agonyaunt | (no subject)

I'm a 35-year-old woman whose father refuses to get along with me no matter how hard I try. Our relationship was always strained due to the alcoholism he has struggled with since my childhood, made worse by the fact that I became an addict. I've been in recovery for a while, and I'm clean and sober now.

He and my mother took guardianship of my two sons, ages 12 and 7, because my disease rendered me unable to care for them at that time. I have mentioned getting my kids back after I acquire more clean time; neither of my parents wants that. I know Dad resents me deeply, both because he has my kids and also because of my addiction.

If I can forgive him for what his alcoholism has put me through, why can't he forgive me? I don't understand why he has to hate me. Believe me, he hates me! I just want him to treat me the same way he treats my older brother and sister. I need help with this situation. Counseling is not an option; I know he will refuse. -- HURTING IN MICHIGAN

DEAR HURTING: A predisposition to addiction can run in families. I suspect that the person your father hates is himself, and that he saw a lot of himself in you while you were using. That you are now sober is a constant reminder of what a failure he is, which may be why he treats you the way he does.

While counseling for him may be out, it doesn't mean that you couldn't benefit from it. Please consider it. Although it won't make your father love you, it may help you to handle his unpleasantness more effectively. Once you have accumulated more clean time, regaining custody of your children may become a viable option, and something to discuss with a lawyer at that time.

https://www.arcamax.com/healthandspirit/lifeadvice/dearabby/s-2594723

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LW may be clean and sober right now, but she clearly is not well and needs more help. It's possible her parents are not the best caregivers for her children (is Dad still drinking?) but that does not mean that, based on this letter, she sounds like she should have more time with them.

Can you point to what tells you the LW shouldn't have more time with her kids?

I didn't say that she necessarily shouldn't. I said that this letter does not prove the case.

But sure, I'll bite. People who spend a lot of time asserting other people's feelings - Dad resents her, he hates her - are often bad parents. Good relationships with people mean taking responsibility for your own actions (she knows damn well why her relationship with her parents is strained, quite beyond their actions) and also understanding that your understanding of their perspective is always limited. Which means no mind-reading. I can think of a million reasons Mom and Dad might not want her to regain custody of the kids that have nothing to do with "hate" or "resentment", or why they might treat her differently from her siblings that don't have to do with those bad feelings either.

I think my general position is that a parent presuming to know what their own parents think of them is maybe not grounds for family separation.

No, but serious drug addiction is, and a history of serious drug addiction + an apparently refusal to accept ones own fault in trouble relations is certainly a reason to consider the pros and cons of disrupting the children's lives.

I think it's a pretty big leap to assume someone having preconceptions about their own parents' thoughts about them that they express in an advice column letter means they can't accept responsibility in general.

You're welcome to that opinion, certainly.

Just want to remind you here that I did not say that LW shouldn't ever regain custody of the kids, simply that I don't think this letter presents that case.

Edited 2021-11-27 02:03 (UTC)

Yeeeah, LW reminds me of my family in the maelstrom of addiction and relapse in a way that's hard to quantify but which is definitely there in a "listen to your gut" way.

Small red flag in a very depressing situation: LW says that her father resents her "because he has my kids." Does that mean he resents that he has to parent her children, or...actually, I'm kind of struggling with another interpretation, unless that's just a very badly written sentence that means "him keeping my kids is a sign of his resentment and my addiction is a cause of his resentment." If he both resents having to take care of her kids and doesn't want her to have custody of them even after she's been clean longer, that's an ugly morass of emotions that two kids are caught in the middle of.

Honestly, I'm a little bothered at LW's priorities, here. I'm trying not to judge too much, because there's obviously a lot that's not included about their situation and how it came to be (including anything about LW's mother but that she also doesn't want the kids to go back to LW), but I'd expect her to be more concerned about her parents not wanting her to resume care of her kids.

Something is off, here, and I'd say that LW very definitely needs counseling of several kinds, including a legal kind. Her resuming custody may not be the best thing for the kids, and maybe they are best where they are, but at some point, there will likely need to be some kind of push, into family therapy if nothing else.

Yeah, I'm far from certain that the kids should stay with the grandparents - whether or not they hate or resent the LW, that past (?) history of alcohol abuse which LW thinks led in a clear line to her own substance abuse issues is definitely something to be concerned about.