There is a whole lot that needs to change in this whole situation, and other posters have given some advice/direction on that, and none of it will be easy.
But here is step one.
Call your daughter’s father, and arrange one visit with him. Let him select the date/duration, but you mutually select a day/weekend that means that you can bring her to him. Make it happen.
Take everything else from there.
I just want to say you did a great thing by coming here and owning up the way you did. The SDMB can be a harsh place, but you can count on us to tell you what we really think!
Hang in there, and keep doing your best to do right by the people you love.
You don’t even have to go into the past, call him up and say " I feel like WE haven’t been good parents about making sure daughter maintains her relationship with you. I want to change that and will do whatever it takes including driving her to see you regularly. How can we get you two together next week?"
This, right here, is the attitude that makes it soooo difficult to co-parent sometimes. Trust me, I used to have this feeling every damn day. I’m sure my ex has this feeling about me every damn day. And it just doesn’t matter. There are many, many times in a co-parenting relationship when one or both parties must decide in a completely unself-righteous, nonsantimonious way, “It doesn’t matter who is ‘more wrong,’ I have to do what is best for my kid.”
And the thing is, once I’d seen my ex take that high road once or twice when I knew I’d been wrong, and he’d seen me take it a few times when he knew he was wrong, we realized in a very concrete way that we both have our son’s best interest at heart, and we can be much more patient with the other and work better together.
As a single mom myself, I also think you should tell him that you now know how hard you made things for him, that you’re sorry, ask how you can help facilitate things. But I also agree that your daughter can take a little initiative as well. I wonder if seeing the two of you working to keep him in her life might motivate him a little more to let bygones be bygones. The main thing I can think is to offer to drive her each way to wherever he is.
Finally, have you thought about moving closer to where he lives? I know moving is a major PITA but if you’re serious about helping them have a relationship, it’s a thought. My ex and I live about 1.5 miles apart and it’s very nice that there’s the possibility for a quick run to the ice cream shop or a jump on the trampoline, just little things. And while my son says my house is “home,” he and his dad are very close. If it’s not a possibility, then it’s not. 
Question: What favors do you think that you’re doing for your daughter by shielding her from the influence of “not smart” people in her life? Take a minute, think it over.
By way of anecdote, I grew up with one parent with limited education and lower than average thought processing ability. She was and is a good mom. She managed to raise kids who are above average (some folks might use the term “smart”) and have been successful, both personally and occupationally. Some of the lessons learned from her and others like her have given me an advantage when leading others, both in my personal life and my career.
By giving your daughter the opportunity to build a relationship with her father and his wife, you could be giving her the keys to a richer, more accepting way of life.
After reading your OP I was loading my guns and readying my pitchfork. Reading the thread, however, I saw that others had handled it beautifully.
Said far better than I could have managed.
First of all, you should be aware of how pompous and arrogant you sound when you have to repeatedly remind us of what a fucking idiot your ex is. He sounds like a stand up guy. He would take the bus, missing work so that he could take his daughter to breakfast before school. He married a woman with MS and cares for her. He basically sounds like an awesome guy and dad. His intelligence is irrelevant and I hope you don’t use language like that to describe him around his daughter. And PS- you have no fucking choice whether he has an influence on his daughter or not. It’s HIS fucking daughter. Jesus.
Just a little perspective for you - people can live 45 minutes away from each other and still be in the same city that I live in. 45 minutes is not an insurmountable distance. My advice would be like everyone else’s; have a bit of a heart-to-heart with your ex, telling him that you’re sorry for past wrongs, that you’d like to have a better relationship with him so he can have a better relationship with his daughter, and that you’re willing to make some effort to help him do that.
I’m almost thinking this letter can’t be real. You sound like about the most unpleasant person in this world, and after years of putting up with your insane BS to see his kid you are still berating his intelligence, and calling him out for not being tougher in insisting on his parental rights in the face of your antagonistic attitude.
Now he’s got a wife with MS taking up his time, and you’re wondering how far you should push the envelope to get him to reconnect with his daughter. Either this letter’s a set up or you’re just nuts.
I’ve heard MS referred to as “the marriage wrecker” - it plays hell with relationships, which might have had something to do with issues in their marriage. MANY people who acquire a disability wind up divorced, it can get very, very ugly and stressful. Which is not to say that is what is happening with him. I have no way of knowing what’s really going on there.
I know that, but, well let me see if I can explain this in a way that makes sense. My parents have been divorced since I was little and my dad and his family are MUCH different from my mom and her family, same as the situation with me and my daughter’s father. In cases like that, in my experience, the child is almost always going to identify more strongly with one side or the other, not on purpose, but just because that’s how things work out.
My daughter is more like my side of the family, which makes sense considering she spends so much more time with us. Even when she used to see her dad often, she spent very little time with his family. And he has some good qualities that I would be happy if she emulated, but overall, yes, I want her to be more like us.
I’m not saying I would purposely stand in the way of him seeing her often (as I didn’t before when he DID see her often), but it’s more like this is how I try to feel better about the situation now since this is how things are anyway. And the older a child gets, the more parenting becomes less physical and more mental. He’s perfectly capable of changing and feeding and holding a baby, but things get more complicated with an older child. We’ve had issues in the past with things like spanking, which based on my knowledge of child development, I think there are much better methods of discipline. He, on the other hand, doesn’t think about things like that, and just thinks spanking is what his mom did (as did mine) so it must be fine. That’s just one example, but basically, he’s not a thinker, and I do believe I make better parenting decisions than him IN SOME AREAS simply because I actually put critical thought into them, and don’t just automatically go with whatever seems familiar.
No, that’s not accurate. I did not try to make his life difficult; we both acted immaturely and didn’t get along well.
I have for years encouraged her to call him and make plans with him, but she rarely does because I think at this point she feels rejected by him. I have told him that she does want to see him and talk to him and that he just needs to take the initiative at first, and then I’m sure she’ll follow. But he doesn’t do it. So what I’m trying to figure out is whether I should keep trying to explain it to him in different ways, or just let it go. I’m not saying I haven’t tried; I HAVE. I just don’t know how at what point I should stop trying.
Tough shit.
It sounds like he’s been nothing but mature and awesome when it comes to his early relationship with his daughter. You’re the one who acted immaturely. Sounds like you still are, too.
Based on how you’ve acted, I’m not surprised that that, combined with the burnout he must be feeling with caring for his wife, he doesn’t feel like dealing with you. But if you’re serious about it, you can try driving your daughter to see him, rather than constantly making him make the bus trips. You say that she feels rejected but your behavior has already poisoned my opinion of you. I can’t help but suspect that you regularly talk about him as an idiot who isn’t making an effort to communicate with her in front of her. Of course she’s going to feel that way when that’s the only thing she’s hearing about him.
And if he would do that, that would be great. As it is, he calls her on Christmas and her birthday and MAYBE about once or twice more a year.
I’d be happy to do the driving, now that I can (my car wasn’t working until recently). And like I said in other post, she doesn’t want to call him now. If she wasn’t the one doing ALL of the calling (apart from 2-4 times a year), I’m sure she would.
On the rare occasions that she does call him, he always calls her back if he didn’t answer, but then he won’t call again. I think HE is also feeling awkward about calling HER, even though I tried to tell him that she would be more than happy to hear from him.
We both did.
He doesn’t have to deal with me, he has always known that he can just deal with my mom instead (they get along fine) if he and I are not able to get along, but he rarely does that.
And he doesn’t constantly make bus trips. That was about 9 years ago. Since then, when he was seeing her, at least one of us always had a car. I don’t expect him to spend hours on the bus to get here. But he does have a phone, and for most of the time he wasn’t seeing her, he had a car.
Well, that’s just not true. Think what you want, but I would never hurt my daughter by badmouthing her dad in front of her.
Going from your OP, that’s false.
Instead you’ll hurt your daughter by attempting to limit the influence of what sounds like a decent father on her. Your words.
Double post, sorry.
I guess I felt like a man who has had little contact with his child for 5 years speaks for itself and I didn’t need to go way into what other things he has done wrong. Apparently that is not true, when people are determined to take sides to the extreme.
The fact is, it would have been beyond easy for me to give all kinds of (true) examples of things he has done wrong. But instead I wanted to give examples of him NOT being a typical deadbeat dad who doesn’t care about his kid.
If someone had come here and said they had had little to do with their child for 5 years because it was just too hard to get along with their child’s other parent and they had too much else going on in their life, etc., I would put money on the fact that a LOT of people would say that those things are no excuse. And they’re not. That’s why I’m trying to tell the situation as realistically as possible and explain WHY he has done what he’s done.
No matter WHAT I was doing, he could have gotten legal visitation. He hasn’t even pursued it, ever. So I was trying to explain his reasons for not being involved for this long, and that he’s not simply just selfish and uncaring. If he was a highly reasonable person, he WOULD have gone through the courts before he would have spent years barely seeing his child, right? But he’s not very reasonable. Not because he’s a bad person, but some people just aren’t.
I haven’t attempted to limit anything. If he WAS trying to have her half the time or something, then we could get into that, but that’s never been anywhere near the situation, so that’s all just hypothetical.
Thank you
Great suggestion, thanks. I just asked my daughter if she’d like to call him and make plans now that I can drive her to him, but she said no and that she’d rather I do it, so I will try.
I wish it was a possibility! He used to live close to us, but for several years now, he hasn’t. He moved away. I know a lot of noncustodial parents do (my own dad moved states away when I was a kid), but I don’t think they should unless it’s really necessary. Anyway, I can’t move near him since we really benefit from living near my family (plus I just moved anyway and am locked into a year-long lease).
Thank you for that anecdote. I do agree that people of all levels of intelligence can have things to offer, and my daughter’s father does. Plus he is smart in some ways (he’s WAY better than me at directions; lucky for her she’s more like him in that regard). I know he has things to offer our daughter and I hope he shares them with her. Granted, I worry about him being her only parent if something happened to me, but the more likely scenario of him being a co-parent is not bad.
It’s not THE reason he hasn’t been seeing her for years, because they just got married maybe a year and a half ago. But for NOW, I’m sure it must be a very difficult thing to deal with, so I will make sure to keep that in mind. And it has pretty much always been SOMETHING with him. I’m lucky to have family support, and he doesn’t really.
Gone through the courts for what purpose, exactly? I’m not getting a clear picture of what he would ask the courts to do.
Get a visitation order.
I thought it might be something like that.
What would a visitation order get him that you are at this time withholding?