How many of us have parents that left as kids and never came back?
Posted by 14thLizardQueen@reddit | Xennials | View on Reddit | 91 comments
To start, my mother is a horrible person. So she tried to anchor my bio dad down with me. They were married but he was a slut I guess. It didn't work. I've never met the man. He doesn't want to meet me. She went on to act like I was the worst burden she's ever had to bare. Insert 34 years of abuse. A good therapist and full no contact. Like I almost get bio dad leaving and never wanting anything to do with me because she is that bad. It was the 80s and she lies a lot ..
So, anyone else have parents that just said about that, nope?
GladosPrime@reddit
Mine are still together. I wonder what stats are on that.
BoudiccasWrath79@reddit
That’s a whole ‘nother post.
PersianCatLover419@reddit
My parents and grandparents had 51 (parents) and 40 (grandmother and step grandpa) marriages. I would like a relationship like that, but I am realistic and the divorce rate among our generation is in the stratosphere. Most of my friends and old HS classmates are divorced.
BirdWalksWales@reddit
Mine too, and my older bro is 50 and been with his wife for 39 years, they fell in love in school and still are mad about each other now, they work together and travel all over the world on trips, they didn’t decide to get married until about 10 years ago and even though they’d been together for decades they were both crying with happiness on the day.
14thLizardQueen@reddit (OP)
True statement.
Digital_Punk@reddit
I’ve seen my mother once since she dropped me off on my grandmothers doorstep with nothing more than a trash bag of clothing at the age of 11. She came into the gas station I worked at 8yrs later, bought a Red Bull and a pack of smokes and refused to say more than two words to me. I just stood there in shock, and my coworker didn’t understand what had just happened until I could finally muster up the words “that was my mom”.
BoudiccasWrath79@reddit
JFC that’s an experience. I’m sorry. But yeah, like you said, you were better off.
14thLizardQueen@reddit (OP)
Damn that's rough
Digital_Punk@reddit
As tough as it was, I was absolutely better off without her in my life. I think in most cases, any of us who experienced that deserved better parents in general.
WilliamMcCarty@reddit
My old man split when I was 2 months old. Weird thing was it wasn't like he didn't want to be a father, he left my mom for a woman who had a 2 year old. He just didn'g want to be my father. I've never met him. Heard recently he might not have much time left and thought about making contact but decided against it. 47 years I been without him in my life, no reason to put him in there now just to ease his conscience.
avecmaria@reddit
Hopefully your mom was great, and this probably doesn’t help, but he was selfish and most likely thinking much more about starting over with a new (to him) woman rather than thinking much, if at all, about the 2 year old being cool. Babies are much cooler than 2 year olds, so he was thinking with his penis and not about being a father. I assume and he probably sucked at being a dad with that kid too.
WilliamMcCarty@reddit
My mom was amazing. I had my grandparents (her folks) but mostly it was just me and her and even though we were dirt poor she did a great job of making me feel like the luckiest kid in the world. I never missed my old man, never felt like I was lacking, she never was overly harsh with me. Let me wear what I wanted, listen to what I wanted, she gave me a such a long leash (and I think it was because her parents were overly strict with her she decided not to be with me) that I never really rebelled. Never got in any real trouble. When i was a little kid in school she had two rules: Get passing grades and don't let the school call me. When I got older it was: Don't get anybody pregnant and don't let the cops call me. lol...she treated me with respect and I think about part of that was she kind of had to. Being it was just us and she worked a lot, 12 hours a day sometimes, she didn't have time to watch me every second, she was tired, man. She had to put trust in me and I didn't abuse that. She took good care of me. Hell, she even trusted me enough to let me leaver school at 16. We moved across the country to start a new life and lived pretty well. I got a job, that was part of the deal, and I think her work ethic rubbed off because when she got a little older and had health issues and couldn't work enough to pay the bills, I did. I paid for most of her bills and rent and when I bought my first house I made sure it had a mother-in-law/converted garage unit for her. She didn't get to enjoy it, she died the night we moved in but I know she died happy, she died proud of me. She raised her son, not my father's.
avecmaria@reddit
Love her commitment to you and your lovely connection with her!
codebygloom@reddit
Sounds like my old man. He already had a kid with someone else when I came along. Turns out he knocked up the other woman again while my mom was still pregnant with me.
He cut complete ties with my mom before I was even born.
I ended up meeting my younger half brother when we were in high school, funnily enough, at a mutual friend's house. Turned out that we had several mutual friends in common and none of them put it together that we had the same last name and looked very alike.
14thLizardQueen@reddit (OP)
What a dick. I'm sorry man. See, I'm still immature enough to show up and be truthful about how I feel. Which isn't mature I've been told.
WilliamMcCarty@reddit
Older I've gotten the more I find maturity to be a bit overrated.
New-Honey-4544@reddit
"He just didn'g want to be my father"
While I 100% understand why you feel that, it's waaay more likely that he didn't want to see your mom at all.
WilliamMcCarty@reddit
Well he also never made any effort to see me, reach out to me, connect. He didn't move across the country or anything, he lived 10 miles down the road. Even as a grown man when my mom died he didn't reach out. When he has a bio kid with that woman guess what he named it? My name. (My mom changed my surname to her maiden name so thankfully I don't have a full clone.) He walked away, ignored my existence and replaced me with a newer, better model. I just wasn't the son he wanted.
New-Honey-4544@reddit
"Well he also never made any effort to see me, reach out to me, connect."
100% agree
Msheehan419@reddit
That’s really shitty
WilliamMcCarty@reddit
Yeah well, that's my old man for ya. Thanks to 23andme I found a half sister three months younger than me so tells you what kind of guy pops was.
MlsterFlster@reddit
Not me, but the kids across the street. The dad was never there, and I think the mom split when the oldest was 16ish. They had a rough go of it.
Blaze_556@reddit
Parents divorced in 1993, I was 12. Mom took off from Illinois to California then when she got back me and my brothers had to go live with her. I’m too drunk to get into this shit right now.
teslas_disciple@reddit
We moved to Canada when I was 14. Six months later my father took all our money and went back to the old country. My mom barely spoke English and didn't qualify for much. It was a tough few years.
Ten years later I went to see him. He shook my hand and expressed disappointment over how fat I've gotten. He actually said "why did I bother taking you to karate classes".
We had a few more conversations but all he did was complain about his life. We don't talk anymore.
HandsomeGemini@reddit
Your mom being terrible isn't why your dad wants nothing to do with you. It's because he, also, is terrible.
Millimede@reddit
Yep. A good dad would have fought to have custody or visitation, even if the mother was awful.
icanhascheeseberder@reddit
That's not how it works, in most places the mother is heavily favored in custody cases, especially in the 80's, and especially if both parents are a little questionable.
I know a dude who was a multi millionaire who owned a business, it took him two years to get custody of his kid from the unemployed mother.
Clamwacker@reddit
My uncle was employed, had a house, and family support. My ex-aunt was a drug addict prostitute who "lived" in some kids treehouse in her friends backyard. Courts gave her custody of my cousins until child services would take the kids away or she would get arrested. Then the courts would give her the kids back every 6 months or so.
Dark-Empath-@reddit
Your name fe experience gets downvoted because it doesn’t fit someone’s narrative.
Gotta love Reddit 😂
icanhascheeseberder@reddit
Courts would rather put kids in foster care than give custody to the father. It's really shameful.
Clamwacker@reddit
I like to think things have got better since then but I honestly have no idea.
NorthernForestCrow@reddit
Things have actually come around to heavily pushing 50/50 except in cases in which a parent is an addict or abusive or just wants to give up their time. It's near impossible to get more than 60% overnights otherwise. Fine when both parents are interested, but the downside of this is that it encourages disinterested parents to get 50/50 custody to dramatically save on child support, but the interested parents still end up paying for most if not all of the kid's necessities (like clothes) and extracurriculars, but with dramatically less support, and also get dramatically less time with their kids. Great for disinterested parents, bummer for the invested ones.
yourlittlebirdie@reddit
You’re arguing that someone with money deserves to have custody of their children more than someone who’s unemployed?
icanhascheeseberder@reddit
There's obviously more to it than that, I'm just illustrating the difficulties of custody cases.
allthesamejacketl@reddit
I’m sure the kids appreciated swing their dad fight for them. When a man just walks away it’s because he doesn’t care, not cuz he doesn’t think he’ll get custody.
Millimede@reddit
Over 20 years ago my kids deadbeat fought for custody because he didn’t want to pay child support. He really only lost because he majorly fucked up and then left the state. They favored 50/50 back then. My parents divorced in 1992 and my dad ended up with custody.
14thLizardQueen@reddit (OP)
Aw, thanks. That's really nice of you to say.
HandsomeGemini@reddit
I wasn't trying to be rude, but I just feel like you're letting your dad off the hook and putting all the blame on your mom. She may be awful, I'm not saying you're wrong. But a good father would still try to have a relationship with their child.
14thLizardQueen@reddit (OP)
Naw friend. We're good. You're right. There's a lot to the story. But it's not for a internet points you know.
alwaysfuntime69@reddit
But they are coming back. They just left to get cigarettes.....
DW241@reddit
https://i.redd.it/lj9m5j2e7nde1.gif
14thLizardQueen@reddit (OP)
Milk and bread is what my step dad threatened.
TurangaLeela78@reddit
I’m really sorry you went through that. My dad didn’t leave, mom divorced him, but he’s also a terrible person, so in his case I kinda wish he would’ve.
But my husband and I, now with kids, constantly wonder how a person could do that. Just up and take off, especially after being around your child for any amount of time. Boggles my mind.
NotSoSpecialAsp@reddit
Lol I'm the product of attempted entrapment too. NC 17 years now.
Cheers!
1HumanAlcoholBeerPlz@reddit
My dad left my half-brother when he was a kid. It was so fucked up to know I had a brother that I wasn't allowed to see because my dad didn't like his son's mom. He did this to my brother when he was a pre-teen so he grew up with my dad until one day, he was just done. At one point, my half-brother lived within a mile of my dad and my dad refused to have a relationship with him.
I can't imagine how my half-brother really feels about it other than immense pain but as the kid on the other side of it, I am really pissed and disappointed in my dad. My mom, his second ex-wife, tried to reconcile them and my dad promised my half-brother in a face-to-face meeting that he would make up for lost time. Then he never did - told my mom that he shouldn't have to be the one to make arrangements with my half-brother because it was his mother that fucked everything up.
Sorry_Consequence816@reddit
I don’t think this counts….but that’s why my paternal grandparents adopted me.
Biological mother was nuts (I am all for mental health and not stigmatizing people, but I wanted to know about that side of my family as a teen, I got in contact, and I’m not going to go into detail, but she did some severe damage, harassed me for years after that, free nights and weekends was a nightmare). I know she lost at least 3 or 4 other kids after me too.
My biological father had problems before Vietnam. All the kids my grandparents/adoptive parents raised had a lot of problems, but he was the only one that spent time in and out of prison. I never knew him, but he was the black sheep, and all his siblings considered me, the straight A introverted undiagnosed but obviously AuDHD child as a piece of shit because they hated him. So that was fun unpacking in therapy for years. I was in contact with my family well into the 2010s, and no one told me that he died in 1998. I found out last year looking on find-a-grave to find out when my great aunt died (she was a wonderful compassionate person).
BlackJeepW1@reddit
Yeah my dad left when I was 7 and my little brothers were 5 and 4. He was the dad who went to get smokes but never came back. He’s still alive probably that’s all we know-he cut off everyone. We don’t even really know why.
WithaK19@reddit
My dad gave my mom an ultimation when I was five years old: choose the family or meth
She chose meth.
screamingcatfish@reddit
My dad left us before I turned a year old. I have absolutely no memory of him. Mom rarely ever talked about him except to say he was a lazy bum (which she occasionally would throw at me when I was a kid like I inherited my laziness from him. Not gonna lie, it was little hurtful and I realize that was definitely not a thing she should have said to me.) Saying she mentioned him once a year is being generous.
I occasionally realize that it would probably be really easy to look him up. But I have no desire to. I have at least one older half-sibling by him whom I've never met. No idea if there are others. No desire to find that out either.
When I got married at 26, my mom put an announcement about it in the local paper. My paternal grandmother (who I also never had any contact with) reached out to my mom to confirm that it was me, got my address from her, and sent me a $50 gift card. It was a little surreal at the time that this complete stranger, who was actually really closely related to me, sent me something out of the blue. Like, you didn't care about me for the previous 26 years, why now? Have I heard anything else from her in the almost 20 years since then? Nope.
If I don't exist for them, then why should they exist for me?
AlphaWhiskeyOscar@reddit
This one really stuck out to me - about the $50 gift card. I find that so deeply sad and confusing. Like I can’t process what that even is. Did this woman suddenly discover you for the first time, and think she was going to break the ice with that? Did she think that was the least she could do? Yeah; surreal.
I don’t want to ask undue personal information but what timeframe was this? Before social media?
screamingcatfish@reddit
Nope 2007
AlphaWhiskeyOscar@reddit
Just strange to me. Thank you for sharing all that.
somanysheep@reddit
My dad left when I was 4 he got busted with over a pound of weed, they let him out on a PR bond and he ran. It was for the best, I got to know him at 15, I didn't attend his funeral.
TigerMcPherson@reddit
Me,my brother, and my half brother
Defiant-Date-7806@reddit
My dad did 19 years in prison for sex crimes, I've never met him and don't plan on it. Mom committed suicide when I was 15. Even if she were alive, I don't think we'd be on a speaking basis.
hpy2bhere23@reddit
My parents divorced when I was 10. I was able to pick to live with my dad but my older sister decided to live with our mom. They only lived 15 mins away when mom moved out. My mom somehow rekindled her romance with an old high school boyfriend 8 hours away. I found out she moved and look my sister when I got home from school and listened to the answering machine.
We tried to reconnect for years after she eventually moved back but she’s too selfish to deal with so we’ve been NC for 18 years.
onetypicaltim@reddit
I've since my father twice since the divorce in 1990. Never paid child support for us three kids. My sister had the only grandchild this year, and he sent $100 for Christmas. Better late than never, I suppose. Honestly, I just wait for his death so I can get some paid time off from work.
Ginger_Snaps_Back@reddit
Yeah. My bio dad bailed right before I was born. His new girlfriend was already pregnant, and he was done with us. He later abandoned that family, too, to go start another. I’ve still never met him, but I did meet one of my half sisters. There are 9 of us that we know of.
JustHCBMThings@reddit
This is so similar to me. He left his second family too. We’re all close and did 23andMe and keep thinking we’ll see other half siblings pop up but haven’t run into any yet.
VaselineHabits@reddit
Holy shit! Any of you ever do a DNA test type thing to see if anyone else matches up?
Although, ya'll probably have a thousand cousins combined
cheeker_sutherland@reddit
Reading through these stories trip me out. I have nothing to add except as a father now I can’t imagine just bailing on my kids no matter how nutty their mother turned out.
Want to make it clear my wife is not nutty and I was making a hypothetical.
sillygoose1228@reddit
I wish she would have never come back.
iFuerza@reddit
My mom, she passed away this past summer. I felt nothing when I found out she was gone.
She chose to never make an effort to be in my life or the love of my kid’s.
As I said, I don’t feel anything about it. It just is.
Resident-Device-2814@reddit
In my case, maybe kind of? I was adopted at birth, bio mom was a teenager and no idea about bio dad at all, never have heard anything other than the teen mom part. And that there was a clean family medical history, but damn this was the 70s so they still hadn't figured out smoking causes cancer kind of "clean family medical history." My adopted parents are all I've ever known and are mom and dad (or was in dad's case, he died in the 90s) as far as I'm concerned. No desire to find or connect with bio parents.
TrustAffectionate966@reddit
There was a civil war at the time and we had the get the fuck outta Dodge or be the next ones to "disappear." The last time I saw my father was when I was 8, almost 9. The next time I saw him was 30 years later - at the cemetery.
In the meantime, I dealt with a real piece of shit for a stepfather. He HATED me. I WISH he had left hahah.
14thLizardQueen@reddit (OP)
Damn . At least there's a damn good reason. Having any parent hate the kid is so weird. Especially a step parent. Like bro , you chose this. I had no say. Sorry bout that.
TrustAffectionate966@reddit
My Ma' is the textbook example of "staying in an abusive marriage for the kids." I don't blame her. It's tough out there. My hat's off to the single parents out there making it work. 🥇
aliceinadreamyland@reddit
I’ve been estranged from my dad and his side for almost 27 years, off and on from my mom’s side for almost as long. I’m permanently no contact with all of them now.
They would have done me a real solid if they had left me on a firehouse step when I was born instead of doing me the way they did.
At least they did all four of my brothers better.
Some people just suck so hard.
mittenfists@reddit
My mom left when I was 1 or 2. She used to pop up every handful of years when she when she thought she could something from me or my siblings, but I think she knows that well is dry nowadays
Significant_Dog412@reddit
My "real" Dad left my Mum when I was very young. I saw him now and again for a while, then he disappeared completely when I was 7, having had another Daughter who he also left behind.
He showed up again briefly when I was in my teens and I saw him a couple of times, then he vanished again.
Last news I had on him was a decade ago, when I found out that my Grandma on his side had died a year or so before. Pictures showed him and a teenage girl not to me, who I strongly believe to be yet another Daughter.
14thLizardQueen@reddit (OP)
What does one even say?
Significant_Dog412@reddit
I don't know how true, but I've heard the only reason he reappeared briefly when I was a teen was because he'd been deported from Holland and sent "home".
No idea if he had any real relationship with the girl I suspect to be another Daughter or just briefly showed up in her life as his Mum was dying. It's more out of not wanting to potentially cause issues for this blameless girl who may have no idea of my existence, that I decided against digging deeper.
14thLizardQueen@reddit (OP)
Fair of you.
Ratatoski@reddit
My dad left for another country when I was little to further his career. He's also on his fifth wife now. I'd see him maybe once a year but he'd always be working. So when I miss him I miss the smell of his apartment, the city, the food, the smell of tobacco and the sounds of him working in his office. But not him as a person because he wasn't there even when we visited
Kiwi_lad_bot@reddit
My mother had authorities remove me and my brother from her care because of neglect and give us to our father who didn't want us and just did his duty as our father until we were preteens. From that point on he didn't give AF about being a father. We were old enough to look after ourselves so he would be out all night. Not fill the pantry. The usual shit. A young man looking out for himself.
Both my parents aren't bad people. Just shitty parents. It's given me and my siblings such a tough start in life. We've had to work super hard to get to where we are in life.
As my father has aged I've come to appreciate the situation he was put in by my mother and we have a good relationship.
I also hold no animosity towards my mother. Her childhood was horrid, she never got any therapy, and she deep down knows she ruined the family and has shown remorse. But she wasn't there when I needed her as a kid. Like really needed her. And now I'm not there when she needs to repent or whatever she needs to do before she dies.
DefyingGravity234@reddit
Yup. My mom left when I was in grade school.
crmom22@reddit
My dad. Haven’t seen him since I was 13. Apparently his happiest day is spending with friends. No mention of his children.
BeBopBarr@reddit
My parents got divorced when I was almost 2. I've never known my "dad" and don't care to
SweetCosmicPope@reddit
So, my mom and dad were very bad with money when they were younger. My mom was a teen mom and my dad was in his early 20s. He was a severe alcoholic, and they were both serial cheaters. They could not manage their finances and moved constantly and ruined their credit.
Eventually, we had to move in with my grandparents and shortly after my mom and dad split up and went their separate ways, leaving my sister and me with our grandparents who raised us. This was when I was 6 and my sister was 3. My dad was very much still in my life, and he lived with us at my grandparents off and on, but he worked in Houston so we'd only see him for an hour or so in the evenings, and he'd go back into town on the weekends to find his next ex girlfriend.
My mom ended up marrying another man and moved to Waco (about a 5 or 6 hour drive from my southeast Texas town). She'd call frequently to talk, but we'd only see her for an hour or two once per year when she'd make the drive down, take us for lunch at McDonalds and then drive back to Waco.
My dad got clean, fixed up his credit, and was able to not only take care of himself and his finances, but did really well financially. I was going to stay living with my grandparents through graduation, but my grandmother got very sick and was in the hospital all the time, so I was often at home alone (and not old enough to drive yet, so relying on friends to drive me to get food or stay at their house), and I found myself missing out on seeing my dad more often, so in my sophomore year of high school I moved in with my dad, and for the most part he was a model dad, though still with his own goofy quirks.
My mom divorced her husband and moved back to the area around that same time. I started seeing her more often. I think it was better off having her far away for my idealistic mind. We have a very strained relationship because she no-shows events, stiffs us on dinner bills, and lies constantly. She is still incredibly unreliable, terrible with her finances, and irresponsible in general. The only reason I really maintain a relationship is because I know she's not mentally well, and also she's very close with my son. But even he's grown tired of her nonsense.
Really, the best thing my parents ever did for me was to leave me with my grandparents because they were amazing parents to my sister and me. I had an idyllic childhood growing up. I think it may have been tough for them to do, at least for my dad, and maybe a little embarrassing. But I think deep down they knew it was the right thing for us.
esocharis@reddit
Hey I've got 2! lol
My bio dad took off at some point before I was old enough to remember anything about him, and mom won't talk. All I know is that he was in the air force, and the only reason I know that is because I was born on a base and continued to receive medical care there off and on for a while.
He's never reached out to me, or at least not to me directly, and mom has never told me he came to her either. No idea what happened there, honestly, but with how tight lipped my mom is about it I can only imagine the worst.
She remarried when I was about 5 to the only man I've ever called "dad," but he was 25 years her senior and a verbally abusive alcoholic, they split when I was 15. Never heard another word from him either after that, until I got word from my half sister in 2012 that he died of liver failure, of course.
She remarried again about a year later to the man she's still married to. They had my little brother when I was 17. None of us are particularly close at the point, as they've descended into full-on right wing mania while I have kept a grasp on reality. 🤷♂️
14thLizardQueen@reddit (OP)
Oh dang, my bio parents were in the air force too. I heard too many stories. Late 70s early 80s
Sad_Tax_2134@reddit
My dad left for a fishing trip when I was 3...
Consistent-Ad-6506@reddit
Mine didn’t leave, he was just never there to begin with. Met him when I was 30. By then I didn’t really need relationship with him and felt nothing towards him.
481126@reddit
My Dad stayed but it frequently came up my Dad was done having kids & my mother went off the birth control without him agreeing and that is why I exist. My mom was there but not there she would become a Nanny to other people's kids and hardly ever be home. When she's the one who wanted to have kids in the first place.
14thLizardQueen@reddit (OP)
Damn
sed2017@reddit
I haven’t had any contact with my bio mom since I was 7… she lost her right to custody because she chose drugs and instability over me. Her loss…
14thLizardQueen@reddit (OP)
Yeah definitely her loss.
DerangedGinger@reddit
Never met my biological father. My mother says he ran off. Tried to look him up once because my health is shit and afaik he's dead. I guess that gives me some insight into that family health info I wanted.
14thLizardQueen@reddit (OP)
Guess so.
Muderous_Teapot548@reddit
I'm so sorry that was your experience. It's really shitty. It's a bad situation gone worse and worse.
I have a friend whose ex had custody of their kid and one day, the ex just checked out of parenting. Left the kid at school and sent a text to my friend saying "I'm done". It's been hard on everyone.
14thLizardQueen@reddit (OP)
I'm not judging because honestly, maybe it was better for the kid to not be with someone who felt they couldn't do it. I wish to hell my mom would have dropped me somewhere instead of her bs.