What to do with unwanted present?

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
21

That really makes sense to me, ivy - thanks.

Of course, my wife is her own person, so I can’t tell/make her deal with this in any particular way. But everyone’s comments do help me process this myself, and help her discuss it should she wish to.

I’m the kind of guy who is pretty quick to make a decision, and then stick with it. Oftentimes to a fault. My wife, OTOH, is much more likely to re-evaluate things, and change her mind/actions should she consider it warranted.

Moreover, whatever I may feel about the guy, I feel my needs/emotions are definitely subordinate to hers since he is her biological father.

And things are complicated by the fact that my MIL remains connected with him in some ways nearly 2 decades after their divorce. Insurance and stuff. Apparently they communicate somewhat regularly - I’m not sure what all about and I don’t really care. But to some extent my wife cannot be completely free of the asshole, because she has to deal with her mom bitching about him.

One thing that sort of makes me tend towards sending a brief acknowledment is that an expression of thanks is just basic good manners. When dealing with a jerk, I’m always wary that a jerk’s poor behavior not cause me to behave badly in response.

22

I disagree with this. An item that is traded requires no “thank you,” because it isn’t a gift. It isn’t something for which gratitude should be expected: I trade you X for Y. We commonly say “thanks” during commercial transactions because that greases the wheels for social interaction, but as to when a thank-you is required, if one ever is, it’s when you receive a gift, not when you’ve purchased or bartered for something. And of course it’s not mandatory to be polite and kind to everyone, but if you accepting a gift from someone, then, yes, IMO, you have a general obligation to acknowledge it with thanks. If you’re not comfortable doing that, then IMO you shouldn’t accept the gift.

The obvious exception, of course, is when you are dealing with a stalker or otherwise unwanted attention where you want to cut off all contact. You don’t want to acknowledge having received anything, even to the extent of sending the item back (which is itself an acknowledgement that, yes, it was received). Whether or not Dinsdale’s wife has reached that point, only she can say. But it doesn’t sound to me like the relationship has been 100% severed or is otherwise as cut-and-dried as some are making it sound. And I sympathize with that. She only has one father, jerk though he may be, and irrevocably cutting off all contact may involve admitting that a jerk is all he ever will be.

To me, if you have made it very clear – crystal clear – that you have severed all contact, the no, you don’t acknowledge notes, letters, calls, gifts, nothing. But for anything short of that, ISTM the choices are probably to accept the gift and send a pro forma tepid thanks (“Thank you for the gift. Happy holidays.”) or to return it with an explanation (“Given our difficult relationship, I don’t feel I can accept this. Please don’t send me any further gifts.”).

Of course, if she accepts but doesn’t acknowledge, he’ll get the message anyway, and it’s not like the earth crashes into the sun over it. So “do nothing” is also an option. Either way, I would not be at all concerned about how he would construe my actions to his friends and family. Doesn’t sound like his opinion is worth much, and it doesn’t sound like she knows those people anyhow.

23

Um, with all due respect, no, she doesn’t. She chooses to listen to your mom bitch about her father.

I’ve been estranged from my mother for nearly 15 years. My sister still has a relationship with her. We do not discuss my mother, and if the subject comes up, it’s quickly cut off.

Your wife can do that, if she wants to. And as far as basic good manners go…a few gifts here and there do not make up for all the other crap he’s done. It’s not like you’re using the check to wipe your butt and then sending it back to him. All you are doing is refusing to acknowledge the gift and his intrusion in your lives.

Come on…you know he’s not sending the gifts out of the goodness of his heart. He’s doing it to mess with you guys. Why does that sort of gift need acknowledgement?

24

deleted premature post

25

Yeah, but I’m not sure it is as clear cut as all that. Her mom is - uh - kinda loopy. And my wife doesn’t really have much of a relationship with her anyways. Certainly not the loving/sharing relationship an adult child might wish with a parent. Mom does stupid and hurtful things, but it is not always clear whether she is doing them out of cluelessness or meanness (to the extent that matters). I’m not always sure how helpless and stupid the old lady is, or if she just prefers to present herself as helpless and stupid. Catch my drift?

But while my wife is pretty content to cut off all relationships with her asshole of a dad, I don’t think she wants to go the extra step to cut off relations with her mom as well, just because she can be kind of a PITA on occasion. I mean, there’s a difference between a family member just being a kind of a PITA, and one who is truly toxic.

MIL doesn’t just bitch about Dick. But she has so little else going on in her life, that the subject frequently comes up. Further, Dick has a long history of controlling and taking advantage of people financially. And he’ll flat out lie about anything, forge legal documents, what have you. Lots of the issues between the 2 are money/legal related. As my wife and I are both lawyers, we have some interest in not having her be completely manipulated and disadvantaged by him. Especially if it would cause her to lack the resources to care for herself as she approaches 80.

No, it’s pretty much past that point. Like I said, we were pretty pleased when he said he wouldn’t have anything further to do with us until we apologized. But now he won’t leave us alone. We keep wanting to tell him, "We’ve kept up our part of the bargain!"

While she would be open to some possible reconciliation, that would take some action on his part other than gifts. Mainly some acknowledgement that he was wrong, and how hurtful his actions/lies were/are. And my wife is not really interested in any relationship with his 2d wife. We tried for several years, and she’s basically an unpleasant bitch - at least to us. But he insists that any relationship with him be with her as well. That’s fine. That’s his choice. But it’s not ours.

26

Well, it sounds like he changed his mind and now he wants at least some contact. I’m no fan of family estrangements, but if your wife doesn’t want him in her life, would things be easier for her if she made that clear?

This is not directed at you or your wife specifically, but surely you know that grounds for reconcilation that amount to “you admit that you’re hurtful and a liar and then we’ll talk” rarely if ever work. ISTM that the question is whether there’s any grounds for a meaningful relationship going forward and if there aren’t, the heck with him. But it also STM that saying a person is “open to reconcilation” once the other person admits their faults and asks forgiveness is not really being all that open to reconciliation. Which is completely fine, of course; she doesn’t need to be reconciled with him at all. As others have done, she might decide life is simply better without him in it.

But to some extent it is yours. By refusing to include his wife, your wife is insisting that she (his wife) be excluded just as he is insisting she must be included. And frankly, it is generally accepted that it is not right to try to exclude one half of a marital couple while socializing with the other, so he is not out of line to insist that she be included, IMO. But if there wasn’t insistence on both sides someone would give way and they wouldn’t be at a stalemate, which it seems like they mostly are.

I’m not at all saying your wife should move one inch towards a man who you describe as a hurtful liar. She has every right to set ground rules for the relationship she has with her father. But I don’t think it’s realistic to say that’s not what she’s doing, as if their failure to be reconciled is all on him. I’m not criticizing her for making reconcilation contingent on whatever she feels she needs in order to protect herself and her family, but it takes two people to be estranged. That doesn’t mean that estrangement is always a bad thing.

27

As always, Jodi, I appreciate your intelligent input. Of course you well understand that a family relationship such as this decades in the making might defy complete description or resolution through message board posts.

Risking a little further explanation of the “open to reconciliation” comment, I guess my wife is really pretty resolved to the fact that she does not and likely never will have the father/daughter relationship most people think desireable/natural. And that is a huge hole, to be lacking something that so many people just assume is a given - love of a parent for their child.

If you are not in such a situation, you might not realize how often people - including best friends and ministers - say, “He’s your father. You should learn how to forgive him and make him part of your life. If not for you, for your children.” And no matter how clearly my wife is able to rationalize things, and no matter how clearly she KNOWS this guy is a toxic asshole, that she wishes things were otherwise.

And I guess we don’t want to consider ourselves inappropriately inflexible - especially if circumstances change. But our firm understanding is that EVERY time we have allowed him into our lives, it has been a net negative influence. So unless he gives us good reason to believe he has changed, we’ve reached the point at which we have no reason to think the next occasion will be any different.

Believe me when I tell you that we have tried every possible manner of relating to this guy over the past 25 years - from open hostility to completely ignoring him. And we firmly believe that completely ignoring him results in the best quality of life for our family. It just really sucks when all it takes is a fucking letter showing up in the maibox to trigger all these ugly thoughts…

It is simple to say “just toss it out unopened.” And I could do that. But my wife is not able to, and I don’t believe it is appropriate for me to tell her that she ought to respond to and handle things the way I personally think best.

I, and my wife, really wish he would just die. Would make things so much simpler. Or absent that, just leave us alone. Of course then I can imagine my wife having thoughts about missed opportunities for reconciliation, etc. :wink:

28

As far as the mom thing, I can empathize. I went through this with my mother (regarding her siblings rather than husband) for many years.

No matter how many times I cut off conversations, usually bluntly saying “I’ve already told you I don’t want to hear about that” and changing the subject, it would come up again, because that’s all she had to talk about. I usually did manage to cut off those conversations fairly quickly, but I never got her to not start them.

It’s even more difficult if you actually need to know what’s going on to protect her.

My best suggestion would be for you to take on as much of that as possible (assuming you’re willing) and have your wife redirect those conversations to you. Something like “I’ll let Dinsdale know and he’ll call you to talk about that. So, how 'bout those Mets?”. Repeat as needed, even if that’s all she says for the next half-hour. (She will, of course, have to let you know to call and be sure it’s not something important.) Eventually MIL can be (mostly) re-trained, so that this is a fairly easy process.

The reason I suggest this is because you don’t have the other emotional issues tangled up in this that your wife does. I’d imagine that it’s easier for you to deal with MIL on these FIL-related business issues than it is for your wife. (I certainly wouldn’t let this become a dumping ground for her to just bitch about him; keep it to the financial/legal business aspects.) YMMV.

As far as the gifts, I’d tend to agree with Jodi. If you’re keeping the gifts, you’re accepting a relationship of some type. Polite behavior would be to send a short thank-you note. Returning the gift with a polite note of refusal would also be acceptable. Keeping them while ignoring him is certainly an option, but I think it will tend more to drag things out than anything.

However, I don’t think anything you do is going to change his behavior or get the apologies or relationship that your wife wants. Certainly she’s not going to get them by expecting the man to be a mind-reader.

I’d say she’s got several options.

  1. Accept her father as is, and set limits to their relationship that make her comfortable. Maybe “cards OK, gifts not, no phone calls, no visits”. Tell him what those limits are, and enforce them. Don’t explain them, don’t make them conditional on his behavior, just set them and enforce them.
  2. Tell her father flat-out what she wants from him (e.g., apologies and acknowledgement of past bad behavior, behaviour changes, whatever) and set limits on the relationship based on his response. Don’t hold your breath, though - IME, it ain’t gonna happen. Eventually IMO you’re going to have to decide between accepting him as-is or actually cutting off contact (which you haven’t done so far).
  3. Continue your current mode of not telling him anything, but allowing him to contact you at his pleasure, and hoping he goes away anyway. Doesn’t seem to be working so far, but if it makes y’all happy…
  4. Actually cutting off all contact.

If Mrs. Dinsdale truly doesn’t want any further contact, I’d recommend returning all mail unopened, blocking his telephone number(s), blocking his email, etc. Anything else is playing his game.

29

Dang it, I hate it when y’all post while I’m previewing.

Dinsdale, I do understand a lot of that because I went through it with my mother. She wasn’t anywhere near as bad as your FIL sounds, but the principle’s the same.

I never entirely, formally cut off contact with her, but it was pretty darn close for a number of years. I didn’t see her, didn’t respond to calls (and didn’t have a listed phone for a long time), etc.

There was nothing I could do to change her behavior. When we reconciled, it was because I had changed enough to let go of the past and accept her as she is. That doesn’t mean that I let her do whatever she wanted - I had some pretty firm limits - it just means that I gave up trying to re-make her into the mother I wanted.

I was lucky. It turns out that she’s an OK person once I gave up my fantasies and dealt with reality (and even more once her personal situation changed to improve her mental state), so I was able to create a new relationship.

It sounds like your wife is probably not so lucky and will need to go the other way. If so, I hope she can work through to doing that.

Good luck to you both.

30

Yeah, I know it. I also know that reality is frequently between the extremes of kiss and make up! or cut the man dead like a stalker! So I think your wife should do whatever she thinks is going to make her the least upset, especially at this time of year. Certainly her concern (and yours) is what she needsto do for her own wellbeing, as opposed to what other people who aren’t there might think she ought to do under social conventions.

But I think it’s BS to believe that a parent-child relationship should exist in every case. There are a lot of shitty parents out there. Anyone who tells your wife any different is being unrealistic. I really relate to your last comment. I would not say I wish my brother’s ex was dead, because I don’t, but it would be a hell of a lot easier to explain why she’s not in my niece and nephew’s lives if she were. At least then we could say she’s watching them from Heaven (or something) and would be there if she could; as it is, the answer is she’s a bitch who doesn’t care enough to be involved and there’s no way to phrase that to a 9 and 7 year old.

Best of luck to your wife, and to you, Mr. Supportive Husband. :slight_smile:

31

Just wanted to clarify - wife #2 is a woman who had 2 kids and maintained a household as his wife for 15 years, knowing that he already had a wife and kids. Now she is married to him, and to what little extent I know/understand, everything from my wife’s childhood - from the family vacation home he inherited from his father down to possessions and furnishings such as photos of my wife’s family - are titled and in the possession of wife #2 and their kids. (He successfully hid tons of assets during the divorce, and my MIL was drunk and had an incompetent lawyer at the time. But we did not force ourselves into what was their divorce/property settlement.)

Now, I’m not suggesting wife #2 is any more at fault than he was. But my wife is related to her dad. So I can imagine there being the possibility - however faint - of some relationship with him. But I don’t understand why she should want a relationship with his wife. or even why it is necessary.

I’m not saying we want to have him over for X-mas and not her. But ISTM my wife could meet him for lunch. Or exchange phone calls/letters with him. No, I would never contemplate inviting him over for a holiday or something, but telling him to leave his wife at home.

Hell, we wouldn’t be completely averse to some relationship with her, if she weren’t so unerringly unpleasant to and flat out uninterested in us and our kids. We tried for more than a decade, before concluding it just wasn’t worth it.

As best as we can figure, he wants a relationship with us essentially to display what a good guy he is - a great father and grand father. He has even said that most guys don’t support one family as well as he has supported two. And if we were willing to play along, we have no doubt we could get considerable $ out of him both in the form of gifts and possibly in his will. But we don’t need/want his money, and certainly aren’t going to assume a role we find repugnant for financial gain.

This guy clearly tries to control people with money. He’s pretty well off, and spends pretty freely asking only that the recipients kiss his ass. And he has a pretty wide circle of “friends” who are happy to overlook his shortcomings, so long as the cash is flowing. We just don’t choose to be part of that circle.

My wife doesn’t want/need his money. What she wants is her father’s love. Intellectually she realizes she never will have it. But knowing isn’t the same as feeling.

32

And every time something arrives in the mail from him, the little girl in your wife jumps up and down, thinking, “This time he means it! This time he really wants to be my daddy!”

It’s subtle, refined cruelty. He’s found a new way to hurt your wife, couched in the trappings of “presents.”

You see how this affects her, and by extension, how it affects the family as a whole. As her husband, the one who vowed to support his wife in all things, I think you need to take less of a hand-off tactic and more of a Protector stance. I don’t think your wife is thinking on all four cylinders here. She needs to know he’s just playing games, and the sooner he can’t to it any more the better for her, you, and the kidlets.

33

Either that or he respects his wife as a capable adult entitled to make her own decisions or ask for his help or support as necessary. From what I’ve heard, she’s the brains of the whole operation in any case (just kidding). I’d be pretty miffed if someone tried to force their help on me in regard to my family.

I’m really sorry man. My only suggestion would be if you could get the post office to get any address he sends stuff from to be marked “undeliverable-from”, if that makes sense. I don’t know if there’s a snail mail equivalent of spam-blocker, but if there is, I’d encourage you to use it…yesterday. I also think that if your wife is open to your suggestions that you encourage her towards a complete contact cut-off. This is pretty much the only way my parents have kept their sanity and marriage intact in regards to toxic relatives (we specialise in them around these here parts). It was very very difficult for them to do but I have no doubt my mother and father would be divorced if they had kept some of their relatives in their life (like my father’s brother…who absconded with half their assets on the morning of their first daughter’s funeral…for instance).

34

I find this thread very sad. I had pondered in another thread I started about what sort of person, or what kind of motive a bigamist of this sort would have (raising a secret “second family”). I’m not sure I have any insight into that from your wife’s story, except to appreciate that there is a lot of pain involved for the surprised first family.

That said, I find some small part of me sympathizing with the old man. Putting myself in his shoes – if I made committed some colossal, relationship-shattering mistake with one of my own beloved children – I would not be sure of how to get myself back into her good graces. He has money, and is used to that money buying him access and goodwill. Is it not natural to think that his way of saying “I’m sorry” is to buy and send presents and offers of cash?

My own father often exhibits a “bribe you to love me” kind of behavior, which frustrates me sometimes. We are already close: I see my parents at least once a week, with my kids in tow, as we live within walking distance of them and my mom even picks up my kids from school on a regular basis. In the past, he has pressed financial aid onto me, in putting down money to buy my house for example, even when I have not really needed it. He phrases it as his desire to see his legacy, his inheritance to me, spent and enjoyed in his lifetime (he’s now 71 and has started to talk a lot like this). Sometimes if he gets extremely angry with me for some reason, he threatens to “cut me off” from his will, as though that would hurt me more than losing my father. It’s a completely unnecessary angle to come from, but there it is.

An interesting insight. Quite possibly accurate. Maybe she should confront him with exactly this?

Is he truly “not capable” of this, or just expressing it crassly and badly from your point of view?

If it’s not prying, what was her relationship like with her father before she found out about The Other Family?

35

anu you ain’t too far off. But unfortunately, she’s both the brains AND the emotions - and its them damned emotions that keep getting her in trouble. Personally, I think I would be able to just cut the bastard, and make it stick. But if I have learned one thing over these past 21 years, its that her emotions clearly work quite differently than mine. And heaven forbid that I suggest that her emotional make-up is wrong and mine is right.

Why would he do this rob? I don’t know. But my guess is he wanted an heir. My wife is the youngest of 3 sisters. Her mom had several miscarriages. Then 7 years after my wife, he has “an accident” (his words) with his bookkeeper. Oops, another girl. Then he has another mistake - this one he can name Richie Jr., and whaddya know? - no more mistakes! Just my conjecture.

What were her relations like before? Guess. You think a guy would be “distant” if he was dividing his time between 2 households? She used to joke that every holiday he’d get the blues. Well, who wouldn’t if they had to shuttle between 2 households. He had all kinds of excuses for why he was rarely at home. But his whole line was, “You had a wonderful childhood. Let me tell you everything I bought you…”

And - face it. Compared with what some folks have to put up with, she didn’t have it all that bad.

He’s a very opinionated, bigoted, and politically conservative. Really wants to dominate any relationship he is in. Very successful at business. She had plenty of reasons to not be overly close to him before she leared of his bigamy.

One thing that eats at her is the feeling that in her dad’s eyes, for some reason she, her sisters, and her mom were not good enough for him, causing him to want another family. And no matter what you tell yourself rationally, it is hard to not keep going back to asking, why?

redtail - thanks for your insight. What you describe with your mom sounds really similar. And then she asks for your advice, you give it, and she just ignores it!

You can imagine how tired I got of every family gathering - Thanksgiving, x-mas, whatever - when we get together with her sister and mom at some point talk turns to what an asshole Dick is, and what jerky thing he has done lately. But it isn’t as tho he dominates our day-to-day life. And if talking about him once in a while is what their family dynamic requires for some reason, I don’t really see it as my place to tell them they can’t. I think you can imagine I’m not the kind of guy who keeps his opinions under a bushel - especially back when I used to tip a few.

But like I said, they don’t seem to be the type who can deal with it and let it go. My family, on the other hand - MAN, were we good at ignoring the numerous elephants in the room! :smiley:

36

My postal worker husband says that unfortunately there is no such thing.

37

I’m really sorry Dinsdale, what an unfortunate stress around the holidays.

I know in my family’s case my mother had a complete depressive breakdown following the death of their child so my father simply could not maintain her and deal with a sociopath-narcissist-whatever sibling at the same time so the choice was made out of dire necessity.

I still think trying to daddy a woman with major daddy issues is a baaaaaad idea and is the first step to getting her to transpose her father-hate on the person closest to her acting like a father. It must be horrible to watch her suffer like this for so many years but I think just supporting her in however she wants to deal with it is probably the safest road for everyone involved…I know it sounds trite but has she tried to go to counseling? She may be willing to listen to an outside person she’s paying to deal with her issues without getting bitey in a way she might not with family members.

On the other hand, I agree with ivylass in that watching you be a good parent to your children together is probably the closest she’ll get to a good father. Frankly I think your wife has her father’s number perfectly-she and her siblings and mom probably WEREN’T good enough for your psycho FIL. It’s rare that anything satisfies a true asshole and they rarely think anything is good enough for them anyway mainly because they have empty souls. I’m so sorry this fact still pains her and I hope eventually she can resolve it and realise that it doesn’t reflect on who she is or what she deserves.

38

Not that I have a bigamist sociopath father (my mother would have curried him long ago had he even tried) but I have some fairly traumatic experiences in my past (which you will never hear me talk about) and I think at some point I just decided I wasn’t going to think about it anymore. It doesn’t mean that stuff still doesn’t trigger nightmarish memories but I just made a choice one day. And it sounds crazy but the whole ordeal is kind of buried now and I can move on with my life and live happily (a big priority in my life) because I choose not to let my mind harp on it.

I hope that at some point your wife chooses to let go of the pain he caused her. Easier said than done but I have let go of some pretty horrible pain and I know it can be done.

39

Put the necklace on your dog.

Eventually, it’ll fall off, or the string will break, or something, and it’ll disappear. For as long as it lasts, though, you’ll have a funny story. And then when it’s gone, it’s gone.

Unless you took pictures.

</juvenile>

40

Yup, that’s how it works. I’ve had more than one topic that’s off limits for Mom to bitch about, because I told her what she needed to do, offered to help make it happen, explained the likely problems of not doing it properly, but NO, she ignores all that and does it half-assed. At that point, I warn her never to complain to me about it because it’s her own fault, and remind her of that anytime she brings it up.

My favorite is when (after many years of me telling her to stop bitching to me about her sibling squabbles) she proudly told me about how her brother wouldn’t discuss any of the sibling problems in front of his kids because he didn’t want them dragged into the idiocy. She thought that was just so wonderful.

I nearly choked. :smiley:

Hey, if it works for them, it’s OK. I had to laugh, though - I’ve got a friend who’s currently trying to deal with the problems she’s having from her husband’s family’s ability to ignore the forty-leven elephants parading around. :smiley: