Hi, I’m hoping to get married in June (optimistic I know) as we want to be married before we buy a house and our rental contract will be up in September and nearly have a deposit together now. Because of this we are just having a v small registry office wedding and a meal after if restaurants are open; we may have a larger party on our anniversary next year perhaps if we can afford.
I largely don’t speak to my dad anymore for around 4-5 years, we send birthday and Xmas cards and perhaps called/I dropped by 1-2 a year just largely to keep the peace as he would otherwise he’d be very unpleasant by text if he hadn’t heard from me that year. He was a good dad when I was young, and I know he loves me very much. We have quite similar academic interests and he always used to try and find places to visit and tv shows/movies and books on those interests that we could enjoy together which I do think of as my best memories with him. The issue is that throughout my life he had a series of addictions; before I was born he was a drinker but stopped but would go between smoking a lot, spending money on reckless purchases and binge eating (in fact made himself quite ill in hospital multiple times) and porn addictions. Obviously most of this I was less aware of as a child but as a teenager this seemed to worsen and obviously I could see what was happening more, it was always my mum who made sure we had enough to live on and she took second and third jobs to pay for this while he rarely worked which she resented as she couldn’t get him to accept help for any length of time. Their relationship was terrible especially in the end; which I do understand was both of their faults for arguing back with each other and both parties stopped nurturing the relationship and they were both really unhappy. My parents divorced when I was 17 due to my dad cheating on top of all the other issues. Things were said and done at the time by my dad which I felt were unfair including hiding funds and income so that my mother was ordered to give him more equity and running up debts in her name that she was unaware of. This changed my opinion of my dad and he has become a very bitter old man and quite a heavy drinker again.
I accidentally discovered a couple of months ago that he isn’t my bio dad when helping Mam out with an unrelated issue regarding a complaint about medical care; she had asked for medical records relating to some hospital trips and an operation to help the complaint and understand entirely what went wrong and the hospital just sent over her entire medical records which was overwhelming and not easy to understand ie. pages of all blood tests and pages of all drs appts etc and nothing was in date order so I was helping to sort through. My parents had conceived me with donor sperm privately so she thought this wouldn’t be on nhs records but there was a letter about it that she had handed to her gp (as you often get after hospital/private care so they know the situation) that she had forgotten about and I believe it was a genuine error that I found out.
Obviously this was a lot to take in as I’d never had any suspicion they’d even had fertility issues and they had told absolutely nobody at all on my dad’s insistence. I’m not upset they kept it from me and can understand why but obviously was a shock and have been thinking a lot about my dad and my childhood ever since; it’s probably made me think of him more fondly as he obviously knew he wasn’t raising a biological child and I can imagine that being quite hard for him and maybe worsened some of his behaviour.
The issue being that I wasn’t planning to invite him to my wedding at all as we just don’t have a good relationship and I know that he really doesn’t get on with anyone on either side of my family so I didn’t want drama. With it being now a v small wedding my partner is having his parents attend only and I was wanting my mum and maternal grandparents (both had the vaccine last week which is really great!) and had wanted my grandfather to walk me into the room. To be absolutely clear there will be no aisle or music or dramatic moment of giving away it’s just I need to get into the room somehow and I thought it would be nice as he is my mums stepdad and didn’t bring her up and had no children himself but has been around for me my whole life and I’m very close with my grandparents. My dad has walked a goddaughter and his sister down the aisle at big showy weddings and was not bothered; if anything he was reluctant so I didn’t think he’d be that upset about it especially as we aren’t close. But as I’d been thinking about him recently and felt much more grateful for the lovely things he did when I was little and people kept encouraging me to invite him I asked my dad if he would also attend but advised that I had already asked my grandad to walk me in but it would be very low key. I thought this would be ok and made sure to emphasise how lovely it would be for him to be there and that it is nice that he is recorded on my marriage cert and suggested we could go for coffee and cake the next week just me and dad to celebrate as well as everyone being at the meal in case it was awkward as he doesn’t speak with my mam. He became very angry and was shouting into the phone at me and then was sobbing and I was very confused and upset myself as obviously it wasn’t nice that I was being shouted at and had caused my dad to be sobbing and kept trying to reinforce that it wasn’t going to be a proper giving away and that I had not intended for him to be upset as he’d always expressed it being a bit pointless and hadn’t been fussed about the previous ones he’d done so I hadn’t thought he considered it a big deal. I could kinda tell he was trying to get me to say that he could just do it instead but I didn’t wanna change my decision while I was really upset and confused so was very non commital when he asked if I was still doing it that way even though he was upset by it. He said he would call me back next week when he’d decided whether or not to come and hung up.
He doesn’t yet know that I know about the donor conception and I had been hoping that I could have this conversation with him in the months after my wedding once I understood my feelings about it better as I feel it’s important to let him know that I still consider him my dad as he is the one who brought me up and that I’m grateful that he brought me up and agreed to have a baby that way and everything. I am still unpacking some of my own feelings around the donor I think which also complicates the issue.
I just feel that I’ve majorly fucked up everything and am not sure what to do, I’m very anxious about his call next week and wish I had not mentioned the wedding to him as he will now be either bitter about it and not come or he will come but I will be on edge about him making a scene or unpleasant comments or turning up drunk (which I did gently say would make me v uncomfortable at the beginning of the call which he took really well and was understanding about) but now he is angry he could easily ignore and turn up drunk. I just feel however it turns out that there is a shadow over the wedding and it’s all my fault. My partner is fuming because obviously I was a state when trying to explain what had happened on the call but has now calmed down and is happy to support me however I want and would be v civil to him if I still want him there. My mum was also supportive when I told her as she asked how it had gone (I’d told her I was inviting him so she wasn’t blindsided) and I got upset and had to tell her but she also was very much of the opinion that I should have expected an unreasonable reaction.
Thank you for reading if your still here, sorry it’s so long it’s just I find it hard to explain everything. What should I do? I can’t really uninvite him as that’s very rude but now I feel that I should have not let myself be persuaded by other people and my memories of happier times but it’s too late to undo it all