What to do when parent you are NC with, reaches out?

[Shefliesonherownwings]

I've posted about this a couple of times before but I need some more advice on this as my dad has been in touch and I don't know what to do next.

I'll try to be brief. I'm an only child and since I was a teen and could form my own opinions, dad and I have clashed. I find him to be controlling, suffocating, selfish, narcissitic, volatile, I could go on. I don't like the way he treats my mum or speaks to her and when I stand up to him/disagree it causes a major argument. We disagree on almost anything of any depth as I consider him racist, sexist, homophobic and so on. We have had numerous arguments and a couple of phases of not speaking but I always end up caving and going back for an easy life. However I used to dread having to see or speak to him because of how he is. He would say we've been very close, i would say we had a surface relationship only.

Last November I lost my DD to stillbirth. DH and I were and still are devestated. My dad acted appallingly, I think grief thief is the right phrase. At a time when everyone else was trying to make things better for us and support us, all he did was make things worse. He upset me hugely the day before DDs funeral and when I later told him how upset I was, he told me that all I ever do is blame him for everything. I didn't reply. A month or so later I received a very long email basically telling me how ungrateful I am, how I've made him ill, nearly caused him and my mum to split up and outlining all he's ever done for me. I didn't respond so we have been NC since December.

I've still been regularly speaking and seeing my mum but we barely mention him. I've told her I feel I am done with him as he's gone too far and I think she understands but she will never leave him, she's lived this way for 40 years. I don't want to lose her but it is hard navigating a relationship when she continued to dtay with him.

Today he sent me an email. He actually for once acknowledged he'd upset me and behaved badly and offered up a sort of apology without actually saying sorry. He said he was mostly to blame. He talked about how hard losing his grandchild was and he didn't know how to deal with it. He tells me he sent the first email by mistake, he was just putting some thoughts down and it was an accident. Much of the email is about how hard he has found things, how hard his life has been and so on. He says he doesn't expect a response but hopes I'll think a little kindlier of him now.

I should also say I am currently 31 weeks pregnant. Obviously this pregnancy has been and still is hugely nerve wracking and my anxiety is sky high. I know he knows I am pregnant, my mum told him when I had my 12 week scan. He has never acknowledged the pregnancy and still hasn't in this latest email.

I don't really know what to do and whether to respond. Part of me wants to reply and tell him all the things I am angry and hurt about and to tell him to stuff his apology and me, me, me crap and leave us alone. I have so many actual dreams at night where I lay into him and say all the things I've kept bottled up for so long. I would love to tell him how I really feel but would it achieve anything?

If we were to ever have any sort of relationship again it would never be the same as before. Dealing with just my mum has definitely been better for me but i know it's hard on her. DH is also very upset with him and wants nothing to do with him. He wouldn't allow dad in the house and thinks we should just continue to live life without him, we have more important things to think about. I agree but there is still a tiny part of me that feels bad and guilty and staying NC especially when this baby is here, even though life is better without him in it. There's still the question of how my mum would be able to visit and spend time with the baby and not him.

Sorry this was so long but I'm all over the place with it. Just wondering what others have done, if anything, in response to a NC parent reaching out? Any thoughts?

'Something along the lines of: thank you for your letter and also for saying I didn't need to respond; I still feel really hurt; I'm also coping with bereavement and pregnancy. You're right: I'm not ready to respond yet and but it means a lot that you can recognise I might not be ready to do that. Keeping some distance at present is the best way of supporting and showing care for me. I will be in touch when I'm ready. Please don't contact me before then'

^this is a kind and well composed response, I think it's also 'pearls before swine'
he will understand it as a white flag and will push to dominate you once more.
Maybe I'm the evil bitter one but given what OP has said about her father the only way I'd recommend a response like that was if she wanted to lure him in for the final kill

@TorkTorkBam

The thought of losing two parents is devestating

You are building your new family. You are breaking the cycle. You are making sure your children will never face this dilemma. If you keep them close it poisons everything.

Think of all that mental energy going on managing your parents that could be spent on building and enjoying your own family.

Failing to break the cycle is more devastating in the long run.

This is such a truth.

Those with parents like yours never really have a peaceful happy family life.

The happy times are inevitably poisoned and the tough times made worse.

No one needs parents like yours, even though you think you do.

You will grieve what you so wish they were, but not the daily reality.

Mind that baby and yourself OP.

You so deserve love, peace, to be treasured and cherished.

There is an extraordinary, selfish cruelty here. You must be giving all your emotional resources to your pregnancy and maybe to your dh as well: I can only imagine 💐

For them to intrude like this and demand your attention is - easy for me to say - unforgivable. Your mother is complicit and your father is cruel.

If at all possible, can you redivert your attention back to your own family? I don’t know if that means ignoring him and making her LC, or going NC with her too. I don’t know. But soon there’s going to be a new baby and they are not going to stop these games.

I’m sorry, what a horrible imposition they have put on you. I wish you some peace for the coming weeks and months 💐

True, I wish I"d tackled this YEARS ago. I spotted the patterns really clearly about 3 years ago. But I wish I had identified them with such certainty years ago. Before they were old. Before my teenagers could walk over there for lunch. Now, my mother will compete with me for the teenagers on Christmas day.

I have not tried to prevent them going but I think that if they choose to go on Christmas day that would be a betrayal. Am I right to believe that? Can I expect them to choose me on Christmas day? The eldest does understand, she does think that her gm is being unfair shutting down conversation but also blaming me for the rift.

Hi all. I need to resurrect this as I am wavering at the moment and you all gave me such good advice. I probably need a kick up the arse rather than advice but either way I need help.

So after the email a couple of weeks ago I haven't responded or engaged. I've ignored it and it's not been mentioned by my mum or me when we've spoken. I wondered if she knew he'd even sent it.

Anyway, it is my dads birthday this weekend. I am feeling some guilt still at the thought of not contacting him on his birthfday but I can cope with that. I had no intention of acknowledging it. However, today my mum has text me and said this I wanted to mention Friday to you which is Dad's birthday. Would you feel up to sending him a card or text? xx

I'm really annoyed she's said this. I've told her before I don't want to be pressured into contacting him and she's still doing it. I don't know if this is off her own back or as a result of pressure from him. I replied and told her I don't want to open up communication so i'm not responding and that includes any sort of happy birthday message.

But I am actually considering emailing him and giving him a few home truths. I have written out separately all my thoughts and pent up feelings about how he's treated me, just to kind of get it out of my head and it did help. But I really want to send him a small flavour of what i've written. I feel i'll be driven mad by it if I don't properly get it off my chest and then end with telling him I don't want to hear from him and I won't contact him. I know, silence is the best course of action but I am just so desperate to tell him what I really think.

This is a really bad idea isn't it? I need to just hold fast with NC and also tell my mum to stop mentioning him in any way, right?

Im very sorry for your loss. You have so much to focus on now, you and your dh and your baby, and the anniversary of your first daughter isn’t far away either.
I wonder if it’s not the right time to go nuclear and say you’re done. You just want to stonewall your father and focus on what matters to you.
Perhaps something very short and flat in response to push him away without a declaration of war then go back to ignoring - how about:
‘it's good that you have had this insight. Please keep in mind that ‘Your grandchild’ is my child.’
And to your mum if she brings it up you can just say I replied to it. I don’t have anything else to say about it. Block, block, block. It’s her problem how she visits on her own frankly, your dh is right that your dad shouldn’t come into your house. You and baby need to be safe.

You think it will make you feel better to send the home truths. It won't. It will open up a world of pain. You know this.

Stop for a moment and think about what mental pain you are trying to relieve. There are ways that will bring some relief and some that won't.

Right now you are like a person with a cold who wants to chop their nose off. That's not the solution.

I think you are angry at your mum and can't cope with that feeling, you don't know what to do with it. So you end up wanting to direct the anger where it feels comfortable, in the well worn grooves, which means towards your dad.

Don't cave. There in lies more pain. Your mother is a fool to try to manipulate you in this way.

Well done for starting this thread.

Well done for engaging with the advice.

Well done for resisting responding to his initial hoovering email

Well done or deciding in advance that you would not be sending a birthday card

Well done with being able to tolerate the LC / vague / boundaried communication with your DM.

Well done for responding to her text in a short sharp clean way.

NOW - you are in phase 2 of this NC business. The rules and boundaries have been established by you - but you are now witnessing him trouncing them with another back door tactic involving your DM - who is highly complicit and facilitating of his abuse and behaviours. You were unable to see it with the chaos of him. Now you can and you need to settle, regroup and tweak the strategy to up your game.

1. Re read the thread from the beginning every time you are triggered by an action or feel an understandable emotional urge / compulsion / impulse to make contact to rage and express your hurt. You need healing - you will not get it with the people who hurt you. You won’t get closure from them but you can work towards acceptance by yourself for the situation - you had an emotionally abusive childhood by this PD parent and his complicit accomplice - you have an emotionally abusive adulthood at the hands of these two. It will continue. You need to take yourself out of punching distance. Close off every avenue of info so that your healing is not disrupted.

1. You need to prioritise protecting your unborn baby and your new little family from these toxic people. You need a calm and peaceful mind, body and emotions to ensure you have a beautiful birth and motherhood.

1. Your DM threw you under the bus all your life. She chose this pig (prioritising her own personal emotional comfort) over her little daughter each and every minute of your childhood. Even today when YOU are facing a v anxious and traumatic time - she has expects YOU to bend over for your DF.

She has zero concern for you or your baby’s needs. You don’t need this stress at this time - but she doesn’t care how much she triggers or hurts you.

She really has made a new move now - I expect she has spent a lot of time being the silent betrayer - now she is actively engaged.

Don’t hand him the bullets to shoot you with by writing the letter - he will parade it every where - it will be a gluttonous feast for him that he can feed on, dine out on and pick over the bones (and then beat you with them) for years. Starve him.

If you want to write a letter do so - but try to do it cold and calm - don’t escalate negative emotions and hormones because him - because these will literally pollute your baby.

This is a v v long road. Know your goal so and objectives and reach for the rule book each time a boundary violation / trigger happens.

Sorry if you do want to write a letter - DONT SEND !!

If you send him what you have written, you are inviting him back into your life and handing him the stick to beat you with.

Write it out, burn it, tear it up what ever. But don’t engage with him. Maybe after baby is born and you are healed, if you really feel the need. But not now.

I know you are all right, I do. I just feel so conditioned to always please him and take the easy road that it feels so hard to actually stand up for myself and say enough is enough, i'm not doing this anymore.

@TorkTorkBam thank you for your insight. I think you are right, despite some guilt I had decided not to reach out with any happy birthday message. The text from my mum has annoyed me, and because it is so difficult for me to think badly or negatively of her at all, I have projected that anger and annoyance at the easier person, my dad. In actuality I wish she would just listen to me for once and do what is best for me, rather than pushing me to reach out to him. Why should I? His hoovering email has made no difference to my feelings about going NC but she is still not listening.

@Sssloou thank you also for your post and to everyone who has said not to give him the ammunition to use against me. I know for sure, he would use any message I sent him to tell everyone how horrible and mean I have been to him. I don't really care about that but I do recognise you are right that he will use it as a stick to beat me with.

It just all feels so unfair, he gets to say horrible things to me and tell me what an awful person I am and I can't do the same. Well I can but it will bring me nothing but more pain I know.

You are all right, I need to focus on me, DH and this baby. Our daughter's anniversary is also coming up. They are my little family, and need my undivided attention.

What's prompted his email is that you are about to become the centre of attention, as is your dc. He doesn't want or like that, he wants it to be him, his aim is to make this child about him, he can't do that if you are nc. How can he hoover you back in, to create drama of some sort of you don't engage with him?

Is this your parents first gc?

I just feel so conditioned to always please him and take the easy road that it feels so hard to actually stand up for myself and say enough is enough, i'm not doing this anymore.

Do this for your little family. They are now front and centre of everything you feel and choose to do.

You cannot be in two emotional places at once - choose not to be distracted, triggered abused in their negative toxic trap - actively choose to be focused and immersed in positive, emotionally warm feelings to bathe and grow your little family in positivity.

Block out all that threatens or compromises this. Distance, distraction and time will make it easier.

Wishing you peace and calm.

@LilyLongJohn yes I am an only child so DD and this baby are the only grandchildren.

I do find it strange that he went on about how much he was looking forward to DD arriving when I was pregnant and how affected he has been by her death. Yet he has never once mentioned this baby and my pregnancy in any way. I find it bizarre. I wondered if it was because this baby is a boy.

I have observed the only child situation is a real burden and an exacerbating dynamic for people in similar situations like yours OP.
It’s not yours to carry - they would I be the same if there were more children - maybe the abuse would have been shared around even and not so intense for you.

You don’t owe your parents a grandchild - they were not capable of caring for you as a child or even now as an adult who has been through the worst that life can throw at anyone.

Hi there, I have read your thread and just want to echo what others are saying. I'm speechless at the abhorrent behaviour of your father at the most painful and awful time for you. To me that would be a line crossed. I agree with other posters that your dm is equally abusive and complicit in a different way.

I think you need to sit down with dh before your baby is born and decide boundaries and rules that you and your wee family feel comfortable with. You dm will push for your df to get the opportunity to play the doting grandad and you will be pressured and vilified for denying him this(crap). Your dm will want the baby at her house possibly overnight. You need a strategy if how you are going to deal with these demands. Your parents won't care you are vulnerable and postnatal they will just want to play happy families.

I think once your baby is here your maternal instinct will kick in and you won't have the heads pace for all their drama and crap. Please lusten to your dh he sounds like he has his head screwed on.

I really wish you well you are in such a difficult position and I fear your parents bad behaviour will get worse once your baby is here. I think your relationship with your mother will be forced to a head when she puts your father's needs again above yours or your baby's. I don't think you will tolerate an ounce of their crap and will be a fantastic empathic living mother xx

Loving mother x

I think I remember your post from when your dad upset you.
Sorry for your loss

I would be tempted to manage the situation by replying and explaining
Life is much calmer with him in it
Life is stressful due to events last year and being pg
No way can you cope with upset and your husband is not going to allow upset so any reconciliation would have to be much further down the line afterwards

This gets you time to look after yourself and not have him around or hovering in the near future

I had a parental estrangement and during it I was so tempted to write a note stating my side of the story, how hurt I was, how unreasonable my dad had been. My dad was at that time telling everyone all sorts about me. In the end I maintained strict NC and I'm glad I did. Many of my family still believe the lies he spread. I don't care. That says more about them than me and I don't need them in my life.

Like you, I had a young baby and a 'new' family. I focused on them and over time, naturally emotionally distanced from my dad. I know for sure now that whatever I would have written, however true, however reasonable, would not have been accepted by him. He is never in the wrong. You can't argue with crazy.

I'm now in very LC with my dad and I make it work for me. I can do this because of that long period of NC, it made me so much stronger and my dad hopefully knows that any of his antics and I'm off.

Your complication here is your mum. I would keep your boundaries and with fair warning I would give her a taste of NC if she persists in trying to reconcile you and your dad. I'm sure that after the birth there will be a ton of guilt tripping from her. Giving birth is a very emotional time and you could easily waver under pressure. You do not need this in your life. Keep going with NC, keep strong. I found the longer I went the stronger I got.

I remember reading your threads before. You owe him nothing. He is a worthless lowlife. Your mother is showing her colours, she’s not much better than him. Listen to your DH not your parents - he will help to keep you safe, they are not safe. Your baby is more important than your horrible parents. to you.

I say first write an angry letter to your mum, which you do not send.

Then write a letter to your baby telling him how you hope you and he will interact when he is an adult. A happy letter.

I would do, right now, whatever is going to cause you least additional stress. That might be to acknowledge receipt but say you are focused on other things at the moment. It might be to not respond at all. It could be to take this to your therapy -not the whole relationship but the feelings now as they are related to your bereavement. I am sorry for the loss of DD and wish all the best for you during this pregnancy.

People who have never experienced the true pain of abusive parents and their enablers can ever appreciate the living hell family dramatics are. I recall your prior posts and my heart goes out to you and your husband. I wish you nothing but peace and love and a beautiful,healthy baby boy

Thanks everyone for your kind words. I’m still having bereavement counselling and had a session today. I didn’t talk about what was going on with my parents right now but I did come to the realisation that I tend to bottle things up a lot, I absolutely hate getting upset and crying in front of others and will often hold it in until I can let it out on my own but this leads to me having absolutely meltdowns instead of dealing with things at the time. I believe it stems from when my dad would upset me and I’d be made out to be weak for getting upset and crying. It’s really affected how I’ve dealt with the loss of DD.

Anyway that aside I am due to speak to my mum tomorrow. I am still annoyed with her for pushing me to contact my dad and making me question whether I should. I’m going to tell her that I don’t want to hear anything from her suggesting I contact him again and that actually I don’t see a reconciliation happening so she needs to back off and respect that.

I will speak to DH too about boundaries when we have the baby, my mum can visit, if that’s still allowed with coronavirus, but I don’t want to see my dad. I don’t want to expose my child to his toxicity plus he’s shown no interest in this baby whatsoever so why should he get to meet him. I know DH will do what I want, he has said himself how much easier things are without him around.