Overcoming A Parent Who Campaigns Against You

Personal growth can mean leaving your family behind.

Hostile attack ads filled with misrepresentations and outright lies continue to clog up the airways during this divisive election season. Watching the latest round of blistering attacks, I came to a sudden realization that I knew what it is like to be the object of a vicious and unrelenting hate campaign.

My dad has waged one against me for decades.

It comes out in the disparaging way he communicates. I haven’t spoken to him in more than twenty years, but I still hear his criticisms echoed when I interact with family members. The sad part is, this campaign is a result of a sense of guilt my dad can’t bring himself to face.

Determining the Party at Fault

Some people handle interpersonal conflict by retreating into the shadows and taking a moment to regroup. This is the tactic of those who are content in their knowledge that the truth will eventually come out and vindicate them. Others dedicate all their energy to marshaling their troops and taking aggressive action. To attack is the strategy of those who perceive a threat to their status.

Individuals campaign both in politics and in the dynamics of family. These campaigns are ongoing and sometimes can be subtle. It’s rare for people to stop and consider why they maintain certain impressions about the people in their lives. An authoritative individual can be very skilled at diverting blame from his or her own transgressions onto people who were not at fault.

It doesn’t matter what they think.

My dad values his position within the social structure of his family above all else. That he would have a conflict with me is an “embarrassment.” Rather than resolve that conflict, he’s elected to create a narrative that I’m deranged and unreasonable.

Every now and then I happen to run into a relative. They always saddle up to me uncertainly as if they expect me to scurry off into a hole or ask them for money or something.

“How have you been?” they ask.

“Very well thanks!” I reply.

“Well, what have you been up to?”

“Oh, it’s been a while hasn’t it? I’ll start from the beginning. I graduated Summa Cum Laude and worked in Lima, Peru for 10 years. I have a teaching certificate in English and Physics but these days I make a good living as a freelance writer. I’m a published novelist and I’ve been happily married for ten years and I have two wonderful daughters.”

They respond with a moment of stunned silence. Once they collect themselves, they say something like, “Oh, I’d heard you’d dropped out.”

“I did, but I went back.” Then I smile, “Let me guess, that part never made it into the family newsletter.”

The Family Newsletter

I’ve always thought the dynamic of my dad’s relationship with his brothers and sisters was unhealthy. He has three brothers and two sisters and the competition between that group is fierce and hostile. But even with all the repressed anger, they maintain a steadfast loyalty to one another.

One of the sisters likes to send out a regular newsletter with information as to the goings-on of all the relations. Although she likes to present the letter as a dignified and proper document with appropriate compassion and concern for all the parties involved, the letter only contains negative information.

“Mike has cancer.”

“Jeremy just lost his job.”

“Walter dropped out of college.”

In my dad’s extended family, bad news spreads like wildfire. Good news never gets a mention. They like to present themselves as saviors, the people who swoop in to save the day when the hardships of life become too terrible for mere mortals to manage.

They love to save the day.

They love it to the point where you start to wonder if they don’t contribute to creating emergencies just for the opportunity to resolve them.

The Divorce

There’s no question that I come from a broken family. The only uncertainty is who was at fault. Over the years I’ve looked back at my childhood and I’ve recognized places where I placed undue burdens on my parents and my siblings. I’ve taken responsibility and apologized for those things.

My dad was the one who left. His departure also entailed a complete abdication of his parental duties. My mom wasn’t handling it well so I, at the age of 19, felt I had to take on a disciplinary role with regard to my brother and sister.

My brother, especially, was having a hard time. We’d gone to a rural school filled with conservative teachers and administrators and they didn’t like us anyway. I didn’t feel they had the power to ruin my brothers life, but I did feel they might be able to provoke him into quitting. I dedicated myself to ensuring that he would graduate and tried to help him as he navigated a couple suspensions and run-ins with the police.

Dad was always there to shower him with expensive gifts, no matter what the circumstances.

The start of the hate campaign…

My brother has a strong strength of character and I’m pleased to say he did graduate both from high school and college. He’s doing very well, though that information wasn’t in the family newsletter.

A few years after the divorce, my dad decided to resume his parental responsibilities. The first step in resuming his relationship was establishing trust. Establishing trust required creating an enemy. He needed somebody to blame for the years he’d been away.

I never could have predicted that my actions in the first years after the divorce would be later used against me.

“It wasn’t your place to be a pseudo father figure, how dare you.”

Who is a young kid going to believe? The guy telling him to do his homework and stay out of trouble, or his long-absent dad who just turned up with a brand new 4 wheeler?

Escape

As my dad came back into their lives, my relationship with my brother and sister continued to deteriorate. They took to regarding me with open hostility, and wouldn’t engage in conversation. It became painful, and I eventually left the country, relocating to Peru on something of a whim. That turned out to be a fortunate decision because work was readily available and the people there embraced me like family.

I felt the best thing to do was to absent myself from the picture. I didn’t feel anything was to be gained by embarking on some absurd propaganda campaign. However, my dad, who is a lawyer, by the way, propagated his message unopposed for years. Imagine a political campaign where one candidate never ran a single advertisement or engaged in a single response?

All of this was done with great subtlety, of course, but it was obvious to anyone who knew where to look. Family members would reveal their perceptions in certain word choices, or by using my dad’s common phrasing. It was similar to how conservatives will often repeat a line from Tucker Carlson or Rush Limbaugh verbatim, even while passing the statement off as their own idea.

Allies began to emerge.

Although I became effectively cut off from the majority of the family, some of the “black sheep” of bygone years began to emerge from the shadows. I expressed frustration to an uncle who had been effectively excommunicated after his divorce from my dad’s sister. This uncle replied with a statement that served to fortify my resolve.

“Well, your dad’s never been wrong once in his whole life.”

His sarcasm and the absurdity of the sentiment made me laugh. I achieved a new level of confidence in my perception of the situation. My dad’s fragile ego prevented him from admitting mistakes. Rather than take responsibility, resolve issues, and move on, he’d dig in and deny, deny, deny.

A Personal Mythology

Everybody has a mythology about themselves which they need in order to survive. The mythology might be something harmless like a mistaken belief that they are a great Scrabble player, or it might be something destructive like an insistence that they are not an alcoholic.

When something emerges that contradicts the mythology, most people won’t face up to their shortcomings. Instead, they’ll deny the evidence presented to them. You see this everywhere. It’s the same mechanism that compels individuals to vote for a political candidate that’s clearly a conman.

People on the periphery of this misconception aren’t going to perceive a benefit to confrontation. It’s almost impossible to convince someone to abandon a personal mythology. To do so would mean having to recognize decades of hurtful actions as they abandon the reflexive mechanism for justifying the behavior.

The truth does come out.

I’m 45 now, and my dad’s campaign against me has persisted for decades. Just as I watch the Trump campaign and I’m baffled that people can continue to believe his lies, I can’t understand how people can continue to be swayed by his position.

He is a forceful person, and he is capable of presenting absurd arguments in a way that sounds reasonable at first blush. It’s rare in life for people to call liars out to their faces. Most of the time, a liar makes honest people embarrassed and uncomfortable. Decent people just want to ignore the moment and move on. Liars misinterpret this reaction and delude themselves into thinking that nobody even suspects them of dishonesty.

You must leave toxic people behind, even parents.

In the early days, there were times when the hate campaign almost broke me. However, I endured, and I’ve managed to achieve the life I’ve always wanted. You have to hold on to your sense of truth even when feel pressure to relinquish it from all angles.

These days I feel sad that my dad made the choice to dedicate his life to such a futile objective. It was a lonely, useless choice filled with sorrow. He never understood that the path to happiness begins with an admission of fault.

Every year a few more people seek me out with apologies for having misinterpreted reality for so long. When change comes, it happens quickly. You cannot maintain a hate campaign forever. It takes too much of your energy and it’s ultimately self-destructive. For those of you still in a fight, take heart, the truth does emerge eventually.