MyDoorsAreOpen
Bluelight Crew
- Joined
- Aug 20, 2003
- Messages
- 8,549
Recently, after a stressful and drama-filled weekend where we entertained my parents and my brother's family despite it being a bad time for this, my wife admitted to me that she doesn't enjoy my father's company. And I'm fairly sure the feeling is mutual. This makes me sad, because I love them both (obviously in different ways), and hate to see either of them suffer for a choice I made (to marry the woman I did).
With the retrospect of adulthood and medical education, I see now that my father is mentally ill. He has fairly severe depression, ADHD, and obsessive compulsive disorder ("process addictions", as he calls them), the latter of which only gets worse as he gets older. I grew up thinking it was perfectly normal that dinner conversations revolved around human rights abuses around the world, conversations changed topic at a moment's notice, and clothes hangers were organized by alternating colors. My father "finds his way by talking", as he puts it, meaning that he seldom has a point even when he speaks with great intensity, and is highly tangential, and doesn't see the hints that others are finding him frustrating to talk to. He obsesses out loud over gloomy topics that present company is not interested in discussing, and for someone who values openmindedness and peace so vocally, is shockingly inflexible and opinionated, in ways that defy logic. Getting reacquainted with my father brought home to me a lot of the reasons why I am the way I am -- in order to cope with his hard-to-tolerate style of communication when I was a kid, and then with a world of human interaction he'd ill prepared me for once I left home. But my father is a kind man who gave all he had to give for my family, and was never abusive or neglectful. In this day and age, that's luckier than a lot of American boys get. Therefore, I've been determined my whole adulthood to accommodate my father and his quirks whenever I've been around him, to express as little of the frustration he still consistently gives me as I can. I do this as a way of showing gratitude. The thing is, though, my father is not open to the idea of admitting he has psychiatric disorders, and not willing to try conventional Western medicine and cognitive behavioral therapy for his issues. I'm no specimen of mental health either (something in between severe ADHD and mild Asperger's) but at least I've been willing to try being diagnosed and treated.
My wife and her family bring to the table a whole different range of mental health issues. Her mother's identical twin sister was schizophrenic and committed suicide as a teenager, and though neither have ever been floridly psychotic, both my wife and her mother are a bit "Cluster A", in psych jargon -- naturally a bit paranoid and mistrustful, interested in the paranormal and esoteric, and often reading too much into what other people say, or reading too much into situations in general. Her over-willingness to hear a judgemental agenda in my dad's hard-to-follow speech is like two trains heading toward each other on the same track. As I relate to my father to a point, so do I relate to my wife. He has shown an unexpected (and poorly thought out, IMHO) judgemental attitude toward a number of things she's said in his presence before. She's once bitten twice shy, especially since she can't discern any pattern to his hangups, and frankly I can't always either, though I have a more comprehensive knowledge of them than she does.
My father wants more than just to be tolerated. He wants to bond with and be close to my wife, and maintain a good relationship with me. I've managed a fragile but truly good relationship with him, largely by learning to hold back. But I can't mandate how my wife or anyone else behaves or relates to him. And I don't see it as healthy to be triangulated between them.
If it isn't clear enough already, family is pretty important to me. Does anyone here who doesn't consider deep rifts and cold wars an acceptable first line solution have an idea of how to handle this situation, in a way that's loving and respectful toward both parties?
With the retrospect of adulthood and medical education, I see now that my father is mentally ill. He has fairly severe depression, ADHD, and obsessive compulsive disorder ("process addictions", as he calls them), the latter of which only gets worse as he gets older. I grew up thinking it was perfectly normal that dinner conversations revolved around human rights abuses around the world, conversations changed topic at a moment's notice, and clothes hangers were organized by alternating colors. My father "finds his way by talking", as he puts it, meaning that he seldom has a point even when he speaks with great intensity, and is highly tangential, and doesn't see the hints that others are finding him frustrating to talk to. He obsesses out loud over gloomy topics that present company is not interested in discussing, and for someone who values openmindedness and peace so vocally, is shockingly inflexible and opinionated, in ways that defy logic. Getting reacquainted with my father brought home to me a lot of the reasons why I am the way I am -- in order to cope with his hard-to-tolerate style of communication when I was a kid, and then with a world of human interaction he'd ill prepared me for once I left home. But my father is a kind man who gave all he had to give for my family, and was never abusive or neglectful. In this day and age, that's luckier than a lot of American boys get. Therefore, I've been determined my whole adulthood to accommodate my father and his quirks whenever I've been around him, to express as little of the frustration he still consistently gives me as I can. I do this as a way of showing gratitude. The thing is, though, my father is not open to the idea of admitting he has psychiatric disorders, and not willing to try conventional Western medicine and cognitive behavioral therapy for his issues. I'm no specimen of mental health either (something in between severe ADHD and mild Asperger's) but at least I've been willing to try being diagnosed and treated.
My wife and her family bring to the table a whole different range of mental health issues. Her mother's identical twin sister was schizophrenic and committed suicide as a teenager, and though neither have ever been floridly psychotic, both my wife and her mother are a bit "Cluster A", in psych jargon -- naturally a bit paranoid and mistrustful, interested in the paranormal and esoteric, and often reading too much into what other people say, or reading too much into situations in general. Her over-willingness to hear a judgemental agenda in my dad's hard-to-follow speech is like two trains heading toward each other on the same track. As I relate to my father to a point, so do I relate to my wife. He has shown an unexpected (and poorly thought out, IMHO) judgemental attitude toward a number of things she's said in his presence before. She's once bitten twice shy, especially since she can't discern any pattern to his hangups, and frankly I can't always either, though I have a more comprehensive knowledge of them than she does.
My father wants more than just to be tolerated. He wants to bond with and be close to my wife, and maintain a good relationship with me. I've managed a fragile but truly good relationship with him, largely by learning to hold back. But I can't mandate how my wife or anyone else behaves or relates to him. And I don't see it as healthy to be triangulated between them.
If it isn't clear enough already, family is pretty important to me. Does anyone here who doesn't consider deep rifts and cold wars an acceptable first line solution have an idea of how to handle this situation, in a way that's loving and respectful toward both parties?
