My[27f] stepdad [43m] is misogynistic, racist, and elitist and I still feel bad for him and confused. WHY??

He's been my step dad since I was 7. We're only 16 years apart. Through most of my life I felt that he was taking me under his wing and giving me a better life than I would have had otherwise. My mom had a lot of mental illness as I grew up and I was almost my little sister's mother because of it. But things started getting really weird when I got to high school age.

Step dad was a marine officer, post 9/11, so he deployed a lot. Mom sank into depression and anxiety and was emotionally unavailable, though we used to be very close when she was a single mom. When I was 17, my step dad left the Marines bc his contract was up. We moved to Louisiana, where my mom is from. Our home had no furniture and I owned only the most minimal of clothing - only men's jeans and some blue or green sweaters and tshirts. My hair was in a low pony tail, held back by a scrunchie. Mom wouldn't let me wear anything else.

Gradually, leading up to college, my step dad became more and more indoctrinated in fundamentalist churches. I only mention my step dad because, though my mom was super controlling, it was more from a mental health/paranoia issue surrounding my developing body and past experiences she had had, while with step dad, he had actual religious views on my role as a woman. Until that point, we'd been a typical baptist or nondenom family - the kind that still believes in women having independence and choice in life. By the time I hit college age, mom and step dad believed a woman should live at home until married, when they would become "keepers of the home."

I attended college locally, with no scholarships or grants. Step dad wouldn't do the FAFSA because of political views, I couldn't get state scholarships bc we weren't residents during highschool, and we moved/applied too late for me to get academic scholarships despite an ACT score that probably would have paid full tuition. To keep from going into a student debt black hole, I lived at home during college and we paid semester by semester (tuition went from $5k/yr to $8k/year during the four years I attended). Not easy but not impossible.

Anyway, things step dad has said:

-Women leaving home Economics is what is tearing apart the fabric of our society

-if I move out I will go into insane, scary debt and be trapped

-I shouldn't accept monetary help from anybody but him because then I would owe other people

-I shouldn't cut my hair because how else will I "attract a mate"?

-Not sure about what I believe? I should take my boyfriend's faith "as [my] own"

-my black, adopted cousins have inferior DNA to his blood relatives (white people) and that's why they work for (insert elitist judgment of job quality)

-the reason we have so many problems in our household is because there are too many women in it

-also insert emotional incest when he started confiding in me instead of my mom

I asked my sister for examples and she included:

-you can't be an artist because Satan targets the minds of artists because they spread ideas. If you become an artist, he'll make you gay so you make other people gay with your art. [Spoiler alert: she is gay]

-"he told me I have no character at Disneyland. I was 9 and I took his phone to play angrybirds."

-Adam and Eve had rainbow children, the black children were cursed and went to Africa. So slavery was part of God's plan because the whites stole them away and converted them.

There's a lot more but hopefully this illuminates enough for input.

The reason I feel conflicted is because he's so emotionally dense and judgmental and awful, but then my mom is worse (to him), they refuse to divorce each other, and I end up feeling sorry for him because he seems so confused and lonely come holidays. To quote my sister, he has "a delicate membrane of denial around him at all times. Sometimes he looks so weak and it makes my stomach hurt." The best version of him is one of the best people in the world, strong and self-sacrificial. But it's like we've lost him to a combination of outside influences including PTSD and his need for structure and identity (which he found post-military in fundamentalist religion). He is also extremely contradictory, because he supported me through college for math while also speaking against women going into science. And now he seems incredibly lonely. It's just so confusing. He often asks to be included in mine and my husband's holiday plans and I haven't gotten the courage to say no. I think maybe because I remember how awful holidays were with my mom.

Tl;Dr I feel sorry for my awful step dad and I don't want to be around him during holidays but I feel so sad for who he is now and what his life has become. He asks to spend holidays with me and I don't want to but I feel too bad to say no. Hoping for some illumination on the "feeling bad" part of this because I don't think I should feel bad.

Submitted June 24, 2019 at 11:37PM

He's been my step dad since I was 7. We're only 16 years apart. Through most of my life I felt that he was taking me under his wing and giving me a better life than I would have had otherwise. My mom had a lot of mental illness as I grew up and I was almost my little sister's mother because of it. But things started getting really weird when I got to high school age.Step dad was a marine officer, post 9/11, so he deployed a lot. Mom sank into depression and anxiety and was emotionally unavailable, though we used to be very close when she was a single mom. When I was 17, my step dad left the Marines bc his contract was up. We moved to Louisiana, where my mom is from. Our home had no furniture and I owned only the most minimal of clothing - only men's jeans and some blue or green sweaters and tshirts. My hair was in a low pony tail, held back by a scrunchie. Mom wouldn't let me wear anything else.Gradually, leading up to college, my step dad became more and more indoctrinated in fundamentalist churches. I only mention my step dad because, though my mom was super controlling, it was more from a mental health/paranoia issue surrounding my developing body and past experiences she had had, while with step dad, he had actual religious views on my role as a woman. Until that point, we'd been a typical baptist or nondenom family - the kind that still believes in women having independence and choice in life. By the time I hit college age, mom and step dad believed a woman should live at home until married, when they would become "keepers of the home."I attended college locally, with no scholarships or grants. Step dad wouldn't do the FAFSA because of political views, I couldn't get state scholarships bc we weren't residents during highschool, and we moved/applied too late for me to get academic scholarships despite an ACT score that probably would have paid full tuition. To keep from going into a student debt black hole, I lived at home during college and we paid semester by semester (tuition went from $5k/yr to $8k/year during the four years I attended). Not easy but not impossible.Anyway, things step dad has said:-Women leaving home Economics is what is tearing apart the fabric of our society-if I move out I will go into insane, scary debt and be trapped-I shouldn't accept monetary help from anybody but him because then I would owe other people-I shouldn't cut my hair because how else will I "attract a mate"?-Not sure about what I believe? I should take my boyfriend's faith "as [my] own"-my black, adopted cousins have inferior DNA to his blood relatives (white people) and that's why they work for (insert elitist judgment of job quality)-the reason we have so many problems in our household is because there are too many women in it-also insert emotional incest when he started confiding in me instead of my momI asked my sister for examples and she included:-you can't be an artist because Satan targets the minds of artists because they spread ideas. If you become an artist, he'll make you gay so you make other people gay with your art. [Spoiler alert: she is gay]-"he told me I have no character at Disneyland. I was 9 and I took his phone to play angrybirds."-Adam and Eve had rainbow children, the black children were cursed and went to Africa. So slavery was part of God's plan because the whites stole them away and converted them.There's a lot more but hopefully this illuminates enough for input.The reason I feel conflicted is because he's so emotionally dense and judgmental and awful, but then my mom is worse (to him), they refuse to divorce each other, and I end up feeling sorry for him because he seems so confused and lonely come holidays. To quote my sister, he has "a delicate membrane of denial around him at all times. Sometimes he looks so weak and it makes my stomach hurt." The best version of him is one of the best people in the world, strong and self-sacrificial. But it's like we've lost him to a combination of outside influences including PTSD and his need for structure and identity (which he found post-military in fundamentalist religion). He is also extremely contradictory, because he supported me through college for math while also speaking against women going into science. And now he seems incredibly lonely. It's just so confusing. He often asks to be included in mine and my husband's holiday plans and I haven't gotten the courage to say no. I think maybe because I remember how awful holidays were with my mom.Tl;Dr I feel sorry for my awful step dad and I don't want to be around him during holidays but I feel so sad for who he is now and what his life has become. He asks to spend holidays with me and I don't want to but I feel too bad to say no. Hoping for some illumination on the "feeling bad" part of this because I don't think I should feel bad.