Just said goodbye to my 70 year old dad following a visit, and feel terrible that what I primarily feel is relief that he is gone and heavy, heavy guilt that this is my feeling. Basically, I find him irritating, dull and selfish 
I loved him as a little girl and was fiercely loyal to him as a teenager as a result, but looking back things are less clear. Small things, like the way holidays were always about him/my mum and what they wanted, which was lying sprawled on the beach for days at a time while we 'entertained' ourselves, got sunburn and nearly drowned on several occasions. Sent my brother and I to school with horrible cheap school bags from the market (social death as a 90s teenager, and we pleaded with him not to - plenty of money so no problems there) and made us wear horrible cheap trainers and clothes. Sneered and jeered if we wanted to watch a soap or TV programme he didn't like.
After our mum died he walked out - couldn't cope, got married again, she didn't like kids so that was that. Had very little contact with him until he left woman#1, took up with woman#2 (who liked us, the feeling was reciprocated) and then took up with woman#3, who is pleasant enough but is similar to him to be honest: a bit irritating and fussy.
He has rewritten our childhood to be this great, lovely, exciting time when the reality was more like he and my mum standing back, watching us nearly get run over/drown/burn alive and then telling us off for it. 
Being bullied at school, largely because the two of them made us social pariahs. He also makes stuff up randomly and I know he does. It's very strange.
He takes no interest in anything that doesn't concern him directly - no current events or news, he doesn't keep in touch with old colleagues or family I might know so if I say "how is Bill, heard from Maureen?" he doesn't know. A conversation about books involves him wittering for nearly half an hour while he tells you the plot of the novel in such excruciatingly close detail that even if you wanted to read it there is no point. Went to the cinema at Christmas to see The Hobbit as we'd read it when I was a kid - endless complaining about too much fighting. Won't eat anywhere but Wetherspoons, even when I'm paying: just won't hear of it. Constantly pokes and fiddles and noses around the house to the extent i'm on edge whenever he's here. All he wants to talk about are his own journeys and trips in mind-numbing detail "well we packed the caravan, we saw we needed milk so we went to Asda, but they'd run out of skimmed so we had to buy semi and then we realised we needed butter as well so we went to Tesco and they had semi and we said, ha ha ha, we said we should have just come here in the first place! And then ..."
He treats me like a child, which I know can be par for the course with parents, but it just makes me want to cringe when (for example) we smell cow manure and he wrinkles up his nose and says in a silly high-pitched voice, "OOOH! Have you TRUMPED?" I'm 32, ffs. And every time he says something like that, I feel, just fleetingly, like I hate him.
I feel awful about this, as I just dread seeing him and hate it when he visits, and it seems so mean to describe my dad in this unflattering way. But his rewriting of history and lack of ability to see outside of himself is REALLY challenging my ability to like him as an equal adult when he persists in treating me like a naughty teenager.
What CAN I do?
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My dad
themoonandback · 12/04/2013 15:58
I really don't think it is dementia, as he's perfectly aware of everything - quite difficult to explain but I've never had the feeling that he's actually unwell, if you see what I mean. Thanks for mentioning it though.
When he makes things up, it is hard to explain. He invented this long complicated story about a holiday we went on to Belgium and said I had a tantrum on the ferry I know I was definitely in senior school at the time as I remember vividly bringing a postcard back to my French teacher and we had a brief conversation about Belgium so I was at least twelve (September birthday) and would no more have had a tantrum on the ferry then than I would now. I know it sounds stupid but there are so man examples like that where he just invents something - pretty much always something where you behaved like a tit (apparently) when in fact we were well-behaved kids.
I'm expecting at the moment, very early days, and I am terrified of ending up like them. But also and perhaps more poignantly I am just fucking sick (pardon my French) of being treated like a naughty child. I was in a garden centre with him and we were looking at some crockery, I stepped near it and I got a loud and embarrassing "Oooh-OOOH- oooh!" noise (he thought I was going to smash it!) like I'm a toddler, ffs. Then the squealing and "have you TRUMPED?" thing, the hissing and sucking of teeth because I had a (tiny) bump in my (old) car, the disgusted yet amused look because the grass in the lawn is a centimetre longer than it apparently should be.
I have a management role at work. Interestingly I do the same job he did and I am at the same level he was. I am responsible, thorough, about to become a parent myself. Yet he reduces me to feeling like a naughty child which I bitterly resent, try as I do to find it funny, I can't. I find it upsetting and very, very embarrassing.
If you dread seeing him and hate it when he visits, then why on earth do you put yourself through it? As the adult you are, go ahead and make the executive decision to manage contact in such a way that you do not feel like you have to "detox" from each encounter, such as a serious reduction in face-to-face meetings.
It sounds like he never listens to you.
I know that it is rude, not any more rude than he is being to you, but have you considered developing a talent of not listening to him? It's a grand sweeping generalization, I know: Men have been doing it to women for these several millennium. So imho I believe it is fair game to take a page out of his own playbook.
I wouldn't go as far as earbuds and an ipod, but it's an option if you are feeling particularly triggered in the moment. The potty references would definitely do it for me. 
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