Hi there, I have a 2 year old, soon to be 3 years old, little boy with a man who unfortunately proved to be an unreliable father soon after we broke up.
The break up was messy and emotions were high so he used that as a reason for not having much contact during that first year. Admittedly I did call him a lot of nasty names and vice versa (never in front of our son, this was mainly on text), so I kind of believed I was the problem. Plus our son was breastfed, still is, so it’s not like he could easily have had him by himself.
Anyways, fast forward to last year. I decided to be super nice and civil so it wouldn’t give him a reason to not be there. It kind of worked but he would find silly reasons to not come, for instance, he would always come on a Wednesday and one Wednesday I hadn’t replied to him so when I finally did I said ‘sorry had a really busy day.’ To which he replied ‘oh so you don’t want me to come then?’ And he never turned up.
He has often done this in the past year but I thought things were getting better. He is building a house abroad and takes 2 holidays a year for around a month each to go and manage it. Last time he went was April this year and he made no contact whatsoever for those 6 weeks. I explained respectfully when he returned that I was upset he hadn’t even bothered a FaceTime call to his son, and that it was unfair on our child for him to do that. He apologised and we moved on.
Fast forward to now, he left at the end of Oct to work on the house, told me he’d be gone 3 weeks. He saw our son for the last time on the 29th of Oct and since then hasn’t sent me one message. He did try and FaceTime once a couple weeks ago but he called at like 6 am and obviously we were sleeping. I never called back. Clearly it’s been more than 3 weeks; so I’m not sure if he is back or not. Sometimes he’s said in the past he’ll be gone for 4 weeks but then won’t, he’ll stay a few more weeks. Am I just supposed to not contact him? I’m worried he’s just going to message me soon and demand to come and see him, with absolutely no apology or at least, genuine apology or accountability.
Do you think I should be trying to contact him? Send him photos of our son? Our son was really ill recently and was admitted in hospital, I didn’t even send a text. Because deep down I know he wouldn’t reply or respond or fly back so what’s the point. Thankfully he’s fine now.
I want to do what’s best for my son, he’s my priority hence why I’ve never stopped contact. He’s always welcome in my house; even though I feel uncomfortable I just hide in my bedroom. I just can’t understand why he does this; last time he said the phone signal/wifi is really bad there but he’s managed to send me money so surely it can’t be that. Or he could have got his family to contact me to let me know he’s staying longer than the 3 weeks etc.
Do I just not bring any of this up with him when he does eventually show his face? Does it sound like he’s doing this on purpose to hurt me or am I being paranoid?
Sorry for the rant, half of this probably doesn’t even make sense.