How to Handle a Serial Cheating Father?
He’s wondering how to navigate a relationship (or not) with his serial cheating father. His mother passed away and his surviving parent is a FW.
***
Hi Chump Lady,
Your writing has been a stabilizing and clarifying force in my life — thank you.
I’m a man in my thirties, in a stable long-term relationship. My question concerns my parents.
Twelve years ago, my mother took her own life. She and my father were together for 37 years, during which he cheated on her constantly. While raising four kids, she managed to hide from the truth of who he really was.
I maintained a relationship with my father after her death — painful beneath the surface, but a relationship nonetheless — until two years ago, when I finally went no-contact. The reason is simple, if devastating:
He is constitutionally incapable of remorse.
His neglect left me with lasting health consequences, and I have struggled with my mental health for a long time because of it.
Still, the pull of family loyalty runs deep, and cutting him off has brought its own grief — a confusing, disorienting kind, because there’s no clean loss to mourn. Your writing has helped me better understand what my mother was up against, and for that I’m grateful.
I’m trying to build my own life, but some degree of contact seems unavoidable — family gatherings, that sort of thing. Even now, being in the same room with him leaves me overwhelmed with an extraordinary mix of sadness, shame, and rage. The knowledge that he will never offer validation or remorse — not for what he did to my mother, not for what he did to us — doesn’t seem to get easier. I’m not sure it ever will. It’s all the more lonely since my three siblings seem to tolerate him on some level.
When we all found out about the cheating, he found a way to make us feel somewhat sorry for him.
He was “trying to feel like a young cool guy”, that whole story. And said things like “I know I’m the one who has to wear the Scarlett letter.”
I never revisited things with him after my mom’s suicide, as he really had us all feeling sorry for him for a bit. If I had brought it up with him, I’m afraid of what the escalation might have brought out in me. At that point, I just wasn’t ready to lose a second parent.
I’ve confronted him on small things unrelated, and he always deflects, is completely remorseless, or at best does some performative apology and then finds a way to make himself the victim.
On some level he scares me.
He’s never been physically dangerous, but his rage and agitation can be disturbing.
I’ve been in therapy for a long time and it has helped enormously. But I’ll be honest: my happiest fantasies are still the ones where he’s simply no longer in the world. And that feels awful.
Thank you.
Son of a Chump
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Dear Son of a Chump,
There’s nothing wrong with you for feeling relief at the thought of your father’s permanent absence. Death is the ultimate no contact. The sort that requires zero effort from you and is socially acceptable. Why don’t you talk? He’s 6 feet under.
Right now you have to navigate every family interaction, invitation, holiday, and social obligation to avoid him. That takes continual mental labor to enforce those boundaries.
Here’s the thing about boundaries — you don’t have to defend them. They’re yours. You don’t have to marshal a defense to your siblings, nosy strangers, forgiveness trolls, or anyone else. Actually, that’s the easy part. Often the harder person to convince is yourself. That you matter. And you’re allowed to have boundaries. That you CAN decide this relationship is NOT acceptable and you WILL NOT continue it.
You might be stuck in a bargaining stage of grief loop.
Still, the pull of family loyalty runs deep, and cutting him off has brought its own grief — a confusing, disorienting kind, because there’s no clean loss to mourn.
Family loyalty is an interesting word choice. Your father is a serial cheater, which means he has no family loyalty. So, just like a chump in reconciliation, I’d ask: why are you trying to maintain a broken contract?
I get that our connection to our parents is primal. It’s not a connection I would sever lightly. After all, this person raised you, financially provided for you. The bar, IMO, has to be pretty high. But your father pole vaults right over it. From what you’ve shared, he’s scary, shows no contrition for the grief he’s caused and pivots immediately to self pity.
You don’t have the raw materials for a relationship.
Or at least not a healthy one. And because you ARE a healthy person with a stable loving relationship, any contact with this guy is going to be painful. Some people can exist on a superficial plane. That’s one approach to dealing with a narcissistic parent. Find some nonthreatening common ground, like say, baseball, and avoid every conversation that isn’t baseball.
Essentially, it’s cool, bummer, wow for FWs. The FW gets the veneer of family bonhomie and everyone else gets a stomach ache. #winning
But you’re not wired for fraudulence, Son. And you have a healthy sense of self-preservation. Being around the injustice of this FW enrages you, naturally you’d prefer to not stroke out.
Twelve years ago, my mother took her own life. She and my father were together for 37 years, during which he cheated on her constantly. While raising four kids, she managed to hide from the truth of who he really was.
A bazillion chumps are going to read that and feel like your father is a murderer. Those are feelings. It’s more accurate to say your father is an abuser. His serial cheating must have been destabilizing to your mother. The trauma of D-Days makes many, many chumps consider un-aliving themselves (I’m writing around the AI censor bots here). Some succeed. We are not a neutral audience on this topic.
The grief makes you crazy.
I thought about driving into highway medians. My first D-Day was spent talking to someone all night on one of those mental health hotlines. They let me blather. I was numb, disassociated, then sick with stress illnesses. I cannot overstate how traumatic it is to discover your partner’s double life. To be continually devalued, gaslit, threatened — and then have deep sunk costs and societal pressure to stay with your abuser.
Your mother had four children with this scary man. She did not grow up in an enlightened age of “You go, Girl” TikTok reels, or online support groups for single moms. She grew up in an age where you were a freak if you weren’t partnered and straight. Where your whole worth — and economic livelihood — was tied up in being attractive to a man. Keeping him was your JOB. Failing to keep him was your failure.
I can only imagine her grief. I can also imagine wanting to nail that grief to your father’s door, or wadding it into a ball and choking him with it.
LOOK WHAT YOU DID.
But he can’t look at it. Because he’s a FW. He doesn’t have the raw materials to look at it. Now, you can go untangle that skein if it helps you. Read up on personality disorders. Outofthefog.net is a good online resource. Also Dr. George Simon, Sandra Brown, and Dr. Peter Salerno. You will understand that some people don’t bond and connect. They’re transactional and manipulative. Some might be dazzlingly talented and charming, but inside they’re barbed wire monkeys. Best to keep your distance.
Some people aren’t available for relationships for other reasons beyond personality disorders, some people have addictions or mental illness. Sometimes people are a combo plate of all three. My point is, it’s not YOU, it’s your father. You don’t have a failure to connect — he lacks an outlet. There’s no one there to plug-in to.
He was “trying to feel like a young cool guy”, that whole story. And said things like “I know I’m the one who has to wear the Scarlett letter.”
What letter is your dead mother wearing? Seriously f*ck that guy.
On some level he scares me.
I believe you.
Now believe yourself. It’s okay if he’s dead to you. He’s probably dead inside anyway.
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Son of a Chump,
I am so sorry this happened to your family, the pain of it all echos in every paragraph. Your mother’s loss but also her visceral act of leaving, your Father’s inability to engage with you on a level that you wish he could. How as children, we want to be able to rage, scream and cry at our Parents and still know they love us and might try to fix it. Your Father barely sits in the room for polite conversation. It’s a big snarl that isn’t your fault, but it’s still a messy, sad emotional inheritance you got left to clean up. Kind of like a horde in a garage.
With your therapist, perhaps spell out what reconnecting with your father in a perfect world would look like. What you’d want from him, to hear from him, what he’d be like.
Then, look at how he really is, and if you think he’s capable of being that person even if he wanted to be. Would that person let his Son, who had lost his mother, drift away so easily?
Think through what a safe, superficial relationship with him would be and what it would look like. Is it making small talk at family gatherings but that’s all? Whatever form feels realistic to you, it likely requires you to fully grieve and accept that he’s not the Father you deserved or needed him to be.
Maybe it’s finding ways to see the family members you do care about on your own terms. A bbq you host at a local park. An event where you control the list. Maybe it’s getting involved in your community with older men who you can look up to and respect.
As an adult, you can build a family around your character. You can remember your Mother and tell her stories. Grief is big, and we carry it always. But we can grow a life that is big enough to hold the grief and more. Whatever you decide about your Father, the grief is there, but so is the rest of your life and what you decide to do with it.
> Maybe it’s getting involved in your community with older men who you can look up to and respect.
That’s a nice comment to make, and something I have put into practice which has done me good. It’s a bit painful – I am older, and I’ll be going to a lot of funerals over the next few years as those guys are much older again. But it has done me good, and my older friends seem to enjoy it too. I recommend it.
Wow your father sounds like a stone cold sociopath. He abused your mom to the point of suic*de and yet HE is the one deserving sympathy?
Maybe your siblings should read this blog.
MY exFIL is a serial cheating FW who finally abandoned his family for one of the affair partners. A grandiose narcissist without true remorse.
So the irony is exH narcopath had a distant uneasy relationship with FW FIL for decades. However now they’re “closer” than before because exH turned out to be a serial cheater narcissistic sociopath himself! Decade of secret double life. Theft of 7 figure sum. Lies, abandonment, post divorce abuse. They are finally getting along better because the son turned out to as hideous as the father!
Be supremely glad you’re nothing like that scumbag of a sperm donor society calls your “father”. That’s why you can’t stand him. You see the monster behind the mask.
Man if your ex and ex FIL aren’t cut from the same cloth as mine!
are*, sorry – typo!
Same! My ex and exFIL as well. That’s been the most eye opening part of this site: how devastatingly similar the stories are.
There is no new thing under the sun …
It has indeed!
Archer your story is mine! One of the reasons I started to suspect cheating is that all of a sudden FW’s father became a hero.
I ended my relationship with my mother in 2003. Lots of details and reasons but I know she had affairs.
It was painful to do so. But it was far far far LESS painful than attempting to maintain the relationship.
There was never any trust or safety and there was never going to be any trust or safety.
I am not required to lie down in front of a freight train as a condition of staying in contact with anyone, even if it’s a parent.
If you don’t have trust and safety, you don’t have a relationship. You have an entanglement. It doesn’t matter whether it’s a parent, a relative, a friend, a romantic partner. That’s why it feels like being snared. No trust no safety = no relationship. This is the number one reason for ending any kind of relationship with anybody.
She died in 2021. It’s complicated grief. Grief about was wasn’t is just as real as grief about what was.
It’s been my experience that ending a familial relationship is akin to managing chronic pain or a chronic illness. It’s a very big deal.
There was a man who had to cut his arm off to free himself when he got caught by a boulder. If he didn’t cut his arm off he would die. I felt like that. It was LESS PAINFUL to stay
I have had the assistance of two very good therapists since 1985. (I have a doctor for my body and one for my mind…)
I would never consider navigating big things like this without one, just like I would never do surgery on myself.
♥️
You summed up perfectly why I cut off contact with my only sibling when I was 18. I am now 61. As the end of our mother’s life approaches, I cautiously allowed contact. It did not take long for the sibling to prove that nothing has changed.
And my family sits in judgment on ME for not accepting the performative olive branch and letting my sibling run over me.
Unlike my sibling:
I have never hit a partner or other family member (or anyone else) due to inability to manage my emotions. (The sibling manages them just fine in public, where other people would judge, but does not make the effort at home. Transactional, manipulative, all about image management — yup.)
I never slept with my (married) boss to get a promotion.
I have lifelong friends (the sibling has never had friends, and would not have them now except for marrying into a long-standing friendship group where everybody seems to still be fooled: see image management).
I don’t shout at my frail 86-year-old mother, although she has been a Switzerlander all my life. She’s basically a Vulcan: emotion does not compute, despite graduating Phi Beta Kappa in psychology. Fortunately she never worked as a therapist.
Thank you, Velvet Hammer and others, for the ongoing reality/sanity check.
“No trust no safety = no relationship. This is the number one reason for ending any kind of relationship with anybody”
THIS IS GOLD
All of CN wisdom can be distilled down to this!
TYPO….”it was LESS PAINFUL to stay away than to stay in it”
(Editing window closed!)
Ending my relationship with my mother was not painless. It was about choosing LESS PAIN. If that makes sense….
No one cuts off a parent willy nilly. It’s incredibly painful. When I cut off my monumentally destructive prolifically cheating father, at the age of 36, I spent a year in physical gut-wrenching pain that I soothed with walking for hours and hours at night, in the early morning, with the dog, while my husband was at home with the kids. But I was resolute. I’d been mentally practising for this point already since I was 12. But the final impetus was having my kids, and knowing that I could not have my father near them, or my husband. No one deserved to have this man in their life. But it hurt so much.
He will be 90 this year. It’s incredible that he got to this age, considering how he drank and how reckless he was. Meanwhile, my mother, who he tortured and destroyed, died at the age of 67. He tries to contact me. His golden child, my sister (I feel so sorry for her that she was designated his favorite), has sadly died. My half brother calls him The Sperm and tries cynically to extract money from him, not because he needs the money but because he wants to see how high our father will jump. And I stay silent. When he’s dead, I can put a line under it.
Makes total sense. Also, I am sorry that you had a mother that made this the only option.
Am in the process of doing similarily with my family of origin who is full of narcopaths. So painful but necessary as their abuse of me will otherwise continue…
PS….cheaters and side pieces do not have trust and safety in their relationship with each other. They maintain denial.
Son of a Chump, are you a friend of Bill Wilson? Sounds like you might be in recovery….
♥️
I have to wonder just how complicit dear old Dad was in Mom’s un-aliving. Because guess what guys like him do when you tell them that’s what you feel like? Nothing. They don’t insist you see a therapist, they don’t beg you to call a hotline, they don’t haul you to the hospital. They shrug and make sure the life insurance is up to date.
And sometimes they give fate a helping hand.
You will likely never know just what conversations took place between your parents. But your FW father doesn’t deserve or need your sympathy.
I cut off a FW parent. It is painful and scary at first, but it gets much better as time goes on. If you’re going to relate to him, you have to set the rules and enforce them (exhausting) and don’t fall for the manipulation. Learning those skills is a good exercise – there are people like this all around us, at work, in our kids’ schools. It’s impossible to never deal with them.
No law says you have to deal with the one who contributed half your genes, though.
Peace.
My mother was an addict and violent towards me until I got big enough to be a threat. For that reason, I withdrew and pretty much went my own way in adulthood. Despite living in the same town, I only visited once a month at most. My father was still alive, and I cared about him too. He had always been very passive around her, so my feelings toward him were mixed.
I moved away, and they aged. My mother developed dementia, but from a distance, I monitored the situation and did what I could to make sure they were taken care of. I still had an aunt there (Mom’s sister), so that helped. After my father died, my sibling was in charge legally and frankly did a very poor job. But I continued to do what I could. When she died, I cried at the graveside, and that was it for heavy feelings of grief. I grieved for years over the situation with my parents prior to their passing.
There was no real closure with either of my parents, so I got it when my divorce attorney commented that I might not get closure with my ex either. With my ex, I was polite during closeout and got things done, but I stopped initiating contact once the legal obligations were over. And I didn’t reveal anything substantive about myself or our college kids then. He raged and threatened legal action periodically for a while, and then gave up.
In each case, I was a decent person about it, though, and that counted.
Son of a Chump,
Your father is clearly not a safe or healthy person for you to be around. That is the “be all and end all” of this … it’s not just that he doesn’t “spark joy,” he sparks a traumatic response from you. Not only do you have every right put whatever boundary in place you see fit, including going no contact with him, I’d argue that you have a duty to yourself to do just that.
The only person who needs to give you permission to do this is you; the fact that some elements of wider society would want us to forgive any harm perpetrated upon us by those that we share a genetic link with is BS,
LFTT
Dear SoC,
I send love. And thank you for sharing your story and reminding me I must stay alive on this planet to continue the relationship with my children. The theft of reality, time,safety and money that the cheater justifies affects the children, not just the chump parent.
My suggestion: nurture the relationships with your siblings. Are you close now or estranged? Please, spend the time and money you would on therapy—figuring out the relationship with your dad and trying to come to peace—to focus on your siblings who shared your childhood, share your reality and can be with you for another 50 years. And as adults, we can create our own families! With friends, cousins, mentors, make strong connections with people you can trust. Build something new and beautiful to fill that void. You are resilient! Humans rebuild after fire, flood, all sorts of devastation. You have the tools and the strength to rebuild a trusting and loving family of choice.
I have faith in you!
Like you, this letter also served in reminding me that no matter how bad things might get, I cannot allow myself to leave my children.
“The theft of reality, time,safety and money that the cheater justifies affects the children, not just the chump parent” – this resonates with me. I have argued before that in many ways, the children of a FW are actually the biggest victims, more so that the chump. I’m allowed to despise him and most people understand why I want NC. But my poor daughters are stuck with having him as their father for the rest of their lives. My eldest’s decision to go NC is viewed as most definitely not ok by most people because she’s only 13 and they hold the common belief that all children need their parents no matter how deeply they’ve been betrayed by them. I am desperately walking the tightrope of supporting her in her own opinions and decisions whilst also not actively encouraging her to stay NC with him.
People who think cheaters can still be wonderful parents are delusional.
yes. My cheaterdad was often charming, fun to be around, and always very intelligent. You could enjoy his company – many did! (He had a wide circle of friends). But a wonderful parent he was not, because “wonderful parents” are the ones who *provide* for their children (economically, practically, socially, emotionally) in order to bring them up to eventually become thoughtful, responsible adults. Many men in an earlier era thought that as long as they worked and supported their families economically, it was job done, and they could take the rest of the income to spend on themselves. Such people are *not* “wonderful parents*.
My son, an adult, is a junior , carries FW’s name. And neither of my children want anything to do with him. 😔
“People who think cheaters can still be wonderful parents are delusional.” This, a million times this. It is simply not possible to be both a cheater and a good parent, and anyone who says it is possible has zero clue about what being a good parent truly is.
100% agree. My ex is “fun Dad” but there is no substance there as he is incapable of deep connection. It makes me very sad to know that one day our kids will realize they don’t really know him and that there are only superficial conversations to be had.
100%. Would we allow any other adult in our children’s lives (coach, nanny, neighbor whatever) to continue lying to them, stealing from them., manipulating and emotionally hurting them? Because that’s what a lot of FW do. Harm the kids their entire lives
And would we let anyone into their lives who would devastate their other parent?
Yes, some of us have to create our own family, and that’s OK. My blood family is very, very small. Everyone else is a friend that I’ve cultivated to the point that we sometimes spend holidays and even vacations together.
My sibling (the golden child) never really processed the disorder in our family of origin, and I’m not hopeful that will ever happen. He’s in poor health and has become very mild of late, so I call him periodically and leave it at that.
She and my father were together for 37 years, during which he cheated on her constantly. While raising four kids, she managed to hide from the truth of who he really was.
Son of a chump, this was so painful for your mother, and in turn for her children.
It’s possible that your mother didn’t hide from the truth, but instead chose to maintain a silence about it. Please consider that your siblings may be copying her approach by publicly ignoring the truth about your father. If you have an open conversation with them, you may find that they feel as you do. You may also find that they share your father’s lack of morals. Either way, it would be good to know, and good for them to know why you have stepped out of your father’s life.
His cheating deprived his kids of his time, probably some of his money, and quite likely he ultimately deprived you of your mother. Combined with his ongoing rage, agitation and lack of remorse or accountability for anything, he is not a person anyone would want in their lives, particularly his children.
You have no reason to feel guilty. And really no reason to have contact, other than to participate in family events.
If your sibs choose to include him, why not arrange or host some gatherings with your sibs that are dad-fee?
I agree with this. Son should be able to have some good times with his siblings without the FW so-called father being invited.
Dear Son of a Chump:
I felt your letter in every cell in my body, and am so sorry at the pain you endured and continue to endure. That you are in an adult, loving, stable relationship is a cause for celebration and a testament to your resilience.
You are asking a very serious question, to which there are no easy answers. The poster who suggested you sort this out with a therapist has offered good advice, in my view. This is a problem with deep roots, and you deserve all the time you need to sort it out, and figure out which path best honors you and the life you want to lead.
One thing you said raised a red flag for me. You feel he is not safe to be around. These feelings that seem to rise up from our gut…I have learned the hard way (along with many here at CL) to pay attention to those feelings and not discount them for seeming to be illogical or finding them at odds with our principles. Those feelings are there to protect you.
There is something in me that rises up at reading your letter. It may be the Mom in me, but whatever it is wants to hug you and tell you, fierecely, to do whatever you need to do to take care of yourself and protect yourself.
Well said, sister/fellow Chump! I had very strong physical sensations of fear as I read the letter: he is in danger. Time to get Psychopathic Fuckwit the HE@& out of his precious life!
Dear Son, I’m one of the crowd who thinks your father murdered your mother.(Figuratively, not literally) The only reason I’m still here is because I had 5 young children and I could NOT leave them with their father.
Yes, it’s okay to see that he’s not safe for you. How would you feel if you never saw him again? That’s what I asked my kids. And most of them are fine with it. And most of them have completely cut ties with their sperm donor. I’m so proud of you for working on yourself. I’m so happy for you that you have a stable loving relationship. You are doing great. And sometimes no contact is the best thing you can do for yourself because you must protect your own mental health.
Ex FW was passive aggressive and at one point suggested (in the early stages of separation/divorce) that I watch a movie where the main character had killed herself. I had already read the book but had the thought of why on earth would he make this kind of specific chit chat with me? In my gut, even at the time, it felt like he was trying to make suggestions – it was creepy AF. There is a more quiet insideousness to some of these FW. Not only do they not care one iota for anyone except themselves, they would actively encourage the chump to do whatever it is that suits their image of themselves, to include removing yourself from their story entirely. I was never going to do something that not only left my child alone with him, but would leave her traumatized. She was my motivation to push through it. That being said, these FW can drive even the most loving, strong, and reasonable chump into a pit of despair with their crazy-making words and behaviors. They are dangerous, dangerous people to be coupled with, and like the poster above mentioned, it’s a special kind of hell for the children, who end up having a soulless monster for a parent. My heart dropped into my stomach when I read about the hell you and your mother went through. I am so very, deeply sorry for your loss. Be safe, take care of yourself, and if you want to stay away from your vampire of a father, you are well within your right. No one who hasn’t been through this nightmare understands, so remember that when someone is pestering you to forgive dear old dad or when you start to feel bad yourself. He robbed you of a safe and loving home and the ability to have an uncomplicated relationship with him a long time ago.
Son of a Chump, have you read Lindsay Gibson’s Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents? Your father’s abuse of your mother and you and your siblings goes far beyond “emotionally immature,” but there might be useful points in her work to help you reframe your relationship and help you figure out the healthiest way for you to manage your dad going forward (be it no-contact or something else).
Hugs. And your dad is a clear example of how cheating doesn’t “just” affect the spouse.
Son, hearing about your father’s behavior outrages me. He drives your mom to suicide, the plays the victim? Oh hell no. I would not engage with that level of disordered either. You need to stop doubting your choice to be NC. I know it sucks because you’ve effectively lost both parents that way. However, it sounds like your father never was a parent in any way that matters to you, so you actually didn’t lose that.
Yes, family gatherings will be awkward and you’ll have to white knuckle your way through them if you choose to go.
I’m in a similar situation as I’m NC with my verbally/emotionally abusive (and drug addicted) brother, so I can’t even attend family gatherings because he’s always there and highly likely to start a fight. If I want to see the rest of my family I have to invite them over or go out to a restaurant with them. Needless to say, I don’t invite my brother. Maybe that would be a way for your to see family without your FW dad being present? You could try creating your own family gatherings which exclude your father. If the others ask why he’s not invited, just tell them the truth, that being around him is too difficult for you. Best of luck and I’m sorry you’re going through this.
I am so sorry you are here. You did nothing to deserve this. Being the child of a lifelong serial cheater is so hard; my son is one, too, and has also had physical and mental health issues as a result. I am so sorry to hear about your mom. She was the sane parent, no doubt. And I can join you in saying that wishing he was already gone is not mean or wrong or unusual. We often feel that way about my FW, a lifelong serial cheater in his late 70s. It would make so many things easier. Alas, this is something we cannot control or make happen. So we do the best we can until that time. You get to choose how much contact and when, where, etc. These lifelong serial cheaters do so often lack any semblance of character or moral compass, so not likely he will change at this point. As my psychiatrist friends have taught me, they are limited. If contact is harmful, then yes, don’t visit him or invite him over. Have family who is willing be his medical caretaker and go-to person. You do not owe him that. Again, so sorry you, and my own son, are both here. Hugs. Keep reading on this site.
A friend works at a nursing home. She says it is very common for the children of patients to say, Look, I’ll pay for him or her to have a roof over their heads, but I don’t want anything else to do with them. You are not alone.
Thx! We gave all that responsibility to his younger siblings. They were willing to be his legal and medical decision maker. They will choose where he goes and they will figure out his finances. I was the major breadwinner, and had a fabulous attorney. He is thankfully not our legal responsibility anymore. Kiddo has more angst over him than I do, and I try to support kiddo. Thanks! Heard similar info from friend who is palliative and hospice physician. I hope the fellow who wrote in willget good legal advice.
My dad did that to my mom… That was a crazy childhood… Together they were very successful but he cheated on her and then ended up leaving us when we were 18 and 15 I was a twin and my brother was three years younger… She didn’t commit suicide, but she was really depressed, but she kind of got over it, but he really screwed her over and she would always try to be nice she didn’t force alimony or anything and she really could’ve… My dad was a user all the way until he passed away a couple years ago… Looking back I would’ve been better cutting him off at that time instead of getting into the family business for two decades, and then getting screwed out of everything because his second wife, the affair partner divorced him and took him to the cleaners which he totally deserved because he ended up cheating on her too… I think what I’ve learned being 61 now and after my wife left after cheating 12 years ago, you just have to protect your own sanity and if you have children be there for them… I’m a great dad still and my kids respect me and they do not respect my ex… Good luck to you. I’ll pray for you.
Dear SOAC. Your father does not have feelings like you do. No Contact is such a gift you give him because you’re one less person to put an act on for,. One less person to lie and manipulate. One less person to push to the brink of taking their own life. He doesn’t care, can’t love and leaves a damaged wake of used up people behind him. He feels nothing,you feel it all.
Im.sorry he has tortured you internally and will continue.to.do so. You can’t help that he buzzes around you, but don’t let him build a hive in your hair.
We are here for you.!!
Yeah, this sperm donor has narcissistic abuser written all over him. These people are the most toxic humans walking the earth. Distance is the only solution.
I was estranged from my father for the last 20 years of his life. And I don’t feel guilty about it. No one but me and my mother know what he put us through. I only attended his funeral because my mother assumed I would. Otherwise, I would have told them to put a stake in his heart, to make sure he was dead, and throw him in the ground.
I’ve been less angry with him since he died.
I went very limited contact with my dad for about 4 years after he didn’t stand up to the second wife for my younger (still at home) brother. But then I realized that I didn’t have it in me to be that vindictive, and so relaxed the limited contact. Oddly, I’ve become *more* angry with him now that he has passed, as I’m still in a kind of disbelief at how badly he treated us out of weakness and selfishness. And no, they never accept responsibility – they really are constitutionally incapable of it.
Dear Son of a Chump,
as the Daughter of a Chump, I can relate to a lot of this; the serial cheating, the inability to acknowledge error/ damage and make some sort of apology, the rages, the acting out. In my case, my mother didn’t hide any of it from us, instead she unloaded her unhappiness, anger, and frustration on us. It was volatile and awful. Here is where CN and Tracey’s sage advice enter (stage right). There are a lot of people out there, stuck in bad marriages, stuck with kids they really didn’t want to have responsibility for supporting who are weak, entitled, and act out rather than attempting to fix the marriage or own up to the sad fact that family life is not for them and getting out of it. not only was my mother a wife appliance, my dad *even said out loud* that “marriage is for status and children, and affairs are for love”. So there you go. People like this have *no concept* of the damage they visit upon their children (as well as their spouses), because in the end, it is all about them/ their desires/ their inadequacies in a consequence free world. You can’t get blood from a stone. And you can’t get love and empathy from people congenitally unable to give it. It is horrible to grow up in a toxic household, tiptoeing around the rages, the grimness, the complaining. But you *can* learn to live with it by making a conscious decision to do better with your partner and children (if you have them). Trust me. You will get there.