CHRISTIAN PARENTS of ESTRANGED ADULT CHILDREN Community Group
Estrangement makes it difficult to talk about with family, friends, neighbors and church members. Christians are NOT immune to broken families. Talk about your experiences with those who know how you feel and get positive support through your Christian faith...."In these last days difficult times will come, for men will be lovers of self...disobedient to parents,...
I appreciate this is a support forum for parents. Please be assured I have no intent of imposing my perspective on other postings.
And if you want me to move along right now I will.
I am an estranged daughter seeking insight into and ultimately reconcilliation with my estranged father. I have read a number of posts here and hear you saying the sorts of things he says about me, that I venehmently disagree with and am hurt by and that hinders reconcilliation. So perhaps you good folk could explain some of these things to me from the perspective of an estranged parent, and perhaps I will be able to understand it better because I am not feeling defensive/hurt by the person Im communicating with.
A simple example to start with. Calling him by his first name. He said that was ok, so I did, and now he says how disrespectful I have been to be calling him anything other than Dad. I stopped using his first name immediately but I cannot bring my self to call him 'dad'. I feel it is disrespectful to me for him to insinuate he had that role in my life. He didnt, literally. I met him for the first time 2 years ago (I am 30 now). How do you reconcile a situation like that so both parties feel respected (so important in a healthy relationship).
This is a simple example of a much bigger more complex situation, but can you help? I could ask in an estranged childrens forum I suppose but I would likely just hear more opinions like my own, which is not progressing anything.
And if you want me to move along right now I will.
I am an estranged daughter seeking insight into and ultimately reconcilliation with my estranged father. I have read a number of posts here and hear you saying the sorts of things he says about me, that I venehmently disagree with and am hurt by and that hinders reconcilliation. So perhaps you good folk could explain some of these things to me from the perspective of an estranged parent, and perhaps I will be able to understand it better because I am not feeling defensive/hurt by the person Im communicating with.
A simple example to start with. Calling him by his first name. He said that was ok, so I did, and now he says how disrespectful I have been to be calling him anything other than Dad. I stopped using his first name immediately but I cannot bring my self to call him 'dad'. I feel it is disrespectful to me for him to insinuate he had that role in my life. He didnt, literally. I met him for the first time 2 years ago (I am 30 now). How do you reconcile a situation like that so both parties feel respected (so important in a healthy relationship).
This is a simple example of a much bigger more complex situation, but can you help? I could ask in an estranged childrens forum I suppose but I would likely just hear more opinions like my own, which is not progressing anything.
I am not sure I have the answers you are looking for but I can tell you what we would love to happen in our lives.
Our main prayer is to be heard, to listen and to be forgiven (we have already forgiven her.) Even though we didn't purposefully hurt her, she was hurt. She has also hurt us by cutting us off for two years from our son and two grandchildren. For some reason she is not open right now to any of this, but we pray everyday that God is softening her heart toward reconciliation. If we could just talk, I know that she would see our hearts. Even if we had to take it slow and abide by some conditions in the beginning, we would be willing. Any path that leads us back to being a complete family is worth it.
So I guess that is my advice.... show your dad your heart and be willing to see and hear his.
As far as calling him dad goes, why not compromise and call him something like Papa, Pop or Poppy? When my husband first came into the family he was not comfortable calling my dad by his first name but he was also not comfortable calling him dad. One day he called him Pop and it stuck. So for 30 years my dad has been Pop to my DH.
I wish you well in your endeavor to work things out. Don't give up!
Counselling is so difficult because we live on opposite sides of the world. When I visited him I asked about counselling and he said only if it was someone from his church. Right or wrong i felt like that was going to be a set up and he would just pick one of his buddies to back him up. So it didn't eventuate.
Forgottenmomma I'm sorry to hear of your story. The story does resonate with me, and I relate to how you describe your daughter. It is interesting you say you as the EP need to be heard. Not just listened to, heard. I can sympathise with that and then it made me think....For me, I admit, I just want EF to stop trying to explain! I'm so sick of hearing his explainations, why i'm wrong and he's right, how I've misunderstood etc etc etc and I do now just refuse to answer those emails from him (which is all of them, sadly). He says he is obligated to correct me when I am wrong about him, my response to that is - who is he to decide I am am wrong? Who made him judge of right and wrong!? Who is he to say my experience, my perspective is invalid? He decided he is right so that's it, I'm just to take him shovelling how right he is down my throat. And if (when) I don't accept that, I'm 'disrespectful' and 'refusing to accept the truth'. His truth. That is so offensive to me and I just shut down. I'm not interested in communicating with him when he is explaining/correcting.
It is difficult for me to want to share my heart with him when I am afraid he is going to use that information to 'correct' me and tell me I am wrong.
So yeah, I guess that is something I could look at.
I like the idea of finding something else to call him instead of Dad. I wonder if he'd go for that...
Your insight is valuable. Please continue to share.
Likewise, It is valuable for me to realise how my actions and words are recieved by an EP and potentially contributing to my own heartbreaking estrangement. I mean, as was pointed out to me, perhaps it is not for me to tell him I find him manipulative. Do I feel manipulated? Absolutely. Is it true for me? Yes. Does that make him wrong? Well, Im going to have to re-evalute my position on that now as per my own desires for how he treat me and say maybe, maybe not. Who am I to judge? I think that could be a really point of difference when we next attempt to reconcile. Difficult for me - is that he has had no such revelation and so will continue to exhibit behaviours that really hurt me. Save Gods grace, I know I will really struggle to manage that and how it makes me feel, and my subsequent reactions. I feel I need to be better prepared for how to deal with that before attempting reconcilliation. Not sure how though....
1- Living Successfully with Screwed-Up People by Elizabeth Brown
2- People Can't Drive You Crazy If You Don't Give Them the Keys by Mike Bechtle
I bought them in Walmart several years ago but they can be found online too.