballistic throwing a screaming tantrum and saying how she knows I am the son of the devil (I said I didn't believe in god to her) and how my dad absolutely must be cheating on her (idk if he was). They see some counselors and she is diagnosed. She still throws him out because she refuses to take her medication. My dad is back at square one.His situation becomes so dire that he eventually gives up visitation rights to the child after fighting for something like 6 years. The funny thing is--the second I hear he is done fighting; all the police phone-calls, and the atmosphere of doom surrounding my dad disappears. He gets his certs reinstated, his L.L.C gets re-approved etc. Life actually starts to almost normalize for my dad albeit with drastically altered norms (farm instead of a house, contracting LLC instead of engineering etc).With that mess of a backstory out of the way:That whole unfortunate situation lead to a very bleak mental state for myself when I was around ~16. I had awful hygiene, lost all of my good friends from grade school, went into a pretty deep depression, etc. I became a pathological liar to just cling to any chance at all of being accepted (thanks dad!). I dressed in loud colors saying I was a DJ and feigned a deep interest in techno music (bass hunter and tiesto are literally the only electronica artists I can name from back then).As I spent less and less time with my dad I sort of vaguely piece together my feelings towards him. This all came to a head during my senior year. I was having a phone "conversation" with him, but after being harped on for about 30 minutes I finally explode. I tell him I don't want to be anything like him / I want to never have kids / I hated him. Well you all can imagine how this goes over: he drives over that night and screams at me in the street about how disrespectful I am and how I need to get my head on straight (I was literally failing every class). He eventually yells enough that I regress into my shell and agree to everything he says. I quit my job, I sign up for the military just like him etc.During these years following that altercation; in my military service--I have battled with keeping my mental issues a secret. At least in high-school the ~2 other people I talked to could be a way to vent / come to terms with things, but now I have developed disorders of my own. Talking to myself / loud outbursts of self loathing as I reminisce about particularly embarrassing events in my past. But I have built a perfect facade to those on the outside. I was promoted relatively quickly, and by some twisted irony I was selected as a base-wide depression victim advocate / response team. This was the first point in my life where I really started to understand--in a backwards way--through what I was supposed to be looking for in others; just exactly what I was going through. I never did come forward. I was always much too scared of any career repercussions that might occur had I done so. But I was able to coherently organize my thoughts just enough to realize that I could attribute a lot of the things that I suffered from to the events surrounding my dad. The 8 years that I spent in the military were spent in a sort of semi-solitary self-reflection. Never allowing myself to get too friendly with those around me--while always maintaining the facade.Eventually I got to the point that I am at today. I decided that serving the interests of corporate america is not a reason for me to continue serving in the military. I do not knock on those that do serve because it does teach a lot of valuable lessons / skills. The whole reason for making this already lengthy post (SORRY!) is the conversation that my dad and I had as I explained my reasons for getting out of the military.It was a simple enough conversation. I explained that I was not happy doing the things that I was doing. I wanted to use the GI-bill that I earned through my years of service to go back to college. He argued that the military is the best thing that ever happened to me, and I should remember that last time that I was in school--what a train wreck it was. I eventually responded with an almost memorized itemized list putting him on blast (sometimes unfairly i'll admit) for the whole situation he put me through in my childhood. I blamed him for my less than stellar mental state. I told him he was an awful manipulative person etc.I haven't talked to him in weeks and he continues to text me. I'm scared to talk to him again. I don't know if I should talk to him again. I don't know if I want to talk to him again.He texts me things like:"if you want to burn bridges you are going down an excellent path to doing so."and others like it.I know the advice on here isn't the absolute best, but I have a feeling he is turning up here tomorrow and any outside advice is better than none atm.TLDR: Kid with bad past bottles it up for years and blows up on dad. Can't figure out how to either move on or move past it.