TLDR: My father is toxic. Had an affair with my mother's sister, which led to their divorce and was not there for me as a father for the last 13 years. Yesterday I decided to cut him out of my life and it is a very strange feeling.
My father had an affair with my mother's sister 13 years ago. I found out about the affair on my 15th birthday. Shortly after this, my father begged my mother for forgiveness and promised he wanted to stay and win his family back. He never stopped communication with his AP, so my mom literally packed his stuff up in black trash bags and put him out. He ended up up moving in with his lover and has been with her ever since.
Since I was underage at the time of my parent's divorce, there was a court order that stated he needed to pay child support for me until I was 18 and give my mother $500 in alimony. In the beginning he did pay the alimony for the first few months although he never paid the child support he was supposed to for me. One day he received my car registration renewal and told me that my mother needed to get a job because he could not be supporting us fully. At the time he was only assisting us with the $500 in alimony and my mother was left with all of other expenses... $500 was very little and didn't even cover 1/4 of our mortgage payment at the time. My father had his own successful business that my mother helped him with for over 20 years; he was well off. I ended up cussing him out and telling him that I did not want his help with anything at all. He told me he was going to stop paying the alimony because of my response to him. At the time I was a hurt and angry teenager with way too much pride so I promised myself that I would work hard on my own and that I would never need him for anything. We were estranged for 3 years after that argument.
He came back into my life one day when he called me sobbing and left me a voicemail saying, "call me I need you". I felt very bad for him and decided to give him another chance. I was hopeful that we could clear things up and work towards repairing the relationship, but it just turned into a very surface level relationship where we would meet up for lunch a few times a year and talk about superficial things meanwhile I kept all my true feelings to myself, afraid to speak my mind.
My mother, brother and I experienced hardship when he left and were almost going to lose our house due to not being able to pay our mortgage and bills with my mother's income alone. At some point my brother lost his job, my mother lost her job, and I was working part-time and going to school full-time at the age of 20. It was a very dark and stressful time for us. My mother wanted to sue my father on several occasions for not holding his end of what was agreed upon in court. I told her not to on several occasions because I really did not want to receive anything at all from that man and deep down... i didn't want to burden him in any way. I now look back and regret not supporting my mother in her decision to sue him although she admits that she should have done it regardless of what anyone else thought.
Flashforward to a year ago when I was 27 y/o... with a master's degree... working full-time... in lots of debt, still living at home but making things work for myself while helping out my mother. We are in a good place where we can make ends meet now. Well my mother decides that she is going to sue him and let the court know that he never paid the alimony he was supposed to. She didn't even throw in the child support he never paid for me. He owes about $90,000 and was put on a payment plan where he is slated to pay $1,000 a month. He has not made one payment...
He did not present himself to court or mention anything to my brother and I about the situation, which is fine because it's really something my mom decided to do on her own and she wanted to keep us out of it as much as possible.
My brother sent him a simple text message a few days ago asking for an old family friend's phone number and he blew up by responding and saying that he was not going to cooperate with anything because my mother had "f***** everything up" by suing him and that if my mother forgotten about everything he provided for us while he was here with us. This made me so angry so I decided to pick up my phone and send him a long text explaining to him exactly how I felt (something I had been wanting to do for many years). Yes, it was impulsive on my end but it angered me to know that he left and never offered us any support whatsoever. Not even emotional support. Just nothing at all other than random superficial lunch dates and still had the nerve to say that he basically didn't owe us anything because of what he did until I was 15 and my brother was 18.
He responded to me by telling me "to go to hell", to change my last name because I didn't deserve it, and that I was dead to him. In my text message to him I was not rude at all... I simply told him that his response to my brother was absolutely uncalled for when he was just asking a simple question and has nothing at all to do with lawsuit. I let him know that he was never there for us and brought upon us an immense amount of hardship, stress, and emotional trauma. I let him know that he did a mediocre job at attempting to win our respect back. I let him know that it was my mother has always been there for me and who has prioritized me my entire life when he wasn't there. I suppose the truth cut him too deep. He continued to tell me that I owe him everything and that if it wasn't for all that he gave me when I was younger I would not have what I have today... (all wrong).
I decided to block him because it was literally pointless to engage with him at that point when all he was doing was continuing to shift the blame onto everyone else but himself. He took no responsibility for anything and told me that "Karma is a b****". He insulted my mother saying that living with her was hell and called her a B**** over and over. He's angry about money and totally invalidated and disregarded the feelings of hurt that I was expressing to him. It does not seem that he is willing to pay what the court is asking for him... not too sure about the consequences since he runs his own business and is self-employed. My mother is not suing him for money, but rather for justice.
I decided that I am going to permanently cut him out of my life. He is the most toxic and hateful man that I have ever met. I'm here writing this out because as much as this is liberating for me, it's also something I have to process and accept. I'm hoping that someone out there relates a bit so that I can feel understood and less alone about all of this. Thanks to whoever took the time to read this.
Submitted April 12, 2021 at 05:02PM by brannewgirl2021 https://ift.tt/3g4Z7VJ
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