I just wrote my dad out of my life. I feel better already.

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

My dad has long been a toxic influence in my life. The other day I finally realized that he is never going to change. He is always going to think of me as a horrible person, and always view everything I do through that perception. I realized that I could either allow him to keep hurting me for the rest of my life and squashing my self-esteem like a bug, or I could remove him as a factor in my life.

So I wrote it all out in my journal and I already feel better. He wrote me a last reply to my email explaining the situation, in which he further stated that I was crap (not in so many words, but he basically said I’m not “all that” in case I had any such delusions) and rather than hurting, it just reaffirmed my position. I didn’t reply to it and don’t plan to.

I feel remarkably free.

I know that there are other people here who have cut family members out of their lives and I am hoping for some practical guidance:

I’m 36, and my dad remarried when I was 21. He had 5 more kids after that, and I’d still like to send them cards and stuff on their birthdays. Can I still do that? Also, especially knowing his wife, I worry that they will still send me and/or my son gifts at holidays and I don’t know how to deal with that. I don’t want to be cruel to anyone, but I really want him to be gone from my life.

2

It’s really hard to believe that anyone could not see that you are an intelligent, funny, and (might I add) beautiful woman. For your own father not to know it boggles the mind.

I’m sorry that it had to come to this for you, but I have dumped a few people from my life that were seriously bringing me down and always felt like a new person afterwards.

Keep in touch with your half-siblings if you can.

I hope everything works out great for you!

3

Congratulations! After seeing first-hand the pain a toxic family member can cause, I applaud you for reaching this point.

Go ahead and keep in touch with your siblings–we still talk to my FILs family, even though Owls hasn’t talked to FIL in years. Just because you’re not talking to your dad, doesn’t mean you have to cut them out of your life too.

4

What would you do if he were your step-parent?

Can you deal with him as a relative by force, rather than by love? Exchange gifts and formal thank you notes, visit every two years at most, change your email address, and shred every letter (possibly after looking for a check for the kid first)?

5

Congratulations.

You know, in my former life I knew a lot of people who had written off their parents and/or one or more siblings. While I came from a very abusive background, I was somewhat strangely proud that I had never done that.

However, I recently wrote off my older sister, though we have not had contact yet to force the issue.

She’s a domineering control freak. It has to be Her Way. As my older sister, she has sometimes been there to help and protect me, and as an adult, to help me out with her professional skills. But it’s always at a steep price of control and being made to feel damaged in the end.

She also has an extremely wicked tongue and will say the most horrible things out of the blue.

Several years ago, we took a family trip to Florida. Both our parents, her, me, our younger sister, her husband and two small kids. Florida is her home away from home, and going there is always a tough thing for the rest of us, because SHE IS IN CONTROL. The first night, in the van with the entire extended clan, she makes some crack about seeing little birds at the top of big smoke stacks just keel over dead, and wishing that would happen to our dad, who was driving at the time. That’s just nasty and extremely unnecessary.

We go to Disney the next day. I had an “agreement” with her that she and I would go to Epcot two days later, or so I thought. At 1pm, she bails on her own to go to Epcot. Shortly thereafter, 8 year old nephew, myself and my father go back to the hotel. When we return at 6pm to meet up for dinner, Sister is livid. How dare we leave Disney! How dare we not keep to what she expected/demanded that we do! Just spitting mad because we left the park for a couple of hours - after she bailed on the entire family!

The worst was that she wanted to go to the outlet malls the next day, but my younger sister said her kids were tired and they wanted to stay at the resort, hang out and swim. Sister fumed and seethed, ranted and raved about how angry she was at all of us over every fucking little thing. I finally said something. I asked her what the big deal was, because little sister had small kids to deal with and maybe, just maybe, she should cut them a break and let them relax for a day. Big sis stormed out of the resort and didn’t return for two days. She didn’t speak to me for FOUR MONTHS.

Repeat the Not Speaking To Me several times since then, always over extremely petty shit, like calling her cell phone during the day when she was at work. Which had been fine the week before, but she had changed plans and now it was costing her precious minutes! How the fuck was I supposed to know? But she didn’t speak to me for a month that time.

Now this year. Mid June she calls me about my job search and goes from suggesting actions to actively bitching me out because I haven’t been doing the kinds of things that she’d be doing. Two weeks later she calls me on my birthday. I missed the call because I was on the computer with my stereo cranked up. But I didn’t return the call because I didn’t want to hear more of the abusive crap about my job search on my birthday.

Haven’t spoken to her since. She’s Not Talking To Me. Two fucking months because I didn’t answer the phone on my birthday when she knew I was home. :rolleyes:

So Monday, I informed my parents that she is no longer a part of my life. I will see her at Family Functions - promising to leave if her mouth causes trouble - but I will no longer have anything to do with her. At the age of 46 (she’s 48), I’ve had more than my lifetime’s worth of control freak drama and bullshit.

Bye bye Sis. Hope you get a clue some day.

6

I’d say: Feel free to send cards to your half-siblings. Accept any gifts without comment, consider them to be from his wife. Don’t make a big deal out of it, or it will become stressful to you and everyone else.

My dad is next on my list. Same shit as yours. I’m always wrong, I’m never good enough, everything I do should be done differently. I’m purposely limiting contact with him and no longer discussing my life with him because of it.

I guess that’s part of why I give you that answer - because I can see how it would affect me and the rest of my family. I don’t want to put them in the middle and make them make choices or be put on the spot because I’m not talking to Sis and might not be talking to dad. It’s my issue, not theirs, and they shouldn’t be punished for it.

So again, maintain contact with dad’s wife and half-sibs, because they are not part of the problem and you shouldn’t make them be a part of it.

7

Good for you, Opal! It’s a tough call, I’m sure, but your relief speaks volumes.

If you reach out to your half-sibs, don’t be too hurt if they don’t reciprocate or acknowledge or anything. After all, they still have to live with the tyrant and may not be able to follow their true feelings. Likewise, as for them sending you things, don’t be surprised if he nixes that.

I suspect that in many families there are variations around this theme, even if the circumstances aren’t this dire. E.g. when my father died, he had requested no funeral (i.e. no body in a casket for viewing). Then my mom got an idea in her head that we had to have a viewing, and since there was nothing in writing to stop her, she did. Good luck getting an idea out of that woman’s head.

Well one of my sisters had a fit. She said dad wouldn’t have wanted that and she knew so, because she was in the hospital room when he said, “No funeral.” So she refused to go. She’s kind of the moral compass of our family, so this had everybody agonizing over what to do. Nobody could get through to her, so I went out and talk to her (which shows you just how desperate the rest of the family was).

Personally, I agreed that she was absolutely right, but my mom had just lost her husband of 60+ years, and what are you going to do? I talked with sis and we agreed that the best interest of the family was to be unified, even if the thing we were doing was wrong.

So, long story short, there’s always one person in the family who can reach the other, one who can act as a liaison or mediator, etc. It just happened to be me in the case I described, but for another sister, maybe it wouldn’t have been. Or, in a different situation maybe I couldn’t have reached the same sister. But a lot of hocus pocus goes on behind the scenes, IME.

For that reason, I’d say go ahead and do what you want. Prepare for the worst—gifts returned unopened, etc.—but hope for the best. And I don’t know what your son’s relationship is with any of these people, but if you haven’t prepared him for the worst, you might want to start on that.

8

Good for you, Opal. I’m glad you did it at a relatively young age. I can only wish I had.

9

Good on you. About 8 years ago, we eliminated my MIL from our lives. It was a long road that ended in her, while talking to my daughter on the phone - all but accusing us of intercepting birthday cards and stealing the $5 check that was them.

Definitely send cards and gifts. If the step mom sends things to your son, let him have them - don’t involve him unless or until he’s able to really understand the issue then let him make his own choice.

If you’re not comfortable accepting gifts, then open them (so you know what it is, and can say "thanks for the Tony the Tiger vintage lunchbox!!! ) and donate them to someone.

10

I don’t see him more often than every couple of years already, and we rarely speak. He almost never calls to talk to me and NEVER calls to talk to his grandson. Even at this already minimal level of contact he still has the ability to completely emotionally ruin me when we do talk, which is why it has to be all or nothing.

Thanks for the responses, everyone.

11

Good for you, Opal. It takes great strength and courage to recognize that your own father is a toxic influence on you plus the cojones to actually do something about it. You will be a stronger, better person and parent because of it. Dominic’s a lucky kid to have you as a mom.

12

Wow. I just read your journal entries and your dad is extremely f*cked up. I could hardly believe what I was reading. Truth is stranger than fiction. But the part that made me almost vomit was:

You made the 100% correct decision to kick him out of your life. I really hope you have the strength to stick with it because he is a sick man.

I feel so angry after reading that. I just cannot believe that a father could act so hostile toward his own child. Screw him, he is a religious wacko nutjob and you are better off without him.

I just can’t believe that a father would still hold so much anger over something he thinks happened when you were 17. Even if it were true, how can he be mad over something a teenager did? I acted like an evil hellion when I was 16 and 17, and my parents have never held a grudge against me.

On a related note, I wonder how you managed to reconcile with your mom? If you were so terrified of her when you were 17, how did you get past that?

13

Part of it was learning to understand each other, but a lot of it was not living together, really. We don’t get along if we’re together for long periods of time.

14

Yeah how do you like this gem from his last email to me? It pretty much explains that I’m going to hell and that because of the magical way that god and heaven works, he won’t remember me so won’t mourn my eternity of suffering:

15

More evidence of Mark Twain’s old assertion that the traditional Christian conception of Heaven isn’t appealing to a rational person. What the Ancient Romans posited is more appealing than that.

16

Bravo to you. One thing I learned was that the opposite of love is NOT hate, it is indifference. The next step is to not CARE what he does or says.

Send the cards to whoever you like.
Let your kids get cards and presents.
Don’t care.

Best of luck.

17

And you’re the one with delusions?!?! :rolleyes:

Have you thought about giving him a taste of his own medicine? “Dad, I will pray for you to the invisible purple unicorn in the sky, that you won’t have to wallow in the sea of sticky marshmallow fluff for evermore, and that you can join me in the sky of cotton candy clouds where we get to eat lollipops for all eternity.”

18

Heretic. Everyone knows it’s PINK. :stuck_out_tongue:

19

Quoting my cousin whose dad had a fight with a common aunt and had since stopped talking to the rest of the siblings, when calling to invite us to his wedding:

“Only because my dad and Aunt are a pair of idiots, doesn’t mean we have to stop talking to each other, I’d like you guys to come.”

Only cos your dad’s an idiot, doesn’t mean you should stop talking to your siblings! Avoid running into him, but don’t throw your siblings out with him unless they refuse to accept the cut you’ve made.

20

Opal, just out of curiosity…what awful, sinful deeds have you been committing (in Dear Old Dad’s eyes) to cause you to deserve an eternity in the lake of fire?
Serial Murder? Income Tax evasion? Reading ‘Harry Potter’? Did you, perchance, fail to stone a known adulteress to death?
Inquiring minds (well, one anyway) want to know!