TLDR: My dad is a mean drunk and I think I'm done trying to have a good relationship with him.
Me (24F) and my dad (60M) have a complicated relationship – only child, immigrant household so you know how that goes.
Growing up, he was the nice one and the one I would go to, to just chat, and he was more like a friend that I would confide in. But as I have gotten older, there seems to be a shift in our relationship – we fight a lot more, disagree a lot more, and I feel like there is a shift in how he views me. Some background is that he is not the best husband, and my parents fall into the traditional gender roles where my mum stayed at home and took care of everything without a thank you.
The main issue is that he just came back from a boys' trip, and during that time, I decided I wanted to do a pottery class that runs on a weekday night (finishes at 9pm. Since I parked at the shopping centre and was walking alone, I was speed walking and just focusing on getting to the car as soon as possible. He called me just as I was getting in, and I missed the call (I was getting a little flustered getting everything in the car). I call him back, and it goes to his voicemail, so i call my mum and ask if theres anything wrong, and she was like theres nothing wrong and lets me know that she was just sleeping. So I try to call him back and it goes to voice mail again and then I realise he must be calling me repeatedly so I stop calling and he calls back so I answer and his tone is already aggressive and he's like "Where tf are you?! I've been calling you non-stop?!" and I answer tlelling him the class ran a little late and I'm on my way home and I'll be there in 10 mins. I get home and he and my mum are sitting at the dining table and he starts screaming like who doesn't answer the phone and by now I'm proper mad. So I showed him the calls I made to him and asked him why he didn't check find my friends if he was worried, and he started again. Important point – he is very drunk at this point and just saying he same thing again and again but angrier and angrier. My mum tries to de-escalate the situation ,so I just go off to my room. Turns out, after I called her, she went down stairs because he smashed his phone into the ground because he was so angry and cracked his phone
I think, for me, this is my breaking point. This is a pattern, where he drinks every other night and says shit like this and just expects us to get over it because he means well. A similar instance happened when he lost his keys and made it everyone's problem and everyone's fault and blamed all of us, when he lost it and even when I found it, he didn't say a thank you. It's like a pattern of speaking disrespectfully, and it just hurts because there was a time when I wanted to be exactly like him, and he was my favourite person in the world, and now, with the way he treats us specifically, it's like he does not care enough to be kind and considerate. And it feels worse when he is speaking to his friends, he has this tone where he jokes and cares, and the difference is so stark when it comes to me and mum that you can't ignore it. We barely talk anymore unless I initiate it, and I think I'm just done. I feel like I can be respectful from a distance and just co-exist because it just hurts too much to keep trying and getting shut down like this.