How to help improve sister and father's poor relationship

[Wigeon]

Advice gratefully received on how to help my sister improve her relationship with our father.

Background: our father left our mother when I was 18 and my sister was 16. This is now about 12 years ago. He had an affair with his childhood sweetheart, who he subsequently married (and is still married to her). I don't actually know too many of the details of the affair.

He never had a great relationship with my sister - nothing like abuse or anything - I just don't think they "got" each other. I think she has never forgiven him for how he left our mother, and generally he did behave in quite a childish way. Our mother was pretty badly hurt (and hasn't had any relationships since). DSis bore the brunt of this because I was on a gap year at the time and she was still living at home.

He has continued to behave in a thoughtless way over the subsequent years, which makes my sister still angry. For example, we both found out by postcard invitation that he was planning on marrying the OW (who we hadn't met at the time), two weeks before the event. And his explanation for the short notice was that was only because the venue was changed from Canada to the UK because they couldn't arrange the paperwork for Canada in time. Once married, the first time we met her was at our granny's 90th birthday party, but neither my father nor his now-wife thought of actually introducing us, leaving us to look round the room wondering who our new step-mother was.

Anyway, I have managed to get to a state where I can be civil to him, and go and stay for the weekend etc. I want my two DDs to have a relationship with their grandfather which is independent of my own feelings towards him.

However, my sister (now 30yrs) is still finding it very difficult. She told me recently that she gets "sleepless nights and twisted stomach" in the run up to seeing him, and after too. I invited them both to an event at my work - she didn't realise I'd invited him to - and she almost pulled out. She finds visiting him very difficult (he lives about 3hrs away so it's always got to be an overnight, not a quick visit).

I feel that the only person who is suffering in all this is my DSis . Our father is pretty oblivious and is having a happy retirement with the OW. How can I help her? There are going to be occasions where she has to see him (and I don't think she wants to cut him out entirely). Would counselling help? If you have any experiences to share that would be very useful.

Your poor sister - I can see why she finds this so difficult (and well done you for adopting such a mature approach).

My feeling about counselling is that it is basically a forum for people to talk without any inhibitions and can as such be very useful... do you and your sister talk much about this situation? Because exploring her feelings in depth with you might be just as helpful as with a professional who is, after all, on the outside of the situation.

I didn't have a good relationship with my Dad for many years - not as bad as you've described here, but not great - mainly because I was angry with him for the way he acted in the years after my Mum died. But now that I'm older and see how complicated relationships and love can be, I feel a lot more empathy for him. He's now died too and I really regret that I never told him that.

If your sister doesn't want to cut your Dad out completely, she is going to have to come to terms with the way he behaved. Might it help if you brought up concrete examples of his behaviour with him - e.g. not introducing you to your new stepmum - and explained how upset that made you both and that you wanted an explanation?

Sorry - that probably didn't help much at all.

Do they want your help? Do they want to improve things?

I have a sort of similar experience in that I have nothing to do with my father's family.

I would not thank someone for trying to 'help' me put that right. Just because someone shares genes with you is no reason why you have to love, like or even tolerate them.

I think you should talk to your sister and see if she wants to be able to change things. If she does, then yes, counselling may be a good idea. She could learn strategies to cope with being in the same room as him.

but - fwiw - (again, my own experience with an entire branch of my 'family' - for want of a better word) if you have to have counselling and develop strategies so that you can force yourself to be in the same room as someone - it's really not worth being in the same room as them.

DNA markers do not a family make.

I agree with Hecate. Absolutely.

Counselling might well help, especially the kind of psychodynamic therapy that I once had. The basic idea, I think, would be for your sister to ultimately accept that she doesn't have the father she wants and deserves, that it stinks but she can't change him, and to match her expectations to his behaviour so that he can no longer disappoint her. It is a sad process but a freeing one.

My mum once told me something she'd read somewhere, about how forgiveness is giving up the hope of somehow having a different past. I think acceptance might be a better word. But either way, it's about refusing to spend precious time on feeling bad about things that can't be changed, and about inoculating herself against future pain by relinquishing the need for more than this flake can apparently offer as a father. Not for his sake, because he doesn't deserve it, but so that she can stop being eaten up by it and find some peace.

Thank you all for reading my OP and your comments.

summer - we have in the past attempted to talk to him about it. Cue many tears from both of us, and general incomprehension / lack of apology from him. And therefore us feeling disappointed / more upset. He has a strong sense of being right in general which I've inherited (!) and I have given up expecting some grand realisation from him that he's behaved rubbbishly followed by a sincere apology.

Hecate - I totally agree with your point. I don't want to (or think I'm able to!) engineer some kind of magic reconciliation. But I think she doesn't want to cut him out of her life completely. She is just in this awful limbo where she apparently feels physically ill about him but hasn't taken a free-ing decision to sever the relationship completely. I think she has just put the relationship in a "too difficult" padlocked box for the last decade and more.

leguminous - I think I have sort of undergone the kind of process you describe in your first paragraph, in a rather haphazard and non-counsellor directed way (but with the huge support of my lovely DH). I have pretty much zero expectations, so anything nice he does is a bonus (eg he did a really quite thoughtful Easter egg hunt for my DD (3yrs) at his house this Easter).

Your second para is very interesting too. I agree. I think my sister would be so much happier if she was able to go through an acceptance process. I like the prayer (although I'm an atheist!) which says "give me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, and the strength to change the things I cannot accept, and the wisdom to know the difference".

I think I need to talk to my sister. I think she doesn't think / realise there's an alternative to her feeling rubbish about it forever.