Hi all,
Looking for some advice again. If you've read my previous question: "Are my grandparents being too relaxed about this situation?" it might help.
My father impregnated my mother, told her to have an abortion, dumped her because she wouldn’t, and then lied to her saying that my grandparents wanted nothing to do with us.
Flash forward 31 years. I start working on a genealogy project and I realised that I wasn’t able to get anywhere on my paternal line. I found my grandparents to ask them about our lineage.
It turns out that they didn’t know about me and they find this out at 84 years of age.
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Anyways, I'm sure you can imagine that I'm not terribly fond of my father. I don't think it's possible for us to have a relationship. He knew about me, met me a few times as a child yet chose to keep this a secret even though I grew up in the same city as my grandparents are living in. My father was also willing to take this secret to everyone's graves as 2 of his siblings are deceased. My father also knew where I lived as he would phone my mother at midnight stoned from time to time. I'm not particularly interested in hearing any excuses etc.
I would like to connect with the rest of my father's family though. I am in contact with a few cousins now and my grandparents. Things have been positive so far. They seem shocked by this news and disappointed but they are happy to have a long lost relative find them.
This appears to be a touchy subject; they are concerned that this will ruin the relationship between my father and my half-brother. My father is not allowed to see my half-sister anymore.
One point of contention though is that my grandparents said they would be thrilled to open the lines of communication between my father and I. I'm not sure if I ever want this though.
They visited my father and gave out to him, which made me feel validated and much better. They said that my father was hesitant to discuss the situation and that he was not willing to discuss big chunks of time. I'm surprised my father even remembered my first name and I'm surprised that he didn't try to deny that I was his.
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If my father asks my grandparents to contact me I'm not sure how I will feel or if I will ever want contact from him.
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I sense that they think it would be good for my father and I to communicate. I don't share this view. I think it's possible that it could just end up hurting me.
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I cannot discuss my mother or my father with my grandparents. It seems to be an off-limits conversation topic. Maybe it's too much for them or maybe they can't accept what has happened and will just blame my mother. Maybe they are controlling?
If the issue of communicating with my father comes up again, what would a good thing to say to them be?