Carolyn Hax: A strikingly petty father poisons the whole family

[conuly]

Dear Carolyn: My nephew was born a year and a half ago. When my father learned my brother and sister-in-law did not name the baby after someone on his side of the family, which they never said they'd do, he broke off all contact with them and their children.

My mother has given up on trying to convince him to change his mind, including suggesting he see a therapist. Now she and I just try to compartmentalize it. I still love my dad, but my suppressed anger over the situation often keeps me awake at night. It hangs in the background every time I visit my parents or my brother.

I'm trying to live my own life and move on, but I still want a relationship with my family.

— The Good Kid

The Good Kid: That signature.

It’s everything. Don’t you think?

You have a rigid and punitive father. You have an accommodating mother. You have, reading between the lines, a brother who is just so done with all of this, and rightly so, given the pettiness and severity of the (latest?) tantrum. A brother who I hope is creating a safe and warm family apart from and in living protest of the tyranny of your vain and self-centered dad.

Or, your ailing dad.

You don’t say whether your father has always been like this, and if he hasn’t, then he could be newly descending into illness instead of living out the latest test to an abusive nature.

For your purposes, though? Your father is who he is now, past or future notwithstanding, and that’s the challenge you need to face. Your inability to sleep, your “suppressed anger” — and, oh, that signature — are all saying you can’t “compartmentalize” this. They also say the nature of your challenge is to separate your identity and sense of well-being from the feedback loop of your father’s approval.

So.

You need to know what you believe in.

You have to trust your own judgment.

And you must summon the courage to live by the code you write for yourself in those first two steps.

I would suggest a narrower, less ambitious solution if I thought one would suffice. But knowing who you are and not trying to answer to anyone but your own moral code — that is how you “live my own life and move on,” that is how you sleep at night, that is how you silence the noise and Kondo the clutter hanging “in the background every time I visit.”

That is how you keep a relationship with your family while also not kowtowing to anyone, or feeling as if you have to just to hang on.

It’s possible that, once you decide where you stand in this familial cold war, your father won’t like your position and will cut you off, too. It’s possible you can’t have your integrity and your family relationships both.

However, coming at it from a position of integrity cuts through the torment. It reminds you that you had only bad options to choose from and this was the one you decided, after careful thought and self-analysis, you could live with.

Good family therapy might be just the sleep aid you need. The more years you’ve spent under Dad’s emotional rule, the more stands between you and your peace.

Comments

[lemonsharks]

Does anyone else have no idea what is actually going on here?

[cereta]

I can kind of get a glimpse of it (father had an expectation, communicated or no; son did not abide by that expectation; father broke off contact with son and son's family - which son may or may not have fought in any way; mother tried to "fix" it but has given up; mother and other offspring keep their relationship with son and his family separate from their relationship with father), but there is one huge, glaring omission:

Has father been like this, albeit on a smaller scale, before? Perhaps even forever? Because that, to me, at least, is the key to the whole puzzle box. That signature, though..."The Good Kid." That gives me a bad feeling that this is some kind of ongoing dynamic. A power struggle between a controlling father and his oldest/only son? A controlling parent that one kid placates more/better than the other? There's really nothing in here that suggests the son has any pattern of problem behavior.

(There is, of course, in the back of my mind the fact that the LW chose that moniker for themselves. That makes me kind of uneasy.)

Which is a long way of answering your question, "Yes."

[ayebydan]

Things like this just...make me feel so Scottish. It is so .....difficult to even find the info to go private with therapy. The idea that you would just go the family therapy for something like this is like saying if you don't like going to Disney Land on holiday then just try the Moon. I am glad the option is there for people but then I wonder, who can really afford it? Or is it just empty advice for the rich and upper middle classes?

[laurajv]

the answer, in the US (where Hax is), is complicated. Therapy can be available to people with very low income — if there’s a free or sliding scale clinic, which there isn’t always — and many health insurance policies, even at jobs that don’t pay particularly well, cover a certain amount of therapy. (Health insurance usually is employer-provided here.) My old job covered 2 therapy visits/month, for example.

But as with anything, it’s more likely to be available the more money you have. Many people don’t live near a free clinic, for example, or don’t have health insurance.

[ayebydan]

thanks for the info :)

[cereta]

Some jobs also have an Employee Assistance Program that will provide a (very limited) number of visits to a therapist, whether the problem is related to the job or not. The only insurance I've had has either been student insurance (which relies a lot on university health care centers) and what I have now, which is really above average, so it's hard for me to gauge. A lot can also depend on where you live, particularly the urban/rural divide. When I took a Dialectical Behavior Therapy class, several of my classmates drove an hour for nearby small towns.