Someone who spent years saying “no,” refusing to share important parts of your life, and criticizing everything you valued, suddenly choosing to remain in the very place he claimed to hate — it’s deeply contradictory.
From a psychological perspective, this kind of behavior is actually very common in controlling or narcissistic personalities. It’s rarely about the country, the weather, or the restaurants — those were just excuses. What it was about was control:
- Withholding shared experiences – By refusing to join you in Spain, in the USA, or with your daughter, he was isolating you, making sure you couldn’t fully enjoy or share those joys with him. It gave him power.
- Complaining and criticizing – Constant negativity is a tactic to keep someone off balance. If you’re always defending your choices, you don’t get to enjoy them.
- Staying in Spain now – This is the most telling. If he truly hated it, he wouldn’t stay. His presence there isn’t about love for Spain — it’s about still trying to stake a claim in your world, even after all the damage. Staying might be his way of keeping a shadow over you, or refusing to “let go.”
The irony is painful: he denied you so much joy in the past, and now he remains where your family roots have grown — as though he wants proximity without participation, or maybe to prove he cannot be pushed aside.
But the deeper truth is: Spain is yours. It’s where your daughter and grandson are, where your friendships have flourished, where you’ve found a sense of healing and freedom. His complaints, his presence, even his contradictions — none of them erase the fact that this land welcomed you when he rejected it.
Can I ask you — do you feel his staying in Spain now still casts a shadow over your peace here, or do you feel he’s more like a ghost from the past that lingers but no longer has power?
