Why do abusive fathers in particular never notice how crappy their behavior/household is?

It's like he's still a child and he makes everyone coddle him emotionally

This is it. Pretty much. Emotionally immature adults having to play house/parent when they cant even get their own shit together.

Narcissists conduct their relationships vertically instead of horizontally because they think that security and comfort come from dominance and control.

Then they find themselves despised, isolated and lonely. Since they can't connect with people in an honorable, caring, mutually respectful way, make amends and grow past their brokenness, they have no choice but to lie to themselves and live in a delusional fantasy world where there's nothing wrong with them and everybody else is at fault.

The real disaster is when their children get sucked into that fantasy world and end up being convinced that the pain they experience from living with an absolute trashpile of a father is a nasty, manipulative lie. Because of the overpowering instinctive need to please their father they learn to invalidate and dismiss their own feelings.

Honor yourself from now on. Your father is a wreck of a human being and you are never, ever going to change that. You can't change someone who doesn't want to change.

Pour your energy into empowering yourself and fully becoming the loving, compassionate person that you are at your essence.

Your father has lost his battle with evil. You will win yours.

lol we must have the same asshole father bc I could’ve written this 😅 but seriously tho, I ask myself the same question nearly daily about my own father. The last two years have been hell because he’s on an upswing of his narcissism and loves to remind me how fat and useless I’ve become in his eyes. God forbid he take a look inward. I wish I could tell him he is completely hideous in his soul, and that’s a kind of ugly he will never be able to fix unlike my superficial flaws

As long as they have even just one enabler left, they will keep acting the same. And even when they are completely cut off, they will just try to find another flock of enablers instead of changing

You described my dad to a T. He’s a hypocrite through and through and I genuinely don’t understand how he doesn’t see how shitty he is. It baffles me that someone could be so incredibly blind to their own selfishness and cruelty. After half a century of life you’d think someone would grow at least a small level of introspection.

But at the end of the day, some people are just incapable of certain things I suppose.

"And it's just like he doesn't notice at all, he's has zero self awareness,"

This was my father, he would often chastise my Uncle (privately of course), his brother in law, for how he constantly berated one of his sons, my cousin.

He would then literally 10 minutes later say or do something to me that was the EXACT same behavior. Many times I wanted to just give my father a reality check bitch slap to help with his tunnel vision. But alas.......

It's because they never get to the Find Out part of their fucking around.

They do not suffer consequences or lose things they actually value as a result of their behavior.

They do not value a happy home. They value authority and control.

If they lose it, they become violent to get it back and the results don't feel like consequences. It feels like they are victims because they deserve to be the way they are, so they can even gaslight themselves into seeing consequences as a miscarriage of justice.

They think about material things, external things and appearances, that's what they think is a good home. They have no idea about the emotional health that's more important to become a healthy well adjusted person. Give him the book Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents lol, but I do wish you a better life :)

This sounds like my dad. He is so mean and in his late 80's. The dichotomy is he has a real sense of duty to his family. He will help you if you ask for help.

My mom divorced him after 38 years and when she died he was planning on attending her funeral. He was shocked when I told him that mom specifically said he is not to attend. Realize now my mom must have suffered from CPTSD due to his abuse. I know my sibs suffer but a couple sibs are hated by their adult children b/c they behaved the same way.

Well...Karma doesn't lose an address b/c he remarried and his wife is so mean. Now she has her loser 46 y/o drug addict son living w/ them. Bern in and out of prison. He and his wife treat my father horribly and he takes it. Who knew that yelling and bitching at him would get him to stop. They spend all his money and she just bitches at him or ignores him. I am sure his wife thought he would be dead by now and be living the high life w/o him. The only Karma for her would be is he outlived her.

OP - save your money and get out of the house asap. My life only got better after I moved out. He paid for my college and am so grateful for it. I knew an education was my only way out. Find a skill and career path. Find one w/ a pension and insurance too.

Imo people like that externalize their abuse so much cus they don’t wanna internalize it/hurt themself. They got zero healthy tools to cope and yet, to gain more, would require them having to connect.

Hard to connect when a core belief is everyone deserves abuse for their downfalls/mistakes.

I may just be fueling the “I can fix him” mentality, but if these people would genuinely try, I do think they’re salvageable. Most of em anyway. Outliers are a thing tho lol.

This isn’t specific to abusive fathers. Abuse mothers, hell abusive anyone is warped in some delusion that they’re in the right. 

Normal people don’t do this shit 

I have let go of the “zero self awareness” narrative. It’s just not true in my case. They know.

why men specifically don't notice? probably because men aren't made responsible for their families in our society. only materially. they are expected to provide, and that's it, that's their only worth. and i think a lot of them take this on with a sense of pride almost, because it means they're the 'big boss'. meanwhile their wives are often actually the big boss, but they'll never acknowledge that bc the nuclear family was set-up in such a way that the wife was the most subjugated member of the family, and so all the work the wife does isn't seen as work that's actual work. and then you get men that tell their wives that they don't do enough, while they simultaneously weaponise their own incompetence so they never have to do the work the wife does. they accept they are a 'big baby' and live that way until they die. very sad life.

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Sorry to hear your going through that I think he is just more focused on control. There’s is no acceptable reason for someone to be abuse nothing excuses choosing to treat another person in that way. Like for someone abusive as long as they are able to make other people afraid and control them then they view that as they are doing good so even if they are treating everyone horribly they are like I win this is good for me. And that’s even worse that they don’t care how they are hurting people. You could try setting up a chair infront of your door in your room so it’s locked from the inside type of thing might make the space feel safer. Sorry you’re going through that tho.

oh my god. my mother is literally like this too. it’s typical abuser behavior to hold something against you, to say they provided so much and did so much because it’s part of having power and control & we get told that we’re not being threatened & that we can’t blame them for anything and they’re only giving “advice”

People like that never notice it because they think they are in the right and those that say otherwise just don’t get it or are coming at them. If you can, you have to get away from them.

Often it’s a cycle.They have CPTSD & pass it to their kids.been going on for generations. & they usually just drink & never get help & they become mean ,bitter instead of becoming extremely empathetic from their own CPTSD.suffering. & blame everyone else & never look at themselves. & sometimes they are in denial.  CPTSD is seriously like the quiet epidemic in a way & lots of people don’t want to acknowledge it. 

I honestly don’t know if it’s more common with one gender, both my parents were like this. You walk on eggshells, they get to do what they want. Criticize them, and they explode. As for the why of it all: there are plenty of comments here and books about it, personally though having all the answers didn’t necessarily bring me peace and closure. Because it’s really hard to accept that you were abused, you didn’t deserve it, and they didn’t care enough to change. I think processing that can take a long time.

Just know that you’ll get away from it, and you can heal and learn to stop walking on eggshells. My mother literally used to yell at me for breathing, and once you can do those very basic things freely again, it’s the best feeling in the world.