Comment on So you grew up with a dad who didn’t know how to express love? Here’s how it could be affecting you today by Janine.
Hi, like other readers, i also came across this article by chance. What type of a father treats their only daughter like she is dead? I married my husband at 18, we had P four years later. He was a very loving husband, hard worker, and doted on his baby. When P was 5, I became involved with a co worker and regrettably left my husband. P adored her dad, they were unseperable. We both worked to remain good parents to P, I had taken her to live with my new partner. Dad paid maintenance and spent six nights a month with P.
After a public holiday where he dropped her home a day early, it was discovered he had in fact left the country and moved back to Florida without even telling us; P was heartbroken (7), and if i’m honest so was I. After three months he got in touch, i had been taking P to a psychologist, her hair was patchy, she was going to the toilet in unacceptable places and most of all she missed her dad. A couple of years later he started to get in touch, he had a good job, a new girlfriend from his high school days who had her own son, and she encouraged him to reconnect.
I had inside concerns but just by looking how happy she was i would never jeopardise that. She flew to visit them for two weeks, had a nice time, and from there would chat once a month for an hour. Now, she was 13 and started to attract the wrong type of company (boyfriends) and her school grades reflected that. We always stayed close even though i knew P loved her dad more than me. The following year we took a holiday to Florida, i could have a nice break in the sun, and P could visit dad and gf for a week. We all met up for an uncomfortable meal where P told me she wanted to stay with her dad. I was heartbroken, but was not selfish, i understood that P was not mine, she was a real person, and that her dad had as much right to have her in his life, like i had had those past 13yrs. I left florida, my heart shattered and i cried through the entire flight back to uk, whilst P was settling into school and adapting to life within her new family. Her dad did not marry the gf, and i didn’t marry again either. So….once she had been there for 6 months she hated it, missed her mum, friends, freedom and life in general. we talked for hours, me telling her to make the effort with dad, as i knew he loved her very much, but she just he was as cold as a fish, and couldn’t settle. I was worried about her, i saved enough to take a flight back the following may, where dads gf picked me up from hotel, drove me to surprise P on her last day of school before summer break. it was loving and emotional. P spent most of the time with me at the hotel, and i honestly did talk with her loads reminding her of her wishes and the expense they had gone to to kit her bedroom out and get her into school etc, she said she would try, but as soon as dad and P dropped me at airport she was the one sobbing her heart out, i felt terrible. two months later i receive a very hurtful email from her dad saying that as long as i was going to continue to allow P to act this way he was never going to win this battle to keep her with him til adulthood. one month later he booked a ticket and sent her home. The last thing he said to her (15 year old) was that he believe it was all a game to her, he would be paying off the debt for kitting her room out for the next two years and that once she is on the plane he will have nothing to do with her until she either saw sense or became an adult not living under my influence. Until P went to live with dad, he was god, simple as that, and it came out that she had so many insecurities since he just disappeared to move back to florida, she longed for the one person who abandoned her. That was 7 years ago, and the man has had no contact with her, he never stopped punishing her for wanting to come home, whereas i allowed her to stay because i felt it was her god given right. effectively, he has abandoned her again. she is now on her final year of a degree but has many daddy issues, the males she date are beneath her, have no plan and she either treats them rotten or becomes obsessed with them. I have no doubt that when i was stupid enough to break my marriage up it seemed he became cold and uncompassionate.
Whilst we were all in Florida at the same time i went along to a counselling session with dad and P where the councillor told me that my ex-husband was not one to display his feelings and was unable to communicate love which is why P struggled, that simply was not true, the man i married who is the dad of my child was a good loving caring person. So here we are now, dad has had nothing to do with her, he actually blames her for how much money he wasted and they have not spoken since then. The only good thing that came out of allowing her to stay there that time was through living with him day in and day out she came to her own conclusion…He is not god on a pedestal any more! How can a dad put the blame onto the shoulders of a 14 year old child, wasn’t he the one suppose to act like a grown up? P has everything in life going for, yet struggles to recover from that huge wound her dad left in her heart.
