A young woman has taken to the internet for some advice after finally telling her widowed father the truth. The heartbreaking post details a family tragedy, her father remarrying and blending his family, and a conversation the OP overheard when she was just 13 years old that changed the course of her life forever....CONTINUE READING
While the veracity of the narrative is impossible to verify considering the anonymous forum it was posted to, Redditors took the post very seriously. It garnered thousands of upvotes within hours of it being posted.
Read on to see everything the young woman said — and how the Reddit community reacted. “I (25f) am not that close to my dad anymore. I was until I was about 13. But that changed. He either only realized it now or only started to care now that I’m living a more independent life and he’s not as involved as he wants to be.
“I was 8 when I lost my mom and we were as close as ever but I needed him more. Then when I was 11 he remarried and he became a stepdad to a girl who was 10 at the time. Now, this is where full honesty comes in. I was jealous as hell that my dad was trying to bond with her and that he called her his daughter and us ‘his girls’ right away.
It made me feel less special. It made me feel like I didn’t matter as much because how could someone so new to him be equal to me after hardly any time.
Every time he spent time with her I felt sick. He still spent time with me but after about six or seven months of marriage, he started to spend more time with his stepdaughter. I hated it. I was both devastated and furious that she was getting my dad.
“I was 13 my dad said how much he preferred hanging out with her over me because they had similar interests. He said he couldn’t spend enough time with his stepdaughter and he was hoping I would hit the teen phase of not wanting my parents around me that much.
He didn’t say it to me but I heard him say it. His best friend was one of the people he did say it to and he was like dude, don’t say that out loud and my dad said most parents probably feel that way. He said it wasn’t like he would ever tell me that to my face.
Then he admitted he also resented me for not wanting his wife the way her daughter wanted him. He wanted us to be the perfect little family and we looked like a stepfamily where the step is always used because I didn’t really want his wife for stuff.
“I gave him his wish and over the years he increased the amount of time he spent with his stepdaughter. They could do stuff together up to four times a week. That was until she was 16 and wanted space. He was devastated by that and that crushed me. So I decided that was all I needed to know and didn’t try to get closer to him.
“He approached me with the question of why after I moved in with my boyfriend and his dad helped us move stuff. My dad said he expected to be called and then he asked me why I had pulled away from him.
So I told him everything from the jealousy to what I heard him say and I told him I decided that I wasn’t going to keep close like I had when he felt that way. Dad was offended that I had ever been jealous.
He told me it was disgusting to want to deny his stepdaughter the chance at a dad. He also told me he should be allowed to have interests in common with someone other than me.
I told him he was. But I was also a kid who lost my mom and clung to my sole living parent. He then accused me of manipulating him by saying all that and I told him that he shouldn’t have asked a question if he wasn’t prepared for an honest answer. He told me I could f–k right off with that attitude and told me to grow up.
“AITA?” Of course, overwhelmingly, the Reddit community voted NTA.
In response to a consoling comment suggesting she cut him off entirely, the OP replied: “I lost him forever the second he showed real sadness and upset that his stepdaughter wanted space for him when he never showed that when I stopped.
That was the moment I knew there was never going to be a good relationship between us. And I was 13 when I realized I could never rely on him for anything. He would just resent me for needing him.”
Another wrote: “He’s going to be singing a different tune when he gets butt hurt for not being asked to walk you down the aisle if and when you get married.”
And she replied: “I can see that too. I find it funny that he was at least on some level jealous or felt replaced by my boyfriend’s dad. Yet doesn’t understand where I came from.”
When one Redditor noted “I guess you only had one parent and she passed when you were 8,” OP responded: “It feels like that now. At the time she passed I still felt like I had a great dad. I adored him and he was my whole world after mom died. That’s what made the whole thing more crushing…CONTINUE READING>>
