Hello all
Im hoping you guys may be able to offer me some guidance on how to help my partner deal with his daughter as her behaviour is less than decent.
For clarity he and his ex wife split over 10 years ago, it wasn’t a good breakup as he cheated on her and got caught etc. Throw into the mix that she isn’t the nicest of people (I’ve known her a lot longer than he has), very money orientated, would speak to him like absolute garbage unless of course she wanted something or needed a favour and would then be nice to a period and then return back to her previous behaviour. Has even been known to threaten to tell the children the reason for their split if he didnt do as she wanted - you get the picture I’m sure. The 2 children are now 21 and 25, the eldest one barely made any time for him unless her car went wrong/she needed financial help. To the extent that when she started earning a considerable wage and he asked her to take over her car insurance payments she simply replied with “don’t ever message me again”, bearing in mind the agreement was that he would pay for the first year but he had actually paid for almost 4 years at this point.
The 21 year old made more of an effort for a few years, would come over each Friday evening, see him for an evening during the week but as the later teen years hit she was busier with friends etc and had less time for him, and by that I mean almost no time, there were always excuses or the messages/calls ignored. But again, would appear when she needed money or something expensive and then would disappear again. Both learnt behaviour from mum I believe as it’s what she would do. This would upset him massively each time as you would expect, he couldn’t understand why she didn’t want to make any effort or time for him and this went on and on and on, and I just sit by and pick him up when he crashes. He did message her and politely say how it makes him feel, and that it’s rude and asking if there was anything causing her to feel that way or behave that way that she wanted to chat about, and nothing, ignored. After months of this, Christmas arrived, he hadn’t seen her and barely heard from her so he decided to not just drop her Xmas presents off at her mums house as usual, but message (like he dos all the time) and popped a sentence on the bottom saying that her Christmas presents were at ours, it would be lovely to see her sometime when she comes to collect them. Cue her mum messaging to say that it’s blackmail making her have to come to ours to get her presents and that we should be dropping them off if she doesn’t want to. He crashed, didn’t know what to do for the best and any contact pretty much ceased as he was devastated constantly messaging and getting no replies.
Fast forward 2 years to last year and she’s reappeared, seemed like she wanted to rebuild a friendship with him, came round a few times, was messaging etc and then she had to move back home with mum due to finances/boyfriend issues and now it’s steadily getting worse again. My partner works away half the time but messages may go back and forth with her whilst away and he will message to say when he’s back, and then radio silence, or constant promises to meet up or come round and then she ignores messages or just doesn’t show. After this going on for about 6 months he messaged her basically saying “look you seem to be heading back to how it was before and barely making any effort and it’s upsetting and frankly quite rude” and her response was “ok well shall we just leave it” 😢. He said no of course not, but he’s in a no win situation, if he dares to challenge her poor and rude behaviour then she just ignores the messages or responds like she did above, but by not challenging it he’s living in a constant state of hope, trying to make plans with her or making plans with her for her to just not show up etc and then him feeling devastated each time.
I’ve tried not to get too involved, I’ll listen, console when needed etc, be friendly, welcoming and chatty when I see her (which has now been almost a year) but I’m holding my tongue so as to not cause further issues, but I’m not happy at all. Her behaviour is terrible, she makes time for the things she deems important such as socialising with friends/getting her nails done etc, but apparently won’t prioritise her dad once in a while.
Personally I have zero doubt in my mind that there’s been a certain amount of parental alienation taking place at home by her mum and I wouldn’t put it past her to have told the kids about him cheating, but she’s now 21 years old, she’s not 10/12/15 and I find it internally infuriating that she thinks that this behaviour is acceptable, kind - anything really. My partner has no clue how to navigate this as if he pulls her up on it, she backs away, offers no explanation, she just simply says “I’ve got a lot going on”. If he says nothing then she just continues with this behaviour and he’s getting let down all the time.
please offer some guidance on how I can support him, it’s horrible to watch 😢