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[quote=Anonymous]I have a somewhat similar situation although perhaps a little less extreme. In my case, both my parents were simply liars. They had to lie to themselves their whole lives to get through their own difficult upbringings and there was no changing it as adults. My father was also extremely insecure from his dire poverty as a child and seems to need to pump himself up to everyone to overcome this — he is the hero of every story. My mom died and my father has this INSANE revisionist history of how happily married they were.

I handle it with very limited contact. The reality is he has done nothing wrong to his grandkids and they think his stories are awesome. So, he sees them in very limited ways. Think like a long lunch a few times a year. And maybe twice a year he spends one night. He doesn’t drive them because he is a functional alcoholic. They have never seen him visibly drunk, but I am not risking him driving. My kids know he is an alcoholic, but I don’t harp on it since it has no real impact on them. They mostly know because I want them to understand the genetics at play for them.

Second, I just internally roll my eyes and laugh at the ridiculousness. I think “sure dad, you just keep saying how happy we all were and that you actually were close to us.” It helps that I mostly only have him over when there are larger family events, and I let him tell his stories to other people. If you cannot just laugh at this, you should limit contact even more.

I also vent with my sister who shares my view of how ridiculous he is. Our other sister is mostly estranged. That is the part that sucks. For complicated reasons, our sister doesn’t want to talk to us — which is the most frustrating thing about our upbringing. I think it has way more to do with my parents than anything my sister or I did. But I also try to remember that for her own mental health, my youngest sister has chosen to detach. Which I’m ultimately happy for is that is the best choice for her.[/quote]

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