Pearoast from terrible parenting
My father promised for my whole life that he would pay for my entire education as he had done for my sister. In the Christmas holidays of my first year, mere days before my first university exams he announces that he is no longer paying for my education. This was due to an argument we had stemming from him randomly deciding I had spent my fees money on beer. Even after I had provided him with receipts covering all of the money he had given me, he was still acting as if I had indeed spent my fees on beer. I was about to have to pay £1500 pounds for accommodation and had £500 in the bank. He said I should get a student loan to pay for it knowing full well that I wasn't eligible for one.
On the same holiday he'd been making snide comments about me being a below average student etc (how the hell would he know - I hadn't done any bloody exams yet!). Well I showed him - despite the panic of thinking I would have to drop out of uni, and spending more time in the bank etc trying to get overdraft etc than revising for the exams, I was still in the top couple of people in the class.
Did he apologise for being a general wanker? Did he apologise for making me live on tesco value baked beans for a month before I found a crappy job and got paid? Did he apologise for the fact that because of him I was working practically full time as a waitress while I should have been focusing on my degree?
Like fuck did he - he apologised for putting me in charge of so much money at the start of the year. Money that I had proved I had spent on the things I was supposed to have spent it on.
Haven't spoken to the man since, emailed him to tell him all about my first class degree from one of the best universities in the country and my upcoming place in one of the most competed for PhD programs in the country. Below average student my arse!
He used to spend entire summers when me and my sister were young trying to turn us against our mother. "Your bitch mother this, your bitch mother that etc". Spent a long time trying to persuade us that our mother was mentally ill (narcisist apparently) and was abusing us. She wasn't going to win any mother of the year prizes, but our mentally ill and abusive (emotionally and psychologically) parent is most definitely our father. The fact that he is never the wrong one in an argument (even after being proved wrong) and the fact that everyone (especially women) that stands up to him are mentally ill in his eyes leads me to believe that if anyone is my family is a narcisist it is most definitely him!

I've not spoken to him now for nearly five years and I have to say that cutting him out of my life was the best decision I've ever made - not speaking to him has really helped me psychologically. A lot of people don't understand being able to cut a parent out of your life but I always tell them that if I was going out with a man who behaved the way my father does then everyone would be telling me to dump him.
(mmm....beer, Thu 12 Nov 2009, 20:20, 3 replies)

Well done. You did the right thing.
I have also cut my mother from my life and I know how hard it is, but also the weight that can be lifted off your shoulders. I feel more sane and at peace than I ever have done. Part of me misses having a mum, and I'd love a grandma for my son, but i'd never trade the stress I had then just to have a person around who happened to give birth to me.

And if it makes you feel any better, my dad told me - and was very insistent about it - that he was going to pay for my son's university costs about six years ago. When he died four years ago, it turned out that neither my brother, my son or I was left a penny in his will.

The irony was that my father was pretty well off and spent his career advising people on pensions, investments and life insurance so that his clients could provide for their family in the event of their death. Doh!!!
( camp freddy well, would you look at that!, Thu 12 Nov 2009, 21:26, closed)

Thanks
Sorry to hear about your fucked up family. It was actually kind of a relief when he cut me off - I'd been worrying that he was going to do it for months so it was a weight of my shoulders in a way once he actually did it. It also meant I didn't have to put up with his crap anymore - he likes to use money to control people. In a way having such a crappy father has made me a better person - I'm not that fussed about material things and I'm very independent. On the down side he's probably ruined any chance of me having a healthy relationship with a man.
(mmm....beer, Thu 12 Nov 2009, 22:05, closed)