To think this was horrible of my dad?

[Rainbowparrots]

After my mum died, my dad met another woman. He’d spend Christmas with her and her family and I wasn’t invited.

Selfish and cold-hearted behaviour. I hope you have found happiness and good support now.

That’s awful.

I have a friend who was at boarding school aged 8-18. In Australia.

She wasn’t collected by her parents at Easter although both wrote to her.
In the summer her mother collected her and took her home to …. Tasmania where she met her step father newly married to her mother and her father had left for England and was also remarried. She didn’t see father until she was 18.
At 18 she was put on a one way flight to England and sent to her father. By then she hadn’t seen him for 8 years or met any of her new 4 half sister.

Phoning him when she arrived and saying her mother had sent her and she was now expected to live with him - he said no that her step mother would not allow her in the house ever. And he got on a train to meet her in London. She had been given no money to live on. A woman in the corner shop took pity on her and took her ‘home to get flat’ she met her father who gave her in todays money about £200K and said he was sorry that was it - no inheritance nothing just ‘that’ that was apparently her inheritance from her grandparents on both sides and he said he would meet her once a year on her birthday. Mother has had 3 girls. She fitted in neither family - no Christmas invites to either.
she brought a flat and ended up fairly well off - and became a teacher but never had a decent friendship or relationship. Any slight - she would just stop talking to them - she waited every year for daddy to come and meet her for a drink and that was it.

both families worth millions she got nothing other than the flat.

all she wanted was a family. She is now very very Ill in a nursing home and has no relationship with any of her 7 sisters. It is all very very sad.

OP, I understand you’re hurt and it makes it so much harder that your dad has died and you can’t get closure. My mum left my dad when I was just 13 and he moved in with his new girlfriend and her family when I was coming up to 15. He left me alone in our new home, hundreds of miles from any other family and friends. My mum died about fifteen years ago and we had reconciled thankfully and my dad and I have cordial bit distant relationship. I have a daughter of a similar age and cannot imagine the thought process that made him think that was ok.

FIL was like this. I judge too.
When his wife died he quickly remarried. One day teenager DH went home and his key wouldn’t work. His ‘step mother’ answered the door and told him his dad didn’t live there anymore! You just can’t imagine doing that to your own teenager can you?
I see a lot of old men in my work and many of them have basically moved from one family (either through death or divorce) and onto the next woman and her family. It’s like they can’t actually live alone and cope without a wife doing everything for them so they move on. It is very sad and hurtful to those children suddenly abandoned.

It kind of makes sense that three Christmasses later he's moved on to a new relationship.

I think the important question is whether you were invited to join them or not.

no op it was very unreasoable to not be with you or invite you-i assume it was the new partner didnt want you there-but to be left alone is really shtty of him

my df done similar but i wasnt a teen or left alone-all thoughts of his previous family were secind to his new partner-we dont have the same relationship

It says in the OP she wasn’t….

It says in the OP she wasn’t….

Oh god, I'm an idiot.

I think that’s shocking op. In my family we take turns hosting Christmas, and alternating families but it’s an absolute given that no one spends Christmas alone unless they actively want to. That’s true at any age. I really can’t understand people saying it was ok to leave you at 19 but not at 17. You dad should have been ashamed of himself, as should his new partner.

That’s awful. I hope you’ve had support and therapy (should you want it) to deal with the trauma and grief.

I feel your pain op.
My Dad was a great Dad up and till the moment he met a new woman after my Mum died ( I was 8).
Then it was like I was a second class citizen. It was awful. I haven’t spoken to him for gone 20 years now. I was abandoned in my formative years and still bare the emotional scars today.
sending you big hugs

This is horrible but sadly not as rare as you would hope.

I don't understand why your dad's partner didn't invite you to join your dad, her and her children, for Christmas. Yes it is horrible.

You're not wrong to judge such a complete lapse in humanity on the part of your dad.

What a deeply unpleasant post. My DM died when I was 16 and I would have found this treatment devastating at 20. Your "poor little orphan" comment shows a total lack of understanding of the impact of losing a parent as a teenager.
It says nothing about the OP but an awful lot about you.

OP - I think that’s an unforgivable thing for your dad to do. You’d lost your mum and those late teens early twenties are tough anyway when you’re finding your feet. I can’t understand how anyone could be so mean.

These things have a habit of rearing their ugly heads. You say your Dad was grieving. We all react differently. Yes it was wrong of him but you sound like a well adjusted reasonable person who has got in with their lives. So out it back in the box where it belongs. Best wishes.

Sounds bad but it also depends on if you were being very clear you wanted absolutely nothing to do with him/them or were being intolerable (smashing up their house etc). All things I’ve heard kids of divorced and remarried friends do in the hope daddy will get divorced. If however you would have wanted to join them, there were no other issues, and he refused to invite you then yes I’d absolutely agree it’s unreasonable.

Yeh your dad fucker up. Horrible git.

It’s true that I was 17 when my mum died and I was 20 by the time he’d moved out altogether (although he did take up with his new partner very speedily after my mum died.) It was a pretty horrible time because I was doing my A levels and my dad would go to spend weekends with his new partner which turned into long weekends which turned into weeks. (She lived in a different part of the country.)

She definitely took the view that I was twenty years old and old enough to fend for myself, and my dad evidently agreed!

That’s so sad, sorry OP. I relied on my parents’ warmth and safety throughout my 20s despite not living with them, and can only imagine how hurtful it must have been that he was spending Christmas with another family with grown up children.

I really sympathise OP. I never had a dad. My mother abandoned me to go abroad with my stepfather when I was 16. I didn't see them again until they retired and came back to the UK.
They want me to act like nothing happened but I hate them. They are rich and had a great life while I struggled with mental health problems and had to make my own way in life.
I wa t nothing g to do with them and they never said sorry. They treat me like a poor relation.

Her mother died at 16 so to be honest i think the should have a large amount of grace a space offered to her and if we're being honest if that scenario was presented.

not chosen to abandon his grieving child in favour of 1 day with his gf?

He should be forever ashamed of himself. It makes you wonder if he has any feelings for you, OP. He's utterly self centred and callous.

I definitely didn’t smash up the house! Probably sullen and moody and withdrawn.