Hi ladybirder,
I know that from my age of eleven onwards, it was the strain of living a double life.
My dad set up home in a town thirty miles away with a woman he knew in the early days of his marriage to my mother. They had the whole nine yards - house, car, dog, son (!) and he lived there under an assumed name.
As far as we were concerned, he was sleeping over the wineshop he managed for a national chain when his own business ran into financial problems - coming home Wednesday and Saturday nights to our home. It all came out when i was 24, he left that day, and I never saw or heard from him again. When he died, he left instructions that neither I or my mum and two sisters were to be infomed of his death until after his funeral - not sure if he thought we would turn up - but yes, he was arrogane enough to think that.
In many ways he was a duplicitous, violent, nasty man, but i think (or i like to think) that he loved me in his own way, he just didn;t like or understand the person I was, or the man i grew into, so he would constantly put me down and row with me, and I would avoid being with him or speaking to him unless i absolutely had to.
Like I said, my daughters have benefited greatly because i have been totally the opposite to him - I have made time to know them, and be with them, and enjoy their company, and we are still very cose as they enjoy their own babies and children.
I feel blessed that I managed to get right what he got wrong - but i could have done without eh constant belittling and yelling as I was growing up. But as Nietzsche says, what doesn't kill us makes us strong - and I think I know what he was talking about.