My dad rejected me

Have you been through this personally?

His loss OP. Concentrate on the people that do love you. You can't change anything now he's dead, concentrate on living your best life.

Op

I'm not saying that it doesn't leave a mark, it absolutely does but it doesn't have to define your whole life. It is possible to have a fulfilled life despite him being a deadbeat .

I'll always be affected by it and it's a thing if you know what I mean. That said sometimes I feel at peace and other times it's overwhelming.

Like any grief there's no right way or wrong way to deal with it but you do live with it. And it's been 8 years since I last saw them. I do hope they are okay. I sometimes check the death notices at home because I know I won't be told if they die and I would say a prayer for them.

I don't know. I just do my best.

I'm so sorry op. Sending love to you and your brother. You both deserve much better. Your story makes me feel profoundly sad. I hope you can find some healing.

Funding spirituality or anything else, may work for some but it's not for everyone.

I don’t speak to my dad, did for a while but he hit and abused me so not a nice man at all, so that’s how I cope with being the child of a horrible man, your dad is a horrible person rejecting his own child, how awful in my mind he didn’t deserve my anger etc it was wasted on him because he is not a good person or a person worthy of me or my sister and our families. It is horrible and I’m sorry it’s affected you, it’s definitely worth getting some sort of professional help to support you moving on and coping in the future, don’t let him take anymore away from you.

Op.
I think you might need to have some
More therapy or change therapy. I know having your father reject you was deeply traumatic for you but it shouldn't still define you and your life today. Unfortunately many many people are abandoned by their parents. It shouldn't happen and it's deeply traumatic but most people go on an live full lives despite this . You need to find a way to accept this for what it was ( horrible) but park it and concentrate on living your best life. We only get one .

The world is full of strange unexpected things. We can’t always shape it to our will, make it fair or beautiful. All we can do is survive despite the worst it throws at us.

Those two men were small and inadequate. They were unable to behave appropriately towards you, your mum and brother. They preferred to come up with fantastic excuses that made it seem ok to walk away and ignore your needs. The people around them came up with similar fantasies to allow them to continue to think well of the inadequate men they were related to.

You have made it to adulthood despite them. You have to keep on overcoming that legacy, and with every breath you prove them inadequate liars.

One day, maybe, you can have compassion for their limitations.

But it’s not an obligation. Your only obligation is to make the best you can of the situation you were landed with.

💐

His rejection has NOTHING to do with you and everything to do with him.

I just think there was some reason, some grand universal reason, for the genetics of that woman and that man needing to come together to create that exact child, and that exact child needed to be here, exactly as created.

If the man or the woman move on from interacting with that exact child, it's unfortunate, but in the bigger scheme of things, that exact child needed to be created and it's now on that exact child to fulfill their life's purpose, whatever that may be.

For some parents, that moment of creation of that exact child, may be their only role in that exact child's life.

Your uncle is an uncaring, abusive POS and your father was an uncaring, abusive POS. If your father had stayed closer to you eg seen you regularly he would still have been an uncaring, abusive POS, albeit a lot closer...fucking up your mental health in totally different ways. You would not have had the relationship you wanted either because he wasn't the loving, caring person you want. Maybe try and see it as the lesser of two evils. Yes, moving on from the abandonment sucks but potentially having had him in your life day in day out, making you feel lesser than on a daily basis, up close and personal throughout the years would have fucked you up even worse.

I'm so sorry that you have had so much to cope with. I also have shit parents, who have rejected me over and over again. I have found that the only way to cope (apart from keeping contact down to the bare minimum) is to accept that they simply do not have what I need from them. I have needed very little, but got far less than that!

It is normal and common to feel love and warmth towards your children, but my parents are not like that towards me, although they seem much fonder of my siblings. They don't have whatever it is that would have stopped them from sending me (and only me) to another country when I was 11, and basically leaving me to be raised by school and relatives. They don't have whatever would have made them react to my life-threatening illness with something other than concern for themselves. They don't have whatever would have made my daughter's sudden death more of a priority than being n time for work. It doesn't exist in them, so there is no way for me to have it.

Your father was not a good man. He was a terrible father to you. You deserved better. I hope you find a way to make sure that his rejection is not the deciding factor in how your life pans out, and that you find contentment.

He's obviously a knob. I have the same and just live my life with those who want to be in it. This is out of your control. I would advise therapy. From the moment he said he didn't want to see me the first time, I wouldn't have looked for him ever again. Life is way too short OP. I wish you a very speedy recovery.

I'm so sorry OP, this person wasn't a father, merely a supplier of genetic material.
He is the defective one, not you. You deserved much better.
I wish you every happiness and I hope that you can heal as time goes on.

The problem is that we put our parents on a pedestal, even when they don't deserve it.

Any idiot can have a child, it's not difficult. Insects with about 3 brain cells manage it. It's "insert tab a into slot b", pump a few times and job done. That bits easy. Actually being a parent is far more difficult. Lots of people are capable of it, some are even capable of doing it well.

And some aren't willing to do it at all. And that's absolutely fine, except when they make that decision after already having a kid.

Your father didn't reject you @Carly944 , he rejected being a father, being a parent. It wasn't about you. It wouldn't have mattered if you behaved differently, or were a different child. He was always going to walk away from his child, no matter who the child was. He was rejecting a version of his life, not the person.

I second others suggestion that you stay in therapy but I also will make two suggestions.

1. look into mindfull self compassion. It is a practice that can enable us to accept and compassionately encompass even deep griefs and injustice like the one you have suffered. If you like to read I highly recommend the work of Tich Nhat Hanh the Buddhist monk. All his books are great and very accessible but I think you eill like his book Reconciliations about grappling eith this kind of pain.

2. actually I will leave it at that!

I'd just been thinking about this over the weekend.

My dad stopped speaking/contacting me when i was 15. He'd already moved 8 hours away before that and then found out he'd moved to the other side of the country with my step mum and step sister not long after that. They play happy families these days, he's very involved with her children.

I often sit and wonder what i would do if he passes away, would i show up and what would his family say. They didn't make much effort so i eventually lost contact with all that side of the family. Whenever id see them as a teen they would ask if i had heard from him and then tut and do an eye roll when i said no. At the time it was just awkward for me, could hardly bitch about their brother to them could i. Looking back though i just wonder why the fuck did they not ask him themselves and call him out.

I've had a little contact since with step mum mainly who apologized and wanted to meet up. i thanked her but said it needs to come from him. I need an explanation from him. He still hasnt bothered. Dont think i'll ever know why, at least not til he's gone maybe? It wasn't anything we did OP.

Is there a reason you keep reaching out to the uncle when there was never a relationship there? Talk it out with someone and move on, he made his position clear long ago and you'd be better off leaving them all in the past.

I'm so sorry OP. I had a similar situation. I was rejected by my birth mother and I often lived with my grandparents. When I was around her she was physically and mentally abusive. I've never met my birth father. I tracked him down over a decade ago. We arranged to meet up and then the day before he ghosted me. It hurt me deeply for a time but I've come to realise that he didn't reject me because he didn't know me. He rejected the idea of me. Admittedly, I did get rather angry and sent him an email where I detailed what I thought of him especially as his fiance was a decade younger than me and they'd been together since she was 17 (he was 30 years older.

You are so much more deserving than the awful treatment you've experienced. There are awful people in this world and your father and his brother are included in that. I hope you find peace.

Everyone here is sympathetic to the OP, and they are trying to suggest a way forward. The advice may not be what you would give, but it doesn't warrant your unkind response.

It actually makes sense to me for OP to speak to her mum - if it's a viable option - to see if there's some history that would help make sense of the situation. That is not, to say the mother should be blamed for the father's behaviour. It's just about trying to make sense of a sorry situation.

I see it as his loss not mine.

My siblings and I, including our brother who died as a baby, and his grandchildren were not mentioned at his funeral but all the focus was on his second family. Even his death notices implied he only had 2 daughters.

I do wonder what it’s like to have a loving father and often watch/see/hear things which depict a close relationship which send me down those thoughts. But, ultimately, he was a self centred, weak man who I had/have no respect for. And that’s what stops me from dwelling on it.

He may have fathered me but he was never a father to me. I’m a better parent than he was (but still make mistakes!) and the relationship I have with my children is testament to that.

He was never going to change so I chose to change how I framed my relationship with him. And, as I say, his loss.