My husband was sent a letter like this. He hasn’t received it, because I read it first. Before you ream me for reading his mail, letters from family usually have kids’ school pictures or something for both of us, and those are considered family mail, and whoever gets it first can open it.
The letter is from his son from his first marriage. He and son’s mom divorced when son was 6 and his older sister was 10. My husband remarried a woman who had three kids, and they later had a child together. First wife also remarried fairly quickly, and moved with the kids to another state.
My husband admits to neglecting his first family in favor of the second. He remembered birthdays and Christmas and paid child support religiously, but he was a long haul truck driver, and his home time went to his second family.
Things got better with first daughter later on, and they’re close now. She’s in another state but we manage to see her and her family a couple of times a year, and there are phone calls, e-mails, and text messages.
When first son got in some trouble about ten years ago, he phoned and needed $1,000. We sent it to him. That was our first personal contact with him for several years. (He lives in Georgia and was in the military for a long time.) Since then things started to be more normal – phone calls on his birthday, Christmas boxes, etc.
They were here for a funeral three years ago. We took them out for dinner, took the kids shopping, and spent the day together. Everything was fine. Son commented that I was much nicer than dad’s second wife: “I like YOU”, he says. He also commented about how much we’d spent on the dinner and shopping, and I said “That’s fine, your dad owes you”, and son said “No, he doesn’t.”
Then two years ago my husband went to Florida for a bowl game. He stayed with his stepson’s family. I told him he should stop in Georgia on his way down or back and see first son, but it was winter and weather was iffy, and he didn’t.
That seems to have been the proverbial straw for first son. In his letter, he tells how hurt he was that dad was nearby but didn’t bother to visit. He talks about how dad always preferred his second family to his first, and said he’s stewed about it for years. He said he wants no contact, ever.
I wrote back to son and asked him to reconsider his letter. I told him his dad realized that he had shortchanged his first family, but that he loves him and his sister very much and does the best he knows how. I reminded him that his dad was there for him when asked, and that things would likely have been different if not for physical distance. I told him I’d hold on to the letter for two weeks, and if I didn’t hear back, I’d give his dad the letter.
It’s been a month, and I haven’t heard anything. It’s dishonest of me, but I won’t give my husband the letter. What’s the point? He can’t turn back time. He can’t atone.
The part that really niggles me is that first son is very religious. He even had his own church for awhile. Where’s the forgiveness?
So yeah, write a letter, get things off your chest, but unless your dad’s the kind of person that you’d get a restraining order on to protect yourself, don’t send it.