Is there ever a good reason?

[BakingOfTheFoodCats]

My ex has not been involved in our children’s lives for a few years now, he suffers from significant mental health problems and says this is the reason, every time he sees them it becomes too much for him and he backs off and disappears again, this could be anywhere from a few month to years, he hasn’t seen them properly now in 4 years apart from a few time’s where he’s popped up again. Seen them briefly then faded away again, he’s gone for well over a year at time’s when he hadn’t seen them at all, as the children are getting older they have started to realise what he is like and don’t want anything to do with him anymore. He thinks this is my fault when in reality it isn’t, I never speak about him to them and I don’t bad mouth him, he tells me I should tell them he is ill and that’s the reason he doesn’t see them, he also thinks I should be understanding and that other people would be, which I’m struggling with as I have my own problems but I don’t just abandon my kids for years. So I guess basically I am asking if there is ever a good reason not to see your children? And if I should tell them it’s because he is ill?

Only if you’re in prison or dead.

What @AnneLovesGilbert said.

Have other areas of his life suffered so badly such as work and relationships? If so then I’d have a lot of sympathy. But if he’s managing to be in a relationship, see friends, go to work etc then I’d struggle to be supportive if it was only his relationship with his children that was suffering.

I think if you genuinely believed that the effects of your illness were likely to upset or harm your DC and wanted to protect them from that then that would be acceptable - such as if you had a serious mental health problem which wasn’t responding to medication and were prone to bouts of uncontrolled psychosis or mania. That doesn’t sound like the case here, he just sounds uninterested in the DC - in which case he should just take himself out of their lives completely and stop pretending it’s your fault for not understanding.

What @SuperstarDog said

@AnneLovesGilbert

Only if you’re in prison or dead.

See this is how I feel.

To answer the other question I’m not sure about his relationships I believe he has casual relationships but I can’t be sure on that as it’s not something we would discuss, he doesn’t tell me stuff like that, I know he still sees his friends and he doesn’t work due to his mental health problems, he claims pip.

If there IS a good reason why he doesn’t see them regularly, he should also realise that popping up every once in a while is doing them harm. Seeing them occasionally is 100% for his own benefit and not for theirs, which is spectacularly selfish of him. If he’s not able to be a parent he should step away and exclude himself permanently. Being repeatedly let down and disappointed by a mostly absent dad is worse than not having any expectations of seeing him.

If spending time with them is too stressful for him why isn’t he making an effort with FaceTime and messages etc? If it’s purely the knowledge that someone depends on him that freaks him out, is he getting therapy to help him dealt with it?

Why should you put your deadbeat ex on a pedestal for your kids by lying?

It will only end up with a world of pain and misery for you as it really screws your DC up and they start thinking it's your fault they cant see their amazing father.

Carry on as you are.

The only way I would not see or communicate with my DC is if I were dead. I'd still send them letters if I were in prison.

he doesn’t work due to his mental health problems, he claims pip In which case his mental health issues must be quite severe as pip is notoriously hard to claim, to be mentally ill to the extent you’re unable to work at all is a serious situation, in which case I’d be more understanding of his absence from the DCs’ lives. However just popping up whenever he feels like it and then blaming you for turning them against him is not a MH issue, that’s a selfish self absorbed twat issue.

I'm with @AnneLovesGilbert

He's got some cheek too......complete deadbeat dad then blames you when they're old enough to realise what he's like and decide they don't want anything to do with him. 🤯
Complete gaslighting behaviour

It is serious he’s mental illness, he has Schizophrenia that’s what he’s told me and I believe he has been sectioned a few times, when I say understanding he expects me to be ok with him popping up every year or two, last time I told him he couldn’t see the children unless he went through court and it was supervised but that was very unreasonable according to him, basically he expects me to support him which I can not do, and he thinks the children not wanting to see him anymore is because of me when really they just don’t want a relationship with him anymore because of how much he has let them down and disappeared for years, to them he is a stranger as he has been more out than in.

Does he hold down a job, or have a relationship, or ongoing friendships? Unless he's completely incapable of functioning in the world it's not good enough and I wouldn't be telling the it's because he's I'll. It would take very little for him to have dinner once a fortnight with his DC. Instead he turns up randomly as and when he feels like it. This is a really damaging way for a parent to treat their DC. He doesn't deserve a moment of your consideration. Better to focus on your DC and making sure they're getting the support they need to deal with the harm caused by having a parent like this. I know I felt abandoned all-over again everytime our not so D'M' disappeared again.

I wouldn't be understanding on the popping up when it suits, it's either regular contact they can rely on or none. The damage popping up when it suits does to DC isn't mitigated because he has a severe mental health issue. If he wanted you to tell them because he felt going NC was best for them given his MH issues, then I'd talk to the DC about his illness. Otherwise no, I wouldn't want to do his dirty work trying to guilt DC into seeing him when it suits him because he's sick.

He definitely still manages his friendships, he has a lot of friends. I asked him to call the children regularly, he called once and then never called again, but I left it as that as I wasn’t going to beg him.

How old are your children, roughly? I think that affects what you tell them.

It’s mainly my boys that are asking not to see him again. They are 9 and 7. The youngest is 4 and doesn’t remember him and has only seen him on 3/4 occasions. (He left when I was pregnant and didn’t see her at all till she was 1 years old.)

Being a non resident parent is harder than a lot of people realise. Knowing that your kids are out there, at arms length, growing up with minimal relationship with you. Even with a 'regular' EOW contact, it's still two weeks of no contact in between. And if things are difficult between the parents, then that makes it even harder. To the point that some non resident parents decide it's better for everyone to go zero contact.

On top of that, this bloke has a pretty serious mental health condition. As difficult as it is, it doesn't sound like he's in a place to offer much positive to the children's lives. Dropping in so infrequently is not good, debatable whether that's better than no contact forever? The older kids are old enough to be frustrated by the lack of contact, and their wishes not to see him should definitely be taken into account. On the other hand, they're far too young to understand his mental health condition, or that it's at least part of the reason for the lack of regular contact. So I'm not sure how you can even try to explain that to them.

How was his mental health before you had kids, was it not evident that he wasn't mentally up to parenthood at that point?

No not until I was pregnant with the youngest, before that he told me he had depression which I did understand and I don’t think people with depression shouldn’t be parents or have relationships and to be totally honest I didn’t really know much about mental illness so I believed that’s what it was (his parents died when he was 15 his dad and 21 his mum) so I understood that, however he took medication for depression so it was managed. We broke up just before I found out I was pregnant with the youngest, but we got back together and then I found out, it was then when I was pregnant with my youngest, that things started to change, something happened in his life when we broke up which I can’t really go into as it is outing but has nothing to do with me or the children, he started coming up with all sorts of accusations towards me, everyone really, that I wasn’t a real person, that I was sent into his life, he took it out on me the most because I was the one that had his children, I got told that I was sent into his life to have the children to “trick him” he would accuse me daily of being a fake person (he would also accuse friends a family and claim that he’s parents were still alive) he thought he was being watched etc, I tried to support him at the time but he would break up with me over it only to come back the next day with how sorry he was, it eventually came to a head and we broke up when I was about 7 months pregnant, after months and months of daily accusations he ended it and completely blocked me on everything, he wasn’t at the birth, didn’t see her when she was born, he contacted me when she was a few days old saying he wanted to see her, we arranged it and he just never showed up, I never heard a thing from him again until she was 1 years old. Saying that it’s hard with him barely seeing them, that’s been his choice, when he came back when she was 1 I asked him to see them frequently but he said he would only see them for a few hours once a fortnight, I told him that wasn’t good enough, so again he disappeared, he said he couldn’t commit to More than that due to distance. So we didn’t hear from him again until she was two, same situation (bare in mind every time he’s come back he’s claimed to be better) he’s only ever wanted to see them fortnightly at mine. He got a job on the weekends and said he wouldn’t be seeing them again as he was working weekends and they are at school all week, so again contact stopped, (he put this down to mental illness that he said he wouldn’t see them again) he came back again when she was 3 this is when I suggested court, there has been a few times in between those times when he has contacted like at Christmas but not asking to see them.

He really doesn’t sound very well at all and I’d probably be glad, to be honest, that he was choosing not to be in the DC’s lives if his schizophrenia is leading him to paranoid talk about people being fake or you all being watched. If he’s still this erratic and badly affected then I think I’d be inclined to say his health really is impacting on his ability to parent and tell the DC this, in an age appropriate way.

That’s the thing be pops up once a year claiming to be better and asking to see them again, he never fully goes away, he seems to think he can pick them up once a year, but as they are getting older then don’t want to see him anymore, my 7 year old has asked me if he can get a new dad. Every time he comes back he claims to be “better”.

I think for the children's own sake they need to know he is ill so the constant rejection doesn't take hold. This is not to save him but for their sakes especially as they get older. It would be good for them to sort of always know this so it doesn't become a big discovery when they are older. They are probably better off not seeing him too often as he might upset them if he was in one of his bad moments .

I think in this situation I would have told my children that he is ill, for their sake so they don't take his rejection of them personally. I would just say your dad is sick he has something wrong with his brain that makes it difficult for him to be a good dad or something wishy washy like that while they are young.

He does sound very ill and he probably does believe that he is better when he gets in touch but just because he believes it it doesn't make it true.

The thing is it’s tricky to get them right explanation as I don’t want him to twist it when they are older “oh your mum stopped me because I wasn’t well” because that’s how he sees it in his head, despite the fact he disappears he rewrites history, a few years back he told me never to contact him again ever, that he wants nothing to do with them and never will and that he will never be a dad, when he contacted me again he had at first completely denied saying any of it, he said we were talking normally and then I just blocked him, which wasn’t what happened. He then put it down again to his “mental illness” making him say it, but how much can you blame on mental illness? I know he is medicated by injections from what he said, so it really is very serious.

I also should have shown up at his house as well apparently despite him telling me never to speak to him ever again I should have shown up at his house to make sure he was ok and he can’t believe I didn’t

I really feel for you OP. It does sound like he is struggling a lot with his mental health but that doesn’t make it any easier to deal with for you than any other father who is unreliable. 😔