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How to handle my sibling pressuring me into getting a gift for my mentally abusive father?
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Hi guys. So I hope I give enough context for this. I am 24 y/o female, my parents divorced 2 yours ago, but if I say the divorce was messy it would be an understatement. I'm sorry in advance for it being so long I guess I needed a final push to let those feelings out of me. I will try to make a TLDR at the end so you don't have to read thorugh my rant.

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(Un)neccesarry background:

I have 2 brothers (one older 28 y/o and one twin brother).

I'm pretty sensitive and I always kinda knew there's something wrong with my father. I realised many years after I left my home how mentally abusive he was mainly towards my mum and partly to me. As far as I know not to my brothers though. I had to work really hard on myself to gain at least a bit of a confidence and not be an easy target for other abusive people (partners or other).

The worst thing for me is how dameged he left my mum. She's 50 y/o and lives in a contryside (my home villege) alone and even if I try to visit I know how hard it is for her to stay strong and not to drown in her emotions.

To my father: apart from what I already said, there has been way too many times he's been mentally abusive, he gaslights pretty much on daily basis and from what I've read so far I have a strong suspicion he's a narcisist. My child years wasn't really fun in retrospective. He always bend every rules so they wouldn't apply to him, he "stole" our stuff - like one time when I was older I got from my mum a really nice set of 2 mugs for my birthday, which I wanted to bring with me to uni he knew about it and said I don't need 2 mugs and kept the second one. Or when me and my brothers were older and was working part time during summer he would borrow money from us because he was broke (I have no idea for what he needed the money because all bills were always paid by my mum) and he would never give it back. He always find a way how to buy himself expensive nice things even though we really didn't have that much money. One time my mother was trying really hard to save us some money so we could go on a holiday trip and 2 months before summer he brought home 3 new pairs of brand sneakers (which would in total pay for like a third of a trip). Meanwhile my mum had to buy her clothes from thrift stores etc.

My mum finally had enough with everything after me and my brothers left the house for uni or work in the city and I guess it dawned it on her that she can't live her life like that. She told me once that she though keeping a family together is the most inportant thing and didn't want us to have divorced parents when we were younger. After trying counceling and everything imaginable to save the marriage she finally divorced him about 2 years ago. There weren't much to deal with (us kids were adult and due to my father there wasn't pretty much any money to split) the only thing was the house. I'm kinda ashamed how the house looks my father never did much work around and to this day it's kinda ruined (like there's a huge water damage in a roof which he always promised to deal with and it has been getting worse and worse for past 10 years). And he somehow thought he's owed way more money for the worth of the house (it is my mums birth home so she wanted to keep it).

He also got himself a girlfriend right after a divorce but kept living in the house for whole another year. He denied my mums laywer the e-mails between them and was prolonging the whole process. He finally moved out and in June this year they finally sighned and agreement. (He also stole a lot of things from the house my mums, mine or my brothers in a "process of moving out).

So to the present: You can imagine me and him don't have a great relationship. I don't think he's aware that my mum was always really honest with me and was telling me a LOADS of thigns he done or been doing. Unfortunatelly she wasn't that honest to my brothers, they always looked up to my father and I guess she was worried they wouldn't believe her. So it took a while and lot a processing for them when she started to share with them all that after a divorce. I don't think they are stupid or anything I guess they just devoloped a blindness towards everything what was happening.

Even now our father don't really try to have a relationship with us and focuses only to his new partner. He calls like once a 2 months and only to talk about himself. He doesn't really give a fuck about me tbh. He's the same towards my brothers as well. BUT!!!

My twin brother got married about 2 months ago with a girl who's really shady, they were together for like 4-5 years and even he told me that she presured him into proposing. Everyone thought they would post pone the wedding due to corona but somehow they decided they have to do it asap (no there's no baby). It was only them and 2 friends, everyone else watched on-line. He didn't even called me or send me a text that this wedding is going to happen (I got to know from my mum) and told me he shared a link on Facebook (like WTF???) but I'm not on Facebook....

So we haven't talked since then and now all of a sudden this twin brother is texting me that it would be REALLY NICE that us 3 kids would do a photoshoot together and gave both our parents the photos as a Christmas gift.

And now what I need to help with - how can I tell him that I'm really not comfortable with doing the photoshoot 1) because our relationships are kinda weird at a moment and he himself don't get along with the older brother and 2) I have no intention to be a part of a gift giving to my father. How to approach this whole situation sensitively but don't give up on myself. There's a huge people pleaser in me and I have to fight really hard just not to say "fuck it I'll do it".

And is there any advice how to aproach my relationship with my father? I realized that all the anger and the feeling of a betray kinda eats me up inside and I don't want to live with is. People usually say you should forgive, but how can I forgive him for what he has done? Or how to let go? I'm honestly asking.

Thank you so much everybody even for reading it.

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TLDR: I have two brothers, divorced parents and pretty much every relationship in our "family" is broken or at least weird. My father is an abusive person and we don't really talk. How I can tell my brother I don't want to participate in "us kids" photoshoot for photos to give our parents for Christmas?

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3 years ago