To feel as though this is the last straw

[DumbestBlonde]

I have attached a copy of the letter I received yesterday (it comes from Canada, and not to my home, so took a while).... It will have crossed in the air with the Father's Day card I sent, with a small message.
Full disclosure (mentioned elsewhere, but I don't expect anyone to search, or remember), this gentleman was not a father in any real sense; he fought for custody to control my mother, and then put me with his parents (I was 2.5), with no further legal actions. (I dod not see my mother again until I was 16.)
Lots of history, but I never lived with him - he has been married to third wife for 50 years this year. They have two sons who are now in their 40s and have various children (both have also been divorced).
I have tried to turn to him for help several times - but not recently. He is a very rich man. I have also very rarely asked him for some career input, or moral support. Drawn a blank there too.

I have not tried to speak to him on the phone since July 2019; I have not written to him, or replied (told not to, on both counts) to letters from him - usually of this nature, have been worse - since, I think, 2014 - and that was actually an email in which he called me "holier-than-thou", and told me to Get A Life. I will not conduct our relationship via email, and he knows that.

This has come out of the blue - and I am at a complete loss. In the past, I have spent hours - days even, trying to compose a suitable reply. To the detriment of every other aspect of my life (also posted elsehwere). When I read stuff like this, I just cannot see the point in going on.
Can someone please give me an opinion, or two; or more? I feel that whichever way I turn, I am being unreasonable. Is the only way, Out?
xx

(If i am not allowed to do this, someone please tell me....)

Nothing you say will be good enough. Nothing you say will land with him. Nothing you say will cause him to have any insight or gain you any satisfaction.

Work on building up your own self worth so that you feel able to just cut him out altogether.

Reading that as a complete stranger all that comes across to me is Hello, arsehole here being an arse

The tone reminds me of FIL who DH eventually went NC with. Nothing is ever his fault either.

I recommend a ceremonial burning of the letter. Then treat yourself on Fathers Day and never send him another card. . To some extent you are grieving for the father you have never had and it’s OK to acknowledge this and accept your feelings. Ultimately there is nothing in your power to change him and the relationship, so just unplug him.

I'm so sorry you wasted a stamp on sending this nasty fuckwit a Father's Day card.

While in the meantime, he was composing this for you, and for what reason?
Just to put you down. Just to tell you off. Just to let you know how hard done by he is, just to insult your mother? There is no love here. In fact there is only hateful spite.

But I'm even more sorry that you have been (and are) wasting your emotional and mental energy on him.

He isn't worth it, and you will NEVER get any satisfaction by communicating with him.

You may be about to spend waste days thinking about him, agonising about how/whether to respond to his badly written, narcissistic ramblings.
I completely understand that. Even agonising about what he will think if you don't reply or acknowledge.

It doesn't actually matter what he thinks. His thoughts are disordered nonsense anyway, he will think whatever he thinks. His opinion is not worth the paper it's written on.

He really is not worth your valuable time, your thoughts, your careful considerations, your cards, your energy, or your sanity.

HE IS NOT WORTH IT.

He is a poor excuse for a father.
He always was.
He always will be.

I wouldn't have anything to do with him ever again.

So sorry

If you are ready to give up on it, then write a one liner to him & explain you will not be communicating with him any more & from here on in return his letters unread (& return the insulting one you just received).

BTW, aside from the relationship issues...what is wrong with email in genetal terms that you will not use it? It is so much more efficient in terms of delivering the written word.

What an arsehole is right.
Boring to boot.

Ignore him completely, without opening any further contact from him.

OP, i wont go into details as this is your thread, however, we have a couple of situations very similar to this in our family, I have seen the awful damage this has caused two people who are very close to me, one is now in their mid 80s, is still broken by the emotional damage caused by a lifetime of trying and failing to please a father who never really cared and will never really get over it, the other is 30 and has gone NC and is far better off, they are working on treating themselves and raising their self esteem and respect and embracing the people in thier lives that truly love them, please do this yourself, its so hard but sometimes we have to recognise that even a parent is just not worth our thoughts/care/love. You are worth so much more than this man will ever know, he has let you down in the worst way and you deserve better!

Just echoing what others have said op, I wouldn't give this "man" any more headspace, what does he bring you but anxiety, anguish, self doubt. I hope you can remove him from your life and find some peace of mind.

What a spectacularly unpleasant person wrote this letter!

This man is no reflection on you OP. You owe nothing to him. You are a complete person, no reference to toxic family needed. You are doing just fine without this horribleness.

Please go NC and burn further letters without opening them. You deserve so much more out of life.

The letter is a string of cliches held together with dislike, hostility and nastiness. There is no depth of amy sort to it and thus probably to the man that wrote it.

Bin it. He might have money but he is not rich and I suspect you ignoring him will drive him crazy - win!

The only way is out. He knows the relationship is blown too. This isn’t a reconciliation letter, this is just a hate mail with kisses at the end to make it crueller.

I actually laughed when you said he complained that his other children and grandchildren aren’t interested in talking to him, is it any fucking wonder??

What a vile, vile man. He doesn't deserve to be called a father. Seriously, just ghost him. NC from now on. It's laughable that he's a writer, as the only thing he seems to be good at writing is nastiness and cliche.
One of my cousins had a "father" a bit like this. Fond of criticising her, her sister and her mother, totally blind to his own multitude of faults, and violent to boot. When she cut him off completely (after he had assaulted her mum when she was dying in a hospice) he sent her the nastiest letter I have ever read, via a solicitor, disowning her. The rest of the family didn't know this until he died, and found out he'd banned all family from his funeral. (And he was a senior police officer - not uncommon in these types apparently). Sociopaths like him and your father cannot bear not having the last word. They can see no wrong in themselves. If it weren't so serious it would be almost laughable that he refers to "normal people" and includes himself in that description when he is in fact so very far from normal himself.
I think you need to look into counselling of some sort, and allow yourself to grieve for the father you deserved but didn't get. There is an excellent Facebook group called Necessary Family Estrangement which you might find helpful. Sadly, fathers (and mothers) like yours are not uncommon. What they do have in common is a rewriting of history and a staggering lack of self awareness.
I really do think that destroying his letters unread would be a good course of action. Or, have a trusted friend or relative read and keep them for you if you feel unable to do that. You are obviously a kind, empathetic person. Do not waste your empathy on this emotional black hole of a person, he simply isn't worth it.

I’m surprised he can walk what with carrying that huge ego around on his back, it must weigh a ton.

Clearly no one, not even chatty Pattie, has told him if you haven’t got anything nice to say it’s best not to say anything.

So sad to hear about your disrupted childhood. I do hope that your grandparents who raised you were kinder than their awful son.

I’m sorry but this made me laugh. Do we share a dad?
Honestly I would have to find amusement in his behaviour and I would cut contact. I speak to my dad once a year - if that, and it’s very quick short and pretty much pointless.

Sorry you’re related to a dick OP.

Your dad sounds like a massive knob - similar to mine. After a lot of therapy, I've realised it genuinely doesn't matter what I do, it will never be enough because he has a personality disorder. Anything I have ever done wrong (not a huge amount as a fairly normal teenager etc) is held up as proof I'm a terrible person when he's in a mood, while other times he complains about having no relationship with me. It's hard, I feel for you, it still tears me apart. Can you cut him off completely? It sounds like he's never going to be a pleasant part of your life - writing about your mum like that in a letter just shows how vile he can be. What a knob. Sorry xx

I’d be tempted to send back an otherwise blank piece of paper with just the link to this thread on in and “a mirror for Narcissus” and then move house and never talk again

Wow! He is really vile, isn't he?

I can't believe he'd write a letter complaining about your disinterest in his news.

Firstly, any normal, nice person would not be writing to simply tell you news that you are expected to want to hear. Writing an informal letter to any family or friend would usually start with asking about the person you're writing to, what they've been doing, how their family are - hopefully also something else to show you've given them some thought and have an interest in them and their life, too! "Last time you wrote you told me about little Jimmy's impending school concert, I do hope it went well?" type of thing.

Whereas this man just wants you to be thankful that he's telling you about him!

He is clearly a complete narcissist - as everyone else has already pointed out. He's really done a number on you, hasn't he? I'm so sorry that he's driven you to the point that you are constantly worried about not doing the right thing.

He doesn't deserve your thoughtfulness, he seriously doesn't. I guess you don't feel you can tell him what he really is, though?

Perhaps you could write it all down as a letter to him and not actually send it if you feel you can't? It might help?

You both come across as dysfunctional. You seem angry that he took custody of you at a young age and you didn’t see your mother until the age you could decide. It does seem odd that a court would appoint sole custody to a father with no visitation to the mother if she was a fit parent. Also you seem to indicate other children she subsequently had were removed/adopted? Without knowing the full story it seems hard to know if your father was unreasonable at the time or not.

Irrespective of your mother’s actions only an idiot would write what he did in a letter to their daughter.

Not sure what’s up with the email as it seems a perfect route of communication and would resolve the issues on both sides but you don’t seem to want that? Much better than the phone calls that are obviously going pear shaped. He writes ‘came back from a week away at x, was hit, glad to be back. What have you been up to?’. You write ‘sounds like a nice week, Harry started school last week and is living it. Has that tree you planted recovered or died as you were expecting?’. It’s easy.

As for the phone calls, none of us are there so who knows. Again, only an idiot writes what he did in this regard, most people just think it and leave it as that even if you do only talk about yourself with no interest if others, can’t end the conversation etc (no idea if that’s the case or not).

I would say either just cut contact altogether or go the email route which would likely solve most of the angst.

eh? read that letter twice, and still do not understand what it is waffling on about.

I would just bin it and then forget about it.

Go no contact. He adds nothing of value to your life,in fact, detracts from it. If it makes you feel less “disrespectful” then send a final email telling him that you are going non contact and that you no longer wish to receive any communications from him. In that way you will no longer have to even think about him or have a background anticipation of another unpleasant letter. Good luck.

It is a very hard decision to make to cut ties with a parent, because to do it, you have to acknowledge that they failed to parent you (clearly true here) and that you don't have a close relationship which most people in the world have. But once you do it, you feel unbelievably liberated. Making the decision not to reply, contact him or ever put any energy into thinking about him again could release untapped happiness and energy in your life.

Nasty bastard, he comes across like a true narcissist. It’s the way he doesn’t seem to take blame for any of his actions at all, everything is someone else’s fault or issue. He’s deflecting blame for his shit actions onto you and your Mother, basically. He also doesn’t have the greatest attitude towards his own Mother or wife, all women I see. He can’t just throw his arms up in the air and admit he was a twat and he made mistakes, everything is down to you or someone else forcing him into that situation.

In all honesty I would burn the letter and in future if any arrive from him (I’m sure you’ll recognise handwriting/postage stamps) then burn without opening. Don’t communicate with him again, he is a horrible little man.

OP you could spend weeks trying to figure out what he means, what he wants, what you've done wrong or right what he wants you to do etc but you will never be able to because he is clearly fucked up. What ever you write back will be "wrong".

Its very temping to tell him to fuck off, or end the letter back mark TLDR, or anything but it will feed the beast. You could get a solicitor to write to tell him not to contact you. Or easier, just bin this letter and never open another, just rip them up and burn them.

None of this is on you OP. These people failed you a long time ago. You must put them in your past.

@PyongyangKipperbang

Dear Father (so called)

Your life is a car crash of your own making. Your kids and g.kids dont care about you because you are a cruel selfish and utterly unlikeable person. Not our fault but yours.

Feel free to blame the shit show that you call an existence on other people if it stops you hating the person who looks back at you in the mirror. I wont be responding again, find your supply somewhere else.

^^

This. In spades.

@YerWanIsGettinNotions

Bin it OP, and put him out of your mind. Easier said than done, I know. But that really tells us everything about him we would ever need to know. It's not you, he’s a self-absorbed twat.

Couldn't resist that dig at your mum either, could he?

Seems sensible. Nothing in OP or the letter suggest that there is any point trying to have any sort of relationship. Ignore.