About the situation with my parents (part 2 of 3)

[My wife made a good point about my previous post, so I modified paragraphs 3 and 4 under Point 1 for clarity.]

Point 2: In the escalation that followed my decision to finally respond to his accusations about presents, all the favors I did for my father were dismissed.

Favors carry weight. Over the years, I have tried to make a conscious effort to do many favors for my father, including helping him move stuff, clearing brush and branches from their back yard, shoveling stones, even inviting him out disc golfing and playing Halo—doing my best to always be available. After the worst day of my life in August of 2000 (caused by both my mother and my father), I considered my actions between then and now to be favors. These were all attempts at quality time and to be part of the family—to try to establish a better relationship than the shaky one we had. In his Christmas letter to me, my father said, “You get out of family what you put into it. Honestly, it has not felt like you have invested much of anything in [our relationship] for a long time.” In one simple statement, he nullified what I had attempted to build with him for years.

Since my actions meant little, I determined that my efforts were a waste of my time. If my efforts were meaningless, then the rest of the "hanging out with them" motive was gone. My father had already destroyed gift giving and receiving for me. In a final attempt to disengage from a point of contention that had existed for years, I returned some birthday gifts with the statement that I still wanted to keep trying to have a relationship. My mother then disinvited us from her 50th birthday celebration.

Our relationship had unraveled. The ties that bind were severed, and the rest of the rigging fell down as a result. The relationship was gone. I'm not a glutton for awkward moments, meaningless actions, or emotional lashings meant to set me straight. If actions mean nothing, then words mean less.

So I ended up stuck with the question, Why talk to him? Not talking to him is not meant to be a punishment of him; I consider not talking to him to be the realistic reaction to the liberties he took in our relationship. I wouldn’t talk to anyone else in this circumstance, either.

My dad turned our disagreement into a crusade against a litany of choices in my life that he disliked or disagreed with. Many of his accusations were weakly supported by hearsay or incorrect conjecture or just bad facts; many others were simply his opinion against mine. When confronted with proper evidence or my actual reasoning, my father refused to back down.

The relationship felt destructive. I had to make a call. How many more beatings was I willing to take for the sake of building a relationship where the efforts on my part were counted worthless? I took a hard look at my poker hand and decided to fold. Better to lose some, than to continue with a losing hand and lose more.

I refuse to suffer the slavish chains of my family’s enmeshment. If my options are enmeshment or no contact, then my choice is no contact. My father did not allow me a third option.

(Part 3 will come soon.)