He and my daughter never got along. He left one day after 15 years and we divorced. The divorce was messy and emotional. She considered his conservative parenting style abusive but he never touched her. She was able to go to private school and have an upper middle class raising thanks to his help.I never had anyone else after him because I never stopped loving him. We recently reconnected and he is alone and in poor health. We are both working through that part of our lives healing and getting closure. Though the eyes of seniors now, he is 77 I am 70, we have found that we still love each other and I want to be there for his upcoming surgery. Seems forgiving him has made room in my heart to be able to do that. She has melted down giving me all kinds of ultimatums and it's breaking my heart. Any advice out there.
IMO a health crisis is not the time to decide whether to get back together or not with an ex .
He left one day and you had a messy divorce . Your daughter considered him abusive . Abuse isn’t just “ touching “.
He may be back in the picture now because he needs a caregiver . There are a lot of red flags here that you are not seeing .
Your daughter seems wiser than you about what kind of man your ex is .
I side with your daughter. He is using you because you are the one person he was able to dig up.
Mental abuse is abuse and long term mental abuse is more or just as damaging as physically abuse
But with that being said this is such a long story and so many different possibilities here. For me this is impossible to answer. I don't believe anyone can give you an unbiased answer. This is a life time of , love with you and him, and hurt for her.
I would say you need to get some therapy, and really think about this.
I also think if this is about loneliness for you, there are many other options than to go back to an ex that was abusive to your daughter.
Also I'm thinking about this, think of your daughter, not In the fact that you will be hurting you relationship but think about what you are teaching her? Are you showing her that it's ok to be with someone that's mental abusive, is that what you want for your daughter?
I think as women we have power to teach the next generation, how women should be treated and respected. Not only the power, it's are responsibility!
When I left my husband someone that had no clue of my life asked me, how can you do this to your kids. I didn't do it to my boys (4) I did it for my boys, so they would know not to treat there significant other that way.
Also , my husband is 72, I'm 61 if I'm end up being single at 70 there is no way im going to have another relationship. For one very important reason, I don't want to caregiving anyone at that point in my life!
And he could be playing you for a sucker just so he has someone to look after him.
Your daughter obviously has some very negative feelings towards this man and you need to honor and respect those feelings.
Who you now choose is up to you, but I would think long and hard before doing anything.
She was a very rebellious teen. He never verbally abused either of us. He was strict. She wanted to run wild. Date an 18 yr old at 13 and run the roads with him. That was the problem. He would say no. I would agree....that was her idea of abuse. He actually never yelled or anything. Just to be fair here. If I had witnessed abuse it would have ended then and there. At the time I was a residential counselor at a at risk youth camp.
Have a look at your daughter’s current lifestyle. Has she grown up as the opposite of ‘conservative’? Is she seeing that you becoming more ‘conservative’ is a rejection of her and her way of life? Is she married herself, and what is her social group now – would his presence be offensive to the others in her life? Can she put forward any compromises – for example that she would see you and not him?
Have a look at your ex’s current way of life. What about it might you not like? And about your own way of life. Are you lonely? And if so, what have you done about solving that problem for your own sake? Can you think about compromises that don’t mean you and ex go right back to past problems – for example living separately and seeing each other a couple of times a week for 6 months?
Estrangement from a daughter is very very difficult. Been there, done that, for 8 years. And so is estrangement from a mother, for your daughter. In my personal experience, estrangement usually involves changing allegiances from mother to something else. That can be a person, or sometimes a cult. Try to work out what is behind this very strong reaction from your daughter. This could be a situation where a session or two with a counselor could help (something I don't usually say).
All these suggestions are hard, but not as hard as things going badly wrong in the long term. And just to say, when my first husband was facing death from cancer, we were on so much better terms that I am sure we both realised that we hadn't tried hard enough to get over our early problems. It happens!
There was a reason for the divorce. I agree that you should not mistake pity for love. Knowing the reason for him leaving would give your question some context.
But it is common sense to look at his ‘poor health’ and what it entails – you certainly don’t want to be ‘taken for a sucker’ and end up resenting it. I’d say again to think about a ‘mid-way’ relationship, rather than a second live-in marriage.
It just hurts that my daughter would be so quick to toss me off so quickly. I'm not asking her to see, talk or interact with him in any way. I do not even bring up his name around her. The only reason I told her I was going to visit because I wanted to be up front and honest. I could have lied about where I was going but don't feel thats okay either.
Classic.
Find a different partner. You shouldn’t be shackling yourself to someone in poor health anyway. This can only end badly.
You deserve to have your relationship with your daughter permanently severed if you go back to this man. I cannot fathom the logic of choosing an abusive ex over a child. It boggles the mind.
I raised her until she was 12. Completely alone. No help or contact from biological father. I went without food so she never missed a meal. My ex was very good to her but he had standards and expectations of how she should act and treat our home.
When at 13, she came home in a truck with an 18 year old young man, that's when things went downhill.
I would be very careful. I would not want to lose a daughter and then find out your being used. He is 77 with health problems he is looking for someone to care for him. Keep your homes separate and your money. You can be there for him, but never be his caregiver. Find him help in that area. Don't be so in love, you don't see whats wrong. Maybe you were too much into him the first time you did not see things. I remember a guy I was so crazy about it was scary.
Maybe you and daughter need a therapist to be a go between. Each of you honest about how you feel. Maybe you can compromise. You don't rush into a relationship with ex and she never is asked to be in his presence. He does not need to be part of her life. You come to parties she is having you come alone. And she is not expected to come to your home if he will be there. You don't talk about him. But again, I would tread lightly.
That would be what I would say. My mom is of course/would be of course free to make her choice. But I wouldn't be there for Thanksgiving dinner. Just sayin...............
If you don't want to be the nurse with a purse, insist that you keep your finances separate and that he hire caregivers on his own dime - is he still interested?
Personally, I can't understand how you can still be in love with someone who walked out on you AND put you through a messy divorce. I get that some relationships aren't meant to last forever, but that doesn't mean a divorce has to be messy. Since he walked out, it was on him to make the divorce settlement generous enough that you parted on good terms.
That is totally your choice. Don't expect her to understand, agree, or partake.
Simply tell her you understand and you pray she will attempt to understand you, and that you will not require or ask of her that she be near him or discuss him.
I hate to sound like I am so supporting your daughter, but I am afraid that I am. The very reasons you left him? Are those reasons now just poofed into the air? I think your daughter thinks you are making a very bad decision here. I would hear her out, then tell her you understand and have heard her, and then make your own choice for your own life understanding that all choices have costs.
No one was cruel to her EVER. If anything I was too permissive. He was strict. We paid big money to send her to private school. We at least expected an effort from her.
But, if you want to be in each others life, that's fine...but I would suggest going slowly and it should be a different relationship than what you had before - meaning, you maintain different residences, your independence, and everything should remain separate. If he requires any caregiving for his health, he should make those arrangements as if you're not in the picture - because why would you want to be utilized for that?
And regarding your daughter, you can maintain a separate relationship with her - and discussing him shouldn't be in the equation. Additionally, he came back into your life at a time that he's a lone and not in good health rather than coming to you in a place of strength - so, please try to protect yourself and your emotions - and take whatever you learned from the past relationship with him as a means of being wiser going into this, if you decide.
My neighbor/friend and I were meeting for lunch and she tells me all this. She asked for my opinion. I told her it would be a big mistake for her to take him in. That his needs were only going to increase. That he has no money and would leech off the meager retirement she was able to cobble together for herself by scrimping and saving.
Like my neighbor's ex-husband, yours has nothing to offer you. Love after 15 years and an emotional and messy divorce? That doesn't like love to me. It sounds like loneliness.
Anyway, I wouldn't risk your relationship with your daughter over a man who is going to need a caregiver. And what kind of surgery is he going to have???
If she has never behaved this way in the past, then it might give you pause to think that maybe there is more to this hatred of her father than an out-of-control teen and an over controlling father. But if this has been her MO over other things, then I would not give as much credit to abuse theories.
On the flip side, you say you found that you and ex still love each other. Is it really each other that you love, or the IDEA of each other - that is, the idea of being with someone familiar, someone to age with, to have nearby as things get tougher, physically or something of that ilk?
Be very careful. As someone else said, he is your ex for a reason. Don't look at any possible reconciliation through rose-colored glasses. Make sure you think long and hard before you make any decisions, ad weigh the pros AND the cons of getting back together.
When I got on better with my dying ex, I forgot the bad times and remembered what we had in common (lots and lots - travel, art history, reading, almost all the things that my wonderful second husband doesn’t go for, plus babies and time together). 'Rose colored glasses' start many relationships and keep many others together. People write books about ‘what is love’. I don’t think we are going to do it on this site! The questions for OP are good, but not the answers.
Loneliness is driving this .
You can always remain friends .
I'm 70 myself, widowed and single for 23 years. The last thing I would want is to be a caregiver slave at this age, for someone I haven't been around in many years, is sick and looking for a nursemaid. The stress alone would kill me. I was deeply in love with my husband 23 years ago when he was diagnosed with Stage 4 cancer, and I devoted myself to him totally, until his death. I was much younger then.
The love you had long ago is not the same anymore. This is a dangerous fantasy for you, so be very careful.
At 16, my daughter wanted to run off with an unhinged loser boyfriend across the country to live with his grandmother. Both my husband, her stepfather, and her bio father, talked her out of it thanks to their "conservative parenting styles" which saved HER from a total disaster. Today, at 31 years old, she is thankful to both of her dad's for guiding her properly, as they should have. They didn't touch her or scream at her abusively either, they just acted like parents which lately isn't cool. Just follow the lesbian childcare "expert" who insists you must ask your infants "permission" to change his diaper. If you don't, you're abusing him.
Nobody here knows why your daughter is issuing you ultimatums when you haven't even mentioned marriage to this ex. I'd ask her if it were my daughter. Why she's SO upset at the prospect of you 2 reuniting that she's willing to cut you out of her life? She may tell you, and it may upset you. Or, she may still be an emotionally unstable and "rebellious" person that's having an adult meltdown. It happens.
My stepdaughter is bipolar and refuses to take her medication. Her husband is truly a narcissistic man in the truest sense of the definition. He divorced her after he threw her out in the street with nothing one night after they had a drunken fight. No car, no money, no clothing, no access to her child, no joint bank accounts, no credit card, nada. She had to go stay with a friend and beg money from her family to hire a lawyer. He sent their child 100 miles away so mom couldn't see her. The child was 3 at the time.
She just remarried him in a barn wedding on Fathers Day weekend. Some toxic couples just gravitate towards one another, like pigs to mud. The child is 7 now, and baby number 2 is 1 year old.
Good luck to you, and choose carefully. My husband has been stuck taking care of me for 19 months now and it's not easy. Good thing we really like each other.
So I kinda side with lea on this one
I stand corrected Margaret 😊
That is a very very loaded sentence, and it comes across as OP minimizing something, and then she threw in “he never touched her.”
So yes, obviously we are getting only one side of the story, but it sounds like there is a ton of backstory there regarding her daughter.
I am going to suggest that all who further answer your post read your responses to questions below.
They bear no resemblance to your original post.
You wrote us "We have found that we still love one another". Yet below you say that you now want only to talk to him in order to know why he walked out on you 15 years ago without a word so that you can have closure.
As the young kids today say. "Yeah-No." That doesn't make a bit of sense.
You also forgot somehow to tell us that you are living in your daughter's home.
Seems you two are a bit enmeshed in one another's business thereby and you may want to consider living independently.
As to why he walked out without a word after ruling the house like a tyrant? (My definition of "conservative parenting"; would love your definition, and already know your daughter's as she hates the man.) Maybe he is just an A$$. When someone leaves a long relationship without a word we are free to make up why by ourselves.
If you have not moved on in 15 years I hope you don't expect closure from THIS jerk.
Sounds like your daughter may be ready for you to move. Probably for more reasons than this jerk.
WHOOPS: I can't get out of here in 10 minutes before there's ANOTHER update from you in your answers below. Basically that your daughter was a madwoman, a psychiatric mess who created chaos of your home and your poor husband was an innocent, unused to chaos, and he had to FLEE for his sanity.
OK. That's yet another twist in the story. So guess you have your answer. He left without a work of explanation because your daughter is "mad" in the psychiatric definition of the word. But this is the daughter that you NOW LIVE WITH by your own choice.
And guess it would have been nice if your husband would have said "Hon, I love you; I just can't live with daughter's madness anymore". Hug hug. Kiss kiss. And you wouldn't have had to wonder all these many years.
For myself, I would not ask you to move over HIM, but I sure wouldn't have you discussing your needs for closure with me. I would tell you "Mom, if you want to see that jerk you are welcome to; you have your own life. Just know I don't want to hear a single solitary work about it if you continue to see ME."
I am sure you would consider that an ultimatum.
I have to tell you, after reading your story above I felt there was something missing.
Your answers to others below shows that, indeed, a whole lot was missing.
I think we attempt to answer with a lot of thought. I feel manipulated between your story posted above, and your answers below.
You are spot on here Alva.
As for the daughter, I suggest you move out. You can see now how she will behave whenever she disagrees with your actions or if you should become ill and need help.
My niece behaved this way with her mother when her mother got back together with an ex. Her mother ended up moving out of town with the ex and my niece moved out of the state. They speak, but the relationship is not close any longer. I hate seeing these situations and all the pain caused.
Prior to that this 13 year old, by calling herself or by the parents calling, had the police out to the house multiple times.
I call that DESPERATION (or, of course, madness).
Now, mom is living with this daughter (who never lived up to the expectations). And apparently still isn't living up to expectations by having mom, and not her car, parked in the garage).
I call that a mistake. On BOTH the mother's and the daughter's part. A HUGE mistake.
But.....one easily rectified.
As others have observed. This isn't a caregiving story. This is a mother-daughter story. They are ALWAYS a bit complicated! And as you read down in the responses you get quite the history here.
I say this as someone who has a daughter I cannot get along with. We leave one another alone and wish one another well and get on with our own lives, staying out of one another's business. It CAN (and sometimes SHOULD) be done. It is the letting go of "expectations", and it's very freeing.
As to "we did this for her and that for her and spent this and spent that"? This is something parents do by choice for their children. It isn't something that has payments WITH INTEREST in the future. And if we think payment comes in our children "fulfilling our expectations" we will be sorely disappointed.
This parent isn't owning up to any part in what happened to her child. There is no taking ownership of her own or her partner's mistakes. There are no apologies for failures. There is no peace in moving on with their own lives and the letting go of expectations. I call that a chosen misery really. A determination to be the martyr. I suspect these two are LOCKED in a mighty struggle to prove which of them was the most "let down", the most "abused" by the vagaries of life. As long as that continues it's a chosen misery in a life that's hard enough without it.
I don’t condone your daughter but I do believe you are giving this man too much consideration . Even though you feel this man may have left because of the chaos of living with your daughter , I don’t believe that he deserves a pass for just walking out on you without even telling you why . The divorce could have gone more calm as well IF the only reason was he could not live with your daughter .
His behavior towards you wasn’t much better than your daughter’s . I’m not so sure you would get a straight answer from him now about why he left .
As well as maybe some individual therapy.
This Forum is not full of professionals in this type of issue . Our conflicting views may be confusing to you .
Seek a professional’s advice on this .
Good Luck to you .
Wow. Just wow. I don't even know where to begin with this statement...but here goes:
You are NOT connected to this man. You have been apart from him between 10 and 15 years (you give different time frames in different posts, I have noticed). That's a very long time.
I don't know if you're obsessed with him or what. But as I said earlier - I think you are in love with the IDEA of being with him, rather than actually being with him.
Don't you think that for this man to walk out on you with no explanation while you were in the midst of raising a difficult child was rather - well, SELFISH of him? To not even give you the courtesy of an explanation at the time? A chance to try and work things through? If he didn't give you an explanation then, what makes you so sure he will give you one now?
And are you ready to HEAR his answer?
A wise woman I know says often "don't ask questions you're not ready to hear the answers to".
I think I'm done trying to tender advice here, because your story keeps evolving into something much more than caregiving. So good luck to you, in whatever you may decide.
We have many lessons in life; I always feel that some of the toughest lessons are the BEST lessons.
However, if we cannot learn even from the tough lessons, then we are in for it.
I suspect this poor daughter, forced really to flee her home at the age of 13, even NOW when the mom lives in her garage (where her car should live) she cannot live up to "expectations" the mom has for "all she's done for her" in terms of private school and so on, is just over and done with it.
I suspect this daughter now wants this mother OUT of her garage and OUT of her life. Finally at age 35. She's likely spent years feeling she didn't measure up. She disappointed. She ruined a marriage. Etc etc etc.
I think this mother belongs in therapy with a good therapist. One that will shake her up and out of habitual patterns that are hurting herself, her daughter, her life.
This story indeed evolves and would make a TERRIFIC NOVEL. One in which you get kind of a different add on in each chapter.
I don't think this mom will change. It is the daughter I wish we could hear from. It's the daughter I hope will stop trying, will allow the mom to move on, and who will stop ending up as the "one blamed". Because that's what this mom has done, I suspect her entire life. Blamed her daughter for much of what's happened in her life. Perhaps even for the demise of her marriage.