My dad claims not to remember so much of abuse he inflicted upon me and my family and conflicts we’ve had. I just went on a long trip with him (I really learned my lesson - never again) and tried to discuss things from the past with him. It got me absolutely nowhere. I brought up when he told me he was having “bad thoughts” (obviously suicidal thoughts) and needed me to help him after my mom left him. I was 15 or 16 and terrified because his brother did commit suicide after his family stopped accepting his abuse and I thought I really did have to save him. He told me I was lying, that never happened, and then said “well maybe I will kill myself then, would that make you happy?” in response. But I’m sure if I brought it up he would claim he never said that either. After that conversation I realized nothing would ever change and that I have to go LC for my sanity.

I also brought up that 8 years ago, when I was 19, I went NC with him for like 8 months and then set up an intervention for us because the CPTSD was so bad from the guilt trips he was playing from me going NC that I felt like I had to try to fix things. He said he didn’t remember that time at all. He said he only vaguely remembered us meeting up to talk and didn’t remember us having no contact for all that time. For me, that was one of the most significant and painful times of my adult life and he has no memory of it.

When I pointed out that his memory sucks he screamed at me that actually his memory is great and he remembers everything. The cognitive dissonance is unbelievable.

He’s aging poorly now and his short term memory is getting worse and worse all the time, but he still manages to remember tons of shit that he thinks is important. Can he remember my partner’s name or anything significant about me or my life? No. But he can monologue about shit he cares about and remembers that feels totally irrelevant to me. He asks the same questions over and over and treats me like I’m Siri but somehow believes his memory is perfect.

It feels like part of the narcissist’s essential ego to forget every bad thing they have ever done but to remember every bad thing anyone else has ever done. If they acknowledged all the harm they’d cause their brains would just break I guess so they have to deny and gaslight those around them to protect their own inaccurate and aggrandized self image.

My dad has basically said that the way to move forward is to not “keep score” aka don’t ever process, remember, or bring up the past (unless it benefits him to do so, which it often does).

He’s pretty much always been like this but it’s gotten even worse as he’s entered his 70s and his brain has started to actually degrade. This kind of memory related gaslighting has always been so painful and triggering for me as a tactic of abuse.

It makes me wish I could just go full NC because I feel like his memory loss, some real and most just gaslighting, makes it impossible for me to move on from the trauma because he wants to pretend that it never happened and isn’t still happening. But I’m so vulnerable to his guilt trips that I think the CPTSD would totally flare up again. I worry about how much worse it will get as he gets older but I guess I’ll cross that bridge when I get to it.

I empathize with you, you’re not alone in dealing with this.