How do I come to peace with the fact that my father is gone?
August 30, 2021 2:14 AM   Subscribe

He's not dead, just... Gone. More below.

He's never been around, even when I was a small child. He worked abroad and left the child-rearing to my mother. A few years ago he filed for divorce, and my mother finally revealed that he has actually started a family in another country. His new daughter is only a toddler.

Currently, he's moved that family to my city, but he won't see me. He'll answer calls maybe a third of the time. I miss him every day and try to call him every week. When I do manage to reach him he tells me that he loves me and he's proud of me, but every time I ask him about grabbing a meal together he'll dodge the question or come up with some excuse or other.

He's still around, and I miss him, and every time I think about him I break down into tears. I cry myself to sleep about this regularly, despite being a fully grown woman. It makes me feel like a seven year old again.

But I think it is high time I accept that I accept the fact that he is done being my dad, but I'm not sure how to approach this. He's not dead, and he's still around, so I'm not sure how I can mourn our relationship. This makes it even harder to go completely NC because I want to call him to tell him about all the good things happening in my life. I want to know that he loves me and cares about me. I want him to celebrate my graduation and my wedding and my birthdays. But he won't, and I can't keep yearning for a love that will never be mine.

Please tell me how you did this.
posted by antihistameme to Human Relations (17 answers total) 7 users marked this as a favorite
 
But I think it is high time I accept that I accept the fact that he is done being my dad, but I'm not sure how to approach this. He's not dead, and he's still around, so I'm not sure how I can mourn our relationship.

I think ritual was borne from a need to deal with complex conundrums of the heart and soul. Someone in a similar situation as yours might hold a specific personal event involving candles and notes that get burnt, imagery, invocations and affirmations, contemplation and a decision to accept what is.
posted by Thella at 2:50 AM on August 30, 2021 [8 favorites]


I don't have your exact experience, my parents divorced when I was in my early 20s and my father died unexpectedly about a decade later. I can tell you that what helped me the most with their divorce was reading other people's experiences about being a young adult child of divorce, and what helped me the most with his death was saying to myself that I would eventually get to a 'new normal'. In both cases, I did indeed get to a new normal where these things were just what had happened and the current situation was something that just was and I could live with it.
posted by plonkee at 2:53 AM on August 30, 2021 [1 favorite]


Your father is obviously conflicted about this, and is being stupid and weak, and he knows this.
I'm on the other end of this - I was one of the second lot of kids. I didn't find out until I was an adult. It's a long story, but it obviously didn't hurt us the way it did the other family. A few years later my half-brother got in touch with me and I really like him. (I have a half-sister I've never met.) We live on different continents but we keep in touch.
I can vividly remember finding out, and having all the strange things in my life - many of which I realized were not at all normal, like my parents having no wedding anniversary - suddenly make sense.
I've never talked to my half-brother about this, except to answer a few questions about our father. I'm sure it hurt him.
My father was a kind and decent person, and I'm fairly sure the breakup wasn't all one-sided. I can, however, see the personality traits that led him to abandon one family and have no contact with them for decades.
If I were you, I'd write him a letter and say what you feel - that you miss him, that he's being weak and stupid, and that if he ever comes to his senses you'll be happy to talk. (I'm not trying to put words in your mouth, I'm just saying that you should be honest and not let him down easy. The world doesn't owe us much, but a parent should be there for their children. It's not a responsibility you can duck.)
And I'd send it to him, but make clear that you're not interested in any calls just to make himself feel better or to promise what he won't deliver.
Don't consider it to be an end, just that you're putting him on hold until he gets his shit together. Realize that he may not, and that the most likely outcome is that he'll wait until enough time has passed and things have changed until the stuff he was afraid to deal with isn't relative any more.
Then put it out of your mind, as much as you can. When his children are adults it's likely they'll come and look for you, and you'll have a larger family, and in my experience that's worth a lot.
I wish I had more to say, or a solution that isn't just to be patient. I wish you the best.
posted by AugustusCrunch at 2:53 AM on August 30, 2021 [9 favorites]


My father was there but 'gone' just as you describe your father and the only advice I can give you is to allow yourself to get mad. You are mourning the loss of your father already. You are not doing it wrong or need to do it any differently. It takes time. But getting angry at your father for what he is doing to you might help you immensely. You don't have to share it with him, just feel it. The other thing is to talk to a therapist, if you aren't already.
posted by marimeko at 2:55 AM on August 30, 2021 [15 favorites]


I don't have any direct ideas for you, but looking at resources addressing "ambiguous loss" may be helpful.
posted by geegollygosh at 3:29 AM on August 30, 2021 [5 favorites]


This makes it even harder to go completely NC because I want to call him to tell him about all the good things happening in my life.

YMMV, but some people do a thing where they write letters to their person telling them what they want them to know, but then never send them. You could keep them in a box or some other place that means something to you.

Do you have other people in your life you're close to, whether family or friends? Sometimes it's easy to overlook how meaningful those existing relationships are, or take for granted the ones who already love you and care about you. So if that might be the case, you could make a conscious decision to really focus your attention and appreciation on those relationships, or to build up new ones, so that you have many people to tell about the things happening in your life, and the absence of this one guy doesn't feel so relevant anymore.
posted by trig at 3:58 AM on August 30, 2021 [4 favorites]


Really sorry you are going through this. This sounds very, very painful. This is in many ways similar to the relationship someone very close to me had with their father, who recently died of old age with a lot of these wounds unresolved and no closure or forgiveness. Someone else is getting to have the father you never had, and it's shitty and awful.

It's unnatural and traumatic to be abandoned and rejected by a parent like this, and you don't deserve it, and these feelings don't go away just because you're a grown woman. Your father lacks the emotional maturity to handle everything about this situation, I'm guessing due to his own upbringing and shame, so it's easier to shut down and not deal with you. As someone else pointed out, he's a weak man.

Nothing besides acceptance from your father will really "fix" this but if you're not already in it, I'd suggest therapy (I know, I know) or some other type of self-help to really try to process this loss, and make it more bearable and move on with your life.

The only other thing I'd say is try not to fall into the trap of thinking your family was replaced and not good enough. I have seen this happen more than once and it usually seems like the abandoner can't be alone, as many people can't, and so just finds someone else for their own emotional survival, and then that person wants kids, and so they end up with kids again, and none of it was because the old family was "not good enough" but because they just needed someone and this how they plugged that gap. In the case of the person I know who went through this, the person's father was clearly very pained and remorseful about the very damaged relationship with the child he effectively abandoned, all the way up to his death, and just never had the courage or tools to deal with it so basically avoided dealing with it altogether, which caused a lot of pain but sadly is a lot of people's defacto coping strategy. The fact that a person doesn't have the willingness or capacity to love you the way you truly deserve to be loved doesn't make you unlovable.
posted by cultureclash82 at 4:52 AM on August 30, 2021 [10 favorites]


I'm sorry. I wish I had a good, easy answer for you. What actually (mostly) worked for me, after many many years of both therapy-driven and personal thoughts and feelings about my absent father, is not particularly replicable.

What happened was that my father became suddenly and severely ill, such that I thought he was going to die without me seeing him again or without ever resolving any of the stuff I'd never managed to deal with about our relationship. It was awful. It was devastating. I cried and raged to my therapist about it a lot. In the end he lived, but I had gone through some sort of accelerated/intense grieving process and finally burned through all the feelings I had left about him. There's just...nothing there, now. Some pity, perhaps, that for a variety of reasons he was not capable of being a good father. He hasn't been a good father to my half-siblings in different ways than to me, but he has let them down repeatedly and devastatingly as well. I'm sorry for him, and my siblings, and a younger me, but I'm no longer angry or particularly sad about it.

I no longer harbor any expectations or hopes of our relationship changing. It is what it is, extremely minimal and only to the extent needed to have my half-siblings in my life. They're great. They're the best thing he ever did for me. We're not close, but I talk to them sometimes and see them when we're in the same state, and even from far away and many years of age difference, having them in my life is worth every bit of heartbreak he ever caused me.

I don't recommend "bad health news dropped on your head during an already-vulnerable time in your life" as a method of dealing with this. But I guess it was ultimately just a way of speeding up my getting to the realization that it was never about me. It wasn't about me being unloveable, or not good enough to stick around for, or whatever. My father is a man who was not fundamentally capable of the kind of connection I craved, and no amount of me reaching out would have made it happen. I put my love and my energy and my time now into connections with people who love me back.

I don't know if any of that is helpful but I'm telling you in case there's some kernel there you can use, and so you'll know that other people are out here, wishing you well. You deserved better.
posted by Stacey at 5:24 AM on August 30, 2021 [11 favorites]


I'd say to treat him like an ex-SO. As others said, write letters when you want to talk to him and don't send them. (Or screamintothevoid.com, which I now recommend to everyone.) Stop contacting him IRL if it only hurts you. Remind yourself every time you want to reach out that you're not going to get what you want from this person when you try. Stop inviting him to things he won't go to.

It's probably worse because he does take your calls and says that he loves you, whatever that means for him, anyway. I guess "phone a friend" is all he is able to give you?
posted by jenfullmoon at 9:37 AM on August 30, 2021 [2 favorites]


You definitely deserved better, and at least honesty from your father. My best friend's father had 3 families, with a child from each relationship. These were serial, not concurrent, so each child is about a decade different in age. It was very hard on each of them, and their father was rarely available, either physically or emotionally, though they all lived in the same city. He was incredibly creative, busy, and selfish.

What did my friend learn from this? It's all on him. It's not you, no matter how much you yearn for what wasn't, and it will probably never be there. He behaved selfishly - and still does. He is probably not actually capable of having an honest relationship with anyone, not just you. Not without a desire to right things, anyway, and his on-again, off-again availability and platitudinous responses to you are more for his own comfort than to respond to the hurt he knows he's caused you. I don't see much hope for him, frankly.

But, you have the ability to frame your own relationship with him from your perspective, emphasizing your strength and resilience. My friend started by talking with her mother and asking difficult questions about what she, her mother, was thinking in having a serious relationship with a man with another family. Not that there were comforting answers, but it felt to her that she needed to push back to understand the landscape. Then she reached out to her younger sibling, who was then about 7 and my friend was 16 or so. (The mother of the youngest child was known to her mother, and she consented). She and her younger brother have also had therapy at various stages of their lives - it's not like one can "get over" this in one fell swoop, it's more that as one matures and enters different stages of life the issues abandonment brings up keep reappearing. She says therapy has been enormously helpful. Finally, when their father died when my friend was in college, she and her half-brother reached out to the oldest sibling. It was important to her to have a relationship with her siblings, and it has endured for decades at this point. So although your half-sibling is now only a toddler, she will grow and you can provide context and love to her, since her deeply flawed father is probably not a good father to her, either. I think she would probably welcome a sister when she is older. To my friend this has been the best part of her painful journey, that she has siblings she can confide in, and who have also suffered from the faithlessness of their father.
posted by citygirl at 9:50 AM on August 30, 2021 [2 favorites]


I think there's a multi-prong therapeutic approach needed in cases like this, because you have childhood trauma to process, and part of that trauma is that all children deserve and are owed parental attachment but sometimes this is not attainable and there are some specific therapeutic methodologies for processing that which are separate from adult processing of childhood trauma.

And then there is the adult grieving process for a relationship that could exist except that the other person does not want it, and detaching yourself from any responsibility for that because, as Stacey said, this is not about you and has never been about you. It is not possible for a child to be the cause of parental abandonment. This is about another person who could not and still cannot rise to the occasion of his responsibilities.

If you have any access to therapy, I think it is a much smoother process to get through all this with pro help. There are books and workbooks if that's not something within your reach right now, but I don't have any specific recommendations for good material - maybe someone else here does.

There are some materials out there about Inner Child work, and if you look into that be warned that there's a term there called "reparenting" that has forked into some very different methodologies and one of them is self-reparenting, which is a sort of active self-dialog and narrative-modification with your inner child and can be incredibly powerful and restorative, and then there's the other tree that involves forming a potentially harmful relationship with a therapist and you should be suuuuuper wary if that comes up because predators love it (the various forms are all outlined in the article linked above and it gives me the huhs that they are all presented in a bullet list like they are all equal, but otherwise the material in that article is quite good).

I would recommend books like Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents and Thich Nhat Hanh's Reconciliation (this is Buddhist but is specifically from retreats for inner-child healing, you do not especially need to understand Buddhist methodology) as starting points.
posted by Lyn Never at 10:11 AM on August 30, 2021 [2 favorites]


This sounds so painful. I'm really sorry.

I wonder if you're mourning the idea of him - or the ideal of him - more than the actual person? You say he was never around much. It sounds like he's never been good at giving you the love you deserve. I wonder if shifting from grieving the loss of him to grieving not having had the dad you wanted would help you move through the grief eventually?
posted by equipoise at 10:46 AM on August 30, 2021 [4 favorites]


This is sad. I’m sorry your dad is really disappointing. It sounds like your mom raised you. I’m wondering what your relationship with her is now. I think you could devote the time trying to connect with your dad into your mom. Call her once a week, share your good news with her, ask her about her life. Maybe you already do this. Or maybe you don’t for good reason.
I have a close friend who has a difficult family- single mom she’s not in contact with now, very few other family members. She does have extensive friends and keeps very busy socially. One thing I’ve noticed is sometimes her calibration is a little off when it comes to family. Like recently she mentioned being a teenager and she expects to be close to her kids when they’re teens. I told her I was really not close to my own parents at that age. Actually we fought constantly. (I have great parents and as an adult, I am very close with them now, she knows us all well). She seemed surprised I didn’t get along with my mom then. I think she thought a good parent is always great friends with their kids. So sometimes I feel she is working to try to understand family from me, and she’ll ask me or other friends about scenarios. That’s just one example! This is relevant because your post mentions calling your dad weekly. In my experience, that is a lot of calls. And he currently has a young kid, right? I think it’s okay to expect a parent to respond and be supportive, but your dad is not someone who will do that, and you’re reaching out more than even people with good parents might. I do not talk to my dad that often and he’s a great dad. My spouse, who is on good terms with his family but somewhat distant from them, only talks to his mom every few months. Just trying to give you a frame of reference. I understand you’re looking for connection with him and that’s completely normal and universal and he’s a loser for not giving you that. But putting yourself through that difficult rejection every week just sounds awful for you.
A letter, a call to your mom or a fun friend, and a therapist could really help.
posted by areaperson at 1:48 PM on August 30, 2021 [1 favorite]


I’m also someone who is fatherless, even though he’s still alive and had another family, so there’s a lot about your question that resonates with me.

I think the real key sentence in your question is I want to know that he loves me and cares about me.

You are struggling with grieving because that is not true. It has never been true. His words that he loves you and is proud of you are contradicted by his actions. You want so badly to believe him, but again and again you find that he blows off your calls and won’t even make the time to have lunch with you. We can speculate forever about why he says those words but doesn’t live them out. Ultimately it doesn’t matter. His empty words are so cruel to you.

I encourage you to reflect on the five stages of grief—denial (which feels like confusion, things just don’t add up), anger, bargaining, sadness, acceptance. From the tenor of your post it sounds like you’re bouncing around in the neighborhood of the first three. I think the way you get to peace is to acknowledge that you are going to have to enter into and move through that sadness, which I know is so, so, so terrible and deep. Enter it, get support as you do (Lyn Never’s observations about childhood abandonment and also adult relationships is really insightful), and move through it to get to acceptance. I think that’s the only way.

One of the great unfairnesses of life is that someone else may cause your wound but it’s up to you to heal it. Focus on your self-value, grow your tender love for your own self, really build that rock solid understanding that his actions have never been about you, and that you are a person who is worthy of care and appreciation no matter what that man ever did or didn’t do.

Take care, friend.
posted by Sublimity at 5:04 PM on August 30, 2021 [4 favorites]


Ugh, I am so mad at this person, and I wish you were, too, though I understand why you're not. I thought my father--who was an abusive clown for much of my childhood before finally wandering off--was bad, but in fact his spectacular asshole behavior made the whole thing relatively easy for me because it was impossible not to be really angry with him and really really sick of his bullshit. Feelings are never simple, and there was some love and regret mixed in with the anger, but this was probably as close as you could get to one clear emotion. What I felt when he finally fucked off was overwhelmingly relief.

This bad father mode you describe may not be loud and obvious abuse like with my father, but it's much worse because it's so cold and quiet, it's confusing rather than enraging, so you don't automatically feel the right way about it. It's so passionless and bloodless and so unnecessary and so hideously, hideously cruel, ugh! How can he? Can you try to concentrate on what this means about him? He's being very cruel to an innocent person who loves him. It's contemptible. He is contemptible.

He doesn't deserve a letter from you saying how you feel. He doesn't deserve a single solitary passing thought. If he figures out on his own that he's awful and if he decides to be less awful and does whatever it takes to become less so and then if he comes creeping back and finds a way to make amends to you, well, fine, but all of that's going to have to be something he does all by himself. You've been more than generous with him and he's had many more chances than he deserves. Right now and henceforth what he deserves from you exactly zero. Jerk.
posted by Don Pepino at 5:55 PM on August 30, 2021 [2 favorites]


Best answer: From a member who would like to remain anonymous:
I apologise that this is very long and very earnest and potentially confronting to read. I hope it’s not overwhelming to you and if it is please put it aside, for now, or forever.

I think you already are mourning the loss of your dad and that you already know how to do it, too: you are mourning it like a death. So I encourage you to trust your own read of the situation and to turn to and believe your own feelings/instincts about it and to rely first and foremost on your own judgement when figuring out what, if anything, you want to do or do differently.

Although my experiences are very different to yours and so was the situation and relationship I was trying to negotiate with my own parents and its background, I relate completely to what you wrote here. I have, myself, used the phrase ‘as if they were dead’ many times to try to capture my sense of the fundamental and permanent inaccessibility and unavailability of both of my parents and also the profound confusion, loss and unease I felt because of this.

For many, maybe even most people, the idea that parents can be capable of genuinely rejecting or abandoning their own child in some sort of permanent or long-term way for no particular reason and/or that a parent might be deep-down or unwilling or unable to truly love their child in a healthy way is pretty much unimaginable. (Not saying that’s what your dad did or has done, by the way, how you read what’s happened and his actions is entirely for you to decide/interpret!) So I’m not sure if it helps to know you are not alone in having encountered these complex emotions and the inner turmoil it brings (that whole paradox of I want them to love me but they don’t but I keep hoping they will or forgetting that they don’t/can’t or I try to accept it and even think I have but then still start looking for signs that they really do/could and sometimes I even get them but I always end up back in the same place). I hope so.

When I finally decided to go no contact with my mother, I spent about two years grieving. It was pretty strange and intense and tiring! I found myself mourning not so much the actual loss of her (since in some ways, and I knew this, I never really ‘had’ her to lose and when we were in touch she was also an awfully difficult person to be around) but more the loss of the possibility that things could have been or would ever be any different. Partly, I was mourning the accrued losses of a lifetime as I came to accept that I really needed a mother and that even though my mother did many wonderful things for me at times and could, in the right moment, be caring, I didn’t have one. I think that’s why the grief is so intense and complicated. (Not sure if it matters but unlike your dad my mother wasn’t physically absent in my childhood, just extremely physically and emotionally abusive and quite neglectful.)

There used to be a strange phrase in contract law to describe a particular technicality where people could sue for “loss of a chance”. Sometimes my grief felt just like that: I was mourning the loss of a chance.

That yearning feeling you describe resonates so much with me and it was what eventually/finally made me decide to go no contact in my mid-30s. My mother had done many objectively pretty shockingly terrible, unforgiveable things many times, we hadn’t been close in decades, and our relationship was already extremely volatile, so it was just the latest and gravest in a series of these that got me thinking about no contact. I recognised she was herself suffering and in pain but also knew nothing I ever did or tried made any difference to our relationship or her behaviour and choices and that she just didn’t have in her what I wanted from her and therefore of course could not give it to me.

Contemplating no contact, I had this sudden vision of a (the?) future where I would be searching and scanning for some sign of my mother’s love for me for the rest of her life, even in her last moments while she was on her deathbed (like I literally had this picture of me leaning in to hear her last words in case they showed or revealed some genuine care for me). In this really stark and vivid vision, I could see myself looking for that love even after she died: I pictured myself going through her things after her death privately, trawling through her stuff, just ceaselessly, desperately hoping to find some note or treasured possession or secret hidden sign that she did or had loved me or even could love me.

So, yeah, I basically went no contact because I realised that I didn’t want that future for myself. I knew if I stayed in touch with my mother, I would absolutely have that future, partly because I just couldn’t seem to drive every last inch of that hope out of myself regardless of how hard I tried and how little I was prepared to accept from her. That weird picture of a scene from the future flashing into my head gave me some strong flash of clarity that I just didn’t want to yearn hopelessly like that anymore, let alone for the rest of my life, always ending up, despite what I knew to be true, looking for signs that would never come. I did not want to spend the precious few years I’ve been granted on this planet like that. I didn’t want to live that way anymore, I just couldn’t do it.

I have no opinion on whether going no contact with your dad would help you or not, but I will say that the mourning period I went through didn’t last forever: while it did at the time just seem to go on and bloody on, it did lift. I was in therapy which helped. It gave me a place where I could say forlorn, helpless things like “I just don’t want to be this sad anymore” to someone who understood when I was struggling. And even though the grief I felt after finally disconnecting from my mother was quite painful (I probably had about six months of intense grief where I was crying myself to sleep as you say you have been over your dad then after that the less crushing feelings of sadness and loss probably took about two years in total to work through), I am enormously happier not having her in my life. And I’ve actually been able to improve myself in ways I never expected and make changes on lots of intransigent problems in my life since I cut her off. It was a bit surprising to discover how much better my life got without her in it and how much healthier I became as a result since it wasn’t a reason or goal for the no contact decision (I was just done, like just completely, totally done) and I would never have anticipated or expected that to happen, so it was a nice bonus!

I have been able to maintain some sort of relationship with my own dad, on the other hand, but I’ve accepted that connection will be entirely on his terms. It helps, I think, that I didn’t have that same yearning for his love since I’d somehow given up that a very long time ago (probably as a very small kid). So when he’s able to be caring or open or kind or supportive, or when he can express positive feelings towards me, or we have a really good few hours together where we get along well and stay connected, I feel authentic and sincere gladness and gratitude, but I also recognise that these are just small beautiful moments, exceptions to the norm, and not something I can ever count on or even expect to see again. My dad won’t ever be a reliable, stable connection in my life; he’ll always need to withdraw or disappear or go quiet or drop contact or shut down emotionally with me and sometimes he’ll even feel quite hostile and aggressive toward me and suspicious of me and need to attack me or to guard himself against me. And part of the acceptance I’m talking about is that I know my dad will always do that regardless of what I do (or don’t do) because it really has nothing to do with me and lots to do with him. He will always let me down and disappoint me if I expect him to be a parent to me. But we’ve managed to keep some contact and I’d even say our relationship has improved and softened a bit as he gets older to the point where we can share some pretty lovely and vulnerable and sincere moments in rare but powerful conversations. It’s tricky because I’m a naturally optimistic person and so have to be quite vigilant to guard against my own inclinations and my tendency towards (creating false) hope but that part has become easier for me throughout the years. I do think there’s something profoundly taxing and unnatural about having a relationship with someone where you have to constantly remind yourself not to trust them or depend on them or rely on them or be too vulnerable with them or ask them for anything important or have any expectations at all of them, really. It’s pretty odd and probably emotionally unhealthy to train oneself to think and act like this, partly because it’s a really alienating way of ‘relating’, but I guess also because it sort of seems in an indirect way like adopting or developing and practising the habit of strategically treating yourself as if you don’t matter and you’re nothing, even if only temporarily when you engage with this one person. But that’s the only relationship that’s on offer and I chose to accept it. And we’ve stumbled along alright so far. There’s no real or deep connection between us, it’s all very tenuous and contingent, but there’s more good than bad in the encounters we do have.

I talk about the different approaches I took with my mum and my dad to show that whatever you do or decide is probably going to hurt and feel hard unfortunately. As you know, the hurt’s already there, there’s no getting around it, and probably no choice you make or try out about your relationship with your dad now is going to let you avoid that hurt or make it evaporate in the short term. You can work through the hurt, though, and you can process it, and it will lesson and you will heal and recover from it. You won’t be mourning and stuck in unmet needs forever. There are just no easy answers or perfectly good choices here —you’ve had to bear an enormous amount of loss in your life and that’s just painful and unjust and lonely sometimes too – but I think the fact that you feel you are in mourning means you’re on the right track. It’s a sign of how healthy you are that you’re grieving and mourning all that you have lost (and it is a lot of loss and a long loss and the loss of so many of the very first things a child needs to feel safe in the world). Treat this like it is grief for someone who has died. Allow yourself to grieve. Let yourself cry if you need to cry. It is okay (if hard and tiring) to be sad, even really sad or heartbroken. It is sad.

I’m not sure if this resonates with you, but for me at least one reason why it felt like I was grieving a death is that I was coming to terms with an unwanted, unfixable, permanent and unalterable truth that hurt but which I could not change one iota, a truth and a hurt indeed about which I could do absolutely nothing. And that’s how I’ve felt mourning the actual deaths of loved ones too.

I’d suggest perhaps also being a little cautious about paying too much attention or giving too much weight to the well-meaning and kindly-intentioned advice you might get from people, even loyal friends, who’ve had basically secure, functional parents or families. For sure, take in and really listen to ideas and thoughts from others if you seek it out and find it helpful, but just be a bit wary about rushing to implement suggestions or try out solutions from those unfamiliar with the spot you’re in, even if they are quite sensible and sound seeming on the surface. Because, look, lots of advice you’ll get (about things you could say or do or try), stuff that actually works pretty well in other situations, even pretty difficult and rough ones, can wildly miss the mark or even be quite harmful in a situation like yours.

You may also hear a lot of people who’ve never been in your shoes insist with great conviction that your dad “loves you deep down” or “really does care” or “will come around”. Well, he might and he might not. I guess no-one knows for sure, although you’re the person in the very best position to try to make an accurate prediction about that (except possibly for him!). You’re also the only person who’s going to live with the consequences of that prediction and the choices you make based on it. I believe you when you say your dad didn’t love you and can’t currently love you (in ways that you need) and probably never will. If you do end up hearing this sort of stuff, try not to second-guess yourself or feel you have to substitute this attitude for your own instincts about things. I don’t doubt that people who may say these sorts of things are generously and genuinely meaning to reassure you and trying to make you feel better and they probably honestly believe what they tell you. But parental abandonment in childhood is a deep wound and you get to feel whatever you do feel about that and you get to judge how much faith you have that it will or could ever be superseded or repaired by the person who inflicted it on you. You might hear the opposite—that your dad’s evil and terrible and you should be furious at him and go right now to his house and tell him exactly how awful he really is—but I’d apply the same caution and the same principles here as well.

If you feel, in your core, that your dad is simply never going to offer you the love you crave, you are probably right and what you do with that knowledge or that truth is totally up to you. To be clear, I’m not saying write off your dad and he will never change (because I can’t possibly know that with total certainty and I’m sure we’d both be delighted if he does change!), I’m not wishing to comment on how you should act or what you should do, I’m saying that your feelings are telling you something very important and very powerful and very real and that you should honour them. There’s no reason I can possibly think of that you’d choose to believe that if it wasn’t true, especially because you actually don’t want to believe it, you are desperate to think and feel otherwise! You seem like a genuinely compassionate person who has withheld judgement from your dad even when he’s acted in ways that might bring up loathing and scorn and even in disgust for other people who’ve experienced what you did. (And maybe those feelings are in the mix too and if so that’s pretty natural and perfectly okay!) Most people are pretty motivated instinctively to believe their parents love them, not the opposite; it’s practically hardwired into us as children.

There can be healing that emerges from the mourning you’re doing. In my own situation, I’d go so far as to say that the mourning actually was the healing. I think your sadness and grief are healthy, deeply human responses that you’re working slowly through as you process a hugely painful truth that feels as unchangeable, unavoidable and intractable as a death.
posted by taz at 11:19 PM on August 30, 2021 [4 favorites]


Response by poster: Everyone, thank you for your responses. I have read and read and read them, and they brought me to tears, but also a welling sense of acceptance for the way things are. I don't know what I want to do yet, but I do know that I would love to connect with my sister, but unfortunately I've never met her and I don't know if I will be able to in the near future as my father has refused time and time again to let us meet.

Anonymous, your answer was difficult to read, but I could not get it out of my head. I cannot thank you enough for writing such an honest, truthful account of your experience. Thank you, thank you, thank you.
posted by antihistameme at 10:14 PM on September 7, 2021 [1 favorite]


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