Dear Luke:

I read all your posts on this thread this morning. I will retell some of what you shared here and comment (my comments follow the *s):

March 2019, your father told you that he went to a party with work friends, got drunk and “slept with a random woman he met there”. A few months later, your mother found out some stuff on his laptop, and he confessed to that night. He told you that the woman he slept with blackmailed him “into buying her goods”, threatening him with telling her husband about that night.

* She didn’t threaten your father with telling your mother about it, but threatened him with telling her husband. Very strange, I would think she wouldn’t want her husband to know, that it would be against her self interest to tell her husband.

“I have no idea if that is what was actually happening”-

* It doesn’t ring true to me because of what I wrote above, and because it is more likely that he had a longer term affair with this woman, not a one night drunken affair.

* Remembering your previous thread, it is quite interesting that your now estranged wife, while married to you, and with your consent, used to go partying and drinking at night, into the morning in clubs and in random people’s apartments after the clubs- and yet you were quite confident that she didn’t have sex with anyone during those nights out.

You wrote about your now estranged wife: “They (your parents) didn’t like her too much. They seem to have an idea of the way things should be and don’t want to deviate at all”-

* I too don’t like your wife for the fact that while living with you as a married woman, without an open marriage agreement between the two of you,  went out clubbing and proceeding after the clubs to random people’s apartments to drink and party into the early hours, while you were home alone. I too have the idea that this behavior shouldn’t be, and I don’t see myself deviating from it.

Your parents, having been married for over 30 years, attended something like marriage therapy for a couple  of months and then decided to get divorced. A month later, your wife left you. As those things happened, you talked  to your father, told him that the relationship between the two of you “is  now not good”, and brought things from the past to him, “letting him have it”, “yelling at him that I never wanted stuff I just wanted a connection”, and you told him that he “has needed therapy for probably decades and that I can’t take this stress level anymore and he agreed to go to therapy”.

You wrote that your father was a carpenter, but “always wanted a better life and wanted to be doing something else”, but he had to provide for his family. His father in the UK died a couple of years ago, and your father, living with his wife and you in Canada, wasn’t there when it happened.

You wrote that your father has “always been pretty overbearing”, and that you’ve “always just receded to keep the peace and just do whatever he wanted for the most part”-

– again, remembering your earlier thread, you did the same, receding to keep the peace and just did whatever your wife wanted for the most part, agreeing that she does whatever she wanted, so to keep the peace.

Your sister too has issues with her/ your father, “and no-one wants them to resurface”. Your father buys her things in his efforts to “sweep everything under the carpet”.

You wrote that “it seems to be a thing in our family of not talking about something until it becomes a huge matter, everyone gets upset and then it blows over and goes back to ‘normal'”

You wrote that your sister and other family members “always makes the point that (your father) has always worked hard for us and given us a lot”, and that he messages you “at least once a month saying he’s thinking of me and to let him know if I need anything”. You anticipate spending this month Christmas with your parents and sister, and that your father “will try to give me a bunch of money or stuff for Christmas.

* The rest of input and suggestions at this point:

1. You referred to your father having had a sexual affair with another woman while you and your sister were adults, as his betrayal of you. But his affair was not a betrayal of his adult children.

You don’t know enough about the nature of the relationship between your parents over the years, and really, it is not your business what he has done in the context of his marriage since you and your sisters have been adults.

His affair and their divorce is a matter between your father and your mother. Treat the issue as that: none of your business.

2. The dynamics between your parents, and between your parents and you and your sister, these dynamics (sweeping issues under the carpet, and so forth) are very well established. You can’t change them. You telling your father that he should have therapy, that’s a very, very long shot at changing these decades old established dynamics, very unlikely.

If you think that you can change these dynamics yourself (outside let’s say a long term professional family therapy where all people involved are motivated to changed these dynamics) by saying anything to anyone involved, again, I think that it is very, very unlikely to happen. Don’t bring anything up over Christmas/ future get together events with your parents, don’t let anyone have  it, don’t rock the boat with them.

It is only in your personal life, away from your parents, and sister and estranged wife, that you can establish new and healthy relationship dynamics of your choosing.

3. It is admirable, that your father sacrificed so much so tp materially provide for his family. Let him know you appreciate it very much. You don’t have to accept any more money and expensive gifts from him anymore, but let him know that you appreciate his decades long physical work to provide for you that way.

anita