My Father Left Me Over a Decade Ago, and Now He’s Replaced Me

My (early 20’s F) parents (mid-40’s M and F) never should have had kids. They met in college when they were both 19 and moved in with each other quickly, and continued their partying lifestyle together. The two of them were always better as friends than they were as a couple. Then, about a year later, my uncle (mom’s older brother) and his wife had a baby. They decided the baby was cute, so they wanted one of their own. Another year later, they had me and moved back in with my father’s parents. Neither one of them was mature or responsible, so they mostly relied on my grandparents and uncles to care for me, even financially. A couple years later, after my father was finally fed up with two year old me calling my uncle “Da-da”, they finally moved out of my grandparent’s house and into a house almost three hours away. There, they had another baby, my brother (now 17M). This is around where I remember the arguing starting. I don’t really remember what they argued about, but since neither of them were employed at the time, I assume it was money. Another year later, they moved back to the town my grandparents lived in. I remember my grandmother taking care of us a lot, since my parents both got jobs at a call center almost an hour away.

This is where things get complicated. My father and mother’s relationship started to break down over the next couple of years, as they were both in over their heads tremendously. Between being young, unfit parents and immature adults, they stopped actually talking. They neglected my sibling and I, and both spent most of the time we were with them instead of our grandmother on their computers. As I later found out, they were speaking to other people. I don’t know who my mother was talking to, but I know for certain my father was flirting with a younger woman. He was roughly 28 at the time, and she was 20. She also knew he was married with two children. They met up a few times in person, but my mother didn’t know any of this. This went on for about a year, and during this time, my mother became pregnant with my father’s child. She had the baby, (now 14 F), but my dad was away a lot “working”. This is about when my mother found out about his affair. I don’t remember much about this – I spent a lot of time with my grandmother during all this – but my dad left, and so did my mother. We then lived with my grandparents while my father moved in with his girlfriend and my mother disappeared. Over the next decade, we saw my parents pretty infrequently. They would show up on holidays and birthdays (separately, of course) and only for a few hours before leaving again.

I’ll spare you the decade and a half of drama that ensues here. By the time I was 20, my father was still with his girlfriend, living 4 hours away from us in a house that they bought together. Then, my father made a special trip down – very suspicious already – and took us out for an ice cream. When we got back in my car (yes, I drove us to the ice cream shop), he told us that we were going to have another sibling. That’s right, he got her pregnant. I wasn’t shocked, since I knew this was a possibility, but I was still pissed. At the time, I was almost the same age he was when my parents had me, and here he was having another baby with the woman he had broken up my family for and left us to be with. I was hurt, but couldn’t bring myself to say anything. I just drove us home and let my siblings change the subject.

Months later, they had a baby girl (0? F), who looks just like me when I was a baby. She looks identical to every baby picture I’ve ever seen of myself, and everyone in my family who meets her tells me that she looks and acts exactly like me at that age. I know this is stupid, but it tears me up somewhere deep down to see him caring for this baby, actually holding her, the way I never felt he did for me or either of my siblings. He is always sending my grandparents and myself pictures and videos of her, and his girlfriend posts pictures to social media. Every time one comes in, I hear the same thing: ‘She looks just like you’. To me, it feels so unfair that after everything he did, he still got a do-over, he got to start over with a new me and a new family. I never got a new dad, a new family, and I never even so much as caught another glimpse at the family I thought I once had. I’m torn between the fear that he will abandon her like he did to us, and jealousy that he’ll be a better father to her, that he’ll be able to be a better man for her when he couldn’t change for me.

I have spoken to so many psychologists, therapists, and family members about how I feel, about the anxiety, depression, and abandonment issues they caused. They have all told me the same thing: that if I’m ever going to be able to move on from this, I need to confront my parents about what happened in my past. I’ve never been able to figure out how to talk to either of them about this. The story above was pieced together from stories I’ve asked my grandmother for over the years and my own fractured childhood memories. Kind internet strangers, do you have any advice on how to confront this? Have you been in a similar situation, maybe? Any advice you can throw my way would be greatly appreciated.

TLDR; dad left my mom for another woman. A decade and a half later, they have a baby who looks just like me.