I (31 female) have had a strained relationship with my dad (male 57) over many years and after a death on his side of the family of an aunt recently, I’ve recently been really trying to rebuild those relationships with my family members who I haven’t seen much of, since seeing them at the funeral made me sad that I’d lost contact with a lot of really amazing family members that I don’t see because my relationship with my dad causes me so much stress.
At the centre of it all is my dad, I went no contact with him for a few years after becoming sick of feeling like the relationship was one sided and I was being taken advantage of. My dad doesn’t work, smokes, is racist and sexist, thinks the whole world is against him. He doesn’t have a job because “immigrants are coming over and taking the jobs” and anything LGBTQ he has no time for. We are complete opposites in every important moral view, however he is completely stubborn, set in his ways, and whenever challenged on them doubles down.
On a personal level, he is narcissistic, manipulative and a leech of energy and resources. He will always try to swindle a favour, if I offer to come pick him up to go out for coffee he will try to negotiate me running errands for him since it’s on the way. If I’m driving past and go in to say hello, since I’m there I could take him to pick something up from a Friends house since I have a car. I’m getting a new phone? The old one is gonna just sit in a drawer and his phone is acting up so I should give it to him. All I’ve tried to do is have a relationship with him and every time I go out of my way to try and make it possible is met with asking for a favour, there’s always a caveat. He is completely capable of doing these things for himself but he’s lazy to the core so will always try to get free stuff, hand me downs, a lift, a favour, they stack up.
I should say that he left when I was about 3 years old and despite living around 15 minutes away made no attempt to spend time with me or my brother who my mum raised alone. My mum tried on many occasions to get him to agree to take us for a day or a weekend and he would eventually say yes and then just wouldn’t show up. We finally managed to get in contact and have some semblance of a relationship when I was a teenager, but even then it was always me initiating that contact, asking if I could come visit and getting the bus there to spend the weekend with a bag packed at 13/14 years old and making my own way home. When I got older and started to drive, again I would initiate contact and go to him, he would start asking for lifts, loans of money etc. Since contact at 13 years old to now (I’m 31 years old) he has never once contacted me to ask how I’m doing, to try to see me, for any reason. He texts once a year to say happy birthday and one other occasion to leave me a voicemail message that my grandmother had died (his mum).
My partner (33 male) and I are getting married, we have not begun wedding planning and are in no huge rush, but I decided a long time ago that if I were to get married I would have my brother walk me down the aisle, we are extremely close and he has been there for me my entire life when my dad has not, and having my dad walk me down the aisle feels wrong, I don’t feel that I’m his to give away. I hadn’t mentioned this to him yet but recently took my fiancé to meet my dad and that side of the family. Like I mentioned I’m currently trying to put in some effort to rebuild relationships with relatives from his side as my only real issues are with my dad.
We talked a little about our issues at the party privately after a few beers and I felt confident to bring it up, I approached the subject through a lease of wanting to smooth things over and try to maintain better contact in the future and that what I needed from him was a bit more effort with communication as I felt the weight of the one sidedness was heavy for me and I was getting tired of being the one to always reach out. He got extremely defensive and as the conversation escalated everything came out from his perspective of how he was the victim in the situation. One thing that he brought up was a grudge he had been holding for around 8 years since my brother and sister in laws wedding. He brought up that he wasn’t mentioned or thanked in my big brother’s speech on the day and that he was his dad and that was so insulting and disgusting to sit there and listen to the speech he wasn’t even mentioned in. I wanted to scream “WHAT THE F**K WOULD HE THANK YOU FOR” as my dad had never been there, been involved in raising my brother at all, and made no effort to be in his life. I didn’t say anything about it and kept my cool but it’s been weighing on me. He feels that just by being his dad, he should be mentioned by default. This made me nervous as I plan to tell him he won’t walk me down the aisle, I knew he wouldn’t be happy but after hearing how much he has held onto this grudge from not being mentioned in a toast I feel like telling him this would genuinely create a rift we couldn’t recover from. He will think it should be him to do it by default too, because that’s just how it’s done. I’m very much a people pleaser and the temptation is there to just have him do it to keep the peace but it doesn’t feel right. My dad is surrounded by yes men, all my other family members see his behaviour and lack of effort and roll their eyes, they understand it but feel it’s not a worthwhile fight as “he will never change” so they take him as he is and don’t challenge him about things like this. I think they would all completely understand, but not him. I will be telling him soon as we’re about to start wedding planning. So AITAH for choosing not to have my dad walk me down the aisle at my wedding?