Love help: I’m not sure if I want to see my dad again. - Help.com

If you are contemplating suicide, hurting yourself, or you are seriously depressed: please, seek professional help!

Call this hotline (1-800-273-8255) operated by our friends at the
Suicide Prevention Lifeline, anytime, for free, professional, and
confidential assistance. While other Help.com users are likely to reply
to your post, please make sure you understand that your use of Help.com
falls under our TOS.

Note: I’m a robot that the Help.com staff created. If this response is in error, I apologize, please ignore it.

Your post touches my heart, and I wish this pain did not exist for you. I think it must be the worst pain in the world. I have a daughter your age, and I cannot imagine the man that could cause such a pain. Well, in my opinion there is no man that could do that because anyone that could do that is NOT a MAN, but some other kind of creature.

I understand your love, and count you blessed for having it and understand your confusion. Have you started seeing a counselor, and are you making headway? What do they have to say? I think perhaps when you turn 18 you may start correspondence with him. You will be able to see his letters then and make an evaluation from them as to where his head is at. You can also tell him your heart as well.

You are blessed, and I’m so sorry you must live through this… but you can live through it and be a positive young woman to those around you. If you ever need to talk feel free to give me a shout.
Bright blessings ~ Richard

Hey Twunt,

I’m sorry that you have to deal with this sort of thing…it’s a heavy burden to bear, I’m sure. And, whatever anyone else says (especially your dad) you neither asked for nor deserve how he treated you. We can’t go back and change what happened, so you have to deal with it so that it doesn’t drag you down in the future. Undealt with, these things have a way of having repercussions years down the road, and they aren’t pleasant. Please, find someone that you trust that can help you get through it, so that this doesn’t hang over your head the rest of your life…

And, for what it’s worth, I might encourage not seeing your dad until you have dealt with it. He is your dad, but until you are capable of defending yourself emotionally it might be best to not get involved with him.

I’m going to invite one of my friends to read this post. She might be able to help more than I can…

All the best, Twunt! And yes, there is some best coming to you…

this is very difficult for you obviously, and you have my deepest sympathies. your a good person to be able to see the good in someone when noone else can, and to even defend it is a very honerable thing. you have to think of yourself in all this too, how you feel, and what is best for all involved. my mother disowned me for selfish reasons, and therapy never helped me either, i’ve tried the medicine and perscribed to their way of thinking until i realized it wasnt for me. not everyone has a perfect fairy-tale family like movies would have us believe, we can only do the best we can, cause thats all we’ve got. be it your fault or not, blameing is not gonna fix anything at all. i still love my mother over the distance, in a way where neither of us get hurt, we don’t talk, but it’s for the better in my situation. i still love her, even though she doesn’t know it, and that is enough for me because it has to be, since communication is impossible for us. all you can do is your part, and your father has to do his part for himself, to love, to forgive, and such. i hope you can find the strength in yourself to live happily regardless of the out come. i wasnt so fortunate with my situation, but you still can be. keep hopeing, keep trying, until you know for yourself that you have done all you can, and done your best, and that all that is good enough for you. i wish you the best. hang in there.

Again, I understand your confusion (because of a child’s nearly unconditional love for a parent), but you need to remove that confusion BEFORE you visit him, which is why I recommend correspondence first. If you don’t know what to write, You might send him a copy of this post, because what you wrote above was beautiful in it’s own way. Read his letters to you. I think this will help to rid you of your confusion yes. IF you decide to meet, your first meeting should not be alone, you should have someone you trust with you when you meet him. You will be terrified, and that is understandable.

Here is the very sad and unfortunate part of your story. Because you have a father, does not necessarily mean you have a Dad. You have to figure out what you have in him, AND he needs to figure out what he wants to be to you. You will only discover this by time together. Letters between you both are good, but can they really be trusted in the long run? We hide so much of ourselves so often… but when we are together it is sometimes impossible to hide the reality of things.

I would encourage you to try to talk to another therapist. I realize you had a bad experience, and I’m glad that woman got sacked… but there are good ones out there. Gimli is correct… there are things inside you now that really have not been dealt with, and they must… abuse and or molestation causes terrible problems later down the road if not addressed.

Bright blessings ~ Richard

Twunt,

I don’t think you have to rush out and blab everything to the first counselor that you see…but there won’t ever be a perfect time to deal with this, either. Just make sure you take care of things before you have no other choice! At the very least, try to find a good friend who you can be real with…preferably female.

The thing is, these types of things can horribly distort what we perceive as “normal”. I don’t claim to know how it all works, but there are example after examples of people who somehow repeat in adulthood when they lived through in childhood…and it doesn’t get any more fun the second time around! You have to be proactive. There may be other things you need to take care of first, but don’t make the mistake of not thinking that your experiences aren’t a big deal.

I hope you are on the boards for a while. This isn’t always the best place to get help, since anyone (including me!) can state an opinion on anything, regardless of how much knowledge or experience we have. But, it IS a good place to vent. Feel free to come on anytime and let it all hang out…you’ve made a good start!

Hello hun.

Thank you for having the courage to post this issue.

You are bound to have very mixed emotions for your father. That is very understandable and very normal for your circumstances.

I think only you can really decide whether or not you want to visit your Dad. Or indeed, what contact you have with him at all.. letter, email, whatever.

Don’t feel you have to rush that decision when you turn 18. You can put it off until you feel you are completely ready to make it.

My advice would be to definitely talk to whoever you feel closest to (a relative, a boyfriend, a teacher..) but also seek some advice from professionals who will have encountered your situation before and will have some experience of the difficulties you face. You can come up with the best plan together that way.

Good luck.

I am so sorry to hear about this, Twunt. I came to to this post thinking it was similar to a situation I’m going through with my own father, but it has shocked me to see it’s quite different. I’m crying for you right now as type this.

If you want my honest opinion, I say don’t go. But ultimately, it is your decision in the long run. Sometimes, when a parent let’s you down and betrays your trust, it can be incrediably hard to forgive them, or forget the person you love in them too.

I suppose it doesn’t make any sense unless I explain my point of view, then maybe you can see where I’m coming from. I will have to post it in a few replies, because I won’t fit, and it’s stuff I can’t leave out :(

My father to me, was my hero. Literally. I couldn’t see anyone else I would have rathered be like, he spent time with me, he taught me everything I knew, I was in political demonstrations and protests since I was a toddler, and I started wrighting satires and anti-political poems/songs when I was 11. All because I had the knowledge, the IQ, and the maturity of an adult (or so the police said when I gave a statement at the age of 5.) I wanted to grow up to be just like him. To me, he could do no wrong, and he always was respected by the most highest in the political forces. I met a few when I was younger, and strangely, without knowing it was the same people, even worked along side of them just recently in my own election campaign. (very small, and insignificant but)

Anyway, my parents got divorced when I was almost 12. A nasty, horrible one. It actually became so bad, my mother slapped a restraining order on him and her, AND on me and him, saying that he was an abuser, and emotionally manipulative. Which, in minor cases that was true, but I won’t go into detail. I spent the next ten years without my father, I had the opportunity a few times for a phone call, he even got married again, to someone I never got to meet. She was dying of Leukemia. I lived with my mom for 3 years, until I landed in foster care because she became permanently ill when I turned 14. A statement was sent to my father through a “friend” of his in the family department that wasn’t planning on even giving him a copy, they asked him to send it back because it “accidently” came in the mail. He told my mother he didn’t want anything to do with me, and he never wanted to speak to her, or me again.

Back in March, me and him had contact again, he was angry at some things I had told my mom (I was rotten, I think it was a way to disassociate myself from him to stop it hurting so bad) However, nothing was like it used to be. He wasn’t like he used to be. He called me ignorant, and “dumbed-down” from how I used to be. He said I had no knowledge anymore, and I should learn to read the newspaper or watch the news. I joined the Australian Democrats (extremely respected here) and even ran as a member of parliament, and he told me I could have done better. He even told me I looked like (direct quote) “biker’s b*itch” because of the tattoo of my daughter’s name on my shoulder, HIS granddaughter’s name. If I didn’t drop everything and find a way to come and see him when he wanted me to, I was trying to soar like an eagle when surrounded by turkeys (also a direct quote, and, he meant my mother and step-dad were turkeys. I’ve since moved out into my own house) In two weeks of getting back into contact with me, he asked me to move interstate with him, I didn’t realize I didn’t want to until after I had said yes…after 10 years of not even knowing this man anymore.

My point is, my father changed. He no longer respected me as a peer. I no longer look up to him. He told me “we” needed to “get the 10 years of crap out of that head”. He wanted to re-program me into his own little creation. I wasn’t allowed to think for myself anymore, and he tried to tell me my dream was stupid and dangerous because the school I wanted to go to was run by “Zionist Nazi’s”. He frightened me. He even told me, that because of my looks, I could forget about even getting married. I stopped calling, texting, and seeing him. Gave him no reason or explanation. He’s threatened me with text messages on my phone saying he was going to file a missing person’s report because he hadn’t heard from me.

Just the other day I was reminiscing about “the good old days” like I usually do, when it struck me that I never really noticed it before when I was a child. Maybe I was too wrapped up in looking up to him so much, or maybe it’s because I was the child and he was the parent. Now that I’m older, I think I saw him in a different light. I wasn’t his co-worker, his friend or his protégé anymore. I was his daughter, and I disappointed him.

Then, I realized something. I didn’t change, and neither did he. It’d been 10 years since we’d seen each other. To him, I was still 11-years-old but at the same time, he’s in shock, that I’m an adult now, and can think for myself. My dad was/is the sort of person of “my way or the highway” if you didn’t think like him, you were an idiot, point blank.

Which brings me to the conclusion. Neither of us changed, except the way I saw him. I really saw him for who he was as an adult, and not someone who’d be told what to think for 10 years. I saw him how others saw him. I feared him just like they did.

It’s a completely different fear to yours, of course Twunt, but it is fear nonetheless. Abuse can come in many forms as I’m sure you know. Mine, was caused from both of my parents, but my father was the worst betrayal, like yours.. You, from as a woman, were hurt by the first man you ever loved, the same as I. While the situations are quite different, it hurts to the core. I know it does, but you still have a lot of people who are here to support you. Us here at Help, and your mom, I’m certain your mom and your brother care for you very much.

A daughter’s love for her father is a lot different than other’s in your family ca see. And once you get hurt, it’s crushing. You will always love your dad for the person he was, and for the memories you had of him. I still do mine, and I too wish things could go back the way they were. But sadly. These type of people who are so set in their ways, do not change. Though, it is really a nice thought. I’m sorry to hear that you are hurting, sweetie.

If you DO still want to see him, it is completely your choice, but I urge you to be careful. I’d hate to see you in a position that you could get hurt again, or even more than you are right now. Perhaps you do still love your dad, but the side of him that you miss. The one who hurt you, is the one you hurt because of. It’s a vicious circle when it’s one person, and it’s completely unfair. Just know that whatever you decide, you’ve come so far, and you don’t ever have to turn back. We’re all here for you whenever you need us. And, if you don’t mind, I’ve added you to my friends list, so if you ever need to talk, send me a shout, okay?

I’m sending lots of love and hugs your way right now. More than you know.

I don’t have much time, and I couldnt read the responses from people but I can say one thing. If its in your heart to forgive, then forgive. Dont forget, just forgive. As you said, you only have one dad and it’s going to be tough if you choose not to see him again, as it will be tough to see him again. The difference is that if you do see him again, you will be giving him a chance, and that makes you a better person. If things go bad, you can always walk away, if you dont see him then you will never know.

Good luck with everything, I really hope things go alright.
Tobee

I didn’t read many of the replies, but is there the possibility of seeing him and then deciding?

You can always see him the once then if it dosn’t go well cut off contact with him.

Just remember to be truthful to yourself, you need to please yourself before him.

Twunt…I do think the best option would be to go and see him. Regardless of your feelings. I knoe its going to be hard..but at least you’ll have some more ‘up to date’ opinions etc about how you feel about him?

Even if its a bad meeting. It may be helpful for you to have that kind of closure?

I kind of understand how u feel…..See him. I f you don’t then you’ll keep wondering what he would do…how he would react etc.