My father(M53) and I(F19) never really have any close relationship at all. I was very depressed as a young teen and it was partly because of my rocky relationship with both my parents. I would say I’m somewhat closer to my mom now but not as much. This past year, my dad found out he had cancer and when they found out the news, my mom also found out he’s been cheating on my her with girls online. To make it worse, he used up all of my emergency college fund my mom had saved up as well as my siblings saving for gambling and girls online.
My mom became very depressed and tried her best to understand him, but he would lash out on her saying shit like she’s annoying and how he can’t fucking stand her nagging about him. My mom has given up at this point and stopped talking to him. They still live together for the sake of my siblings. My siblings and I are not talking to my dad and I feel like I’m handling better than I thought I should. When I heard the news, I just went “oh…ok…he has cancer…” and went on with my life. I know it sounds fucked up as a human being but I don’t feel any sadness about it. He made promises after promises to my mom as she was crying and begging him to stop the cheating, gambling, and just talk to her, but he hasn’t. Now since he’s not working, my mom can barely make enough for the family. I also found out he’s been stealing money from her and would take off randomly and be back the next day.
Everyone around me is saying how I will regret this for the rest of my life if I don’t make amends with him, but honestly…would I? My relationship with him was very rocky from the start as a child. There would even be times where our fight would get physical. I became very depress and decided to move out after high school and attend college 3 hours away to get away from the environment that was suffocating me. I’m currently a college student with part time job living financially independent with what I have and I feel happy about that. He’s not doing well and my mom have ask me to talk to him and put everything aside. I feel like when the inevitable comes, I’ll be fine. Maybe I’m just so numb from my past problems with him that even knowing that he’s dying is numb to me. It just felt like my whole life, I was just living with a random person like a roommate in the house. He’s not a great husband nor a great father, but I still believe in giving him a basic respect as a person like I would with anyone. He ultimately did raised me financially with a roof over my head and food on the table. Am I wrong for thinking like this?
4 comments
There is no right or wrong. You are just being you. You will learn whether it bothers you or not. It may take years or never enters your mind again.
The relationship with your father is as valuable as the effort you both put into the partnership. If nothing ever really existed then it’s fine, nothing existed.
We do not miss what we don’t know or didn’t experience.
Your feeling is that you don’t care if your Dad dies. That’s ok! . You might also feel some kind of way about your mom putting up with that asshole. That’s ok, too. Look after yourself – this is a hard time.
Your feelings are just as they are, they make sense to you and they don’t have to make sense to anyone else. Nobody gets to police the emotions of others. The people who are getting it wrong here are the people telling you how you should feel. Nobody has the right to dictate how or if someone else grieves. You may have grieved the loss of a dad already long ago due to the poor relationship, so his death may not feel much different to not having had a proper relationship.
He’s toxic and you don’t need to care about him. He will never give you closure. Going to him for anything is a lost cause. When he passes you need to be honest with yourself about the grief. It can take a couple years to get over the death of a parent. But you’ll do that for yourself, you don’t need to involve him.