Would you meet an absent father again after years without contact?

[Tisfortired]

I am 35, my parents split when I was 2, and after my mum remarried when I was 4, I didn’t see my dad again for 10 years. In the first 4 years of my life, he did things like - forgot to pick me up from nursery, ‘forgot’ to come and meet my mum to collect me at Christmas, sold my mums belongings to get football tickets, never gave my mum a penny of maintenance… you get the picture. He’s the kind of man you would call funny and charming - everyone liked him. But as a partner and father, pretty terrible.

When I was 14 I initiated contact with him and from the ages of 14-18 we had regular contact. He’d remarried and had another child. I would go to their house for dinner once a week, went on holidays with them, spent a Christmas with them etc. Pretty normal, and I loved getting to know my new sibling. However as I got older I got fed up being the one always initiating contact, it was always me getting in touch with him. One day I just didn’t send my regular ‘can I come round on Thursday’ message and thought I’ll wait to see if he messages me, and he just never did. I realise now that this was probably quite childish, but I just felt like he should be the one making amends and making an effort and I never got that feeling from him.

I’ve bumped into my dad a couple of times recently just by chance. He has asked if I will go for dinner with him to catch up. He said he thinks about me a lot and wants to start seeing me regularly again like we used to. He said he thought about messaging me but thought I wouldn’t want to hear from him (this is what he said about not seeing me as a child too. He said that as my mum had remarried he thought I was happy with my ‘new dad’ and wouldn’t want to see him anymore.)

He’s missed out on so much. I’ve graduated, got married, had 3 children - he’s missed out on it all. I never admitted it but it’s always broken my heart that I didn’t see my dad. I always wanted more than anything to have a relationship with him. My mum hates him naturally and would be devastated if she thought I was seeing him again. My husband doesn’t think I should either. But I can’t help but think we only have one dad and if we have a chance to repair our relationship we should. Saying that though I don’t even know if I can forgive him for everything. I think I just wish it had been different.

In my position would you meet him or not? My heart and my head are telling me different things.

Thank you if you got this far and sorry for the ramble. I guess I would just like to hear objective opinions and maybe from people who had been in similar situations.

I wouldn't sorry

But you must do whats best for you, whichever choice you make is fair x

I lost touch with my dad for a few years. I contacted him when I was pregnant and to be fair he's completely stepped up and is a full part of my life (much to my mum's disgust).

Meet him but take him at face value. He's obviously not a great human being if he's treated you like shit by not seeing you for many many years and didn't contribute £ when you were growing up. But is he a decent chap now? Is he brilliant in other ways?

Don't introduce him to your DC until you know he's putting enough effort in so they don't end up losing him (worse than never having him round in the first place)

What's the Mumsnet saying? When people show you who they are, believe them....

This is who he is. He's not going to change. He's never going to be the dad you want him to be as he doesn't have it in him. His actions, or inaction, over the years have shown that. This isn't on you. You were a child. This is completely on him. He should own it. Let him own it. He's likely asking to assuage all the difficult feelings and realisation of his shortcomings that these and hoc meets have generated. Not a priority enough to make contact to ask when you're on his mind but only when you're a physical, unignorable presence in his life.

I'm in a similar situation. Estranged dad, made contact, better for a bit but back to estranged. He doesn't care. I felt guilty for a while about not pursuing a relationship but I don't now. We're strangers. He doesn't know me and has no importance in my life and as hard as it is to realise it's the same for him with me. I cannot ever think of a circumstance where I would physically and financially abandon my kids but he did that so yeah, I owe him nothing.

Look after you and yours OP.

Not a chance. Why do you want to give him a chance to hurt you again? Leopards and spots!
Has the 2nd wife moved on and he's wondering about care in his old age or who’s going to cook his Christmas dinner? I wouldn’t want to upset my mother, who was there as a responsible parent either.

I personally wouldn't.
Once a feckless father always a feckless father. I don't think these men deserve to have their adult DC and GC in their lives.
Minimal effort for maximum gain? Nope.

I think thats what law courts are for - a devoted dad would find a way?

in the op case she’s older now and they did reconnect when she was a young adult but he’s let it lapse

Female here. No realistically a women can turn DCs against the father. I’ve seen it play-out first hand.
Persistence and going through the courts, believe me doesn’t necessarily mean it’s a happy ending at all, particularly when young brains are being corrupted.

@Tisfortired
I would, but 3 strikes and he’s out/never again.

Why bother with someone who didn’t want to bother with you? It’s easy to say he thought about you, etc but actions speak louder than words and there weren’t any of those. I haven’t spoken to my dad since I was 23 and never will again. There are plenty of people who do value you, use your energy for your relationships with them.

I wouldn’t bother with him at all as he will bring nothing but unhappiness to your life. Some men are just not cut out to be responsible parents. He is one of them. Don’t waste your time. It will end with him asking you for money or a place to live or asking you to look after him as he gets older. Just don’t.

God it is so sad reading all of these posts.

And I think this is one of the saddest paragraphs I have read on Mumsnet;

One day I just didn’t send my regular ‘can I come round on Thursday’ message and thought I’ll wait to see if he messages me, and he just never did. I realise now that this was probably quite childish, but I just felt like he should be the one making amends and making an effort and I never got that feeling from him

I hate the fact that he never initiated contact and I also hate the fact that you are criticising yourself for even having that expectation Op!

As others have said, from the pov of protecting yourself from further hurt, I think it would probably be best to leave things as they are. It’s very much his loss and he is probably (selfishly) realising that properly only now! 💐

Tried that, his parents paid to take it to court, she promised the earth to the Sheriff (Scottish court), then resorted to type. Tried again and Sheriff ultimately couldn't force her to hand kids over, they never jailed Mums. This was early 90's and very much different times for Dads compared to now.

I'm with your Mum and DH. With that amount of neglect I'm more likely to contact the police than your df for theft and abuse on his part. He sold your mum's belongings to buy football tickets??? The only thing I'd want from him is the money to pay her back.

Why are people telling the OP that her mother may have lied or it was easy to exclude a dad or there may have been parental alienation when even the absent dad isn't claiming this? just why would you want the OP to doubt her mother without any evidence at all that this happened and plenty of evidence including the statements of absent dad that he just thought -- ah she'll be grand with her new dad. I can't understand this.

In your case OP I probably wouldn't bother with him. I can understand why you are interested in building a relationship with him but the reality is he is far more likely to disappoint you than fulfill the father relationship at last. And I would be VERY wary of having any grandfather type of interaction at all. Whatever you decide I would take a lot of time to make that decision and start out any contact with no expectations at all.

I wonder what happened to his other children? Is he still married. his wife must be an odd one too - did she never say "um where is that other child you had who used to come for dinner/christmas/holidays?"

Do you want to see his child/children again, the ones you knew when you were a teen?

I’d want him to explain why he wants to be in touch, then think about whether those are good enough reasons.
I’d want to know what his relationship with his wife and DC is like too. If they’ve binned him off, well frankly I wouldn’t bother at all.

Then I’d arrange an initial meeting where you lay down the terms- that you are very disappointed by his behaviour in your life so far, that you will need him to be very proactive in arrangements, and that he won’t be part of your DC’s life until you are confident he won’t disappear again. And mean it.

I come at this from personal experience. My biological father left when I was 18m and never looked back. He had another family shortly after.

Independently of him, I have a relationship with one of his other children. We are pretty close.

I met him once as a child, aged about 10. And then not again until I was 30ish.

He is now very keen to maintain a relationship. He is acutely aware of the grandchildren he does not know, and the life he has missed with me. I also think, as he gets older, he's more and more uncomfortable with the optics of the situation. He will have to explain to friends and family that he has been chosen to be absent from my life.

I have not pursued maintaining a relationship. I don't know what I'd get out of it. For me (I realise not the same as you) he is essentially a stranger. And as a parent, I cannot fathom or relate to the choices he made.

He made his bed. Let him lie in it. I wouldn't goce him the time of day.

@AttilaTheMeerkat

Exactly what I was going to say.

I get the sadness op, my DD has had the same her whole life.
She's mid 20's and had her heart broken yet again last year by him, after re contacting him and a new bond formed.
Then everything they built he destroyed and backtracked.

It's very very hard to know what to do, for fear of how you'd feel if you get let down again.

Sounds like our early life was similar and our fathers too, although neither of my parents re-married or had other children (well, that I know about). It was brave of you to initiate contact when you were 14, I think I was around that age when he and I last spoke on the phone. I thought that I'd try and initiate contact when I was an adult, I figured maybe he just couldn't relate to children. The sadness never ever leaves you. I hadn't yet got around to contacting him and then he died. Obviously a very different situation to yourself - do you think you can live with the sadness alongside a relationship with him? As you say he won't apologise, it's who he is. All I can say is that I am only now, age 50 getting over the idea that I just wish I had been able to see him before he died.

The sadness and conflicted feeling has never left me for what it's worth, obviously I'm not thinking about it all the time but periodically, yes, and it can come out of nowhere. I don't think you can just put it down to a heart/ head decision - as said you'll always have conflicted feelings about this type of father.

This didn't happen to me but i was witness to a situation where a mother led by her own domineering mother estranged the father of her 2 little boys.
They were pretty useless partners to each other but he was not an abusive dad.
They put obstacles in his way until so much time had passed it became an estrangement.
The boys are adults now and i'm not in touch so i have no idea if they got back in touch with each other, i suppose he could have fought harder but the grandmother was a definite spanner in the works.
I think in a situation like this i would want to meet up with my dad, curiosity would get the better of me .
When there has been abuse that's a different matter and i don't think i would then.
Good luck.

Whatever you do, don't invest emotionally in him, because he's let you down multiple times.

I realise now that this was probably quite childish, but I just felt like he should be the one making amends and making an effort and I never got that feeling from him

Actually no. It is up to the parent to make the effort and cultivate a relationship with their child, not the other way around, so it wasn't childish on your part, especially given his history and how you felt.

He sounds strange and selfish OP, so don't get your hopes up.

It's not just optics. He's probably worried about which one of his children will be willing to look after him the most as he ages and falls ill.

This. It says a lot about him. Unless there's something to it that we're unaware of, this is just very self-serving or vindictive.

The ‘I didn’t think you’d want to hear from me’ concerns me. Did you feel the need to pacify his little pity party? How would he react if you asked him why he thought you wouldn’t want to hear from him? Could he tolerate hearing how he has hurt you?

we only have one dad

I belong to the I’ve Got A Shit Dad club and I just simply won’t break No Contact just so he can hurt me some more. Sometimes the one Dad you get isn’t deserving of the title and that’s sad but that’s how it is

Don’t get hurt OP

I think in my case optics definitely play a large role. My sister (his 'next' child) got married and I was there. Most people there were acutely aware of who I was and the lack of relationship we have. I think the reputational damage drives his desire for contact more than actually wanting a relationship with me.

At least he has respected my 'no', I guess. I've not heard from him since.

He's consistently shown you who he really is. Any further time you spend on him will be time wasted, time that you could instead invest in yourself, in your actually loving family members and children, or therapy sessions to get this loser off your mind.

As is usually the case on here, he is just some shit bloke (they truly are ten a penny) and YOU DESERVE SO MUCH BETTER ❤️❤️