Daughter rejection :(

[James365]

Hi, let me start by stating that I’m not looking for sympathy and understanding. I just want to get this off my chest and listen to any advice that may be on offer.

To cut a very long story short, my now 20 year old daughter wants nothing to do with me. This has gone on for ten years and has even gone through the courts when she was younger. I don’t feel like I’ve done anything wrong to cause this. In fact, quite the opposite.

At the end of the day, what point would there be in me writing an anonymous post on this forum if it was full of lies? So please, dear reader, bear with me...

I come from a very stable and healthy background with good morals, strong work ethics and I believe I brought my daughter up well. Her mother meanwhile has been in and out of mental institutions all her life and at one point even admitted to the police her intentions to take my daughter’s life. My belief is that since our divorce 12 years ago, my ex wife has manipulated my daughter through jealousy and her own mental condition to turn her against me. I’ve been reading about Children with Narcissistic Parental Alienation Syndrome along with Children with Personality Disorders and this pretty much sums this all up.

During the past ten years, I don’t feel like I’ve interfered or gone out of my way to cause any problems. But each time I’ve tried to rebuild relations with my daughter I’m eventually met with rejection. This has lasted for so long because I’ve been determined not to give up. However, my daughter has now expressly told me once and for all that she wants nothing more to do with me. Why? Who knows?! I honestly have absolutely no idea. I know for a fact I’m not a bad person. I don’t drink, smoke or take drugs. I have always had a very good and stable job and have never shunned my responsibilities.

I have another daughter with whom I have a perfectly normal relationship with which goes even further in trying to justify my other daughter’s decision. It’s all very frustrating.

So now here’s the crunch. This is the bit that’s made me want to write this post. Despite my daughter’s complete rejection, she is still expecting me to pay her mobile phone bill. It may not seem like much. And money-wise, it isn’t a lot. But in principal I’m struggling to get my head around the cheek of it. She doesn’t want anything to do with me but still expects me to put my hand in my pocket. This is coming from a 20 year old woman who is perfectly capable of getting a job on the side of her uni studies to pay for things like this. Not to mention my late father leaving her a five-figure sum in his will 2 years ago.

Do you see where I’m coming from? Am I being unreasonable to expect her to pay for her own phone use?

It’s pointless having a conversation with her mother and she just repeats how poor she is herself (despite taking regular overseas holidays) and can’t believe that I would even consider stopping paying for the phone bill.

I’m at the point now where I’m considering altering my will to write my daughter out and leave everything to my other daughter. When I eventually die, there will be a considerable sum left behind and I’m struggling to understand why my daughter that has rejected me for ten years should in any way benefit from it. Do you?

Thank you for reading.

Thank you for this post @MohairTortoise . Until it happens to you, you have no right to be judging a person who says they've been alienated. I cannot even begin to describe the pain.

Well if he's been alienated through absolutely no fault of his own, surely the worst thing he could do would be to cut off the one thing his daughter accepts from him, especially since he says he can afford it so he must have some other reason for not wanting to pay it. And to disinherit her too, while leaving everything to the good child.

It's not the sort of thing a blameless, broken-hearted, alienated parent would do. It's the kind of thing a person with a deeply transactional approach to their children would do.

It's NOT a "helpful observation". It's stupid and pointless.

And don't be so silly.

Are you 4?

Well all the carping has probably driven the man away.

Maybe he's just not that good at expressing his feelings.

I'd like to know the answers to the questions that I and other posters have posed before I could comment, unlike some of the armchair amateur sleuths posting utter rubbish.

Again, though, 99% of posts in AIBU present themselves as completely blameless. It's an extreme minority who are genuinely asking a question, and even fewer don't push back hard when people vote YABU.

The only difference with this one is that he's up-front about his gender.

No they don't. They're only one side, sure, and obviously the OP always thinks they're right, but they get torn apart. They do not get preferential treatment for being female. Far from it, we're always being told what bitches we are, how women are their own worst enemy, etc etc.

The only reason you or anyone else is jumping to this guy's defence is because he's a man. Everyone else is pointing out the actual facts, or lack of them. His sex is the only thing preventing you from focusing on his actual question and situation and just complaining about how hard done by you think he is.

But people frequently give views when a mother comes on having issues with her ex? Posts will always be one sided.

I think the best approach is to either answer in good faith as an op looking for advice will only get advice as good as the info they supply, if they post shite then the advice will be meaningless.

No tantrum here, nice try to try and minimise though. Not derailing either, calling out the hypocrisy that is on show here.

If you don't like it, don't respond.

You might want to check out what I've actually said on the subject. My perspective is only peripherally to do with his gender in that I know three good fathers who've been through exactly the same thing, when their daughters were almost exactly the same age - and I've heard of quite a few more when looking into it - and then a couple of years later came back admitting that it was all a load of rubbish and claiming peer pressure as though they had no agency.

It's simultaneously a desperately sad and incredibly weird phenomenon.

THIS.

@Reugny thanks for your input. I’m aware SS take children away as a last resort. The way OP paints his ex however suggests SS are involved, and yes very often SS will presume a parent/child is coping when they are not. I do feel like given the mums apparent long standing history of MH issues that they would be sensitive that this parent/child may need more help and support, and perhaps in this case would raise red flags if at 8 years old were walking home from school alone etc. OP doesn’t sound like he’s particularly tried to better the situation after the courts allegedly failed him. He’s sung his own praises about how upstanding he is but he gives zero indication as to what kicked all this off in the first place or what roads he’s been down to maintain contact. I just don’t buy the way he paints himself as some marvellous father figure yet offers no context to situation other than to slag off the mum with mental health issues. There’s no way he’s blameless in all this with an ego as big as his. And why is he issuing ultimatums and threatening to disinherit her if he’s so concerned about her welfare? Why is he so petty as to make or break it with a mobile phone contract? And cut her out of his will? If that’s not a bully tactic I don’t what is. If she’s as damaged by her mum as he says she is, there’s no way he should be sticking that final nail in the coffin.

Forgive me, but I don't have enough interest in your posts to comb the entire thread and compare and analyse them. You're claiming that the only reason posters are sceptical of his account is because he's a man. If you checked out what more or less everyone is saying, you'll quickly see that there are plenty of excellent reasons why many of us doubt it's as simple as he seems to think, and if you think women get an easy ride in AIBU then you're either very new here, or so determined to turn everything into a "poor victimised menz" issue that discussion is pointless because you literally can't see anything else. After all, you think whining about poor menz is more important than the guy actually fixing the issue he claims to want advice about.

Anyway, I'm tired of the derail.

I empathise with the OP and find many of the replies here absurdly presumptuous, uncharitable and unpleasant. The guy knows the reality, he knows what he's done and if he did something bad enough to justify his daughter going NC then why would he post the story while omitting the fact? What would he gain from that? Advice for an imagined scenario? Undeserved sympathy? It doesn't make any logical sense.

I can empathise because I alienated my father as a result of manipulation by my mother. It turned out that the version of events I grew up with wasn't the real version of events, I was totally in thrall to my mother who was bitter about how the relationship ended and it took many years of slow rebuilding and regret before I had any relationship whatsoever with my father.

I do too, and I totally agree with you about the replies.

People making up shit to suit their own prejudices. Attacking a poster who may have had to steel themselves to post, only to get hit with insults, criticism and character assassination, based on a few lines.

Some of you should be thoroughly ashamed of yourselves.

I believe you. What's the point in people trying to put their own spin on this and assume that you're telling the truth? So taking what you say as the true situation yes - I would stop paying the mobile phone bill. I would also quietly change my will and not mention that to anyone, or discuss it if you are ever asked. The solicitor will ask to include something in your will to explain why you've done this, to avoid any legal challenges when you are gone.
Your daughter has made her choice. Maybe at some point in the future she will reflect and want to re-connect, leave that to her, however hurtful this is.

I believe my dc was manipulated by their grandparent ( covert narc) into leaving home.

Who looked after her while her mother was an inpatient? What we're the contact arrangements between 8 and 15?

The guy knows the reality, he knows what he's done and if he did something bad enough to justify his daughter going NC then why would he post the story while omitting the fact? What would he gain from that?

@MaryMcCarthy - I strongly doubt he would know whether he'd done something to cause her to want to go No Contact because his posts are tone deaf.

He offers no self reflection, no love of concern for the young woman, and exudes self-satisfaction.

I come from a very stable and healthy background with good morals, strong work ethics and I believe I brought my daughter up well.
^ but says he's barely been in her life since she was 8, which is hardly bringing her up.

I know for a fact I’m not a bad person
^ yeah, that's a totally normal, good-person thing to say.

During the past ten years, I don’t feel like I’ve interfered
^ again, left the poor kid with a mum with mental health issues and didn't stand up for his daughter

When I eventually die, there will be a considerable sum left behind and I’m struggling to understand why my daughter that has rejected me for ten years
^ for TEN years? she's only 20 and he's had bugger all to do with her for most of her life.

In addition, we don't leave money to our children because they danced attendance on us, we leave it to them because we love them.

It's the principal between right and wrong and downright selfish.
^ No, it's between OP's ego and a means of punishing a young woman who has been through a lot, because she won't dance to his tune.

So many people who believe parenting is some kind of quid pro quo.

You must have failed her either emotionally ? Financially or otherwise. Maybe, if her mum was really so unstable you should have gotten your daughter out of that situation???

parental alienation often backfires. Did you also maybe talk badly about the mum to your daughter? Maybe you don’t consider it talking badly, just honestly?

do not write her off, if yoj jeave daughter nothing then you will forever prove her right. You have to keep striving to show her you love her.

also your post doesn’t come across as if you feel anything for the xaughter, maybe that’s how she feels?

And you know all that from a mere few lines?

There is also the small matter of the other daughter...

I guess we will never know, as the usual pile-on has probably put the poster off ever making any further comment!!

Kinda the opposite of what I'm saying, really, but I think we're past the point where suggesting you actually read what I'm saying in detail would actually help your comprehension.

You remind me of a thread ages ago where a child was alienated herself from her father because of her mother's behaviour.

The child, who posted the thread, could not see that her mother's behaviour towards her when she was growing up had damaged her emotionally and mentally, as well as damaging her relationship with her father.

I think this is the kindest and most sensible advice on the thread, and I suspect it's more than the OP deserves. It would be great if he proves us all wrong by taking it.