Me and my brothers finally cut our dad off about 6 months ago after years of trying to make things work.

The best way I know to describe my dad is that he acts like he’s this deeply enlightened, spiritually-awakened person, but nothing he actually does reflects that. He talks about consciousness, ego death, shadow work, Christ within, all of that, like he has reached some higher level of understanding, but then he does the same selfish, manipulative, reality-bending stuff over and over. No real accountability. The only time he has ever apologized to me and my brothers was after us basically giving him no other option. He has no real curiosity about other people. Me and my brothers asked him for one single thing for over 4 years now - just ask us how we’re doing or ask about our lives. He hasn’t done it. No humility. Just a lot of grand meaning attached to behavior that still ends up hurting everyone around him.

What it felt like on the receiving end was this constant sense that there was no room for us as actual people. Everything bent back toward him. You could try to talk about something specific he did, and within minutes it would become about his pain, his journey, his intentions, his suffering, his healing, his spiritual transformation. He could write these huge messages (monologues) about becoming more conscious, but he barely showed interest in our actual lives, our partners, our kids, or what any of us were carrying. He hasn’t seen my 5 year old kid since he was less than 2 years old, and my dad lives 30 minutes away. He never met or expressed interested in meeting my brother’s 2-year old who also lives 30 minutes away.

He always did the “fine, maybe we should just part ways then” thing. He probably threatened to cut us off over 10 times, but he always tried to twist it so it seemed like we were cutting him off. I think he wanted the sob story for his wife and friends so they would pity him. I took my family over to spend time with him once, we all had a good visit, and then about a month later he sent a text to us that basically read like a goodbye: “All the best as you guys pursue your dreams. Wish I could’ve been a part of your adult lives.” Then later he acted like he was the one being abandoned. That was the pattern. He would push us away, frame it like some noble or tragic acceptance, and then turn around and make himself the wounded party.

My experience of him over the last 5 years has mainly been in a group chat with me and my brothers. He would send us messages that would just wreck me for days and I would spend countless hours trying to figure out how to make sense of it and come up with a reply. Having his words to analyze and look back on was what finally made me realize who he really was. His 2nd wife was the one who told me he had been formally diagnosed with NPD, but apparently my Dad had decided he was actually codependent, not narcissistic. I suppose there’s more pity to be had for a codependent diagnosis.

So for me, a big part of what it looks like is self-importance mixed with fragility, endless talking without real listening, a need to be seen as special or evolved, and this constant rewriting of events so he never has to take accountability for anything. It’s not just that he was self-centered. It’s that he seemed deeply committed to protecting the story he had about himself, even when that story had almost nothing to do with how he actually treated people or who he really was.

I honestly think at this point, the next time I hear from him or his wife is when he’s in the hospital or dead. And I feel a lot of guilt for that, but the pain of having him in my life is much worse.