This is probably pointless from the point of view of getting a coherent answer, but it’s the middle of the night and I just want to talk about it.
I have three children: two young adults with jobs and the third, who is a bit younger, is in full time education.
Ex-H has always had a problem with alcohol abuse. It’s a problem that doesn’t occur regularly as he can go for months, even years, without drinking, but now and then will start to drink and will get absolutely wasted over the course of a single afternoon or evening. He is an abusive drunk and has a long history of falling out with family when he does this.
For years, I protected our children from this to a large extent, with a reasonable degree of success. He was banned from getting drunk at home and on occasions when I knew he would drink to excess, he was banned from coming home until the next day. With hindsight, I should have instigated an absolute ban or left him, but I was the typical frog in boiling water and he was abusive in other ways as well, which I had somehow normalized or excused in my head, so the alcohol abuse seemed relatively minor.
Roll forward a few years and I finally left him after, on the very first occasion he had the chance to get drunk with my two elder children, he did so and ended up wasted enough to become abusive (name calling, revealing he despised one of them, to the distress of the other). They were afraid to leave him to sleep it off and felt responsible for looking after him and I was horrified that he’d been so stupid. He’s always been in denial about his drinking, but this was so easily avoidable.
Both of those children have been in sporadic contact with him since, though neither has much respect and the scapegoat that he insulted most when drunk is edging towards permanent no contact.
Fast forward a few years with no further incidents. Our youngest had stayed in contact and ex-H seemed to be working at maintaining contact, while, at the same time, being something of a Disney dad. He’s way better off than I am, so can offer expensive holidays and lump sums of money for birthdays etc.
Recently youngest and ex-H were in very regular contact and ex-H seemed to be making a good effort. Youngest chose an educational establishment away from me and closer to ex and I was pleased for them both.
Guess I’ve always been foolishly optimistic about ex, because the other day, out of the blue, he went out and got drunk when he had arranged to meet our youngest. He completely forgot they were supposed to be meeting and left our child in limbo, worrying about where his dad was. Ex-H did answer the phone, but sounded so abnormal that our child didn’t know who he was speaking to and thought it was someone else.
Youngest child called me, worried about his dad, and as soon as he explained, I guessed what was happening as ex-H does a weird voice when wasted. My diagnosis was quickly confirmed when I called ex-H.
The drunkenness and thoughtlessness was no surprise really, though I don’t understand how anyone who knows they have a drink problem could still be stupid enough to risk lunchtime drinking when they knew they had arranged to meet our child. Once again, so easily avoidable that I just don’t understand why he let it happen. It feels like self-sabotage.
But it’s the aftermath that I understand even less. After months of working quite hard to keep up a good relationship with our child, ex has made literally no effort towards trying to make up for his cock up. He made an offensively minimal effort towards apologizing, which was more of a brush off, with no attempt to address or even acknowledge the concern he’d caused. Our child has quite black and white thinking and decided to cut off contact, which I do understand, but ex-H still made no effort to apologize or explain and just seems to have accepted that the close relationship I thought they had, is gone.
Why, in those circumstances would any dad not be crawling on his knees to try and get contact back? If I’d fucked up in that way, I’d have been incredibly apologetic and tried to explain. How can anyone just let their children walk away and not make any effort? I just don’t understand. Did he never care at all about any of them? To look at what went just before, you’d have thought he did. He was never a great husband or dad, but he wasn’t an absolute deadbeat, or didn’t seem like it.
Obviously, my only pathway here is to support my children through this. I have to accept the shocking fact that I had a family with a man who is willing to let his children walk away and make not one iota of effort to stop it happening, but can anyone throw any light on his behaviour for me? They’re lovely children and turning into decent adults, though the poor scapegoat is more scarred than the others. I’d crawl on hot coals for my children and am horribly conscious of the fact that I should have protected them better.
But my question is, how can their dad be so indifferent? I just don’t get it.