Found father after almost 30 years, unsure about his personality

[Sappho11]

I don't know what it is, maybe I see it's all going downhill so I might as well see things burn. I just poured oil into the fire responding to his dysfunctional email. I should know better by now: whenever he starts anything with "Ahhhhh, my daughter...", whatever follows is usually complete BS.

I told him in no unclear terms that it was he who spoilt my birthday, that he didn't even reimburse me for the cost; that it was doubly grating after the fuss I had made about him on his birthday (a two-day celebration no less); that his reason for not wanting me home for Christmas were ridiculous; that telling him about my worries was a mistake, that a father would ask "how can I help?", not "Can't any of your friends help?"

Also that I'll have no time for further discussion until I've solved that problem.

Maybe a part of me is cowardly hoping this will lead to a month of NC on its own.

[Sappho11]

Looking at the whole thing objectively, I'm finding it difficult not to see the humour in this whole affair – going from "meeting perfect family" to "absolute sh*tshow" with years of pettiness and resentment miraculously compacted into few months. If I was a dramatist, this would be great material for a play. Without the mental illness bit, of course. Got to keep things light and relatable.

On the other end of the spectrum, there is a song cycle by Schubert called Die Winterreise, A Winter's Journey. It starts: "A stranger I arrived here / A stranger I go hence." Very fitting. The whole work, quite lengthy, is a master study in melancholy.

Unfortunately there's no time for wallowing right now, so I might as well go with the comedy interpretation of this tragicomedy.

[Sappho11]

Was expecting an angry tirade from my father this morning, but so far nothing. Radio silence.

Maybe I've called him out one too many times.

The past couple of months got me thinking: He puts great emphasis on going through with the legal acknowledgement (which I'm expected to organise by the way), but none on actually having me around as a daughter. He doesn't want to see me on my birthday, nor for Christmas... and I'm beginning to think: What if he isn't my father at all?

In the beginning, when I first wrote to him, he wouldn't tell me if he was or not. Then, after we'd met, he said he was. Even more curious: He told his wife, who was unconvinced, that I had in my possession a letter from my mother proving that he was my father, and asked me to go along with the story. Problem: That "letter" is complete fiction. I never understood why he made it up.

He's also always skirted any questions of a paternity test. I thought we had a great deal of things in common, but when I read back our initial emails, I see it is mostly me being detailed, and him going along with everything, saying he is "the same". Just mirroring from start to finish. Yes, we do have some things in common, but to the degree that any two people might have something in common.

Maybe this is just copium. Maybe not. Maybe his wife has caught on to the story, which is why I cannot join the family for Christmas. Maybe he's playing me completely – telling one story to the people at home and another to me.

Well this is all a house of cards.

Once I get some time, I'll go through my mother's letters again. I remember never finding direct proof or confirmation that my father was my father. But perhaps I'll find a refutation.

[Sappho11]

He's replied. Took him 48 hours which is rare, and which probably means it's a novella-sized elegy of self-pity and blame-shifting.

I marked the email as read without reading it. I don't have the time or energy for this right now. Maybe in a week's time. Maybe next year. Maybe never.

[SaltyDawg]

Sappho,

You have been through a lot, and I sense it is quite overwhelming for you.

Be sure to do self-care whatever that looks like for you, even if it means not reading nor responding to novella e-mail.

Take care with self-care.

SaltyDawg

[Sappho11]

Thank you, SaltyDawg.

I clicked on the email to see whether it would be short or long. As predicted, it is a huge wall of text. Possibly the longest he's ever sent.

I'm not reading that.

I have bigger fish to fry at the moment (have to sort out considerable money worries) and won't deal with this until I am firmly sorted in life. Might take a month, might take a year. Until then, it's NC for me.

It's his wife's birthday in a few days, I'll send her a text to congratulate her and maybe also to tell her that I'm behind her whatever she does. My father will likely be taking my silence out on her, and that wonderful woman needs to know she's not the crazy one.

[Sappho11]

I've set up an automated email rule now that will mark his messages as read and sort them into a hidden folder, well out of sight. This way, I won't get that dreaded cortisol flash whenever I check my emails and see there's a new message.

His text conversations are archived too. (I turned off their notifications for him long ago.)

I've been around the block often enough that these aren't things that are necessary with good, safe people. I'm thankful to everyone, on the forum and in life, who told me to wait and see before going through with the acknowledgement of paternity. A few years ago, this forum made me realise I had dodged a major bullet in not getting married to my BPD ex. I'm feeling the same sense of relief about my (non-legal) father now. This could all have gone a lot worse, but it didn't. Gratitude.

[Sappho11]

My father has deleted me as a friend on Facebook. Incredible. You'd think you're dealing with a 13-year-old child.

Just as well. I don't need to see his disgusting woman- and youth-hating memes. If anything, I'd rather we're not associated at all.

I guess he can unhide all his family pictures and connections now.

[Sappho11]

Couldn't resist and did look into the email. Figured I might as well get it over with.

Long story short, my father has now discarded me.

Classic narcissistic rage, blame shifting, victim blaming. A lot of "I hate you, don't leave me". Goes on to lists all my "flaws": hysteria, hypersensitivity, speaking of things I don't understand, moralising (in "siding with [his] wife's family").

Lots of warming up of past conflicts with stilted arguments for why everything is my fault.

I'm glad I'm far away and know that it is nonsense.

He goes on that he knows now that I exist and that he'll keep loving me, but that I have become "toxic" and he has to "protect himself". He told me to not write again, that he'd feed all my future letters to the fire, unless he receives an email first beginning with the words "I ask for your forgiveness, Papa".

Yeah that's not going to happen. No contact it is.

[Sappho11]

I'm looking over my notes that I made on his dysfunction over a couple of months (contrasting his behaviour with normal behaviour), and it just occurs to me that the timing of the discard is probably not coincidental.

I find it very telling how he was pushing me towards the legal acknowledgment of the paternity for months; and as soon as I tell him that I have money troubles, he drops me like a hot potato. It's so absurd I'm finding it funny. I can't even be sad about it. I thought gold-diggers were supposed to be young, fit and handsome? I want my money back!

I'm now going to go through my things and clear out the things he gave me. It's not a lot to begin with: a coffee cup, a dictionary, and a magazine to which he contributed an article. Reminds me of my BPDex's gifts: a used CD of his despite my not having a CD player, and a teapot. Same dysfunction. I remember when my BPDex discarded me for good, I felt astoundingly good after only a day or two. I knew the horror was finally over. This feels similar.

[Sappho11]

In order not to worry anyone: I keep adding posts to this thread not because I'm in distress, but because I'm thinking of so many things now that are downright hilarious.

My father's rant (I only skimmed it) contained the sentence: "You are wrong, as always."

I'm smiling at the screen as I type this. It's supposed to be a damnation, but it's just so blatant, so outlandish, such an overt admission of his own narcissism, it strikes me as funny. Much needed comic relief. What does he expect me to say? It's so delulu (as the young ones say), it could be a meme.

[Tangled mangled]

Oh dear Sapho,

I’ve followed this thread since it started and was silently rooting for this to work for you.
Reading your latest post, you seem to have handled it like a boss.
Persons who haven’t been through trauma will find it shocking the kind of things survivors laugh at.

Hoping you can rest assured that you lost nothing even though the discard is from your own dad. It’s truly heartbreaking what you have been through but as a fellow survivor of trauma with disordered parents I’m proud of you.

[Sappho11]

Oh dear Sapho,

I’ve followed this thread since it started and was silently rooting for this to work for you.
Reading your latest post, you seem to have handled it like a boss.
Persons who haven’t been through trauma will find it shocking the kind of things survivors laugh at.

Hoping you can rest assured that you lost nothing even though the discard is from your own dad. It’s truly heartbreaking what you have been through but as a fellow survivor of trauma with disordered parents I’m proud of you.

Thank you, Tangled mangled. You are right in that nothing was lost.

I think I went through the whole grieving process in September. I remember when my father threatened suicide to manipulate me into going to his niece's party on my birthday to make him look good (God this sounds even worse when condensed into a single sentence ) – when I realised this was typical, pathological cluster B manipulation, and I felt suddenly hit as if by a freight train. The mask had come off completely for the first time that day. Having gone through this cycle with a BPDex before, something in me knew in that very moment that the whole thing was doomed, though of course I was hoping otherwise. So I started this thread... and three pages and almost three months later, here we are.

It's strange how these things mirror one another. The trajectory with my BPDex was similar. Whirlwind, and despite it, I knew in the first weeks that something was wrong. Increasing conflicts over nothing. Then, rapid devaluation. Inexplicable outbursts, crazymaking arguments, gaslighting. He, too, discarded me after four months. Two or three weeks later, he came crawling back and I took him back, for another, even worse four months of emotional abuse. This time, I'm not making the same mistake. I can already see my father penning tearful, disjointed emails trying to h00ver me. I expect them around Christmas. By that time his wife may already have left him. He too will be back, probably telling me about how miserable he is now that he is alone and things didn't magically pan out for him. But this time, I won't be there.

There are more parallels. Like my BPDex, my father refused to add me on social media. He paraded me around two or three select people in the beginning, but never introduced other family or friends to me. And even when he did, he made sure I was completely isolated from the people in his circle; that nobody got my phone number or contact details, and vice versa. It was all about controlling the narrative, of course.

Last night I made a list of early warning signs. Things that seem innocuous, but aren't. And because I was feeling good, I also made a counter-list: finding the opposite behaviour of the warning signs, a list of "green flags", to detect healthy people (such as affection growing slowly, in proportion to time spend together). To my surprise, I realised that I have many of those "good" traits myself; but that I could be less critical, more patient with others, more encouraging, and that's going to be something I will work on.

I'm not sad about how this all panned out. This time, I have enough self-esteem to walk away, which is a major milestone in my book. The whole thing isn't devastating or soul-crushing, like the separation from my BPDex. It just is. If anything, it's a pointer to not underestimate my own weaknesses, that I can still trip into these exploitative relationships if not careful. It's all a learning curve. And there are better things ahead.

[SaltyDawg]

Couldn't resist and did look into the email. Figured I might as well get it over with.

Long story short, my father has now discarded me.

Classic narcissistic rage, blame shifting, victim blaming. A lot of "I hate you, don't leave me". Goes on to lists all my "flaws": hysteria, hypersensitivity, speaking of things I don't understand, moralising (in "siding with [his] wife's family").

Lots of warming up of past conflicts with stilted arguments for why everything is my fault.

I'm glad I'm far away and know that it is nonsense.

He goes on that he knows now that I exist and that he'll keep loving me, but that I have become "toxic" and he has to "protect himself". He told me to not write again, that he'd feed all my future letters to the fire, unless he receives an email first beginning with the words "I ask for your forgiveness, Papa".

Yeah that's not going to happen. No contact it is.

He has done the classic "I will dump my daughter, before my daughter can abandon me" where is shifts the shame of blame on to you.  Based on the number of posts you have made, I can surmise that it is really affecting you in a negative way. 

Sappho, this is not your fault.  I know you wanted to have a relationship with your dad so badly, and he is not someone you wanted him to be, and that can be very unsettling to say the least.

Please be mindful in telling yourself the following:

I did not cause it.

I cannot control it.

I cannot cure it.

You can get more tips from www.margalistherapy.com/articles/borderline-and-narcissism-issues/handbook-for-dealing-with-a-bp-np/

I love your NC precautions, that way, if and when you are ready, you can read what he has wrote on your timetable, not his.

In the meantime, follow his advice, and don't write him.  However telling you not to ruminate on him, will only make you want to ruminate more.  Instead, I will offer up, with all of the stress you are under right now, take time to do some self-care.  I know money it tight, do some self-care that doesn't cost anything except your time and effort.  Go for a walk (run/jog) outside in the brisk autumn/winter air in the sun, I find between 1-2 hours it is ideal for me, figure out what is good for you.  Get lost in a good book, tv show/series/movie.  Take a nice long hot (or cold if that is your thing) shower/bath is another one of my favorites.  Continue to journal your feelings here on this thread to get it off your chest so it isn't internalized.  You can also Google "self-care" for more ideas.

Take care with self-care.

SD

P.S.  If you ever decide to write to him again, you can show him some 'radical acceptance' (DBT tool) by starting off your e-mail to him "I forgive you, Papa" (only if you mean it)

[Sappho11]

Hello SaltyDawg, thank you for the advice. I can assure you I am fine, no need to pathologise It's not my first rodeo and I already have solid self-care routines in place. These days I post a lot but I always have when there was something to think about – it's just the way I process things. It's not rumination, it's constructive and leads to resolution.

Yes, I am aware that my father's behaviour is not my fault, nor is it up to me to change him. The responsibility I do have is to not get lured into a codependent relationship again. I have no intention of resuming contact with him and can't see any scenario where I would be inclined to do so.

[SaltyDawg]

Hello SaltyDawg, thank you for the advice. I can assure you I am fine, no need to pathologise It's not my first rodeo and I already have solid self-care routines in place. These days I post a lot but I always have when there was something to think about – it's just the way I process things. It's not rumination, it's constructive and leads to resolution.

Yes, I am aware that my father's behaviour is not my fault, nor is it up to me to change him. The responsibility I do have is to not get lured into a codependent relationship again. I have no intention of resuming contact with him and can't see any scenario where I would be inclined to do so.

It sounds like you have a good head on your shoulders, and your posting is more journaling than anything else - that's good.

Take care withe self-care.

[Sappho11]

The whole thing is having unexpected beneficial effects.

Yesterday I went out to buy wrapping paper for a friend's upcoming birthday, and I suddenly noticed that I was feeling really good. Just calm and cheerful. I thought about the past couple of weeks, about my father, yet the calmness and peace persisted. I realised I was happy. Not in a triumphant "Haha, I won the match" kind of way, but more like "I'm feeling really good about myself for some reason". Usually I'm self-critical so this cheerfulness was bit of a shock. I was worried it might be complacency, that I might be getting too full of myself.

This morning I woke up and tried thinking about the times in my life when I'd wronged people. I've always had this notion about myself as an insufferably arrogant child, a troubled teenager, and a self-absorbed, self-unaware loser well into my 20s. I've also always known that I grew up in abusive households – abusive in all meanings of the word; and that most of the people supposed to raise me after my (healthy) mother's death had manifest personality disorders. I thought of all the ways I had acted out back then, terrible things I'd said and done as a teenager, which I hadn't thought about for years and which now have me shaking my head at my past self. I also thought of the ways I had somehow held it together despite the difficulties (not going down the road of mental illness myself, still getting good grades, making some loyal friends despite my "troubled outcast" status at home and at school). And I realised I had neither been "all bad" nor the "all good poor abused child". I was a kid that grew up without love, with a whole lot of hatred projected towards me, and that I did the best I could at the time: looking out for myself when nobody else did, and as a consequence, having to figure out a lot of things by myself, including how to healthily relate to others. Most of my life I'd assumed I was defective somehow. Now I realise I simply went through certain social development stages later because I had to figure them out on my own (which, in social matters, is admittedly hard to do, do not recommend ). In my early to mid-20s, when I'd finally worked myself into safe living conditions, the pendulum swung from "self-absorption + survival" to "codependence + healing fantasy". Not good either. It took a disastrous romantic relationship with a BPD man (and my signing up to this board) to see where I was failing. The resulting course correction eventually eliminated the one-sided relationships in my life and led to formerly distant, healthy acquaintances becoming close, reliable friends. There's still a lot to learn, but the overall direction is the right one at last.

This morning when I was lying in bed thinking about all this, I realised that this was the reason for my sudden inner peace despite the recent storms. In the past week, something in me had finally fully caught on to a feeling of self-worth – that there were good parts and bad parts of mine, but they were all integrated into a whole. It was the strangest feeling: as if a ghostly something that had been walking beside me forever had suddenly become superimposed onto me and been fully absorbed. Yes, I'd made mistakes in the past and would probably continue making some in the future (hopefully not the same ones), but at the core I was all right with who I was, and nobody could take that away from me. The discard was the acid test that proved it beyond doubt. Even a year ago, perhaps even half a year ago, it would have wiped me out completely. Now it was barely a paper cut: irritating for about an hour and annoying once or twice thereafter, but eventually – inconsequential. Hence the cheer, the peace, the serenity of the past couple of days.

And then an even stranger thing happened: In realising I had integrated the good and the bad within myself, I thought of my father and suddenly felt a sense of pity. Not in a condescending, haughty manner, but in a compassionate "I see why he acts the way he does, yet I don't have to stand for it" way. I thought of some of the people in my life that had wronged or even abused me: and I saw that they were all fighting for their own survival, one way or another. Cognitively I had known this, but I hadn't actually understood it. I went through a dozen of different scenarios in my mind, and this understanding was suddenly immediate and intuitive. And understanding doesn't mean I condone these people's actions – some were criminal and could (and should) have got life in jail. But I now see how they got to where they ended up and why.

On an entirely different note, it also occurred to me why so many people here are conflicted about their parents, and whether or not they should go NC. I have it easy, my case is obvious and the verdict is too: "My father shunned his duty and never did anything for me, I had to grow up an orphan and still built a decent life all on my own. There is no reason to give him and his dysfunction a place in this self-built decent life. He has done nothing to earn it and everything not to deserve it, both then and now." But I realise now that this gets a lot more tangled and fuzzy when you're dealing with a parent with whom you may have grown up, who may have provided for you economically, or who might even have been a good parent some of the time. It's probably most people's experience so it may sound stupid to anyone who didn't grow up completely isolated, and cognitively it's obvious, but it took me until now to understand it intuitively, without the mental steps in between.


tl;dr
The whole father drama indirectly led to self-compassion and improved personality integration, which in turn led to increased understanding of and compassion for others. Major personal win.

[SaltyDawg]

And then an even stranger thing happened: In realising I had integrated the good and the bad within myself, I thought of my father and suddenly felt a sense of pity. Not in a condescending, haughty manner, but in a compassionate "I see why he acts the way he does, yet I don't have to stand for it" way. I thought of some of the people in my life that had wronged or even abused me: and I saw that they were all fighting for their own survival, one way or another. Cognitively I had known this, but I hadn't actually understood it. I went through a dozen of different scenarios in my mind, and this understanding was suddenly immediate and intuitive. And understanding doesn't mean I condone these people's actions – some were criminal and could (and should) have got life in jail. But I now see how they got to where they ended up and why.

[...]

The whole father drama indirectly led to self-compassion and improved personality integration, which in turn led to increased understanding of and compassion for others. Major personal win.

Sappho,

   That's awesome, that you got this so "immediate"ly.  For me it was more of a process.

   The first phase, was realizing that my wife was a borderline, that threw me into a full blown panic mode on I was with a person who was severely (at the time) literally a 'mental case' and I had been in denial for nearly two decades.  That was immediate after wracking my brains on it for about 10 days from the time I was introduced to the concept by my first individual therapist.

   I took me several months to figure out, and understand how the borderline mind worked, where I can more accurately predict their behaviors than a normal person's behaviors as they follow fairly rigid set of behavioural patterns, and are as predictable as a 3rd world train schedule.  You know the train is coming, you just don't know the precise time it is, or how bad it is going to be once it arrives.

   For me the realization was first anger, frustration, but also a preliminary understanding, I needed to stop the 'crazy' at any cost (including my relationship, if necessary), as it already cost my daughter some severe emotional outcomes, and my son was also being showing oppositional defiant tendencies.  I didn't even realize that I was being abused as it had come on so slowly, it wasn't perceptible to me - 'how could I be so, so... duped?' into being so complacent, for so long, for these unacceptable behaviors.  This is where I 'cognitively' knew what I needed to do.

   It wasn't until several months later after observing borderlines on their own 'facebook groups' on how they think, how they react, and how they process things.  It is pretty hard core being exposed to raw emotions being expressed in these groups - it was also extremely enlightening at the same time.  I later had a licensed counselor approach me who had borderline symptoms, and at one point when I asked her, she admitted to it (but later recanted) whose personality was nearly identical to my wife - I had access to a science fiction (fact) level psychological tool of 'mind reading by proxy' as I did not have the experience of being severely abused as a child - while my FOO has some mild abuse (disciplining by spankings and something similar to caning - only this was illegal, and some yelling - even though the public school system still used paddling, even though it has been made illegal as the parents demanded it).  That said, my childhood was mostly non-eventful when it came to me in comparison to others I have communicated with.  Most of my issues, have come from my romantic interests, as I didn't know any better at the time.

It wasn't until a month ago, when I started a volunteer job to help those in crisis, did I finally shift to a full understanding about a week ago which has led me to a much better understanding of what is going on, empathy, and compassion for others - and I find this understanding to be extremely rewarding, as I no longer have any 'anger', 'contempt', left in me for my specific scenarios or that of other people's scenarios that I am helping them out with.

To summarize, my understanding is a process, and not an epiphany which is what happened to me when I first logically realized the extent of the dysfunction my marriage was.  I hope this makes sense.

I am glad you have grown a better understanding of and an increased compassion for others.  I am there, but it took more than a year to get there for me.

Take care with self-care.

[Sappho11]

I have been having the nagging feeling that my father has been lying about a great many things, but since he's successfully isolated me from my step-family, I was wondering who else I could ask.

The other day I unearthed my mother's address book from 30 years ago. I started googling some names in it and eventually happened upon a lady who was friends with my mother for most of her life. She still lives in the same city, and I also found her new phone number.

I think I faintly remember her from my early childhood, so once I've mustered up enough courage, I'll call her and ask her about my mother. And if she's willing to talk, I'll ask her about my father, too.