@Anita – Thanks Anita I will look into psychotherapy, but in some ways my therapist might be best to stick with. Psychotherapy isn’t claimable in my country, whereas a psychologist is.

I felt like I probably became more the mother when I was around 18 and my he left my mother. I didn’t feel much of a mother figure to my dad growing up (perhaps slightly as I always wanting him to save his money rather than spend it so we could buy a house). But that went in one ear and out the other.

@ JayJay for your reply, but no I was a pretty switched on kid. No my father definitely didn’t want to be with my mother anymore. Plus I could hear it in the arguments what he was feeling. However, my mother not wanting me to grown up in a single parent household, so she begged him to stay. He almost had an affair and my mum convinced him to stay (I heard this in the fights and discussions themselves, so no one was telling me a different story), but once I reached around 17-18 he had enough. He kicked my mother out one night (granted he was manic but we didn’t understand at the time what was happening) and said never to return (and never apologized for his behaviour even when better).

I do understand partners when manic, can do this and don’t mean it and still love their partner, and feel so much guilt.  But I feel deep down that was my dads true intentions to end things and the manic episode just made it unfortunately a really a harsh way to end it. He never said he regretted leaving my mother or how he handled it even when he got well. I’m sure he does regret how he handled it somewhere deep down inside of him. But to really admit it, he would have to confront his ability to not take responsibility with things, and that’s just not him. You know something I found a blog post of his after all this happened (quite recently) and his perception was quite skewed as to what happened, he said that my mother had enough and wanted to leave. I think that’s what he needed to tell himself to feel okay about it all.

I have discussed with my mother not long ago about my dad (because I asked and sort of suggested that maybe he never loved her) and she’s pretty level headed about it all now and she told me her perspective. She believe he did love her in the beginning but just fell out of love with her. I think his losing interest in the religion (caring too much what his parents thought about being in such a religion, as they were devout Catholics), perhaps the undiagnosed bipolar (that went under the radar), my mother being too pushy and her own mistakes (she’s knows she could of handled things a lot better) and also the loss of my sister, just was too much for him but stayed because of religious requirements (and religious people convincing my dad to stay). Basically my mother and father had very different values after he lost interest in the religion. It just wouldn’t of worked, because it was such a strict religion and my father was now interested doing things that were completely different to my mothers values.

I don’t think my dad hated my mother, he got along with her well enough (there were certainly good times and fun times) but he just fell out of love with her. They “got along” with each other, but that was certainly not enough for my dad.

I also played up a lot because of this confusing childhood, I stole, I lied, I cut up clothing (all under age 6). My mother realises I was obviously effected much more than she realised and I was playing up to get attention and I was obviously hurting very much. She is very remorseful and feels terrible (hindsight is a funny thing). To be fair my mother lost a child at that time as well, and I think she probably was depressed.

Yep, I have a therapist and she does help a lot, but obviously there are still a lot of wounds.