Edad has gone to the dark side

[wesorya]

I'm trying very hard not to beat myself up for setting myself up for this. EDad has been unwell for some time now, and living in a reasonably remote area, is fairly reliant on UNPDMother.
He has been distant during the regular calls I make to him over the past few months. Doesn't ask about me or the kids, just answers the questions I ask him. I was asking him about tests he has coming up and he said something about there being so many that it's hard to keep track.
He didn't contact me on my birthday last week. He always contacts me on my birthday. I asked him if he forgot. Silence. Then said that "we" don't hear from you much these days. I said I wasn't sure what he meant, as I had called and spoken to him several days before my birthday, and had also called him 2 weeks before that, and also a few weeks prior etc.
Then it was silence and then all about UNPDM and her perception of having been ignored.
I tried to tell him that I didn't think that her perceptions should affect his behaviour, and that I found that very hurtful. He didn't care. He also didn't care when I fell further into arguing, and said that I had the perception that I had been ignored on a lot more occasions than he described, and a lot more recently. The past 8 occasions that I had seen UNPDM, she had been providing transport, food, accommodation and their home for my UNPDex-husband to have court ordered visits with our child.
I repeated to him, as I have told him and her previously, that I find it hurtful that despite my requests, they have maintained a relationship with my UNPDex-H, who I have had 2 years worth of restraining orders against, and who has been dragging me through family court for nearly 2 years. While I have sole care of 3 children. And that UNPDM has also written a character statement for ex for family court.
He said that it's not for him to know what goes on between a husband and wife.
He didn't care when I said that he's not my husband, that he has abused all 3 children outside of our marriage, just said that he believes in forgiving people.
He said he couldn't forgive me because it is ongoing. So he is saying that unless I keep my UNPDM happy, he cannot like or be happy with or forgive me, it seems. He doesn't love me. He wouldn't answer me when I asked him directly if he did.
I told him numerous times that I loved him and cared about him and that I just wanted to be able to call my father and speak to him and see how he's going.
He seems now just as narcissistic as her. The way he was twisting everything. The double standards about everything. The way he doubled down about her being allowed to have feelings and perceptions about whatever he and she wished, yet my feelings being completely and utterly dismissed as preposterous.

I'm so very hurt, and angry and sad. I don't know what to do, how to process this. I really thought my dad actually cared about me. But the two of them have been sitting there deciding what an awful nasty person I am, based on literally almost nothing - the very tiny thing they are basing it on(me cancelling a picnic because it was raining and the kids didn't really feel like going out in the rain to see the grandparents that make no effort to contact them whatsoever) -completely taken out of the context and ignoring the way they had treated me and the kids for the 2.5 years prior.

[NarcKiddo]

I am so sorry to read this. Sending you big hugs.

It seems to me there are two main possibilities:

1) He has been obliged to sing to your mother's tune because he is unwell and reliant on her. She has been able to bamboozle him more and more.

2) He has always been on the dark side, but less obviously or in a different way so you didn't realise. Bear in mind that it is bad enough to have one PD parent. The double whammy of having two is really tough to take, especially when you were also saddled with a PD husband for some time. When I realised some years ago that my mother was probably uNPD I assumed my father was an enabler. But the more I learn about narcs the more I fear that he is one too. Just a different type.

Whatever the reality of your situation it absolutely sucks. I have no advice on how to process it as I have not yet got round to processing my own experience. It's on the "to do" list to discuss with my therapist.

[Srcyu]

You didn't set yourself up for that, your mother did.

Your father is in a weakened position and it's easier for him (like all enablers) to go along with her narrative.
It's possible that his personality has changed during the long period of being unwell. Presumably he never has any time away from her. Rather than think for himself he just completely accepts everything she says. She is right there helping him and you aren't because of your own commitments.

Enablers always take the side of the narcissist.

He needs her, his physical situation demands that he keeps right on enabling her.
That's what he is doing - enabling for her by proxy.

[wesorya]

Thank you for your responses. I'm still annoyed with myself that I got drawn into an argument and JADE with EDad. The amount of "arguments" he had (petty, out of context supposed examples of all the occasions of mistreatment against my mother) made it clear how much time she spends demeaning me - mostly, I expect, to put him in his place for daring to speak to me when I am clearly not deserving of that. Notedly, this became a major issue only when she realised that she couldn't use him as a tool to force me to do what she wanted ie. give her access to my home or unsupervised access to my children.
Also of note, when I contacted unpdM after all this, to let her know that eDad had said she felt I was ignoring her, and had given dozens of examples of  all the ways I had apparently ignored her - also the reason he had given for not being able to have a friendly relationship with me any more. I said that I hadn't been aware she had felt that way as we had spoken in a friendly, conversational manner the last time we saw each other, and then neither of them contacted me on my birthday. She then provided, in writing, a message saying that she did not feel ignored, and that eDad doesn't speak for her. Ha.
No, he doesn't, he speaks what he is told by her. Her response to the birthday comment was to say that she remembers my birthday well, it was a joyous day when I was born, but now the day brings her sadness.
Well if that isn't basically saying that she is sad I exist, I don't know what it is.
Then she wanted me to agree to drop my children off to her for christmas baking. Jiminy cricket. Not a chance.
If I hadn't been experiencing this sort of gaslighting and invalidation for so long, I would be calling the dementia ward.
Everything is deniable and triangulated. So very carefully deniable. To describe to anyone outside of this forum the hell this woman wields is impossible. She is a sad, rejected, victim of a grandmother. A poor victim with a heart of gold who has done nothing but try to help and fix and reach out and just tries so very very hard but I just make it so very difficult. She has not once, ever shown the least speck of concern for my feelings - not when my marriage ended, or when she stayed friends with my ex, or during covid, or the past 2 years o ffamily court while she has been holding my ex and his mothers hands. But they tell her how amazing she is. And I do not.