My mom cheated on my dad and they had a divorce during my O-Level year.
I came home late one day because I was training for a race—I ran 100 and 200m—and a strange man walked out of her room.
My dad was on an overseas business trip.
I called my dad immediately and the divorce proceedings didn’t take that long even when my mom was blaming my dad for being absent in the family because of work. My two siblings and I chose to move out of the apartment into a new apartment with my dad.
My dad had one apartment which he conceded to my mom even though he paid every single penny for it.
It’s been some years since I graduated with an FCH in applied math and I’m now in asset management and on a good income. For the past few months, my mom kept trying to make contact with me to ask for money.
She doesn’t contact my brother and sister because they haven’t spoken to her since the divorce. Since the divorce she dabbled in a few jobs and ultimately retired because she says she’s too tired. She has a degree in accounting and she’s was or is a CPA, I don’t know how it works. She worked for PwC for several years before quitting to stay at home.
She said she had to look after the kids when we had a domestic helper our whole childhoods and we were almost never home. I was in childcare until I was 7.
My dad dotes on us, pays for everything at home, and he alone paid for all three of our university tuitions, even for my brother, who went to medical school at the University of Sydney on no scholarship. My dad isn’t that rich. He’s been in risk-management at an insurance company his whole life. He just worked and worked and he loves us. Now that he’s retired, he’s finally had time to do things that he loves doing, which is to cook. So he decked out our kitchen with stainless steel commercial-grade kitchen equipment and he’s just been making food. Last year on his 60th birthday, I bought him a custom French cooking suite, the kind that’s used in fancy restaurants but smaller, I’ve never seen him so happy. I’m happy to see him being so happy.
I’m not on good talking terms with my mom although I still answer her calls. But she’s never asked about my life, she’s never asked about my dad, never asked about my siblings, all she does is complain about how hard her life is and how much money she has left. She has brought nothing but disaster to this family. She hurt us so much that my brother and I have zero interest now in being in any relationships and I doubt this will change. I really want this relationship I still have with my mom to end but I feel bad sometimes so I answer her calls.
Can someone please walk me through if I should learn to be more cold-hearted in this because every time I see her I see that man’s face walking out of her room and my immediate desire then was I wanted to chuck something very heavy and very hard at his head, we had 4-foot vase in the living room then and I was already itching to do it but I held myself back.