[guardiangod]

Without going too deeply, I sympathize with the writer on an extremely personal level.

At some point, you have to make a decision- do you continue to maintain a relationship with your father, or do you choose to sever your relationship like most people he knew.

If you choose the former, then you will accept that he will never change, and some day he will even harm you, if he has to choose between you and his beliefs. It's not that your father is out to do bad things- an aggressive dog does not intentionally try to bite your legs off. It's just doing what it believes is best for itself. You will have to learn to accept it, hard as it might be.

If you choose the latter, then realize that your father spent decades of his best life holding behind his beliefs to raise you, and that the least you can do is to make sure he doesn't die alone.

From my armchair research, this kind of change stems from a deep-seated sense of paranoia/threat, that was seeded by childhood traumas. A schizophrenic sense that everything in the world is trying to cause harm to him. When the person was young and was trying to make a living, he can keep those thoughts away. But as he gets older and can see the end of his life, these paranoia thoughts gradually overwhelm him. Having all the sudden free time post-retirement doesn't help either.

[Ajedi32]

Having some degree of personal experience with this situation myself, I don't see why you'd ever sever a relationship over something like this. Like sure, maybe his beliefs are insane, but why would you let that affect your personal relationship with someone you're close to? Just talk about something else.

> "Why am I going to abandon the truth?" he insisted. "I can't abandon the truth."

In a way, that's actually kind of an admirable attitude, it's only sad in this case because he's so wildly wrong about what the truth is, and because some members of his own family decided to abandon him over those beliefs.

[guardiangod]

Because the paranoia will worsen, and one day he will accuse you (or your siblings/wife/his siblings) of doing harms to him, even though it's pure paranoia.

Examples include trying to steal assets from him, belittled him with offhanded comments, or betrayed him even though he helped you in some distant past.

>In a way, that's actually kind of an admirable attitude, it's only sad in this case because he's so wildly wrong about what the truth is.

I totally agree. It is indeed admirable that someone can be so convicted in his beliefs. There is a certain beauty in that.

[generj]

> Just talk about something else.

You can try to set boundaries like this, but typically the beliefs are so deeply held this isn’t possible. Sure the son could try to base the relationship totally on their shared loved of Ohio football, and make it clear he doesn’t want to discuss other things. But the chance the father doesn’t make snide comments or try to convince his son to buy gold is near zero. His beliefs are more important than anything, certainly more important than trivial things like boundaries set by loved ones.

It becomes exhausting to love someone when they are constantly choosing to be annoying or hateful. At a certain point it becomes a betrayal of your beliefs as well. If the father in this piece keeps bringing up bigoted views, it’s a betrayal of the author’s sister to keep a (negative) peace and not confront him on them.

[throwup238]

What is “some degree” and why does that make you think that’s relevant experience? The author didn’t sever the relationship, the wife and daughter did. The wife who had to live with him far beyond “some degree” and the gay daughter whose very identity the father rejected, years after the rest of the family knew.

[arp242]

> Just talk about something else.

My experience is that this is very hard with people like this, as all they want to do is "enlighten" you and/or rant about "the truth".

[jfengel]

In my experience, people talking about "truth" are rarely talking about the truth. They escalate to the highest epistemological levels in order to avoid talking about the fact that they are Just Plain Wrong.

People who talk about the things, talk about things. Talking about "truth" often seems to be a deflection.

[lesostep]

> Having some degree of personal experience with this situation myself, I don't see why you'd ever sever a relationship over something like this

The reasons were explicitly given in a written piece: the daughter severed herself because it hurt her when her dad insisted that she was lying to him. His wive was hurt because it is very hard to plan your retirement with someone who is convinced that the world would change in a year.

Note that the son stayed connected and the actions of his dad never explicitly hurt him. Made him feel sad and disconnected, but never hurt.

The problem wasn't that the others never accepted his believes or weren't considerate of them; the problem was explicitly the dad who decided that he knew better about his daughter sexuality and shared house budget, without taking anyone views on the things the rightfully belonged to them (their thoughts and the money that partially belonged to the wife).

It is hard not to sever relationship with a person when they decide that they have a right to choose for you. Either you pretend that they have this power over you or hurt them when you make your own choices, making them feel betrayed and powerless.

[fragmede]

The problem is sometimes people can't help but share their ish with you. Getting a text at random hours saying that you're a dumbfuck, for thinking X, from someone you still love, because if only they share this one post with you, you'll finally be convinced, and join their side, gets tiresome.

[xracy]

> I don't see why you'd ever server a relationship over something like this.

I don't know more about your situation, so I can't help you with what you're missing. What I can say is that I have been in the same situation, and it seeps into every interaction. It starts off as one thing, and it becomes all-consuming, until you can't have a normal interaction with the person that doesn't get pulled into the conspiracy web.

I used to have a list of topics I would avoid around my Dad. What was truly devastating was watching all of the things I could relate to my dad about slowly get consumed into that web of topics that were all connected. What was more devastating was that my dad is a smart guy, and he's painfully effective at making the leaps he wants to make from where he's at. If you brought up any topic on the list, he would immediately run you around all of the topics on his list, and any time you make a substantiated claim on one thing, he'll jump to another thing, just to argue.

This story was devastating to me, because I wanted them to find a way to make this work out. And I was hopeful the father was going to be willing to believe that he was wrong given that he brought up the idea of the bet in the first place. But the giveaway to me was that when they discussed the stakes, the dad wasn't really considering losing as an option.

I considered that list and thought to myself "Yeah, I would take all of these bets, and yeah, if I was wrong about all of these I'd be willing to tell the person I was seeing something wrong about the world." But it was clear from the bet setting that there was no world where the father could believe he was wrong. He just wasn't anywhere in the same world as the rest of the world, and honestly, that's what scares me the most.

It feels like we have this incurable disease that makes people believe things irrationally, and there's a risk that anyone can catch this disease just by spending enough time online. What truly scares me about the 'cutting them off' piece here, is that it's a measure to protect yourself and it also represents giving up on the person.

When I cut my dad off, I explained to him my concerns that led to the decision, as well as that I was willing to talk again if he was willing to work on this and at some point I called in to check on how he was doing, and if he was making any progress, and the most baffling thing to me was that he didn't even register the part of my communication (written down) that explained I'd be willing to talk to him if he worked on this. Like, working on this wasn't even something he would consider doing to salvage the relationship, which was pretty devastating because of how long I spent trying to fix this relationship and make it work.

[kayo_20211030]

Are you not being a little simplistic, and wholly presumptuous, here? This is a sad story and, from your armchair, you can explain it all? The man has beliefs; they might be slightly nutty, but he seems unlikely to bite your legs off. He's not a dog. What's your justification for believing that he has any sense that "everything in the world is trying to cause harm to him"? There's no evidence of that in the original post. What make you think that "these paranoia thoughts gradually overwhelm him"? Again, not supported unless you turn your head and squint a little (lot). If you dropped all the paranoia/trauma/threat threads, maybe you could weave a whole cloth from something you do know.

[mingus88]

This is a story of a man becoming radicalized. He is prioritizing these radical beliefs above his marriage, friendships, and relationships with his children.

I will drop an observation here that many perpetrators of mass casualties were seen in retrospect to go down a similar path. Friends and family knew something was up, but nothing could be done.

My view is that there is a straight line from this guys story to a catastrophe where this guy harms himself and others. At a certain point he has lost everything that matters and will be consumed by this paranoia