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.
Loneliness is driving this .
You can always remain friends .
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.
Since he left without a word and it's been all this time no communication I want to have that talk about why he just walked out the way he did and I want to have it face to face.
I have been tormented about that too long. Now I have a chance for closure and I feel I am entitled to it.
I do still love him. He was the love of my life but I'm not jumping into the fire. But being attacked like this. Being told I have to move out of her house where I pay to live in her garage and contribute to household expenses, clean and cook for them is a slap in the face. I'm now being shunned, not being spoken to and basically ostracized for just wanting to go and see him and assess the situation.
The fact is, it was my daughter being abusive to both me and my ex.
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.
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.
This is NOT a caregiving issue. It’s a marriage relationship issue and a parenting issue. I got into it because a) I have had troubles with an estranged daughter and b) I got on well with my dying ex. I thought the other posts were too one-sided. Most of us have experience with care issues, and have had little experience with either of these things, so I chipped in.
I think that we all need to chip out. OP can find other more relevant ways to deal with her problems, not a site where the expertise is about caregiving. That's if it's genuine.
Sorry, folks, I think I was followed down the wrong track.
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.
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.