My father insists on a version of past events that is not true, where he supposedly helped me pay off debt when in reality I paid it off by working FOR YEARS. He doesn’t say it as something he’s proud of, but something I owe him and haven’t “thanked” him for (?). He is extremely stubborn and old enough to definitely not remember things well.
He does this kind of thing with my siblings as well and it’s come to the point where we feel that all we really were for our father was a money burden, be it true or not that he helped us financially at some point.
How can I come to terms with the fact that he’s not gonna acknowledge the truth no matter how many times I explain it to him, despite the anger and frustration I feel towards him for claiming something he actually DIDN’T do for his kid while minimizing my own work and effort?
Gotta lean hard in the other direction to flip the gaslighting onto him. If he says he paid for your college then start insisting you never went to college. If he says you owe him for keeping your car running during X-Y years then tell him you didn’t even own a car.
More seriously, though, my mom was the same way. Hers was due to being extremely manipulative instead of memory issues. Either way you aren’t going to get through. Better to start distancing yourself now until you’ve reached a level of contact that isn’t detrimental to you. If that eventually means no contact then so be it; they bring it on themselves and you owe them nothing.
Ha! I didn’t think of that before, it’s a great idea 😂 Sorry your mom was like that. Thanks for your comment.
I don’t know if this helps but i had a similar experience. My mother would bring it up all the time. It was many years after I had just given up the guilt of it. It finally came out. She was afraid noone would take care of her. Deep down she’s knew she never did anything to help me and now that she was losing her independence in her age. She is desperate to believe she has leverage to make sure i will take care of her when she’s unable to. It’s sad and pathetic but once it came to light my anger turned to pity.
It does help, thank you. To think that you have to have “helped” your kids enough for them to want to take care of you in old age is indeed pitiful. And it speaks really badly about your concept of your children.
You’re not helping her, right? She would just find a way to make you miserable with it anyway. People like that don’t help anyone but themself and even when they get their needs met themself or you, that doesn’t satisfy the desire to control and dominate you even still.
Honestly I think i posted this before but it all came about when I explained even if I wanted to I couldn’t. Like I broke down the math of my income and savings and how much her care will cost. Had to explain the world her and her parents left us with nothing they were grifted and the pay gap from 1970 broke the game. Her Brain kind of broke and she got real quiet and has not brought up that i owe her anything since.
You’re not helping her, right? She would just find a way to make you miserable with it anyway.
You don’t know this person. Just because some are like that doesn’t mean all others also are.
Its like when Putin
There reaches a point in human stupidity that it suddenly becomes impossible to realize one’s stupidity. These people cannot be fixed and cannot be helped in anyway that benefits anyone else around them. Even therapy won’t do anything as they’ve become so stubborn and self righteous that they’d never believe the therapist, or bother to improve.
There is a reason this saying exists. “You can’t fix stupid”.
Ive been dealing with something similar to my mom. She’s extremely abusive and entitled. She insists that I “owe her”
It’s repeated a lot but rings loud for a reason. Cut them out.
Thank you. My siblings and I have decided we aren’t even going to reply to him anymore.
If you can, ignore it or dismiss it as “old man yells at clouds”.
Either way, unfortunately, you have to find a way, somehow, to deal the issue so that it stops causing you problems. It’s hard and it sucks.
IMHO as a parent, my kids owe me nothing and I owe them everything. I created them after all.
This is kind of rubbish advice, sorry.
You could ask him what he expects you to do about it. Force him to follow through on his line of reasoning to the conclusion. Does he want it paid back? Does he want to estrange his children?
That can work because, rather than
contactingcontradicting him you’re facilitating him reasoning through his position. Hopefully for the best.It’s not rubbish advice. I agree with you. To feel like your children owe you stuff is to not recognize your own responsibility by bringing them into this world. We’ve never been problematic kids, we have probably actually justified him too much - he grew up in poverty, couldn’t study, had to work in the fields since he was six, didn’t know better, had shitty parents etc etc. Until that bites you in the back! And it has obviously created this entitled behaviour in him. Thank you for your comment.
Best of luck, hope it all works out of the best!
My family is exactly like this and my sister keeps her distance and advised me to do the same.
I petulantly refused and got it rubbed in my face 15 years later when I saw the trump flags flying outside their homes during Xmas. I have no intentions in seeing any of them ever again.
Fuck that’s awful. I’m very sorry
I’m sure it’s going to be worse for my nieces and closeted nephew (assuming that my gaydar is correct).
I used to think it sucked having conservative Mexican parents; but maga parents are on a whole other level of worse.
I have seen this quite a few times in young and old. Which makes me doubt my own memories bt I do get corroboration from other folks. I am sorta obsessed with truth and I am convinced that when you lie you essentially can’t help but believe it to some degree and I truly believe that every time you lie you will limit your ability to see reality. This is very disturbing because no one can avoid lying 100% over decades of life it means that pretty much none of us can live 100% in reality. I mean maybe but its impossible to tell how well one can avoid their own dishonesty in life from warping their own memories. Anyway its why I try as much as possible to be honest. This is all my own beliefs though. There is another thing I have heard and im not sure how much study is behind it but supposedly every time we recall a memory we alter it. Ugh. My thought is the more you lied around the event the more likely the alteration will be towards the lie.
Thank you for this!
The thing about lying and becoming to believe it is a real psychology thing, I just can’t remember what it’s called. In other words, this is a thing and happens.
Edit, chatgpt to the rescue:
The psychological term for when someone lies about something for so long that they convince themselves it is true is confabulation or self-deception, depending on the context.
- Confabulation
This is often used in clinical psychology and refers to the unintentional fabrication of memories without the intent to deceive. It commonly occurs in individuals with memory disorders, such as Korsakoff syndrome or brain injuries, where they genuinely believe the false information they are recalling.
- Self-Deception
This term refers to the act of convincing oneself of a truth that aligns with their desires or beliefs, even when there is evidence to the contrary. Unlike confabulation, this process can be more deliberate at first but eventually becomes internalized, leading the person to believe their own fabricated story.
- Illusory Truth Effect
This phenomenon occurs when repeated exposure to a lie or false statement makes it seem true over time. It isn’t necessarily a conscious process and can influence both the liar and their audience.
The specific term depends on whether the process is intentional, pathological, or a natural cognitive bias.
please double-check chatgpt’s answers before posting them as facts. chatgpt does not know what it is saying, and often hallucinates false information.
its good for making nicely-written texts, not for researching anything important
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How do you know whether I did or didn’t double check if I didn’t say whether I did or not?
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The chatgpt piece just is basically an add-on to what my main point was and isn’t really super important… For anyone that really truly cared to dig into it, they’re free to research on their own.
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i never claimed whether u double-checked or not.
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i know, but still i think its important not to make it seem like posting chatgpt responses without oversight is okay.
if u normalize listening to ai hallucinations in any situation, people (especially tech-illiterate people) are going to replicate that behaviour in more important situations.
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Yeah I still refer to it as a belief for basically two reasons. One is that soft sciences are usually a bit more indeterminent but more importantly I believe this always happens to some degree regardless of the individual and one can possibly be really center and cognizant and keep it to a minimum effect but if one is to live within a context of maximum reality they need to minimize any lying or deception in their lives. Of course that won’t help you society or government not running based on reality.
For me, I came to terms with this by learning more about human nature and behavior and realizing that, in essence, we’re incredibly flawed beings with only a minimum of accidental rationality. That it’s absolutely not natural for us to “make sense” in a logical way, that truth doesn’t matter to us, that we are all incredibly selfish.
And that working against this nature to a “better” (in quotation marks on purpose, who really knows what’s better) state of mind and behavior requires massive amounts of dedication, conviction and constant effort, which most people simply don’t understand or can’t be bothered to do.
That humans/I have a natural desire within them/me to band together for survival purposes. This includes loyalty to family and feeling bad about being estranged to them.
That our emotions are just motivators making us do things that were/are useful for survival.
That we also have a great capacity for adaptation, which also helped us to survive.
And finally, to put it all together, that I can use my skills of adaptation to change my feelings about things after understanding them and deeming them not beneficial to me. So in other words, I use mindfulness techniques, my natural propensity for rationalizations, training/practice through repetition, my selfishness, etc, etc, to change my behavior/thoughts/feelings to a state I’d like to be in.
This is imo only possible with serious study of all these interactions and years of reprogramming yourself, which you have to decide how worth it is for you. In my opinion, it’s ultimately worth it for everyone, because I went from a state of deep unhappiness to a state of deep happiness/content, which is a massive quality of life improvement.
However, I also realize that because of all of this, I myself could just be talking bullshit and be just as or even more flawed than anyone else, so you can probably safely disregard any advice I give or things I say :D
Edit: oh yeah, and to give a superficial answer: fuck family/people, stupid people are not worth having around and making your life worse just because of some arbitrary tradition/feeling of loyalty/peer pressure. My dad is nowhere as bad as yours and I still don’t really care about interacting with him, and I like it that way.
Very well said, and the story sounds very familiar. Mindfulness and reprogramming yourself to essentially react with positivity rather than negativity is a good way to describe what worked for me too.
And if that sounds like a good approach to anybody else, I found a lot that stuck with me in the philosophy of stoics and buddhists.
To be in control of your state of mind — by working with your brain and body and not against it btw — is to be in control of your quality of life, within reason.
Thank you very much, this helps a lot.
Your statement of old enough to not remember things that well, implies memory issues.
Has he always been this way or just recently? If it’s recently then have him see a specialist about his memory. There could be a bigger problem there. Memory problems can show up earlier then you realize.
Did his memory of events change recently?
He has in fact started idealizing the past. He first did it with his own mother (who was also someone extremely problematic with whom he barely spoke while she lived), he suddenly started denying they were ever estranged and praising her as a mom etc, as if we didn’t live through it and remember it too. You might be onto something there. He won’t see any specialist though, because obviously it’s us that don’t remember things correctly, and we can’t really force him to. Last year he had a nervous breakdown and ended up in the hospital due to anxiety. He refused to see any therapists, he just wanted a pill to make it go away.
I doubt it, but if you have bank records to prove how it was paid. That might show where the money came from.
But otherwise, ignore his comments. Change the subject and if he stops talking to you all together , then sadly there is nothing you can do.
Does this actually affect your life? Just ignore him when he brings it up. Convincing him will likely not materially affect your life.
Well today he said he doesn’t want to be in touch with us anymore because we’re so ungrateful, so I guess that he’s just made it very easy to ignore him but it fckn eats at me, it’s my dad, you know?
you’re not obligated to like someone just because they’re related to you.
honestly, there’s no reason he should consider you guys as ‘ungrateful’. bearing children is a commitment, not an investment.
Thank you.
He doesn’t want to talk to you because you’re not grateful enough to him for doing something he didn’t actually do? Is he mentally ill? That sucks man I’m sorry.
Thank you. Yeah he could be. Sometimes it really sounds like narcissistic personality disorder.
My dads crazy too. I get it. I’ve learned just to expect absolutely nothing good from him and then if he does behave it’s just a happy surprise.
“Well, if you helped me pay off this debt then you should have some sort of proof. No? Well then, guess it didn’t happen.”
Did that, and guess what, he said he’d given it to me in cash. Convenient, eh?
“Well guess that was dumb of you then. Bye.” I know this is hard as he’s your dad, but sometime you just need to walk away. I’ve not spoken to 90% of my family in over 20 years due to narcissistic, selfish behavior. Your peace is far more important then any relationship. I wish you luck and hope you can figure out a solution.
Thank you.
My father once took credit for an idea about how to do something when in the previous conversation he’d argued against my suggestion. He really believed it was his idea. I hung and called my mother exasperated because I knew she’d understand after being married to him for how ever many years (divorce). She was just like, yeah, what can you do. It sucks.
So, what can you do. It sucks.
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Thank you. I guess realizing there isn’t much you can actually do is kind of liberating
Glad that helped. Good luck.
Ignoring him is not working for you, or you wouldn’t be here. Either respond actively or distance yourself. If he’s a narcissist, the former might work. If he’s looking for a fight, the latter might work.
And he was your dad. If he doesn’t act like a dad, though, he’ll become “the jackass who fathered me”. Which is sad.
Thank you. He even said he doesn’t want us to call him dad because we never treated him as one. (?) It’s just so sad
Sounds Like dementia to me. You’ll have to come to terms with the fact that your father isn’t the person he was any more. Arguing is entirely futile.
Yes, it’s a process, but he always had a bit of this in him to be honest. Thanks for your comment.
lifes too short to deal with assholes. blood relative or not. fuck that shiit
Thank you!
Nothing you can do but go no contact (0%). He needs a time out and to reevaluate. You must be ok with whatever outcome that lays ahead since you cant control others, you can only set a boundary that says you won’t be discussing this or tolerating anybody who continues to revisit it.
They won’t like having control (control of You) wrestled away, particularly if they’re accustomed to that, so it might take them a while to adjust their behavior but it is necessary to resolve that dynamic. Make it clear that there will be no money talk or transactions flowing between you and if it comes up again, you will be taking a break for a month and then everyone can circle back and try again at that time.
If it happens again after you’ve had to enforce a month timeout, you have to decide if you want to do escalating consequences or if you want to start a full and longer-term no contact regime where they are completely blocked and unable to communicate with you any longer
If its escalating consequences, start at a lower threshold like say a week, any violations that happen after they’ve been welcomed back, adds to that or doubles it. I suggest doubling so
- 1 week
- 2 weeks
- 4 weeks/month
If they refuse to respect it after that I would consider strongly making it permanent. They are adults and that is literally an extended tantrum they are and continue to throw to your detriment and without seemingly intelectually recognizing that they are not going to win this or beat you into submission somehow. Do not depend on them for anything or give them any bargaining chips. Once you impose a consequence, do not falter or they will sense weakness and persist or get worse.
Thank you. Yeah we have gone no contact with him twice in the past, once for six years. He showed up at some point asking to see his grandchildren, being very nice and gentle. He eventually and invariably goes back to shitty attitude, so we are thinking this time it’s got to be permanent. On an emotional level I am struggling with that, but I know it’s right.
