Is My dad right?

[redderthanred]

Long story cut very very short but basically neither my brother nor sister will talk to my dad. Its been this way for years and he cant understand why.

I only see him once a month or so, for about an hour, ususally on his way home from golf. We have no kind of relationship at all other than this.

Ive been involved in the past in trying to get them to talk to him, and ive tried many many times over the years to explain to him why they wont talk to him but he just cant see it.

My relationship with him is rubbish - if i actually think about it i end up very very upset, so have sort of detached myself, accepted it for what it is and thats how i deal with it. They dont want to do this.

He said to me yesterday he would like to see them and he texted them both but got no reply. He was being all sad about it and i said that, seeing as they were grown up i could do notihng about it. ( i am the eldest sibling)

But that as noone of the issues have been resolved and he has said that they wont ever will be, that its unlikely they will talk to him.

One of the issues is that we are not welcome in his house. We have been barred from going, from all family events and he is not even allowed to call us from his house. We can only speak to him when he calls us from work. Its been this way for 5 years.

He said that should have nothing to do with it at all and that he is still our dad and that is all irrelevant.

Is he right?

OP, are you me? Your situation is pretty much identical to mine.

I flip between raging at her and raging at him for being so fucking spineless as to allow it, to worrying that he's in an EA relationship and that if the genders were reversed I'd have done something by now, to just feeling abandoned and miserable and rejected and wishing I had my dad back.

It's shit. I don't know what the solution is. Don't want to hijack your thread but just saying I feel for you and recognise your situation.

Oh and I am 'allowed' to see my dad once or twice a year, supervised by her.

ah - sorry to hear that. Thats crap. I totally understand how you feel.

I dont think there is any solution, i just dont really think about it at all any more - except for when he gets all moany about it like he did yesterday.

actually - what i do do, or do now, is this:

and i got this fab bit of advice from MN :)

You cant change other peoples behaviour - but you can change the way you react to it.

So - for the most part ive given up feeling any anger, or resentment, or hatred ( yes, really) or being let down, or just anything and pretty much accept that hes not really in my life - i see him once a month, he occassioanly chucks £10 my way as way to ease his own conscience.
and i dont let it bother me.

just on odd times, like yesterday it got to me and tbh i had a good cry on the way to work this morning about it all.

Sure as hell he isnt crying about it today though. So no point me wasting my time over it.

You cant change other peoples behaviour - but you can change the way you react to it.

That is so true.

Yours is a very sad situation but i think to follow the above advice is all you can really do

((((((((((((hugs)))))))))))

*he chose to spend xmas with them.

He spends time with her grown up children doing things for them that he never did for us - all while not being allowed to speak to us from his house.*

Says it all sorry

Why should your siblings bother with contact when he clearly doesn't care enough?

He may be their biological father but he is not their dad.

What a pathetic excuse for a man your dad sounds like. Selling his kids down the river - for some silly bint.

oops bold didn't work there

he chose to spend xmas with them.

He spends time with her grown up children doing things for them that he never did for us - all while not being allowed to speak to us from his house.

I generally don't think about it - except when I hear about all the time they're spending making a fuss of HER son in the run-up to HIS wedding, and I've had zero fucking interest whatsoever.

Anyway, you have my fullest sympathy.

My dad did the exact same thing. spent the first few years saying how she wouldn't let him see us, he'd lie to her on the phone if she called him when we were out with him. Ran her down for years at the beginning. Until he told us they were getting married. He genuinely didn't understand why I was confused. I told him at the time that if he was happy and loved her, somehow I'd find it easier than him running her down then telling us they were engaged.

She banned us from the house in the late 90s. 18m ago, he said he'd work on an invite to the house that year for christmas. Using my 18m old DN as a catalyst (his words) The fact that my then 4yo was also home in the UK for the first time at christmas since the christmas he was born was clearly immaterial.

I called him out on it. all of it. The fact that I was now older than he was when he left us for her, that now I had a DS where as he had 2 teenage DDs just meant that I now knew exactly what he had done, and exactly what kind of person it takes to walk out on your DC and to lie to them and not stand up for them. Course he had a different recollection of history, called him out on that too!

Nutshell, I told him to stick his invitation. Sis went,and so did the OW youngest daughter (to even up the scores no doubt, but I'd not have been happy with the intrusion had I gone)

I've said my piece to him now, I'll never get invited again, I'll not introduce my DS to his W, why would I? She is not good enough for my DS to meet. I don't want to introduce him to people as low as her. She is an OW, OW don't get to enjoy the original family. she won't get that recognition from me, nor my acceptance. ever. she was complicit in pulling my family to pieces, and further more prevented our dad from spending time with us, lied about us and did all she could to prevent our relationship from thriving. He also did nothing to stand up to her.

He knows I see him because he is my dad, for no other reason that that. He knows now that somehow he can con everyone he likes into thinking his family is respectable, it is not, nor will it ever be. It was founded on lies, and betrayal.

Funny enough I get the impression her DDs are not 100% comfortable with the arrangement either, the youngest one apparetnly only calls when it suits her. Kind of rings true to me. Had my mum done what hers did, go after and shack up with a MM when her own H had left her for an OW, knowing the pain that it had caused, but still going on to do it yourself? I'd have said something at the time to my mum and I'd never have held her in high regard somehow.

Let it go OP, it literally is not worth it. he is weak, he will never stand up to her. Your only hope is that she dies first. Then perhaps you can spend time with him, without him looking at his watch. What a truly sad little man.