[CallanG]

Thanks 31, I think my Father is still on meds, but when he gets a bad bout the red mist decends and he is almost out of control .

I do see some of the same behaviour in H at the moment but not quite as extreme if that makes sense. The difference between my H and My Father is that I can see in the internal battle that my H is having because of what he has become. I can almost see different personalities fighting it out in him , and I do beleive that he hates feeling like this .

I think that my Father prefers to feel like this because then he does not have to feel anything . He will end up alone because he keeps pushing people away with he is awful behaviour and in the end people can only take so much .

Callan
x

[Ready2Transform]

  That is so sad.  I hope this episode ends quickly for him without more incident.  It is absolutely frightening the power of the mind to work against us.  You are an amazing person to be able to view this from such a place of non-judgment.

[CallanG]

Thanks R2T, I think with my Father I have come to realise that he is what he is and therefore you just have to go with the flow . If you fight it its mores stressful . Much like dealing with MLC , it is best to step back and try and let them work through it.

I think that dealing with my Father for so many years has helped me see My Hs behaviour for what it is , but its harder to step back when it is your H and the hurtful comments seem to hurt so much more . I think I am realising finally that he has to sort all of this in his head and I really can do nothing to help him .

Callan
xx

[Songanddance]

This reminds me of an interesting story from a female colleague whose father has just died. In short it is clear he had MLC - left his wife of 25 years, vanished, married but my colleague never met her (she was apparently younger than my colleague his daughter but they D'd some years later)
Her father developed dementia which made him angry the whole time and my colleague said that she never really reconciled with him but he put all his affairs in order. He wrote the eulogy and insisted on every detail including where he wanted to be buried and how! This was a year before he passed. Her mother sadly committed suicide ten years after he had vanished as he had taken all the money and left them with nothing. My colleague said that the eulogy stated that he had no regrets in his life but he was sorry that he had treated "Her" so badly but it had to be done. The her is an exact quote and my colleague was never sure if it meant her mother, the OW or herself.
Very Sad but my colleague is one of the most upbeat and positive Christian people I know so it's not all doom and gloom.

[CallanG]

I was talking with my IC yesterday about how H has no idea how his behaviour impacts on other people, all he cares about is the space imediately around him .

She told me of a client who was severly depressed and had attempted to kill herself several times and one of these attempts had been in front of her children . It was only when the fog of depression start to clear several months later that she had any idea of the impact that it would have had on her children , until that point it never evern entered her mind .

[31andcounting]

Wow, so scary and so so sad.  I can't imagine feeling so low, in such a fog that you did not know that!!!
sheds some light huh?
31

[calamity]

I always come back to suicide when I cannot believe what these people do in mlc.  Parents of young children DO kill themselves because they think their kids will be better off without them.  Depression is unfathomable & strange but nonetheless real.  Maybe others would take this more seriously if it was called midlife depression.

[riverbirch]

It doesn't enter your mind how much impact it has on others because all you want, is for the pain to go away.

[UKStander]

Hi Callan

Reading your accounts of your father's behaviour with interest - as mine was depressed most of his life, as I think I told you. He ended up in psych unit of hospital at c.80, having tried to kill himself. I think the guilt, of leaving my mother and me (at 50) wore him down in the end, plus the new marriage was not all it was cracked up to be (he drank heavily throughout, which he'd never done in the time with my mother).  Downhill from the moment he hooked up with OW, really.  I wonder how much was chemical and something he couldn't avoid, and how much was FOO issues. His father beat on him, and, so I'm told, his mother often just delivered him into the hands of his father when he'd been naughty. A double whammy. He had no belief in himself, of that I'm quite sure.

I'm interested in how self-belief can just be beaten out of a person at a young age. The extent to which that happens must have some bearing on whether they can ever recover and get themselves up out of the self-imposed hole again. But who knows.  Our H's have us - and we understand more than most. For that they should be extremely grateful!  When they awaken.

I'm sorry we still find ourselves here.  TIme will change things. Maybe our legacy of fathers with mlc means we'll be stronger than most. Maybe that's why we're here….

Greetings and strength to you.

[hopeandfaith]

I have a friend who has just had an experience with an MLCer but we only just realised it.  A few months ago an old boyfriend contacted her on facebook and told her he had been looking for her for years.  She is single, having been divorced for about 7 years.  He must have made quite an impression on her because they started a long distance relationship and she considered moving to his town.  She has 2 lovely boys but started to get a little disappointed that her boyfriend never seemed too interested in them.  They decided to meet and she reported that he was like a randy high school teenager.  He said "I am going to pay you the best compliment ever" and then told her how many times he had masturbated to her in the intervening years.....NICE 

Ok, so now she is getting a little concerned.  She decides to give it another go and visits his town.  By day 2, she has called friends who also live in that town to come and rescue her from an unshowered selfish pig who drinks far too much.

Not sure on his LBS status but she had been told that he had broken up with his partner a while ago and it was amicable.  His ex partner had a daughter who is grown but had referred to him as Dad and had the same surname.  Doesn't see much of her either.

Thank goodness she escaped.  We couldn't believe that while she is travelling this journey with me, she gets to visit the other side.  He sounded YUK!!!