Posts about ‘old-fashioned parents who will never change’ have reminded me about my own second marriage into a good old-fashioned family, me aged 50+.
All the daughters-in-law call them Mum and Dad. It’s compulsory. Me – I’ve nursed my own mother as she died, and if you knew my father you wouldn’t want to be called Dad. So no.
FIL had a terrible time as a WWII prisoner of the Japanese after the fall of Singapore – absolutely true. So he won’t eat rice (the Japs), or pasta (Mussolini), or drink warm water (the prison camp). I caved in on rice and pasta, but when he was risking dehydration on the farm, my response was ‘if you expect me to walk half a mile each way to get you cold water out of the fridge, you can think again’. He drank what we had with us.
I do wonder whether the controlling expectations are the children’s as much as the parents’. So “the father will not change and will say he can’t do things ….” – it depends on the choices he has.
Problems are so often brought to AC that start out with what to do about the way parents get along. The answer is always "nothing". It isn't their place. It isn't their marriage. The couple has made their own way through the history of their marriage for often as long as 50 years. They have their "agreements".
While the child was being raised it never would have occurred to him or her to interfere in the marriage, but now all of a sudden they want to be a marriage counselor to their own kin. Just won't work.
I DO understand if this is a change. If one spouse has dementia and the changes that come with it; and the other spouse is struggling in a battle to care that cannot be won.
But usually this is a time-worn dance between a couple that a grown child thinks he or she can participate in, and it just can't be done.
On a private chat the other day we were talking about how many come to us with problems of the "abusive parent" they are dealing with.
They will have stories about decades of abuse, and about their current struggle to give care to the abuser.
Someone had posited that the healthy, who have dealt with their childhood abuse (usually by distancing from the abuser) never ask us the questions, so we are left with a rather unhealthy group of OPs for which we cannot have any answer (not being psychologists).
That may have some foundation in truth.
When you figure out the complexity of family relationships, please let me know because I still wonder
about certain things too. Family dynamics do seem to be complicated by generational differences.
I don’t think that you caved regarding rice and pasta. I see your behavior as an act of compassion.
I certainly understand that compromises are sometimes made for someone suffering from PTSD.
I agree that walking a far distance for cold water is going a bit too far. So it was fair for him to compromise on that. Life is full of give and take situations.
If our lives are becoming increasingly difficult and intolerable we must learn to break past cycles.
Whether it is a job that we hate going to every day or never ending caregiving responsibilities, nothing will get better until we make the appropriate changes in our lives.