Read my Dad's memoir; description of my childhood was a gut punch

[Anonymous]

OP, I did have one thought: that men his age may not consider writing about relationships as appropriate, hence why he skipped all that stuff. Because it's not the subject of his book. Otherwise he'd have written more about the AP, right?

Is it possible that you can use this memoir as a start of a different conversation about what happened? Can you share with him your side of the story without it coming across as an accusation (because if it does, he'll tune out/react and not be able to hear you)?

I agree with PPs who say you are a good writer and are introspective, and those are real strengths.

[Anonymous]

He was selfish then and he still is now. That's sometimes hard to see.

You were a child, he was the adult. Anyone who reads that "one paragraph" about his SIXTEEN year marriage that resulted in TWO children can see that he made poor choices.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I am a book editor who has worked on a number of memoirs over the course of a 30 year career. People who are driven to write memoirs, unless it is because their experience is so particular that they are the only one in the world who could convey it, are almost without exception highly narcissistic. Even if there are products being marketed to encourage them to do so, normal people with healthy-sized egos do not feel driven to create this sort of record of themselves.

I'm PP whose husband did the marketed memoir. To me, its just the modern age version of those "A Grandmother Remembers" books with each page having several questions. I treasure the one I had my grandmother fill out 40 years ago, with the advantage the answers are in her handwriting. Stuff like "Tell me how you met Grandpa" and "Did you have other boyfriends?". Loved her answer on that one - "Oh Yes! Lots of boyfriends!" Then she listed their names, haha. She was born in 1912 and married in her late 20s, and she was very beautiful and popular.

I also helped a 95yo lady at my dads assisted living record her memories. She just thought she had an interesting life. It was so meaningful to her because she remembered every address she had lived as a child. I promptly googled and she delighted in seeing how those places looked now. I asked her about the depression and she said she had no memory. Then she said, oh, that must have been why they moved in with relatives and her father's patients started paying him with celery and chickens. She worked at a switchboard and was one of the first people in her town to hear that WW2 was over. It took us a year of me visiting weekly and taking an hour to transcribe what she remembered. I sent it all to spotify and had a "book" printed. By the time I finished, she unfortunately had died, but her daughter and adult grandchild were so grateful for the book.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:My Dad left my mother for his affair partner after 16 years of marriage; my sister and I were 12 and 14 respectively. He had sold our family home and moved all of us to another state for his job, then decided he wanted to be with AP, who had a toddler at the time. My mom took my sister and I back to our home city, Dad moved AP and the toddler to the new city, and that was that. Needless to say, it scarred us all. My sister and I are both successful and I'm a SMBC, but neither of us got married. I think we never recovered from the mushroom cloud of what happened in our early adolescence.

We've stayed close with my Dad (AP died of cancer and Dad remarried again), but as I've gotten older and become a parent myself, I find his choices during my childhood to be breathtakingly selfish. We never lived in the same city with him again. We saw him for summers and holidays, and that was pretty much it. This was compounded when he recently compounded his life story into a book and sent copies to my sister and I (and also my mother!). He devoted a single paragraph to the divorce and our resulting family split, including noting how much I "lambasted" him (his word) over the phone about the divorce during this time. Well, yes. I was a 12 yo girl who's Dad left their family for another woman and child. I was devastated.

My Dad now wants to talk about all of this, is querying my sister and I if we've "read his book". What makes me sad is that it's full of other great stories...he's had an interesting, successful life. I'm glad to have his personal history written down and it will be meaningful when he passes away. But I had to work hard to make peace with what happened during my childhood, and seeing in black and white how easily he justified his behavior gutted me.

I thought I had closed this wound, and I'm not looking for beef with my 79 yo father. It's so hard when people we love let us down.

What’s there to say? Your father behaved in a cruel and selfish manner and pretty much delegated his first family to a footnote in his life. Get therapy for yourself if you need the support but don’t feel obliged to make him feel good about his behavior.

[Anonymous]

I think you should write your memoir and send it to him with all the nasty details he left out.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:He sounds like a narcissist.

+1

Everything about this is wrong.

He abandoned you after moving you all to a new city. Conveniently, he had sold off the family home before deciding he wanted a divorce...

Years pass. He sees you only sometimes in your childhood.

Then, as his method of communication, he writes a book including material that lambasts a child over how she acted after being abandoned. And now he wants you to read and respond to this?

Like wtf?

[Anonymous]

The best way to deal with a narcissist is to deprive them of your attention. When he keeps querying about whether you've read it or not, just ignore. Or if it's in person, just say no and quickly change the subject. Do the slow fade and make peace with that. You can appreciate the things he did for you AND not reward him for all the other crap he did. Being engaged with this memoir is rewarding him. It's okay to not do that.


Peace to you.

[Anonymous]

You should write that part of your life from your perspective and send it to him. No other reply necessary.

I get that you have an ok relationship with him now but this elephant in the room is not going away. He has completely traumatized teenage you and perhaps derailed your entire life with respect to trusting men. Supporting you as an adult does not just magically wipe all that trauma and hurt away. Actually opening up to him about your perspective might bring about some honest conversation finally, and therefore might actually help your relationship with him. And if it doesn't and it causes you more pain because he backs off or he acts like a jerk, then know that it is ok to not have men like this in your life. You are an adult now and don't need him. You can leave him now like he left you when he apparently didn't need you.

[Anonymous]

Your father sounds like a disgustingly selfish man. From personal experience with my own self-centered, delusional parents, they only get more selfish as they age. I would find it very difficult to maintain any kind of relationship with him if I were you.

[Anonymous]

I would write that chapter from your perspective OP. Not to send it to him or anything, just to append it to the book for your kid.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:My Dad left my mother for his affair partner after 16 years of marriage; my sister and I were 12 and 14 respectively. He had sold our family home and moved all of us to another state for his job, then decided he wanted to be with AP, who had a toddler at the time. My mom took my sister and I back to our home city, Dad moved AP and the toddler to the new city, and that was that. Needless to say, it scarred us all. My sister and I are both successful and I'm a SMBC, but neither of us got married. I think we never recovered from the mushroom cloud of what happened in our early adolescence.

We've stayed close with my Dad (AP died of cancer and Dad remarried again), but as I've gotten older and become a parent myself, I find his choices during my childhood to be breathtakingly selfish. We never lived in the same city with him again. We saw him for summers and holidays, and that was pretty much it. This was compounded when he recently compounded his life story into a book and sent copies to my sister and I (and also my mother!). He devoted a single paragraph to the divorce and our resulting family split, including noting how much I "lambasted" him (his word) over the phone about the divorce during this time. Well, yes. I was a 12 yo girl who's Dad left their family for another woman and child. I was devastated.

My Dad now wants to talk about all of this, is querying my sister and I if we've "read his book". What makes me sad is that it's full of other great stories...he's had an interesting, successful life. I'm glad to have his personal history written down and it will be meaningful when he passes away. But I had to work hard to make peace with what happened during my childhood, and seeing in black and white how easily he justified his behavior gutted me.

I thought I had closed this wound, and I'm not looking for beef with my 79 yo father. It's so hard when people we love let us down.

He's still selfish. End the relationship

[Anonymous]

I hope your mom had a good laugh upon receiving that book. Oh my god, I would immediately call my best friends over and get tipsy while reading the juicy parts out loud.

[Anonymous]

What a piece of garbage. I’m so sorry op. I can’t imagine how hard that would be to read. It doesn’t sound like he’s taken any real responsibility for breaking up your family and abandoning his children. He still sounds just as selfish.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I would write that chapter from your perspective OP. Not to send it to him or anything, just to append it to the book for your kid.

Great idea! Then block him.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I would write that chapter from your perspective OP. Not to send it to him or anything, just to append it to the book for your kid.

Actually, definitely to send to him!