Dad’s girlfriends: What to do?

Dear Amy: Our elderly father has had long-term, concurrent relationships with multiple women in the same city for many years. It seems clear that the women are not aware. Each acts as if she is his main companion. We respect our dad’s decision to lead his own life and have no judgments of him that he chooses to have multiple partners. But we are uncomfortable with his deception regarding his partners and have had related conversations with him about this.

He made it clear that he will not make any changes to how he handles these dynamics. This puts us in awkward situations — for example, when they ask us questions about why they don’t see us more often or why they can’t visit him during his occasional hospital stays. Of course, we encourage them to ask him questions instead of us. These women are nice and kind and we enjoy being with them (although this does not happen much because we don’t want to be in the middle). We wonder what to do in the event of a significant health issue and how to handle the convergence of the companions at his eventual funeral/ memorial. (He has suggested separate funerals.) We would value your opinion and recommendations.

— Concerned Adult Children

Dear Children: You are doing a very good job of maintaining boundaries between your father’s multiple deceptions. When a similar situation happened in my own life (multiple people arriving at the ICU claiming to have a special relationship with my family member) hospital workers told me they see this frequently. If it had been up to me, I would have said to welcome everyone. Unfortunately, one result was that no one was permitted to visit.

You are not your father’s gatekeeper and you are not responsible for maintaining his multiple deceptions. Tell him you will never lie to any of these women. Nor do you need to explain or interpret his behavior to any of his partners. If he wants to plan and pay for multiple funerals to continue this deception after his death, then you might be able to respect his wishes. If he is not willing to plan and finance this, then you should welcome everyone to a celebration of his complicated life. Do not make choices among people that your father isn’t willing to make.

You can write Amy Dickinson at askamy@tribune.com or by mail to: Ask Amy, Chicago Tribune, TT500, 435 N. Michigan Ave., Chicago, IL 60611.