My parents have been divorced for a couple of years now but it was honestly a long time coming. Dad was married before. His first wife was his high school sweetheart and they married right after graduation and lived happily together for years before she died when she was pregnant with their (first) baby. My dad never got over her but that was something he hid for several years and it came out after my mom had my brother and then me with dad.
My memories of dad from my childhood are of him talking about his first wife all the time. He’d sit me and my brother down to tell us stories about her and show us photos. He tried to say we looked like her and that sometimes he saw so much of her in our personalities. He told us she was the love of his life and the only woman he ever loved. He’d talk about the baby he lost when he lost her and all the hopes and dreams he had with her.
With mom he was cold and I don’t believe he ever liked her let alone loved her. From accounts others have told me he convinced some that he did but people closer to dad for a long time said it was obvious he was faking. None of them tried to warn mom. Dad even compared mom to a mistress a few times.
My dad and brother started fighting a lot when my brother was about twelve. He’d tell dad that we didn’t care about his dead wife and why was he telling us about her like she was our mom. Dad would argue that she was a part of our history too and she deserved to be remembered and loved by everyone. That nobody was as good as her.
It took dad admitting he wished we were his first wife’s kids for mom to leave him. And my brother stopped having anything to do with him but I needed to spend every other weekend with him. And now I just don’t know if I want a relationship with him or if this can work. Talking to my dad gets me nowhere and a part of me doesn’t want to lose him but I don’t even think he loves me. I think he loves the image of the kids he could’ve had with his first wife if she hadn’t died.
I’m feeling so weird about this and I’d appreciate any advice you can offer.
Comments
Welcome to /r/relationship_advice. Please make sure you read our rules here. We’d like to take this time to remind users that:
We do not allow any type of am I the asshole? or situations/content involving minors
We do not allow users to privately message other users based on their posts here. Users found to be engaging in this conduct will be banned. We highly encourage OP to turn off the ability to be privately messaged in their settings.
Any sort of namecalling, insults,etc will result in the comment being removed and the user being banned. (Including but not limited to: slut, bitch, whore, for the streets, etc. It does not matter to whom you are referring.)
ALL advice given must be good, ethical advice. Joke advice or advice that is conspiratorial or just plain terrible will be removed, and users my be subject to a ban.
No referencing hateful subreddits and/or their rhetoric. Examples include, but is not limited to: red/blue/black/purplepill, PUA, FDS, MGTOW, etc. This includes, but is not limited to, referring to people as alpha/beta, calling yourself or users “friend-zoned”, referring to people as Chads, Tyrones, or Staceys, pick-me’s, or pornsick. Any infractions of this rule will result in a ban. This is not an all-inclusive list.
All bans in this subreddit are permanent. You don’t get a free pass.
Anyone found to be directly messaging users for any reason whatsoever will be banned.
What we cannot give advice on: rants, unsolicited advice, medical conditions/advice, mental illness, letters to an ex, “body counts” or number of sexual partners, legal problems, financial problems, situations involving minors, and/or abuse (violence, sexual, emotional etc). All of these will be removed and locked. This is not an all-inclusive list.
If you have any questions, please message the mods
This is an automatic comment that appears on all posts. This comment does not necessarily mean your post violates any rules.
I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please contact the moderators of this subreddit if you have any questions or concerns.
Wow, this is hard. My heart hurts for you and also for your father. Nothing he is doing is right. However, I also can not imagine losing someone I thought I would have spent my life with and then felt robbed of that.
What he needed to have done was have a therapist when it happened, and he should now. The idea of what could have been is hard to lose. Any time he felt contempt for your mom, he would probably be mouring the loss even more. However, your mom was a victim of his unresolved issues, and that was never fair to her. He’s placed someone on an unrealistic pedestal. He doesn’t realize that even that relationship would have had its own things to work through and overcome. Instead, he lives in a fantasy of what he missed out on.
You should definitely get a therapist. Maybe even invite him in on a few sessions after you have worked on your issues with him without him there.
I think your dad is emotionally abusive to all of you and you should follow your brother’s footsteps and stop talking to him as well. He’s a harmful person to be around and you’re still really young. At your age you’re still in a space where you don’t realize that your dad isn’t your responsibility but I’m a parent and I’m going to tell you that your fathers behavior growing up was incredibly inappropriate. I don’t even have the words for how fucked up it is to tell two children with another woman that they look and remind him of a woman they don’t even know and aren’t related to in anyway. What he was doing is akin to parental alienation and it’s a form of child abuse. He also emotionally abused your mother and you witnessed it. I can’t speak to whether or not he loves you, but he isn’t a good father and he didn’t care enough about you and your brother’s wellbeing enough to get therapy to grieve his dead wife and be a better parent to you both. Go no contact and get therapy for yourself to heal from all of this. Be there for your mother. Don’t fight for someone who isn’t fighting to be good to you. If he wants a relationship with you both he has to atone, take accountability and foster the relationship. It’s his job to fix this, not yours. He’s the parent. I’m so sorry this happened to you three.