24.
“This isn’t about me, but it’s about my mom. She grew up on a farm in the middle of nowhere. She did well in school and went to a state college, where she met my dad — a graduate student studying abroad (he’s from the UK). My mom pretty freely admits she wasn’t happy with the ‘farmer’s wife’ kind of life that she saw her mom living, and she wanted a ticket out of there. I do believe she loved my dad, but a lot of the attraction was hitching a ride to his wagon, as he was about ready to finish his doctorate and had pretty decent prospects. They married and moved to the UK, then back to the US, with him chasing various academic jobs and trying to make it up the ladder to deanship and consulting money as fast as possible. He always made pretty decent money, so she stayed home with us kids. In the end, though, my father had the money and used it as a source of power.”
“The power dynamic at home was never healthy, and my dad would constantly hold over everyone’s head that he was the sole provider. In his eyes, he brought home the bacon, so EVERYTHING else needed to be done by my mom, period. In my whole childhood, he never bought a birthday gift, or made dinner because my mom had a hard day, or anything like that. He did the absolute bare minimum and didn’t really want anything to do with us kids, and thought we shouldn’t really be either seen or heard. We used to hide out in the basement to play because of his hair-trigger temper. Long story short, my dad and I never really got along so my mom was able to blame a lot of the family dynamics on that.
Finally, they divorced. My dad was shocked and couldn’t understand why. He felt that marriage was about him paying and everyone else (wife and kids) obeying. He didn’t think he did anything wrong. In the end, my mom went through some tough years, but she kept working. She started dating. She ended up meeting a man of reasonably modest means and got remarried. It’s clear her and my stepdad’s relationship isn’t about power and ownership, it’s about love.
Being ‘acquired’ just isn’t a good idea. One person having the power leads to abuse of that power in all too many cases. For the same reason, even though I knew I was abandoning my inheritance doing so, I stopped seeing my father entirely because of his abusive and manipulative ways. One by one, my siblings did the same. My father remarried a woman who wanted a rich husband. Good luck to her — she can have that money. It just wasn’t worth it.”
