To be frustrated we’ve come all this way for his daughter just to cancel

Most women overlook that their partners are terrible Dads for their own benefit.

OP, I honestly find it quite bizarre that you have never talked properly about politics or the war with a DP who is Russian.

This war has been massive, not just on Ukraine and Ukrainians, but it’s affect on wider Europe including the UK.

Do you have no interest into what side he is on? Or even the Russian pov on nuances that might be new to us here?

Bloody hell, I wouldn’t want to be xenophobic about Russian people, but with Russia invading Ukraine, destroying undersea cables, sending their subs through our waters in the Channel, North Sea and Irish Sea, operating troll farms to interfere in elections I would want to know in detail where my partner stood.

The rift started in 2022. He visits his Moscow based Ds, his Dd does not live in Russia and is reluctant to let him know much about her life or partner. He is reluctant to talk politics with you.

Time to take an interest.

Is there another ,controlling , person involved in this somewhere?

😂

You get out what you put in, with children especially. No great mystery here.

Ah 🤣

I'll just fetch my coat...

The daughter lives in Lisbon not Russia.

A lot of people have your DH sized up as a wrong'un OP for not visiting his daughter since 2022, when the Russia-Ukraine war began. Given what happened in Ukraine, where they suddenly raised the cut-off for conscription to age 60, I don't blame him for not venturing back, especially if he is not a Putin supporter.

Maybe it’s you. How about the next time he makes plans just to see her alone and maybe that will be more appealing to her and she’ll follow through. Sorry to say that but I think it’s worth a punt

She’s giving him a taste of his own medicine. Certainly if I was her I wouldn’t be re arranging my life to accommodate seeing him when he has only seen her once a year when she was growing up

I feel like you've posted about the russian DP who never sees his kids before...

Was it something like they lived with their mother, and he was in some third country for much of their lives? Or worked away a lot or something?

Either way, I suspect there's a LOT of background that you're not privy to.

I find this a bit odd. You told her 9 months ago you would like to spend time with her. Then message to arrange the details a few weeks before.

Any contact about the trip in between? That seems odd to me.

Do you want a relationship with her? If so then its about providing consistency and stability, coming from a genuine place.

I get why you're annoyed, but I'm not sure what you want us to say.

There's a backstory you haven't got to the bottom of, and I can see how you can change anything. Leave him to sort out his relationship (or lack of) with his DD.

Just don't include her in any major holiday plans in future, then you wont be frustrated when she bails.

Russia has been at war since 2022, though, so that does complicate things somewhat...!

Edited to add: depending on his age, he might get called up to fight 😕

@Ghrale
You are certainly not unreasonable to be frustrated with the situation where you have travelled to a destination you would not have otherwise have travelled to, to be cancelled at the last minute by the person you were going to visit. Perhaps it wasn’t wise to have gone there as a family in the first place? I don’t know. But you aren’t going to find the reason for the daughter’s apathy towards her dad on MN, everyone will post from their own bias. I guess it’s up to your partner to follow up with his DD, and maybe arrange any future meet ups just between him and his daughter rather than you and your DC being put in a similar situation again.

Sounds like he hasn’t been a great father to his kids and now it’s pay back and you are blaming the wrong person and unfortunately you can’t see that!

It’s so he can tell everyone, and himself, that he is a caring father. It’s low effort and makes him look good

“He hasn’t seen his daughter since 2022, when she visited London and spent exactly one hour with him”

These kind of parents make my blood literally boil. That’s a very long time to go without seeing your child, even a grown up child. And she had to make the effort to see him. He’s clearly and absolutely shit Dad. No wonder she doesn’t want to see him. Then, he decides to ‘build his holiday’ around her. He probably wanted the red carpet rolled out for himself as well. I know these type of parents, my Dad was one. I am sure he is all ‘woe is me’ about her not wanting to see him as well.

You keep using ‘we’ about you and your DP, but this is about him and his DC. You don’t know his DC. Would park what’s happened on the Lisbon meet up and stay out of it, other than a reasonable amount of time listening to DP.

It would have been better to plan a holiday to suit you and your DC.

The decision for you was whether you wanted to date a man with a low contact relationship with his young adult DC, without information on the past and current situation other than his version. Many wouldn’t.

Most likely explanation seems that he wasn’t and still isn’t a great father.

I can imagine doing something like this.

I have quite bad social anxiety. I'm fine in my every day life, I work in an office, I have kids and a partner but any plans out of the ordinary get me in a spin. I can make plans in the future, think I'm fine about it but as the reality comes closer and closer it's like a black cloud and then I'll find a reason to bail and the relief is incredible. It's not malicious. In a weird way having plans to meet people is comforting, makes me feel normal and functioning as I hate not being able to deal with social situations that are out of my comfort zone.

May be his daughter is happy with just texting and keeping in touch with her dad that way. And as you believe, in the grand scheme of thing he seems fine with knowing she's happy even if he's not part of her life.

I'm not say if it wasn't wrong for her to make the plans and cancel but it might not have been done maliciously.

It does sound as though there are some very big black holes in your relationship with her dad though, talkig about fundamental things like politics and the war in Ukraine. Also around his relationship with his chikdren/their mother.

Something very odd with this story.
My first thought was that perhaps he doesn’t really have children and it’s all some kind of a love scam.

I agree with the comments regarding a back story and she's obviously punishing him, however she's still happy to take his money, so perhaps she's not that principled. Obviously keeping the phone messaging going so the money keeps coming but not prepared to meetup in person.

You keep saying “ we offered” arrangements should have been between him and his daughter. Tbh I don’t imagine many young women would want to meet an absent father’s girlfriend and her family.

You have been with a Russian man for 5 years, through the start of the war and don't know his thoughts on Putin?

You also do not know why his relationship with his own children is so distant.

You really don't know some quite important things about him after 5 years. Is he paying them money out of perceived cultural duty or to ease his conscience because he was otherwise never there for them - they'll take the money as they feel he owes them but are also not really interested in his too little too late contact if it inconveniences them.

He knows why his relationship with them is like it is, he just doesn't want to admit it to you. I see the same with my brother, he tries to have contact with my adult niece (who I am close to) by showering her with money/gifts, but he will never heal the thousands of tiny emotional wounds he inflicted by never being a father presence when she needed him as a child and growing up. She takes the gifts as she feels awkward saying no, but they will never change the emotional distance and her deep rooted feelings towards him.

Then don't take money off him? She's 26 years old, not a child. I would never take money off someone I essentially wanted to cut off.