I'm pretty sure it's not personal.

baconsmom

Dear Prudence,
When I met my husband, he was in the initial stages of his divorce. Fourteen years later we are happily married. He had two daughters with his ex-wife, and once the divorce was final my husband’s ex-wife tried to minimize his contact with them. We had to hire lawyers to make sure that my husband was able to visit his daughters. But now that my husband’s daughters are well into their teens, we rarely see them. They are busy with their friends and work on the weekends and rarely answer my husband’s texts and calls. We tried to be good parents, and I always made sure the girls had quality time with just their dad. We had plenty of good times while they were younger, which makes their current “rejection” of their dad so hurtful to him. How do I help him? I want to encourage him to keep the lines of communication open with his daughters, but it seems to keep him open to more pain. Is this the right thing to do?

—Helpful Stepmom

monkeysip

baconsmom said:

I want to encourage him to keep the lines of communication open with his daughters, but it seems to keep him open to more pain. Is this the right thing to do?

—Helpful Stepmom

Yes, it's the right thing to do.  I think that's true of parenting teens in general.  Teens can be rude, they can ignore you, they can hurt your feelings, etc.  But they're your children.  Just keep the lines of communication open, let them know you love them, and hope they will allow you to have a closer relationship later on in their lives.  Parenting hurts, but he can't just cut off communication. He also can't FORCE a relationship with them either.

levioosa

It's actually refreshing to see a LW who is being supportive and not controlling, or an asshole about kids from a previous marriage.  

ShesSoCold

I agree with you, Bacon.

I was friends with H in high school and he used to have to go to his dad's every other weekend. I remember thinking how much that would suck. Not because I don't like my dad, but because I had "better" things to be doing with my weekends at that age.

OliveOilsMom

Depending on their job, LW's H could visit his daughters at their job.  Are they waitresses?  Ask to sit in their section.  Work retail?  Go in and browse for a bit.  In both instances, you should be able to quickly chat and say hi.  It also shows the teens that their dad loves them and is interested in how they are doing. 

But yes, they are teenagers and they may want no part of either parent.  I would just be concerned that mom has been filling the daughters' heads with nonsense about their dad and that is why they don't want to see/talk to him.

glasgowtolondon

Tough situation. Sometimes the best thing to do is nothing, it sounds like their approach is as good as it can be. Forcing the issue will probably make it worse. My parents are still together, but in my teens I would rather have chewed my own arm off than spent time with them on weekends. I can only imagine how little I would have wanted to spend weekends at my dads house had they ever split up. 

OurWildKingdom

glasgowtolondon said:

Tough situation. Sometimes the best thing to do is nothing, it sounds like their approach is as good as it can be. Forcing the issue will probably make it worse. My parents are still together, but in my teens I would rather have chewed my own arm off than spent time with them on weekends. I can only imagine how little I would have wanted to spend weekends at my dads house had they ever split up. 

Yep. As a teenager, I only spent as much time with my parents as I did because I was *very* socially inept, and apart from a few friends and people from extracurricular activities, pretty much everyone else freaked me out.

bleve0821

OurWildKingdom said:

glasgowtolondon said:

Tough situation. Sometimes the best thing to do is nothing, it sounds like their approach is as good as it can be. Forcing the issue will probably make it worse. My parents are still together, but in my teens I would rather have chewed my own arm off than spent time with them on weekends. I can only imagine how little I would have wanted to spend weekends at my dads house had they ever split up. 

Yep. As a teenager, I only spent as much time with my parents as I did because I was *very* socially inept, and apart from a few friends and people from extracurricular activities, pretty much everyone else freaked me out.

I was socially inept and chose books over even my parents. People didn't freak me out so much as they did bully me, and the very last question I ever wanted to answer was, "So... How was your day?" It was just more than this moody teen could handle. 

mrsconn23

SIL/BFF pretty much stopped seeing her dad as a teen because she had a terrible stepmom and because her dad lived 45 min away. SIL had a job and friends where we lived, so getting to see her dad was not a priority at the time. 

Currently, her dad is the most functional parent and best grandparent my new nephew has. My mom (who's unrelated to her) is probably the second best grandparent to the baby.  

So, keep on being there and understand it may not pay off until the future. Teens are self-absorbed jerks. 

OurWildKingdom

@AtomicBlonde, I chose books over pretty much everybody but our cats. 

GBCK

ShesSoCold said:

I agree with you, Bacon.

I was friends with H in high school and he used to have to go to his dad's every other weekend. I remember thinking how much that would suck. Not because I don't like my dad, but because I had "better" things to be doing with my weekends at that age.

My baby sister was working hard to make the visitations reasonable for the bonus-daughter that came w/ her marriage, and, in a large metropolitan area, they looked at houses for over a year, that would be in the right school district, be reasonably close to the ex's, and all around make daughter's life and transition easier for sharing custody
.
Two choices.  In that year, Sis had 2 houses that, location wise worked for what they needed for daughter.  Not really a lot of variety and choice to make.

So...sis isn't in her dream house.  And that might be annoying when bonus-daughter is moved out in 3 more years...but Sis also knew that these things loom large in teenager's lives and that this was part of the deal.