My daughter (31F) left our country and married a wealthy man (36M). She move to another county in North America and has cut all contact with me (56F). She still talks to her brother sometimes but she communicates mostly with my sister and my mom. When her dad died, she was living with her aunt while I worked abroad. I visited my kids every two years.
My daughter has a lot of complaints and doesn’t appreciate my sacrifices. She told me how she hated her name because she was name after her stepsister. My husband have two children from his first marriage. When we met, he was getting a divorce but legally they were still married. We got pregnant and I didn’t want his family to find out yet so we gave my daughter and her brother the same name as her stepsister and stepbrother. She hated her name when she found out. She said I only gave her the name because we were hiding my relationship with my late husband. Her dad was married when we were together, he has two kids, Sarah and Jacob. We name my two kids Sarah and Jacob, my daughter and my son is also Sarah and Jacob. My daughter thinks her name was to hide infidelity and she hated it. That was not the sole reason. I just thought someday it might make them close as siblings. Her brother on the other hand, was ok with it. He’s the quiet type of kid and has always follow adult instructions. My daughter is exact opposite. She always questions anything we ask or told her to do.
When she was 6, her dad was diagnosed with Parkinson’s. His health was failing and he can’t work due to his illness. I left the country and work abroad to provide the best life I can give them. She is blaming me that she had to take care of her sick father at 6 until he passed away when she was 10. There was nothing we could do at that point in our life. But she can’t understand that. She has always been hard headed and opinionated unlike her brother. She’s a bit of rebel. Everyone was expecting that she’s would fail in life and maybe be pregnant by some teenage boy since she never comes home and she’s always in trouble in school. Surprisingly, she gets good grades.
By 17 when she graduated high school, I told her that we have to put her brother to college and that we can’t afford school for her anymore. She was angry, she thinks that she gets good grades while her brother needed a tutor. She believe she has better chance of finishing college. I disagreed at that time. She was upset and ran away. She to a city and live with her friend. She manage put herself through college. We remain in contact once year until she married her husband. She blocked me on all sm and refuse to take my
Call. I tried to reach her husband but he is also declining my call. Her aunt told me that she told her she does not have a mother . She was also mad that her brother didn’t finish college. She said it was a waste. It’s not her money so I don’t know why she was mad about that. She sometimes sends money but most of the time she sends it to her aunt. It upsets me that she sees her aunt as mother. I made sacrifices and she wouldn’t be where she’s at without me. I hope there is a way for me to communicate with her to make her understand my sacrifices specially now that she has a daughter of her own..
Edit: I believe that putting her brother to college instead of her motivated my daughter to do well in life. She has achieve her dreams. I don’t believe she would have if I financially supported her at that time since she was a really bad teenager when she was young.
Edit: just want to clarify. In our culture, it’s expected for a son to finish college. We expected our daughter to marry well as their husband will take care of them. My daughter has always been too liberated and does not want to conform to cultural norm. She married an American and became more Americanized. She has stopped helping me financially since marrying her husband whom I believe was the reason she stopped talking to me. I wish I can turn back the time and had put her to school instead.
TD;LR daughter has cut of all contact and refuse to talk to me
22 comments
>daughter has cut of all contact and refuse to talk to me
Not sure what your question is, but honestly, I can’t blame her.
Can’t say I blame her for cutting you off.
Stop the pity party and genuinely accept all the ways you fucked up.
So you thought that stepsiblings having the exact same name would make them closer?
And you think making a 6-year-old child the carer of a terminally ill adult is a reasonable plan of action?
And that favouring a boy child over an academically well-achieving girl is fair?
Also, you think that assuming your daughter will fail at school and become a teen mom would be just right for her?
And after all this hate, disrespect and disregard you’ve subjected your daughter to, you wonder why she doesn’t want to talk to you? It really is a mystery.
You’ve done your best to give your daughter a bad life. You failed. She’s a success.
I can’t say I blame her for cutting contact. She’s the product of an affair, and you named her after her half siblings? That’s weird and messed up
Also, you left her to take care of her father by herself at SIX??? What the fuck? She was a child, she shouldn’t have ever had the burden of taking care of a sick parent that young.
And to top it all off, you promise her college, and then back out of it last minute?
I would cut you off too if you were my mother. Your daughter has her life together despite all you’ve done to hurt her.
She doesn’t owe you anything, and you should just leave her alone. You sound incredibly entitled. You did basic things to raise her, all parents sacrifice for their kids.
I hope she has an incredible life with her daughter, without you.
Yeah, she’s good. Goodbye to you.
Based on the post. She made a success of her life despite all the trauma you threw at her.
She owes you nothing. Culture or not, that child should never have been put into that situation to care for a terminally ill parent at 6 years old.
She found a way to put herself through school, earn a degree, marry very well and now has a happy family in spite of you making horribly bad decisions that effected her very negatively.
Her aunt basically raised her. She was her actual mother while you were making your “sacrifices” abroad.
I applaud her determination to over come and the success she has obtained.
You were a cheat and a liar, used her as household labor – disrupting her education and social growth – in a traumatizing situation as a young child, and now claim *ownership* of her success because you went and burned her education to the ground out of sexist favoritism.
How can she think you were a bad mother? It’s inconceivable!
Question what sacrifices did you make specifically for your daughter.
Two things can be true at once: you did what you felt you had to in order to survive and your daughter was neglected growing up. Parents make sacrifices because it is the right thing to do. Not to make their children feel indebted to them.
You had choices in what happened. You had children with a married man and named them after his first children. You choose to force a very young child to take care of her father when there was clearly other family involved. You choose to obviously prefer her brother at every step. You obviously thought very lowly of her as a teen even though she had been through incredible trauma and was still doing well in school.
Your daughter had no choices in this. She was too young to even push back on taking care of her father. You talk all about sacrifices- what about her’s? She never got to be a child.
You say she wouldn’t be where she is at without you, but it’s very clear that she did a lot of work to give herself a better life. If it was up to you, she would have never gotten to better her life by getting a degree. SHE choose to leave and work hard to put herself through school.
She knows that she is always going to be second to her brother no matter how well she does. It’s clear that you resent her for how successful she is. She’s made the decision that she doesn’t want to deal with that anymore. You need to respect that.
She is where she is in life in spite of you, not because of you. As a mother I could not fathom placing one child above the other. You are lucky you got the years and few visits you got. Good for her leaving you behind.
If you want money ask it from your son, you know THE ONE YOU SPENT YOUR MONEY ON.
Affair baby, who was given the same name as her stepsister for disturbing and selfish reasons, who also dealt with parentification (a form of child abuse by modern standards) at the age of SIX?!? And on top of that, you talk about her in the most despicable ways throughout your entire post. Plus you favored her brother over her.
All I know, is I am so happy to hear she is living her best life. And so grateful she realized how toxic her childhood was and went NC so she can move on in a healthy way.
I wish her all the best. (Though I do hope she stops sending money.)
And, just so we’re clear, she did not succeed in life BECAUSE of you. She did so IN SPITE of you.
She disowned you because you were a terrible mother at every turn. The name thing is definitely a part of it, that was your second major failure as a parent, but it’s far from the only reason.
She hasn’t succeeded because of you, she has succeeded **despite you**. You get absolutely no credit whatsoever for anything she has accomplished and she owes you nothing.
You abandoned her at **6 years old** to take care of her sick, then dying, father. She was **SIX**.
You bet on the wrong kid when you decided to pick one to finally do something for. That’s your problem, not hers.
And this is you trying to make yourself look good.
You don’t have a daughter. You did this to yourself. You deserve far worse than just being disowned.
OP, you’re an absolutely disgusting human being 🤦🏻♀️ Kudos to your daughter for getting out of this viper’s nest 👍
“ When we met, he was getting a divorce but legally they were still married. We got pregnant and I didn’t want his family to find out yet so we gave my daughter and her brother the same name as her stepsister and stepbrother.”
Excuse me, WHAT? How does this make any kind of sense?
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Your poor daughter
First, why did you have the need to say she married a wealthy man like it was her best accomplishment? I hope you’re not trying to mend your relationship with her so you can guilt her into taking care of you. Whatever happened to your husband’s family? They weren’t available to help him out while you working abroad? You leaving her to care for her dad could have been avoided if he had a relative to help out. I think you should let her be and let her talk to you on her own terms.
You valued your son more than your daughter, she has every right to hate you. “It’s our culture to treat daughters like shit” every culture that does that is awful.
She has a new life. Leave her alone.
Yikes! As a mother I cannot fantom the things you did to your child. I don’t blame her at all for going no contact. I would have done the same. Reading your comments, I don’t feel genuine remorse because you just deflect on all your bad choices. YOU were the parent, she was a CHILD.
You really want a relationship with your daughter? Own up to the bad choices you made as a parent. But don’t bother trying to get into contact unless you really mean it. From the sound of it your only mad she isn’t helping you financially. If that’s the case leave her tf alone.
INFO: Why did you make 6yr old a caregiver to her dying father ? Where are his older children? What about his family?
This is a very sad story and, unsurprisingly, has a very sad ending.
I recognise the power of cultural norms but also know that they can still be incredibly harmful, especially if a parent unquestioningly follows them and later refuses to acknowledge that they made the wrong choice – even if there was no alternative they could see at the time.
My mum was a victim of cultural norms that contributed to a lifetime of suffering, some of which she passed to her children. Plenty actually. If her mum apologised for making some wrong choices, it would have helped my mum let go of her anger and resentment. I would appreciate it if my mum apologised to me too. I understand she was very stuck in a bad situation but we were kids and had zero alternatives compared to the adults in charge of us.
Apologising for mistakes doesn’t mean you didn’t try hard and make sacrifices. It doesn’t mean you’re a bad person or didn’t love your children. It’s about recognising that your daughter suffered because of your choices, and therefore you regret your decisions – even if you didn’t mean to harm your daughter.
I don’t think I will ever get an apology or even acknowledgement of the past. My family had some weird unspoken thing where apologising meant you were a bad person and _meant_ to harm someone. I still struggle with that with people I love today.
At least in yourself, recognise that you _thought_ you were making the right or normal choices, but – listening to your daughter and looking at what is happening in your lives – they turned out to be wrong.
So, just to sum up. **This is not a time to defend your past behaviour.** It’s a time to recognise that, regardless of your reasons, your behaviours harmed your daughter. Once you accept that, you can work on forgiving yourself and if you have the chance to contact your daughter in the future, maybe your true apology will get through to her.
Of course she stopped talking to you, you were a horrible mother I’m shocked she didn’t cut you off sooner. Good for her.