I have not cut my father out of my life, but I wouldn’t go out of my way to do him a favor. I’ll talk to him on the phone (but not call him); I buy him a Christmas present most years, but I have not given him a Father’s Day card in years (and likely never will again).
I don’t hate my father, but neither do I love him, and, try as I might, I cannot respect him.
Mr. Adoptamom and I on the other side of the fence. We are parents that have been “cut off” by two children.
The first is my husbands daughter from his first marriage, my stepdaughter, now 24 years old. She laid the ultimatum down to her father that when she came to visit for a month each summer that only she and her father be present in the home for the entire month. Considering DH and I have 5 other children, that was impossible and he called her bluff. Although it pains him GREATLY at times, he often says how grateful he is for our children who love him unconditionally and understand that sometimes parents are like a pie who must be shared among their children. Today, you may get the bigger piece, tomorrow your brother may, but you will always get a piece of Dad’s pie.
The second is our foster daughter who joined our family when she was 15 and pregnant. We took this young lady in, loved and nurtured her as our own. Fought (and won) our local Children and Family Services for her right to chose her child’s adoptive family. Fought (and won) Children and Family Services for her to be able to obtain her drivers license (first teen ever in our state).
We then helped her find a job, paid the down payment on a modest car for her and helped her get into college. When she failed to pay the car notes, and subsequently went into hiding so that we couldn’t find her or the car, we felt we’d been used and cut off. We located and repossessed the car. Since that time, she’s been rollerblading on the wild side of life (she’s now 22), including two more unplanned pregnancies which she made adoption plans for. Constant crisis and chaos surround this young lady, and after taking years of the blame, I finally said ENOUGH and she hasn’t phoned in over a year.
Although the loss of these two children hurt - tremendously - our four remaining children are as good as they get. We share loving, warm, affectionate recipricol relationships with the two adult children, and the same with our two still at home.
If I had a magic wand, I would wave it over the heads of the two who have chosen to cut contact with us, to heal their hurt, smooth their bad experiences and welcome them back into the fold. In the meantime, we keep them in our prayers daily and enjoy the time we have with our other four children.
Trish, my sympathies. It sure sounds like a tough row, but you seem to have done it. Congratulations.
The question of my children is a double-edged sword that I feel I’m holding by the blade. I feel I have to protect them from my Dad-- not that he’d abuse them physically, but that he’s a real menace emotionally. We were still in contact when my first was an infant, and I never really felt comfortable leaving him alone with her.
The other edge of the sword is that the same daughter (now three-ish) knows all about parents and has asked several times about my father. I’ve got several strategies for this (compulsive planner) but it basically boils down to keeping the truth, i.e. that children can cut off their parents, from her for as long as possible. Without lying. Not a great solution, but I’ve come to believe there isn’t one.
My father, the creep, sends her presents that have his picture on them. I give all such presents (sans pictures) to the public library.
Nog
I have faith that your stepdaughter will come back to you, probably when she has children, or especially if she ever has to get divorced, and she will be in your husband’s shoes. There’s nothing like parenthood for a perspective switch. Hang in there.
Make sure she knows the door is open…
That’s simply common courtesy and should be done whether the person is your child or not.
Zev Steinhardt
I’m completely estranged from my father, and have been for about 10 years.
My parents divorced was I was 14, after many years of my dad’s infidelity with many, many different women. I was born while my father left the hospital after a few hour’s labor to spend the night with his girlfriend. He was distant and uninterested as a part of our family. He never went to a sports game, never took us to lessons, didn’t go on family vacations, and spent 100% of his time at home hiding in his workshop. My only true memories of childhood involving him was opening the basement door and yelling that dinner was ready. My mother stayed married for the sake of the kids, but gave up and divorced him. He married the woman he was involved with at the time, who was about 22 years old when I was 15. She had no interest in having stepchildren nearly her age, and contact with him pretty much halted. I’d try to call him once or so a year, and got less than that back from him. He didn’t go to my first wedding, and I late found out (from that wife, after they divorced) as he was with yet another woman. He didn’t go to my husband’s funeral as it was too far to drive (less than an hour), and I basically gave up. Thanks for the DNA, I appreciate the long legs, but it just isn’t worth the hassle, in my book.
I’m not unhappy, or feel guilty, or even wonder what things would be like if the situation were different. That’s just how it worked out and I’m fine with it.
After my first year of college, which did not go well, I did not return home, opting instead to move to LA and stop school for awhile. The last semester had gone very badly, mainly because I was depressed, and was not at all interested in school, so I didn’t go. Mom was going through a rough divorce with dad and menopause at the same time (as she told me later), and called me alot. She was always upset, and I didn’t want to upset her further, so I did the wrong thing, and misled her about my grades. I never lied, but I didn’t tell her what was going on. So, when she recieved my got my grades in the mail, she blew up. She told me that I was a liar and a coward, and that she didn’t want to hear from me again. Well, I am a pretty obstinate cuss(I get it from both my parents 
), and refused to contact her, and she didn’t contact me. Thankfully, after about a year and a half she broke down and sent me a letter. We resumed contact, and have a pretty good relationship now another year and ahalf later.
But I feel that not all parents deserve to be in their parents life. And while I have good parents, I have friends that if I had their parents, I would have cut them out of my life long ago. But those are abusive relationships, not something just said in the heat of the moment.
If forgiveness does not sit well with you, think of just how hard it would be for her to actually come all that way and knock on your door. Eating crow and admiting to past failings, perceived and real, is exceptionally hard to do.
It might be the hardest thing you do, but after you have done it ( maybe years) you will feel better, if only to show your child/ren how far you have come from that sad, forgotten little girl to a woman capable of rising above the hurt.
Good luck and Happy Gestation.
I cut my mom off after she withheld a gift to my daughter that she’d been promising for months because she was angry at me. Luckily, my daughter was too young to realize what was going on at the time. I’d been dealing with her tantrums, emotional immaturity and manipulation since the beginning of time, but this was the last straw. Attempting to hurt my child to get back at me was going waaaay too far and I will not give her the opportunity to do it again. Not that she’s interested in my daughter or anything - the only reason she ever calls these days is to ask my husband to fix her computer.
I don’t call my parents----I occasionally email if something new/important/interesting goes on with the kids. I didn’t invite anyone to our wedding, mostly so we wouldn’t have to invite our parents. Drachillix, the kids and I ran up to Lake Tahoe to get married. We showed up for my mom’s birthday in November and for Christmas Eve, but decided to spend Christmas Day with people who liked us. I am grateful for the love and caring my parents lavished on me as a child, but they have opposed almost every adult decision I have ever made if it involved moving more than a few miles from their house or loving anyone who is ‘different’. When I decide to do something they don’t approve of, I am cut off until I come to my senses except for what I call Command Performances----Christmas Eve or family reunions.
Boy, this is a depressing thread. I’m glad I always had a good relationship with my parents. My mom is gone now, and my brother didn’t correspond with her more than once or twice a year for the last 20 years of her life. I know it hurt my folks a lot, because there is no reason for the stand-offishness (is that a word?). He says he loves them and tells all his friends how wonderful his family is, and then doesn’t acknowledge gifts or letters. It makes me so mad I could shake him!
I am so incredibly lucky.
My younger sister, on the other hand, is showing all signs of being a self-centered little priss and if it continues, I doubt very much we will have a sisterly relationship. Maybe when she goes away to college, and if I EVER manage to get my own place, things will change. Until then, she’s just a very selfish, manipulative, hurtful person. (But my mom says it’s the age. Yeah, you’ve been saying that since she was 12, Mom).
My paternal grandmother is driving away pretty much everyone in her life. Some of her best friends she treated like absolute shit and her own sister. She’s still hurting over the death of my aunt, but she WON’T move on, and it’s pretty bad for the family. My mom pretty much only puts up with her because of my dad.
I did it once for a few months, as a way to stop some emotional blackmail I was receiving. It wasn’t something I wanted to do, but something I felt I had to do. After a few months, my point was made and my grandmother (whom I had continued to speak with) brought about a reconciliation.
However, both of my brothers are completely estranged from our father and have been for, oh, 3-4 years now. My parents had a big, long, dragged-out, melodrama of a divorce that went on for 5 or 6 years and included many periods of separation and reconciliation. My oldest brother got far too involved in it, and I’m still not exactly sure why my younger-older brother holds out. I don’t have the best of relationships with my father – we talk a few times a year and maybe email every other month or so – but it’s actually better than it was before the divorce. Things are pretty much on his terms, which I have accepted and am fine with. His life as he has chosen it is far from the rest of us and with the “other woman” that precipitated the divorce. He seems to be happy. Unfortunately, because of this choice, he will probably never know his first (and possibly only) grandchild when she is born this spring.
You know, this thread has really made me think of how lucky I am
(even though there were times during angst filled years I didn’t feel lucky) and how not to treat my children.
I no longer have a relationship with my mother, at my choice.
She made a series of bad choices, including marrying a man who fancied little girls. Thankfuly, nothing ever happened. No one told me at age 11 that he was strange - I never trusted him, and always was very careful to not be around him by myself. He just gave me the creeps. I learned later that my mother caught him spying on me in the shower - he had drilled a hole in the wall. They divorced when I was 18 - right after I moved out.
When I was about 24, it really hit me that she placed me in a lot of danger. I confronted her, and she denied everything. Called me a liar, said I wanted him for myself. Mind you, I had married, moved away, got on with my life at this point.
Yes, she gave me life, and provided for me. Does this negate the fact that she left me alone with a man who she knew to have pedophilia leanings? No. Nothing can atone for that.
I learned later that my mother told my grandparents that if they went to the authorities, she would take me and run. So I ended up spending weekends at my grandparents. We are very close, so it wasn’t an odd thing.
For my mental health, I cannot have a relationship with her. Merely thinking about her turns my stomach. My husband and my grandparents support my decision. I feel that my grandparents raised me, as I spent more time at their house than my own anyways.
I have not spoken to my biological father for over 20 years, by choice. His second marriage was to a young woman who was abusive and nasty to my sister and I. I will not go into great detail, but the LEAST unpleasant thing she did was to offer her children (by my father) sweetened cereal in the mornings while serving my sister and I plain white bread. When my mother had some difficulties in her own life and my father conned a court into granting him custody, his wife tried to have me committed to a psychiatric hospital because I refused to convert to her religion. After six months of living with her, all my hair fell out and I developed ulcers. My mother sued for return of custody, which my father refused – UNLESS my mother’s new husband agreed to adopt my sister and I so that he would not have to pay child support. At the time I was 17 and my sister was 12, and his child support payments were $125 a month. He sold my sister and I for $9000.
At one job I had later, I made a phone call to a company and was shocked when my father answered the phone there (with his name.) After a few seconds of panic, I told him who I was, and also told him he now had a granddaughter. I told him if he wished to be a part of her life, I would not object. He said, “I want nothing to do with any of you pieces of garbage. I never did.”
Do I regret not having him in my life? Hell no.