Icy

My dad has always been a part of my life and I’ve always looked up to him. I never understood why he did what he did but for me, there was always some unspoken wisdom behind it. Now that I’m older, I realize (and I absolutely hate admitting this) that he’s pretty clueless and a lot of what he does makes no practical sense. He hasn’t thought his life out very much and the way he deals with problems is super unhealthy. I don’t want to just straight up address him about it because I think there’s a pretty good chance he shuts me out but I also want to help him realize that his life could be a lot better and make a lot more sense if he just stopped all of the nonsense. He isn’t very self reflective and is very hard to even communicate with. It feels like he died a long time ago or that he’s lost his sense in some kind of way, it takes up a lot of my mental capacity, but admittedly I allow it, because I want to fix the problem. Any advice?

Well thank you everyone for the advice on this thread. I thought more about it and he seems to be afraid/doesn’t want to make personal connection with people. If he does I’ve never seen it. He’s very surface level and apparently this has been going on for years. My mom who divorced him like 25 years ago had the same problem. It’s like being in a room with someone and feeling alone. I guess I’ll just be there for him when he needs it. Hard to tell if he’s ok when we never talk about anything personal though. And yes he’s 54.