Is this unreasonable to send to my dad?

[Specialguardianshiporderchild]

Trigger warning- abuse

I'm in my mid-30's.

Horrendous childhood. Emotional and sexual abuse etc.

My older sister (we share a dad) has regular contact with our dad. Her children get regular contact and gifts from him.

Our brother (same parents as me) lives close to dad and he regularly cares for DB's children. Lots of social services and court proceedings involved. Children on a care plan, placed with maternal grandparents.

So, my dad has regular contact with 4 grandchildren.

As above, childhood was horrendous and I'm the only one not in regular contact with dad.

My children have never met him. They're 9 and 11.

I often meet my older sister during the holidays with our kids for a day out. She always tells our father in advance and he always calls whilst we meet, I always hear the conversation which is very anti-me. I have no desire to speak to him.

I adored him as a child until the moment he literally ran away from me down the road when I told him I was being SA'd. He was in love with my mum and she chose the abuser. He couldn't see past my my mum choosing my abuser. Not because he abused me but because my mum chose him over my dad.

26 years later, I have on and off contact with my dad.

I can't even copy the message I wanted to send him. Writing this down has made me feel like a 9 year old again.

I know I'm not being unreasonable.

I remember running after my dad down the road not being able to keep up with him. He was so much faster than me.

He ran and he's been running ever since.

I don't know why I want him to acknowledge me.

I will never be able to trust him.

I'm sorry this happened to you, you've had a very difficult life and I hope you've been able to find some support since.
You haven't included what you want to say to your dad so I can't comment on that.
But I wanted to point out that in the situations you mention with your sister, I consider your sister to be at fault. She presumably knows about your relationship with your dad, yet she tells him the two of you are meeting and she answers his phone call in your presence. It would be reasonable for you to ask her not to do this, and that shouldn't be difficult for her unless she wants to make things harder for you. She can simply not answer his calls for the few hours you are together.

Your dad really really let you down as a child he didn’t protect you …. so you as an adult have made the decision of not engaging with him . You are absolutely right … your sister needs to understand your decision and stop trying to force an unattainable relationship between u and ur dad . That’s it …your sister needs to be told and u keep on living your lovely life.

Write him off, he's not worth your time or energy.

What do you want to achieve by writing to him? I wonder how it will feel when you don't get the response you want, need or deserve? I think writing it down is incredibly therapeutic and.helpful, my counsellor has me write letters to my parents, I wouldn't send them to them but I do find the process of articulating my feelings powerful.

It sounds like you have made some very sensible decisions in terms of your boundaries. Can you have a conversation with your sister that she doesn't take calls from your father when with you. If she refuses and you want to keep seeing her, then just move away when she takes these calls, you don't need to hear his hurtful comments. I wonder if he does this because making you the bad guy means he doesn't have to deal with the shame about the way he hurt and abandoned you and how he has let you down as a child and adult.

If you are not already I would consider getting some counselling to support you in recovering from this.

Absolutely this. Give her one chance. Or if she persists, gather your children and walk away. If she's in your house, ask her to leave.

I’m so sorry your father did not protect you as a child and is now compounding the effect of his neglect by deliberately baiting you when you spend time with your sister. Surviving abuse is incredibly tough and surviving parents who were more interested in themselves and their own self-interest than loving and caring for their children is very tough too. The double whammy of both happening simultaneously is excruciatingly painful. You are an amazing woman to have survived both these things and go on to be a mother who is able to love and protect her children.

I hope it is some consolation to know you are not alone - I too had a father who failed to protect me as a child and then went on to behave appallingly towards me and my three children when I became an adult. Like your father, my father was obsessed by my mother and did everything to keep her even when that meant accepting I was being abused and doing nothing to stop it.

I think you are doing the right thing by staying away from your father. I’m a lot older than you and I tried so hard for many years to keep in contact with my father, desperately hoping he’d show me love and affection, only to be treated by him blowing hot and. cold - ok one time then callous indifference and/or cruel jibes the next. Manipulation and mind games were his forte - he liked to play the victim himself for being cuckolded yet got angry with me if I dared to suggest the pain my abusive childhood caused me.

I got a great deal of support when I joined a Facebook group called ‘Estranged and Thriving; Support for Adult Children’. If you are on Facebook, I really recommend joining. It really saved my sanity to chat with others who have not only survived but thrived when they either went vlc (very low contact) or estranged themselves from parents who are incapable of real love.

I also learned via this group that a root cause of the sort of neglect my father demonstrated is often due to covert narcissism. We often think of narcissists as extrovert people who are full of themselves, but this is not always the case. I found YouTube videos by Dr Ramani really opened my eyes to my father’s narcissism and made me realise that there was nothing I could ever do or say that would make him capable of loving anyone but himself. I went no-contact with him 7 years ago and have finally found some peace of mind. In the beginning he sent various ‘flying monkeys’ (people who are manipulated by a narcissist to engage those who have managed to escape their clutches). It sounds to me as if your father could be a narcissist and is manipulating your sister to be one of his flying monkeys.

It might be worth you reading up on this (or looking at some YouTube) to see if it rings true to you. If he is a narcissist, then writing to him is highly unlikely to get the reaction you want - however you phrase it - and he will either ignore you or behave even more spitefully. Having said that, I got a great deal of comfort from writing several letters to my father, with no intention of ever sending them. I wrote pages and pages over several weeks until I exhausted everything I wanted to say, then burned the lot! It was cathartic!
I hope you too find peace after all you’ve survived.

Thank you for your replies.

I think writing that post brought up a lot of resentment on my part.

I don't hate him, I don't dislike him but I don't love him either.

He was always very placid. Never an angry man. I always held onto my dad being 'nice'.

I was always told I was the only one of siblings born out of love. I held onto that and still do even though I shouldn't.

My sister is amazing. She's so lovely. She's also quite naive. I don't think she answers the phone in my presence for any negative reason. She's genuinely happy to see me and share the news with him. I will speak to her before we next meet up though because it does hurt.

I did send the message;

Have you ever thought about meeting my sons? They really are amazing boys. They're intelligent, polite, funny and ask about my dad regularly.

I'm tired of hearing your complaints about me. (thanks for my big sister by the way, she's your one redeemable feature 🤣). I have a whole entire life outside of my childhood where my parents failed me. I've moved on and I now have a good relationship with my mum.

Seriously, life is short. Make an effort to come and meet my boys. You wouldn't regret it.

At least let me know when you're in London next so I can introduce them to you.

They've got fantastic grandparents but it would mean a lot to me if they could see who my father is.

Let me know x

I sent that message and he read it. My brother is having some problems so the next day I asked him if my brother is OK, he replied straight away to say 'I don't know I haven't seen him'.

That says it all really doesn't it?

I don't know why I feel so weak now.