My dad keeps writing to me and I don't know what to do

[Thesoundofsilence16]

Name changed and I don't know if it's advice needed or just to write it all down as I don't have anyone to talk to about this. There is also much more I could say about some things growing up but they are things I've never told anyone ever. This is long and perhaps nobody will read it though anyway.

Growing up, my parents had a very difficult relationship. I think basically they married after a short time because my mum was pregnant, but really they should never have been together. The relationship hurt them both as people. I think I probably took on the peace keeper role as my mum and then my older sister were often very disdainful towards my dad, and I felt like he needed someone on his side. However, he also has a lot of flaws as a person - often self absorbed and self obsessed and I don't think he's ever really known me or wanted me to be anything other than an extension of himself. Very strong beliefs on everything that he always wants to 'convert' others to. He's also had a lot of mental health issues, which were swept under the carpet, never talked about openly and something we weren't supposed to know about, but were a sort of backdrop on things.

My parents had a fairly nasty divorce when I was a young teenager (long after they should have separated anyway). Shortly after this, my sister stopped talking to him. Their relationship had been difficult for a while and they were always having angry arguments about everything. Both very opinionated. I felt angry at my sister for a long time over this and our relationship never really recovered either - I think really though it was because I felt abandoned by her to have to deal with my dad alone from then on.

Anyway, I moved away for uni and for a while our relationship was pretty calm and 'normal' after this, albeit he was always fairly needy. Like frequent monologuing phone calls. But I still felt a sense of protectiveness towards him and I was aware that he needed me, having essentially lost my mum and sister, and all parents have their flaws. I always felt sorry for him.

Around 10 years ago however, he launched some very big news at me. I don't want to write it on here as it's very specific and I don't want it to be the focus of this. It came as a shock and I really needed time to process it, but instead found myself inundated with phone calls and letters. I remember silently sobbing down the phone on one occasion as he obliviously launched into a monologue about how wonderful all his new changes were and how fantastic everyone was being to him (having spoken to other relatives, I know this was not the case for people who actually knew him, who were all very much perturbed and concerned). I ended up sort of 'grey rocking' him because it was actually quite difficult and painful to speak to him. And I just didn't know (I still don't know) how to express any of this. I think I needed time to do a sort of grieving. He came to visit me and my now husband a handful of times after this and we were both unnerved by the change in him, total change in appearance, mannerisms and appearance. He showed only the most superficial empathy for me finding this hard and was more self absorbed than ever.

Gradually, contact dwindled down and down, although he'd occasionally call me tearfully saying how heartbroken he was by the state of our relationship, or write me lengthy letters. I've since moved to a different part of the country, started my own family, who he has nothing to do with. At Christmas we exchange cards and he sends money or presents for the children, which I text send a thanks for (I've told him he doesn't need to send things and we don't need anything). Occasionally I look him up online where he is quite an outspoken presence. He looks like a totally different person from the father I grew up with in every way - colourful hair, colourful clothes, tattooed, different outspoken beliefs in almost all areas. He has also given an interview of his life story online, which felt like a form of violation somehow to be spoken about as some kind of background figure without my consent, and also how he spoke about my mum. He doesn't know I've seen this however.

Occasionally, as in the case of this week, he sends letters. This week he writes telling me how acutely lonely he is feeling. I feel like I don't know how to respond. I feel terribly guilty for causing his sadness. Yet I feel he is now a stranger to me, and a confusing stranger to my children. I don't miss him in my life. He doesn't even call himself 'dad' at the end of his letters to me anymore anyway, so what even should our relationship be.

I feel that I remain silent because there are no words that won't cause further hurt. There is no way out of this. What is the point of trying to explain how I feel about things when the only outcome is hurt. I don't think he'd ever understand me and so much time has passed. But by not replying I am causing pain.

It's very difficult to give advice without knowing what caused the rift.

Can you resume contact but grey rock him and keep contact low?

If that's impossible then stop reading his letters.

I am assuming he wants to force you to accept his new ‘female’ persona, although he will always only ever be the man he is. By the sounds of it he is a self obsessed narcissist who never brought anything good to your life, and you’ve been locked in FOG for years (fear, obligation, guilt - children of self obsessed and toxic parents often feel this).

You don’t have to be in contact with him. His loneliness is his responsibility. You are not his parent, you are not responsible for his happiness, and you are free to detach from a source of pain.

I feel terribly guilty for causing his sadness.

You are NOT responsible for his sadness.
You do not have to have any contact at all if you find it upsetting. Bin the letters and don’t let him guilt you.
He made his choices. Maybe it wasn’t his fault he was a rubbish dad (product of his own upbringing perhaps?) but if out of sight, out of mind is easier for you then do block him. Tell him you’re moving and you’ll send the address when you’re settled, but then don’t, if it helps you to get distance from him, or tell him to stop using you as a therapist and to pay for one.

Maybe some counselling will help you deal with all the feelings you have about him. I’ve been grieving the father I’ll never have for many years, I know how upsetting it can be.

I know you don’t want to ‘out’ the situation, but did your dad change his identity in some way? I’m not sure how to ask in a less direct way, but the ‘me me me’ behaviour and the not even calling himself dad is quite telling. Whatever the situation, he’s obviously detached himself in a big way, and it’s not your responsibility to play catch up with the way he wants to live his life. Especially (and I’m making huge assumptions here) if it means erasing your past/historical relationship. Don’t feel guilty about someone else moving the goalposts of expectations.

Clearly he decided he is now a woman.
OP, you are not responsible for any of this, look at Trans widows support. I know he was not your husband but the principles are the same.
If you want to go NC then you can, you don't even need a reason at all. Sedn the letters back unopened or bin them

Yes, I was waiting for the op to clarify if she felt she could but was going to suggest Trans Widows. I’m not sure if there’s an similarly supportive group children, but its certainly the best place to start,

op you don’t to give details. Simply, you are receiving unwanted correspondence which is of a personal nature but is ultimately of no danger to you physically.

If I was in your situation I would continue to be silent/unresponsive. That in itself is a response. You are not this person’s keeper/nurturer/mentor/emotional sponge.

Your silence compels the correspondent to learn to manage their own feelings/emotions.

This is not on you.

Have you considered writing to him to express some of what you’re feeling? Maybe you already have. Or maybe it’s too painful to open up when he often fails to recognise your needs. But it might be worth considering if you haven’t. It might bring him a bit of insight.

You owe him nothing.

I admire your optimism but I don't think you have a lot of experience with people like this man

This man you’ve never met?

If you definitely don't want any contact from your father, you could write him a 'cease-and-desist' letter making this clear, or get a solicitor to write it for added impact. Persistent unwanted contact can amount to a criminal offence even if it is not intended to cause distress.

Op, before making any decision about replying, you need to understand, accept and firmly believe some things. From what you’ve written, these will probably shake the beliefs or foundations of thoughts you do have, so don’t brush over them quickly, and get therapy if you need too, to understand them.

Thrse are taken directly from your post,, and I have no doubt there are more, you just haven’t written them -

1. You do not need to be the peacekeeper. You should not have been put in that role as a child, nor should you be now.
2. You do not need to be the one ‘on his side’. You should not have been made to feel this as a child, nor should you now.
3. You do not need to feel sorry for him - not as a child, nor now. He is a grown adult, made choices and like all people in this world, lives with the consequences of those choices. Again, like all adults, he has the ability and means to try and change things. You do not have to try and change them for him, nor do you need to accept his overtures to try and change them. You are allowed to say you don’t want someone in your life.
4. He is entitled to change (I assume transitioning, but could be gay or something else - it doesn’t matter). You are entitled to be pleased he is moving forward, but to also grieve the change in relationship to you. You are entitled to take as much time as you want to do this. You are entitled to wish him well but not see him moving forward. You are entitled to your own feelings. You are allowed to feel them, at whatever pace you choose.
5. You do not need to feel responsibility for his sadness. You did not cause his sadness or loneliness. You are not his solution to those things.

Think over these points, and work on acknowledging that little girl inside you, who seems torn between wanting to ‘be on his side’ and keeping the peace, vs the knowing that doing so was at the expense of her own feelings. Be kind to yourself and push back on feelings of fear, obligation and guilt. It will probably take awhile, but once you do, THEN consider if you want a relationship at all with him, and if so, what that looks like. Until then, protect yourself.

https://childrenoftransitioners.org/

this might be helpful

I have met a few like him

You are not, and never were, responsible for his happiness or pain. If you think it would help you to write to him then do so. Simply saying what you have said here. He may not read it and probably won't understand or take responsibility though. You can also ask him not to contact you again, or decide not to read his lengthy letters. Most importantly, stop feeling guilty.

Ask your DH to intercept the letters and put them through the shredder without telling you. Block any calls , texts or emails.

He’s changed his entire self and described the change online. We are told that no one must doubt this , so the best thing is to accept that this,person is a total stranger to whom You owe nothing.

Be free of it 🕊

"I feel terribly guilty for causing his sadness"

Has he ever shown any guilt for what happened throughout your entire childhood? Or the distress he has caused you in the time since?

You are not responsible for someone else's happiness, sadness, mental health or wellbeing, that is something they have to tackle for themselves. Even now, he writes telling you how lonely he is feeling, but there's no concern at all for your welfare, is there? He is trying to make you feel as though it is your fault he's lonely.

Thank you for all the comments and taking the time to read it all. Hit the nail on the head with what happened... but I just didn't want it to become a conversation just about that. Obviously it's hugely relevant to my feelings and the whole situation though. This is all just a spiel of thoughts. If you can't write these things anonymously on the internet then what can you do.

He wasn't a bad dad in a lot of respects. He did/does love us but didn't know how to parent us. I do think he tried and didn't know how to do things any differently. It was all a bit of a mess from the start I suspect. It is hard being a parent sometimes and his mental health issues were all real. I mostly don't think his intentions are bad either, but I'm not sure what he wants truly... Affirmation from me? A prop to validate and show others that he is a good person whose family love him? What kind of relationship does he envision? Am I being manipulated or am I being heartless? He doesn't really know me and never really did even when I was younger. I think he genuinely believes everything he says. I'm sure he believes he is a good person. It is definitely very important for him to be seen as a good person. I still feel sorry for him. My husband says he feels sorry for him too. I feel cruel and I still feel a sense of responsibility.

I worry that one day I'll find out he's killed himself.
I worry that one day he'll write to me that he's terminally ill or has some other health issues and what do I do then. Sometimes his letters repeat questions he already knows, I'm not sure if it's because of some kind of decline or maybe it's just because he never paid attention to my answers.
I worry that he'll show up on my doorstep if I stop replying completely. He did this to my sister once (many years ago). He'll say it was because he was desperate or he was worried something might have happened to me when he didn't hear anything. This is what he says in his messages sometimes.

I think I've felt betrayed by him. I stood by him when it was hard and had disagreements with my mum and sister because of him. Only for it to turn out that he wasn't the person I thought he was.

I do find it embarrassing too. And shameful. I know my mum used to hide her underwear from him (this is something I've never even spoken about to my husband, no-one knows I know, I found a note my mum had written when I was younger but buried it in my head and tried never to think of it again until all this happened). Unsurprisingly this is never mentioned in his online presence. And I don't mean for it to be ammunition by mentioning it but I'm trying to explain or justify, maybe even to myself, why I find it all so hard.
It's not something you can talk about in real life because you don't know how people will react. I lost a pregnancy a couple of years ago and had some counselling afterwards where my dad was mentioned in passing and I was surprised when the therapist expressed immediate sympathy and affirmed that it was a form of loss. You see celebrities in the news with trans relatives and I feel like I'm supposed to be loving and accepting when I struggle to be. That's what my dad expected too - I know because he wrote about it online.

Anyway. What use would come of telling him any of this. He'd only be defensive and hurt. And on my part, I don't really want to move forward and as I said I don't think it would achieve anything positive in any respect. Yet I can't bring myself to just not look or not reply in case it makes it all worse too.

Grey rock forever I suppose.

Thank you especially @3LemonsAndLime. Point 4 especially and your end paragraph. The only issue is the ageing and future problems I worth about.

There is a lot of support out there for you- the trans widows threads and the children of transitioned groups understand what you are going through, so check them out.

Some excellent advice has already been shared. I’d just like to add this-
he isn’t interested in what you want from a relationship.
he is interested in the perception of himself. He wants to look like a man who has never given up on his daughter. He writes to her even though she doesn’t write back etc. he’s painting himself as the virtuous one who’s sadly outcast by his nearest and dearest as a way of refusing responsibility for his behaviour.
He wants to look like a great parent so he’s doing some stuff to help that appearance- but it’s as superficial as the changes he has made. All about surface impressions. No actual feeling at all.

Kindly, OP, your feelings can’t be held hostage to unknown ‘future problems’ or a worry about your Dad aging. The State (assuming you are UK) provides for aging people, so this is not your concern. No debate about the standard or care levels - the State says it provides, he knows as much about the process as you do (or can find out) it is not your responsibility and that is the line you must tell yourself.

in terms of ‘ageing’, I assume you mean future care, but also losing him, and how that would make you feel. This is complex, but I’d suggest right now you have already ‘lost’ him, or lost the person he was (or the person you thought he was), and so any grief you might have at his passing is actually similar to what you feel now, except at the same time you are expected to hide it and have this (what can feel like) new person in your life, but who has all the same expectations of closeness as the old person. In some ways, the grief from death is a simpler, more linear process to go through, not taking away from the difficulties of that process.

Either way, you will be better equipped emotionally to deal with his aging or future problems if you focus on yourself, and working through your feelings and emotions now. Indeed doing so may make the path easier at that point - eg if you have determined to go NC, or if you have determined to him back in your life at a level you are comfortable with. A big part of your concern comes from you not knowing how you feel. This is expected, from what you wrote in you OP you haven’t acknowledged your feelings, but rather tried to ignore them as you try and please your dad or be the peacekeeper. Give your feelings a chance to come out. Go NC for awhile. Drop the rope. See a counsellor. Process the feelings of the last decade/s. THEN decide what you want moving forward.

Minus the trans thing (which is a big part of the dynamic for you and your father, I realise) my dad was similar - a deeply troubled,
emotionally unstable and self-centred man who quite aggressively insisted on being perceived as A Good Person and one of life’s victims. I spent 4 decades feeling guilt and pity towards him, and trying and trying to keep our relationship afloat - even while he did mad things like conduct a secret second life abroad, telling people his wife had died in a car accident and he had no children (he was still married to my mother and 2 kids still living at home).

Then my daughter died, and he responded by writing me a long letter about how hurt he was that I never paid him enough attention.

I couldn’t speak to him again after that. It was finally completely crystal clear that he didn’t give a shit about me - he wasn’t able to. He couldn’t think about anyone but himself or see past his obsessive need to be a victim. The harder we all tried to love and support and understand him, the harder he had to work to turn us into the abandoning persecutors he needed us to be.

I blocked his emails, and didn’t open his letters. Eventually they stopped coming - he found someone else to harangue about not loving him enough.

He died in Jan. I hadn’t spoken to him in over a decade. It was OK. I have a good relationship with my sibling, and we were able to reflect together that we had done the right thing in not letting him bleed us dry emotionally while our own children were very young and needed us. We were also very glad he hadn’t been in our children’s lives, controlling and gaslighting and guilt-tripping them as he had done to us.

The guilt is worst at the beginning - once you’re fully estranged they move on quite quickly to find other people to feel abandoned by, and you realise how much life force and joie de vivre and capacity for happiness is freed up by not being endlessly monologued at and made to feel like shit by someone who takes no responsibility for the pain they’ve caused.

You can’t make him feel better. He will drag you under, and you can’t afford that.

You’ll get there, and you’ll be OK. ❤️

I have no very helpful advice, just letting you know I feel a lot of compassion for you. This is a horrible situation your father has put you in and it's not your fault in any way. I'm glad your previous counsellor was sympathetic - would you consider further counselling?

He’s seeking validation - online, being ‘out’ in his new persona, and is leaning on you to close the circle. This is all about him.