Dear Bel,

I am nearly 60, and have a lovely, busy life. My husband and I work part-time, have everything and are very content. The problem is my elderly parents. Do you know Catherine Tate’s character Nan? Or the Old Gits, portrayed by Harry Enfield? What is so funny is also so sad to me – that I have parents just like that. All my life I have been a good daughter to them, but because they are very stridently dominating, I have been constantly insulted by them. Like a fool I have been silent and never answered back. My parents are 81 and 85, with plenty of money to do what they want; they go out every day, are never content with their lot in life and are nasty about everything and everyone. They have no friends, hate the neighbours and do not mix with people if they can help it.

I don’t like or love my parents and it seems that I am the only one who feels this way. My friends are so caring to their parents (even the ungrateful ones) that I wonder where I have gone wrong with mine. I have all the drama of their self-pity, their dislike of my lifestyle, my friends, the way I dress. They say I am so “nice to everybody, but if people knew you like we do, you wouldn’t have any friends!”

We live an hour’s drive away from them, so I am no use for taking them out for jaunts to the garden centre, etc. Even when I was phoning every other day, my mother was always rude to me and gave me the uninterested voice she uses with me, or a litany of complaints. They both enjoy bad health, and my father goes to the doctor at least once a week, sometimes more. Always being the “brave soldier”, he says how much he needs to stay alive to look after my mother because I and my sister (housebound, disabled) would both kick her up the backside if she was alone.

I have four sons, married to lovely girls, and I get on fine with them and my wonderful grandchildren. Only one son and his wife visit my parents, who are always jolly with them. That son is not particularly sympathetic about my difficult relationship with his grandparents. But the other three are, and keep away from them. My poor husband has never spoken his mind to them over the years; partly because I wrongly believed that it would only make things worse.

After the last bout of nastiness and shouting at me down the phone (nearly two weeks ago) I haven’t spoken to them. It’s bliss not having to listen to their moans. I have visited my sister in the same town and she said that they've been especially nice to her, though she’s not fooled. She knows how manipulative they’ve been all our lives – throwing tantrums, threatening “You’ll be sorry when I’m gone” to us as children/adults etc.

Maybe I should just accept them the way they are. But I don’t want to any more. They’ve never liked me, so why should I always go back for more? I used to think I needed to see them as a sort of penance/balance to my beautiful life. How do I cope with the guilt trip of being a bad daughter now? Lorraine

What will we be like when we’re old? Most of us like to imagine ourself as a twinkling, apple-cheeked sweetie dispensing wisdom and entertaining anecdotes from the armchair. Yet there’s the grim possibility of a curmudgeonly slide towards the grave. I watch programmes in which well-known men and women (younger than I) happily enact the roles of grumpy old men and women, thinking that if they’re moaning this much now, an unhappy future as old gits looks assured. Your letter is a painful reminder of how selfish and unpleasant the elderly can be, and will resonate with readers who perhaps never dare to express irritation with those who gave them birth. Goneril and Regan are a poisonous pair but – honestly – wouldn’t King Lear as Dad test anybody’s patience?

After the last screaming match, you feel your silence is justified, yet you still feel guilty. Why? It goes with the territory of being a grown-up child, but conscience is part of the system of checks and balances that makes us human. In Middle English the word was inwit (inner knowledge) but when the Latinate took over it was with a broader meaning – con+ scire= to know together. So this was beyond the individual’s inner self-knowledge, this was the collective wisdom of the tribe. What we share are standards by which we know right from wrong, and by which we may judge our own actions, as well as those of others. This is what keeps us from the cruelty and chaos that afflict the moral universe when two of Lear’s daughters, aided by Gloucester’s bastard son, abandon their duty as children.

Please don’t think that I’m trying to add to your guilt, because I’m not. This is just my way of explaining it. Your inner niggles are being reinforced by the collective aware-ness – both moral and expedient – that we need to look after the old as we in our turn will want/need/expect to be looked after. I have no doubt at all that everything you say about your parents is true, that you’ve shown the patience of a saint. Blessed with great parents, I read your letter with sympathy. But you started the unedited version with the interesting statement: “I’m not writing to you to ask permission to be nasty.” It seems to me that that disclaimer reveals what you did want. But you knew that I would be unlikely to give it.

I used the word “duty” above, and hear groans up and down the land, so unfashionable is the concept in this age of selfish cynicism. Yet the reason people visit aged parents suffering from dementia is because their filial duty takes them there, no matter how much distress they feel when Mum asks “Who are you, dear?” or Dad turns his back. Falling out with your parents permanently isn’t an option; it will only make you feel worse. You need somehow to cultivate a mechanism whereby you don’t let them get to you as they do. Easier said than done? Yes, but since they won’t try, the only option is for you to find a way through. It’s too late for them to change, but not too soon (dare I whisper?) for you to catch their selfishness. You don’t want that. So why should you bother? Because it’s the right thing to do.

It might be useful to start with some questions. I’d love to know how they themselves were parented – a little private project, ana-lysing why they’ve ended up like this: unhappy, resentful, disappointed, unloving, unloved. If you pity them for their unhappiness, can you still be so affected by its nastier manifestations? Why do they have it in common? If you conclude that one is actually worse than the other, then use the least troubled of the pair as a way back in. The child in you who felt bullied by them needs to be replaced by an adult who shrugs, philosophically: “Who cares?” Your letter reveals a woman laudably aware of her own good fortune, intelligent, imaginative and humorous. You need to focus all those qualities on your tiresome parents.

Write them a letter, saying that you don’t quite understand what it is you have done to make them so angry, but couldn’t they call a truce? If they don’t reply right away, follow up with a card. I suggest that you enlist the help of your son who sees them, and wonder if at least one of the grandchildren (better; a pair of cousins, involving the other disaffected sons) could pretend to have a school project which is to write a “biography” of his/ her grandparents, complete with old photos. Your father can recall childhood toys and tell army stories, your mother can describe what she wore at 20, how she met your dad etc; this way they will feel that they have a function and enjoy the centre stage. The kids could make a book and present them with it, and when they are dead this will be a wonderful document for the family to have. Think about it, good daughter.

Do you need advice about your relationships? E-mail your problems to: bel.mooney@thetimes.co.uk or write to her at: times2, 1 Pennington Street, London E98 1TT. Details such as your age are helpful. Please include your real name, but we will use your chosen pseudonym if you wish. Bel Mooney reads all letters but cannot enter into personal correspondence

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