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Dear Captain Awkward,
My mom passed away when I was quite young. In the years that followed, my relationship with my dad disintegrated.
While I’m sure I’m not blameless in that disintegration, it was overall pretty one-sided. Before my mom passed, he refused to talk to me on the phone once I’d moved away, citing that he had “nothing to say.” After she died, I heard from him less and less.
There were a few years of contact after he remarried: he invited me and my ex husband to visit him at his winter home a few times, and a twice I stayed at his home (across the country from mine, quite a trip to make), once for the purpose of work, and once attend a friend’s wedding. Both times, he left me alone in his home for multiple days while he left to visit friends, or to travel to his winter home. To clarify: both times I spent more than half of my stay alone, after I had specifically taken an extended period of time off with the intention of visiting with him, which I communicated to him about in the months leading up to my visits.
In the time since his wedding, he has more or less stopped calling me or sending cards on important days. He has done the same with my brothers, who live in the same city as he does, choosing instead to spend his time with his new wife, and with her children and grandchildren. When my ex husband and I separated, I told him in advance that I needed him to be there for me, even if just for five minutes, on one especially hard day. He reluctantly agreed, but then texted me day-of to say that he had a Christmas party, so wouldn’t have time to take a call. I have since stopped reaching out to him entirely, and as result we barely talk.
It has been ten years since my mother passed, and my current partner and I are planning to be married. Is there any way that I can reasonably ask my dad about my mom’s wedding rings? I have desired them since her passing (she and I were very close), but did’t dare ask sooner because I thought it would be disrespectful to him and to his grief. He now seems to be happily moved on– remarried, and invested in his new family. If I sound bitter, it’s because I am, but I still want to be respectful, and further am worried that my asking will allow him to somehow spin a story about me a greedy daughter (rather than as the daughter he abandoned, but who misses her mother). Please help.
Hello, thank you for your question.
I don’t think this is an unreasonable request at all, and I suggest that you just go right to it:
“Hello Dad, if you are still holding onto any of Mom’s jewelry, especially her rings, can I please have it? It would mean a lot to me. You can send it to [address] or I can have [Brother*] pick it up.Thank you.”
[*I normally do not encourage people to delegate difficult family stuff to others, but in this case, if you think a trusted sibling would be willing to do this for you, then yes! Recruit a local to solve the “Dad said yes but never actually sent it” stage of this problem!]
Don’t assume anything about what his reaction will be or try to manage it, and don’t loop through past disputes. Ask for what you want, present tense, and give him the opportunity to rise to the occasion. This is a kindness to both you and your dad.
If the wedding ring got buried with her, or he doesn’t want to part with it for sentimental reasons, he’s got access to the same 26-letter alphabet that you do and can tell you so in words. “I’m so sorry, I’d really like to hold onto it.” You’d be sad, but at least you’d know for sure, and the problem of approaching him wouldn’t be hanging over you anymore. Maybe a good thing to do before you ask is to pick out a plan B ring that you love, so it will be slightly less fraught.
As you fear, your dad may be affronted and spin some story about you being a “greedy” daughter and you can be like, you know what, I am greedy, GREEDY FOR KINDNESS, thanks for sending those rings, I’d like them by [date] and I can reimburse you for the shipping. If he gets accusatory or insults you, my bet would be that he lost it or already gave it all away to his new family and feels guilty, so he’s taking it out on you. Fun thought! Not actually fun! But totally in character! If he reacts badly, it won’t be because you asked wrong or weren’t supposed to ask. Can him thinking of badly of you compare to how badly you already think of him? The dad who ditched his kids when their other parent died is hardly in charge of defining “selfishness” for other people.
On the plus side, he may also just go ahead and send the jewelry on without a second thought or word. He’s been totally avoidant and absent from your life since your mom passed, so if he can get rid of stuff that he doesn’t use or want to think about without having to have a conversation about feelings, that would also be in character. This is not a man who runs toward the difficult conversations! It’s sad and painful given what you needed from him, but in this case his reticence might not be the worst thing.
No matter the possible reactions, I think the best way to ask is to keep it extremely simple and direct and omit apologies that you don’t owe and reasons that he won’t care about. Does he still have the jewelry? Can you have it? When/how is the easiest way for you to collect it? Thanks so much.
I’m sorry about your mom, anniversaries can be really tough. Congratulations to you on your upcoming marriage. 
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A long time ago, Shepherd created folders and tags for my blog inbox, mostly categories like “Family” and “Friendship” and “Work,” but also a few like “LW Behaving Badly,” “What Is This I Don’t Even,” and “This is Not Penthouse.”
I really, really, really try to be kind and gentle and find somebody to root for in every situation, but sometimes I fail.Today, I thought, instead of publishing certain letters with those tags, I would answer the questions but save the Letter Writers some embarrassment and the Internet from seeing some things that can’t be unseen.
Think of it as a New Year’s cleanse for upsetting content.
1 Hmmmm let’s do some math:
- You’re 47 and your new girlfriend is 23,
- You’ve “been good friends” “for 8 or 9years,”
- The wife you just left her for is also 47,
- Your own kids are 16 and 17,
- You used the words “technically legal adult” and “soulmate” in the same sentence more than once.
Like, enjoy your newfound happiness, I guess? Since you are “technically legal adults,” I certainly can’t stop you!
But if everyone who already likes and loves you is giving you a wide berth all of a sudden, I can only assume they did the same Creep Math I did and are now wondering if you serially groom lots of teens or just this one.
Sometimes getting what you want and having everyone’s trust and good opinion are mutually exclusive.
2 I accept that “there’s nothing I can say” to make you leave him, and both ethical and logistical constraints prevent me from standing outside your house with with a boombox looping Goodbye Earl, so it appears we are at an impasse.
There’s a part of you that knows that a happy ending for you involves getting away from your abuser (or you wouldn’t have picked me, of all people, to write to), so I’m going to take some hope from that and keep right on wishing you peace, safety, and freedom.
3 I wish you had options other than making peace with someone you dislike in order to keep a roof over your head, but antagonizing your boyfriend’s mom further at the cost of safe housing while you’ve got a baby on the way is not in anyone’s best interest. There’s a difference between being disliked and being harmed or abused. For now, I recommend that you deploy a strategic* apology, find a way to be very polite, neutral, and boring when you interact with her, do your fair share of household chores with minimal fuss, and stay away from stressful topics until you have a much more stable situation.Let your boyfriend take charge of interacting with his mom while you focus on getting enough rest and food and otherwise taking care of yourself.
*You don’t have to feel sorry in order to say sorry, sometimes it’s necessary to say the words to defuse a situation and stop things from getting worse.
4 Whoa, thanks for the incredibly detailed accounting of your sex life as a dating couple and newlywed! I’ll enter all the stats about “precisely which acts” and “approximately how often” into the spreadsheet to prepare for The Audit, I think it will really build a logickal case for why your wife should continue maintaining quarterly orgasm quotas even though she just gave birth to an entire human. Your arguments re: “I know she’s recovering from labor but it’s not like she couldn’t do oral!” were especially fleshed out, and definitely did not make me never want to see, touch, or think about a penis ever again.
CONVERSELY [/sarcasm]
If your data is to be believed, your wife clearly loves you and likes having sex with you a whole lot. Someday, when her body starts to feel like her own again, she will probably enjoy it again. But right now, I promise you, I PROMISE YOU, she DOES NOT want to hear your worries about how your “level of intimacy” has changed.
If you want to be a candidate for Sexiest New Dad 2022, try making a meal and then holding the baby while your wife gets a whole plate of hot food inside her, then hand off the baby to her and eat yours. Facilitate her ability to take an uninterrupted nap or shower as often as humanly possible. Do your part to stem the Laundry Avalanche that a new baby creates. When in doubt, clean something. Run interference with intrusive or difficult relatives. Tell your wife that she looks beautiful and that she’s doing a good job. Be helpful and kind and nurturing and – THIS IS KEY – without treating any of it as a giant favor you’re doing or as a downpayment on sexytimes. You won’t die if you have to take your sexual pleasure into your own hands for a little while, but you will kill your marriage if you walk around with a giant sense that you’re owed something and that it’s your wife’s fault for not trying hard enough to “satisfy” you, when, if you haven’t noticed, she’s kinda busy. You’ll also destroy your relationship with both your wife and your kid if you treat the little fella like competition for your boner.
You have this shining, beautiful chance to not be That Guy. Please, I beg you, take it.
5 You “didn’t take sides” when you sent holiday invitations, but by inviting all of the known anti-vaxx, anti-mask loudmouths in your family for the holidays this year, you effectively disinvited everyone else, including kids too young to be vaccinated and their parents.
I hope Asshole Christmas was a good time and that you get to meet your tiny new niblings someday under safer circumstances. Until you guarantee/enforce safer circumstances, it’s probably not happening at your house.
All right, thank you for reading, happy new year! I don’t know about anyone else, but I feel a highly specific combination of better and worse after all that.
