Rachelc, I'm sorry to read you have dealt with this in your family, with your sister and father. It is so hurtful that your father doesn't acknowledge the children you and your sisters already have… It really is unbelievable the kinds of cruel things a parent can say to their child.
NaiveAgain, that is horrible that your mother said that to you! I am seriously at a loss - who does that? What parent says that they can't have a relationship with their child because they *stress them out too much*!? WTF?!!! I think you're doing the right thing by not calling her as much, but I know how very painful this must be, especially because she just said it last week.
Yes, my father definitely has some FOO issues. Not with my grandfather, fortunately - he's my grandmother's third husband, and they were married on my 8th birthday. But Dad's own father left the family pretty early. He traveled around a lot, moving my dad and grandmother from country to country, and my grandmother got tired of him not putting his family first. So for most of Dad's childhood, he was raised by a single mother. His loyalty is so strong to her; I think he would do almost anything she asked, because she was all he had. When he was in his teens, she married a second time, and when he was 16 she moved with her second husband to the other side of the country (military purposes). Dad had the option of going with them or staying where he was; he stayed by himself. I can't wrap my head around that myself, but he says he appreciated the experience? The second husband [retracted; remembered in OT]. So Dad's never really have a consistent male role model - ohh, lightbulb! He said that exact comment to me one time when I was trying to tell him about my grandfather's verbal abuse, when I was 15 or 16. He said "your grandfather's the other stable male influence in your life, aside from me. Of course you'd lash out at the safe people."
Anyway, that explains where that comment was coming from. It was really about him and how he esteems my grandfather.
He's never seemed to have an issue with my grandfather. But perhaps he feels that a) his mother loves him, so he must be wonderful, and b) he treats my dad well (used to treat me well too), so he must be a great person. And all those other pesky complaints about him are wrong, ignorant, and jealous. And also my dad likes to keep the peace. He questioned why my grandfather would make some of the accusations of me he made the night when we fell out, and he said he'd talk to my grandfather about it. He went back on his promise. Wanted to know why I wasn't over it 4 months later and said my grandfather was probably already over it (he wasn't, by the way). Conflict-avoidant.
What you said about how he didn't write about unconditional love… That was the hardest thing about all of this. When I was growing up, Dad always said that he loved me unconditionally and this is what parents do (I still didn't take it for granted). When he left, he shattered that belief he'd tried to instill in me. Now I have some *fun* abandonment issues to work through in addition to all my other issues. Whoopee. My therapist thinks I should write him the last email. I'm not sure. I'm not gonna get healed if I keep engaging with him, even though I do want to tell him one last time that I love him, so he never doubts it (isn't it weird - so often it's the children who unconditionally love their parents. A valuable lesson for me, to never take my son's love for granted, and to treat his heart with the utmost care and tenderness, knowing this - to never give him abandonment issues). Like you said, my father really does keep me dangling on a string. Mr. Silver said the same thing.
Sorry, I'm still a little in shock right now, so I'm rambling. My mood absolutely plummeted yesterday, and it led to a nice conversation in therapy about my depression and going back on meds soon. Hey, thank goodness my father wrote me on a therapy day! Though I'm a little concerned - he'd have no reason to know I'm on here, since he stopped speaking to me a year before I joined… But this is the second time I've posted here that I'm distancing myself from him, only for him to write me within the next day. It could just be the universe's energy answering and trying to teach me something, but that strikes me as… odd. He does work with computers too, building them for people. I hope he's not keeping tabs on me. That's probably my paranoia talking, right?
[This message edited by silverhopes at 12:36 PM, August 20th (Wednesday)]