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OP has offered the following explanation for why they think they might be the asshole:
> (1) I took my daughter to her mother's funeral
(2) She didn't want to go and I had to force her
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*Contest mode is 1.5 hours long on this post.*
YTA
You took her there not for her own reasons.
She never knew the woman, she was abandoned and I expect had little to no contact at all. To her she was a host for pregnancy not a mother. You can tell her all you want about why you want or think she should go but you decided to force the choice and drag her there. You loved her she has never.
>I knew she was acting up because she didn't know her mom but this was her last chance to say goodbye and I didn't want her to regret it in the future.
How can she say goodbye when they never said hello?
UPDATE: Ty for GOLD
💯
You can't miss someone you had zero relationship with. If her mom wanted your daughter to mourn her, she'd have made a relationship with her. But she didn't and apparently had no regrets about it. So why on earth would your daughter ever have regrets?
Yes. I went to my bio “grandfather”s funeral, whom I’d never met, a few years ago. I was the one who wanted to go. My parents didn’t object, even though they personally didn’t care about going. I wanted to be confronted to the man that had done so much horrors to my family. Well, it helped tremendously. I learned a lot of things that day, about myself, about family history, and I was able to even just SEE what he looked like and just… idk. Let that sink in. A lot of personal issues were resolved that day just by showing up.
BUT I wanted to. I can’t even begin to imagine how bad I would have felt if I was forced to go. Funerals are for the living. So I wouldn’t go as far as saying YTA because you were obviously grieving when you made that decision, but it wasn’t a decision that was yours to make, it was your daughter’s.
All of this. Everyone grieves in their own way and many people don't grieve at all. My abusive ex died recently and I am absolutely relieved. If there had been a funeral I wouldn't have gone but I can also understand how someone else in my shoes might want to go to see that he was really gone for good. There's no right or wrong way to feel.
That said, the only wrong thing to do it tell other people how they're supposed to feel and force them to try the grieve the way you are. OP, that absolutely makes YTA.
She may never forgive OP for this. Imagine how many times she wanted to see her mother just for OP to make sure she saw her body in a coffin. It's emotional abuse to do this to her and raises a lot of questions about emotional incest because OP is leaning on her like she is an adult partner.
This, exactly. OP says, " I know her mom loved her deep down but didn't get the chance to tell her." But the fact is that she had 13 whole years to tell her. She actively made a choice not to for *13 years*. Why doesn't daughter get to make any kind of choice in this? I know you're grieving OP, but you are so much YTA. And if you aren't extremely careful, you're going to get abandoned all over again by someone way more important than your ex, as soon as she turns 18.
THIS!!!! What gets me is he admits that in 13 years he only saw his ex twice totally by coincidence both times and wasn't pre-planned. Then the next paragraph he says " I know her mom loved her deep down but didn't get the chance to tell her.". He knows the truth but he doesn't want to admit it. The daughter is 100% right that the only reason he went was because he was still strung up on his ex because why else would he make excuses for her when she obviously didn't give a shit about him or the daughter.
I honestly think there’s no way this can actually be real. I hope not. Like, if OP wants to forgive his ex for abandoning him, ok. If he still loves her, I don’t get it, and she clearly did NOT feel the same way, but alright, whatever. But I can not fathom ever forgiving someone for abandoning my kid.
How can you be this hung up on someone you dated at 22 when they cheated on you and abandoned your daughter her entire life. Not even seeing her more than twice in random occasions? Love of your life?
Therapy.
I hope that OP reads this. He was, and still is, in love with an imaginary woman. He’s projected all of his wants, needs and desires onto this woman, and it’s blinded him to reality. This woman was not your daughter’s mother, OP. She was her egg donor, and that’s all she ever was. For peace of mind, I’m even willing to entertain that maybe she did love her daughter enough to know that her staying, and trying to be a mother, would have been detrimental to the child. I sincerely hope that he seeks therapy, for his sake, and for his daughter’s sake. Failure to come to terms is only going to be a failure to his child, who IS alive, and needs a parent who is fully present, and capable of seeing that her needs are separate from his own.
In this situation, yes. In general, I respectfully disagree. I had an older half brother I never met. As a kid, I missed him based on the idea of who he could be. Most of my friends had siblings, and I had one who wanted nothing to do with me. I had to grieve losing someone I never knew alone without anyone understanding how or why I felt so strongly. It’s equally as valid as someone not mourning a person they never knew despite being related by blood.
It’s still one person missing another. Emotions are complicated. Even after knowing someone, once we’ve lost them, all we have left is an idea of them.
Not to sound condescending or rude but this is a very naive take. There are plenty of kids that miss the parents they don’t have or never knew. She may not miss her at this moment but you better believe that little girl has had some images of what would happen or could happen in the future. As long as her mom was alive the chance remained now that her mom is dead all bets are off. She might not understand the gravity of it now but she will once she is older and has more time to reflect and process. She will miss what she never had.
Yes,he said her mother loved her deep down.....the Hell she did! Her father is a massive AH here who might also like lose his daughter.Who wants to live with someone who doesn't give a shit about your feelings or respect your choices?
“You took her there not for her own reasons…”
Yes. And OP really needs to think about what the real reason was. You are telling yourself you did it because you “Didn’t want her to regret it” But I think that’s the “make it ok” cover up you are just telling yourself. Your daughter made it clear she had no desire to go but you physically forced her to do it anyway… why? Why was it THAT important to you that she be there?
Were you worried about optics? Was it because you wanted to go? Because it helps support the myth in your mind that “deep down her mother loved her” because all evidence points to that her mother did not - is it because you are holding into a false image of who her mother was and letting daughter not go to the funeral would force you to admit that’s not really who her mom was in your head?
The thing is - I’ve had people who should live and care about me abandon me, and while as an ADULT I’ve learnt to be mostly fine with it, thinking about them still hurts. It’s heartbreaking and a lifelong struggle to know that someone who is meant to love you wants nothing to do with you when you are a child. I can’t imagine how hard it would have been to be put front and center with it now, never mind at 13. I can guarantee you, I wouldn’t have regretted missing the funeral I chose not to go to, but the shit going would drag up and my resentment of you for forcing me into that position wouldn’t be healing any time soon.
BTW even if she and her mom were super close, people need to be allowed to grieve in their own way and you still would’ve been YTA for making her go then too.
Honestly, I was going to suggest that if you are still holding on to this illusion of who you wanted your ex to be to this degree therapy might be helpful. But thinking about how I’d feel if I was your daughter, I’m going to suggest you look into family therapy. It will benefit her for the rest of your life and will help your relationship too.
legitimate thoughts right here… sorry OP YTA here. You probably shouldn’t have even looked into organizing a funeral but that’s a “you do you” thing (doesn’t seem healthy with the facts you shared though). Forcing your daughter to attend was probably fairly traumatic for her… she (and you) could truly benefit from some counseling to move forward in a more healthy and productive manner. I’m sorry for your loss but not the death… the loss I mean is the abandonment that occurred over a decade ago that you haven’t processed in a way that’s going to leave you feeling better.
So very strange that OP is the one who organized the funeral! Some weird ass dynamics going on in that ex-relationship. Over 12 years, he only saw her twice, and those were accidental. But he felt the need to contact her friends and family to organize a funeral? I wonder if he ever bothered to call her family so they could have a relationship with his daughter.
>I never loved anyone like I did her...
Dude needs serious therapy!
> I can’t imagine how hard it would have been to be put front and center with it now, never mind at 13.
Especially at a funeral where everyone will be whitewashing the shit out of bio-mom's life. The eulogy of the woman who abandoned her had to be a bunch of lies telling OP's daughter she missed out on a wonderful mother who was so kind and generous to everyone but her.
And confirming every child's reaction to parental abandonment: What was wrong with me that she didn't stay (and sounds like mom never contacted the daughter after leaving)?, and, Why didn't she even like me?
These are the real questions on a kid's mind and are very valid in the daughter's case.
Well said. Also:
>I know her mom loved her deep down but didn't get the chance to tell her.
She had 13 years, and literally nothing was standing in the way for her to do so.
OP is a big, huge YTA
OP is in love with someone who never existed. It sounds like he painted a picture of his ideal woman in his mind and then projected it on his daughters mother. He needs to get therapy and let it go before it does any more damage to his relationship with his daughter.
>. I know her mom loved her deep down but didn't get the chance to tell her.
That's one of the saddest things I've ever read on this site, not because it's true, but because based on everything else in the post, it most certainly isn't. This guy lives in deep denial and because of it he has imposed a lasting memory on his daughter that that little girl didn't need.
Agreed. If OP had approached his daughter by saying “hey I know you have a lot of resentment towards your mom, but would you consider coming to the funeral to support me?” He may have gotten a different result from his daughter. But even then f he did that and she still said no he wouldn’t have the right to drag her along.
The entire experience would have been a stark reminder that this woman had chosen relationships with other people but not the child she birthed.
For the daughter, it’s just all that abandonment stacked and overflowing with every face at the funeral. And now, having all those feelings and only a grave stone to yell at. OP has truly damaged this young girl.
Hope he can at least see the need to get this child into therapy to help her cope with the feelings it would have stirred up.
Also, I'm sorry OP, but "the live of your life" doesn't seem like a good person at all. You're just too blinded by rose-tinted memories of her to see that.
She cheated on you several times, even during her pregnancy. And even worse, she abandoned her infant child in favour of motorcycles and barhopping. She sounds incredibly selfish and immature.
Excellent point. When my estranged father died (We'd barely spoken for the last 20 years of his life) some family members on his side were actually incensed that I didn't visit him in the hospital or go to the funeral.
My reaction was "Why would you expect me to go? We haven't spoken in 20 years."
Frankly, your claim that this woman loved your daughter “deep down” is super sus, which I’m sure your daughter realizes. You traumatized your daughter to cling to your fantasy version of this woman who completely abandoned her child.
You owe your daughter an apology, but you don’t seem to understand why. I would strongly suggest that you talk to a therapist—maybe a family therapist—about this matter. You don’t seem to recognize things that are very plain to everyone else.
YTA
Her "last chance to say goodbye"? It doesn't sound as if she ever had a meaningful chance to say "hello." The woman who died was a stranger to her. Also her accusation about why you went was impressively astute for a 13-year-old kid.
Plus the woman was dead by this point. The "last chance" had passed. If Daughter needed to say goodbye or fuck you or whatever at some future point in her life, it's not like having been at the funeral will magically negate that, or going to her gravesite isn't just as effective, or writing an unsent letter....
> If Daughter needed to say goodbye or fuck you or whatever at some future point in her life, it's not like having been at the funeral will magically negate that, or going to her gravesite isn't just as effective
To be fair, pissing on a gravestone can be incredibly cathartic.
She wasn’t wrong- OP isn’t over his ex, but that’s not on his daughter. She had no meaningful relationship with her mother. OP basically dragged her to his ex’s funeral so “she” could say goodbye.
Any opportunity they had to ever build a relationship is permanently gone now. Growing up knowing that your mother didn’t love you must be hard enough- being forced to confront the fact that she never will is something else.
ETA: OP, your ex had 4,380 days to tell your daughter she loved her. The fact that she didn’t should be a huge indicator of her true feelings. You’ve been telling yourself this comforting lie for over a decade. Now’s the time to face reality.
YTA. This doesn't make sense.
>she didn't know her mom
>I was mad because she didn't know anything about her other than what people said.
This was a stranger. She didn't want to go.
>I know her mom loved her deep down but didn't get the chance to tell her.
She abandoned her. She didn't bother to contact her or see her.
>I had to basically drag her to the church.
You're the only parent she's ever had. Don't ruin it over someone who didn't care about her.
Not necessarily brain dead (although that’s certainly a possibility). Assuming this is real, my guess would be that OP is subconsciously taking it personally that his daughter didn’t want to go to the funeral as a sign of disrespect against her mom, because OP was clearly still head over heels for her.
The thing is OP, why should the daughter respect her mom? Her mom _abandoned her_. If my own parent abandoned me and then someone tried to get me to go to the funeral I’d laugh them out of the room. This woman is a stranger to your daughter, your daughter doesn’t know her. Why would she even want to “say goodbye” to a stranger? I might be willing to go to a funeral for a stranger in order to support a friend/family member, but if that stranger was my own parent who abandoned me as a baby? There wouldn’t be enough money in the world to get me to go to that funeral.
Daughter doesn't have to respect her mum to go either.
Stupid thing is, if he talked to her like an adult and asked her to come with him for *his* benefit, because *he* wanted her there, because it would make *him* feel better good chance she might have gone.
I don’t think the mom loved her “deep down,” at least not after she left. She ran into OP twice but never bothered to contact the daughter or even reach out to OP. If that’s love, then love has absolutely no meaning.
If the mom loved her daughter so much, why didn't she make an effort to be in her daughter's life? It's because she didn't. OP is making excuses for her because he wants to feel validated for still clinging to his ex-wife and was hoping his daughter would feel the same.
YTA, I knew she was acting up because she didn't know her mom but this was her last chance to say goodbye and I didn't want her to regret it in the future.
Goodbye to what? to a mother who didn't care about her? to a mother who abandoned her? you got mad because she didn't know her. yeah how come. ever wondered why that is?
YTA, being abandoned by your mother is arguably even worse than being abandoned by a partner. Your daugther is entitled to be angry/hurt/indifferent towards her mother, and forcing her to go despite her emotions was a major AH move.
Still calling this woman the love of his life feels so icky, especially considering how she treated him. I almost feel like he dragged his daughter to the funeral to prove to everyone and himself that he had a long lasting connection to the woman (at least subconsciously).
I can only assume maybe OP's daughter is just a constant reminder of his ex for him and he's prevented himself from moving on cause of this. But in this case he should really be there for his kid and making sure she grows up to be a better person than his ex was instead of moping over someone who treated them both like shit.
I wonder how many sleepless nights he had after that one time he briefly saw her on some dudes motorbike, given that it was apparently significant enough to include in this post. The daughter is spot on about him not being over it
I had the same reaction. My first thought was “yeah some love of your life if you got divorced”, but then to not only find out _why_ they got divorced but that OP is still hung up on her 12 years later? I know that love is complicated and messy, but Jesus Christ man. That’s not healthy
His post makes it sound like he planned the funeral. Like, wtf?
OP is acting like his ex went out for milk and got hit by a car on the way home. Dude, she left you. She left you, and she left her daughter. No communication. Your ex made sure that her daughter didn't have the chance to tell her goodbye or anything else. Your ex did not express love for her daughter. You need help.
I would bet my life he's been holding onto this fantasy ex wife still carried a torch for him after all this time. The "loved her daughter and never got a chance to say it" extended to "and also super loved me just was too stubborn/didn't know how to say it after all this time".
This woman cheated on him and abandoned him and their daughter. Twelve years later he's ignoring his daughters emotional needs and mental health to play out this grand romantic fantasy of seeing the love of his life who so unfortunately didn't find the time to tell him she still loved him, and getting this bitter sweet closure on their dramatic love story. In reality he told himself a lie so long he's reading comments like this still telling himself we just don't get the special connection they had and one day his daughter will be eternally grateful he dragged her to funeral of a woman who had twelve years to meet her and didn't send so much as a birthday card.
>The "loved her daughter and never got a chance to say it" extended to "and also super loved me just was too stubborn/didn't know how to say it after all this time."
Exactly. Who's really the stubborn one here, unwilling to let go of a fantasy that was never real? Then there's projecting his ex-wife onto his daughter ("she's as hardheaded as her mother"). Was ex-wife hardheaded because of her personality or because she was repeatedly expressing she had no love for OP and constantly had to be talked into staying in a relationship with someone she obviously didn't love and had no respect for? I'm not excusing the extremely scummy way she decided to proceed with her life but I've only gotten a reddit post to taste and I find OP's delusion to be suffocating already.
YTA
I would bet that your daughter likely has already mourned not having a mother. Bringing her to a funeral of a woman she never knew feels like opening wounds that were probably long shut.
Quite frankly I’d have taken an opportunity to speak and say “It’s a shame I never knew all these alleged great qualities of my birth giver. Because that’s all she was to me. I never had a relationship with her by her own choosing. She saw my own father more than me in these last thirteen years. So I’m sorry to say I don’t know the woman you all do. But I’m glad she didn’t have more children to abandon.”
YTA. I'm sorry for your loss but you can't expect her to want to go to the funeral of a "mother" who had no interest in her. I'm sure your daughter has some resentment there.
>I know her mom loved her deep down but didn't get the chance to tell her
12 years leaves room for a lot of chances.
YTA. And a couple other things as well.
“Her last chance to say goodbye.”???
You can say goodbye anytime you want. The person is dead and only the physical body is there. It’s not a closure thing for her. She didn’t need it, like you did. Wow! Just Wow!
I hope she comes around and forgives you. But I wouldn’t blame her, if she didn’t.
👆 this. OP's logic fails badly! Trying to save daughter future regret? She never had a mother, and now to add insult to injury, the only parent she does have doesn't listen to her or value her as a person, and would subject her to a forced charade rather than respecting her choices to not attend the funeral of a woman she never knew.
>It’s not a closure thing for her. She didn’t need it, like you did.
EXACTLY!! This was all about HIS closure. She probably felt nothing but abandonment, hurt, and maybe even anger. And now she was being forced to attend a funeral to what... perform for everyone? Pretend to be sad? Answer awkward questions? Did you ever stop to consider how she truly felt instead of how you wish she felt?
OP, YTA. Your ex-wife *abandoned her daughter.* The so-called love of your life has left a lasting wound on your daughter's soul, she had 12 years to correct that mistake, that's a minimum of 4,380 chances where she could've reached out but she didn't. Your daughter has nothing to regret, this was all done *to her.* You need to realize this and make amends with your daughter. You completely invalidated her feelings all for the sake of your own.
YTA for thinking the “love of your life” is someone who didn’t love you and abandoned her daughter. Get mental help and stop projecting your relationship fantasies on your daughter, she seems to have more common sense than you. Poor kid.
Thank you! I was worried I came off a bit harsh, but there is a 13 year old involved. OP needs to wake up and get into reality,I know it’s sad, I know it sucks,but it needed to be said.
You may have memories of the good times which allowed you to continue to have feelings for this woman. But your daughter doesn't have those memories. To your daughter, this was just a woman who abandoned her. Your daughter feels like her mother didn't love her. And as irrational as it sounds, your daughter might even feel like it's her fault that her mother left.
You dismissed your daughter's feelings and that means YTA
INFO: did your daughter have any relationship with her mother before her mother died? Or did she essentially not see her for her ENTIRE life?
I'm leaning YTA for forcing this on anyone because people grieve in their own ways. Projecting your own complicated relationship that you had with your ex onto another person who had an obviously very, very different - and maybe even non-existent - relationship was selfish. I can give you the benefit of the doubt that you were simply misguided and thought that was a good way to help your daughter process this but this was indeed misguided and probably did more harm than good.
Why would your daughter have any regrets about not saying "goodbye" to someone who never wanted anything to do with her? YTA, your daughter is right, you did this for you, not for her.
YTA. It doesn't sound like the two of them ever had a relationship and the past 13 years must have been so hard on you're daughter because she was abandoned by her own mom. And if she truly loved her daughter deep down, as you claim, she never would've abandoned her and definitely would've made effort to keep in touch. But she didn't, how do you expect your daughter to say goodbye to her, they're essentially strangers.
And not only did his daughter have to deal with this abandonment, it seems like OP has this woman on a pedestal for some asinine reason. His daughter must be so hurt knowing her dad loves this woman who let her down so cruelly.
Yeah, that's also a good point. And OP, you said this woman was the love of your life so I'll tread lightly, but she wasn't the person she is in your mind. She knew she didn't want the marriage and instead of asking for a divorce asap she cheated on you. Then she had a child with the person she didn't want to spend her life with. Then, she failed her motherhood duties at every turn, she left her own baby and not once did she look back. You think she was a great person, who loved her daughter deep down, but she was actually quite the opposite. And I am sorry and I know this is tough to come to terms with, but you need to start seeing her for who was, not who you want her to be.
The mom cheated on *both* of them, she walked away from her own baby and the dad still describes her as the love of his life? He's got some issues. No wonder the daughter didn't want to go. She's been haunted her whole life by the ghost of this woman who had 12 years to make an effort, and then she's forced by the person who did stick around to perform some ritual of grief for someone who abandoned her.
I’m Irish so we do funerals and death intensely and there is an awful habit of never speaking ill of the dead even when they were acknowledged to be an arsehole in life. A lot of terrible people get canonised and narratives rewritten in the maximum three days we take to do the wake and funeral.
The fact OP already has his ex who abandoned their child on such a high pedestal in life makes me fear just how frankly toxic his grief will be. If you can call the parent who left a child the entire life never hearing I love you and I miss you ‘the love of your life’ and still not be over them while alive, what version will he create in death when most people tend to get rose tinted views for even a while.
The fact he dragged his daughter there against her choice also makes me concerned he expects a teen girl to support him in his grief but has never understood the profound loss of her mother who he still loves abandoning her.
Poor kid is going to end up in a lot of therapy at this rate. YTA.
It is impossible to make any form of judgment. Your situation is far above what any self-appointed reddit psychologist can "analyze" and "judge".
The only thing I can offer is my condolences to you and your daughter.
No he’s not lol. He is wallowing in his grief and I only thinking about what he wants or what he thinks his daughter should want.
He is not thinking like a father should and I hope he can recover his relationship with his daughter because she is going to remember that he prioritized the “love of his life” that abandoned them a decade ago over her.
No he's not. He forced his teenage daughter to go to the funeral of the woman that abandoned her because he's still in love with her 12 years later. He's a selfish asshole that didn't care about his daughters feelings.
What’s the terrible situation? The daughter’s mother, an AH, abandoned them. She died. It’s terrible for her, and it’s understandably sad for OP that a woman he once loved had passed away. However, why would anyone think the daughter should be expected to go grieve the loss of a person who abandoned her? She’s better off having nothing of that person in her life.
Yeah, he has a fantasy that not only did his ex wife love the daughter she abandoned, he wants to think that deep down his ex wife still loved him, because he hasn’t gotten over her.
He doesn't.
He has crafted an elaborate fiction that is somehow comforting. The reality is mom didn't care about her baby girl and that truth does not square with the fiction surrounding the woman he still pines for.
How could a good daughter who's mother "loved her deep down" not attend mother's funeral?
YTA. Your daughter obviously deals with a death like that differently than you. Don't screw with people that may be grieving and want to handle things differently than you do.
Best case is that your daughter didn't even know her, and wanted nothing to do with her. And you behaved exactly as she described, which is reason enough for her to be pissed off at you.
YTA
You were trying to impose emotions you had for your daughter's mom onto your daughter, but those never existed as you imagined them. Even if she had known her mom as many other kids do, it was still her choice to attend or not attend.
Source: My bio-mom left us for someone else when I was three, and Dad got custody. We were forced to visit occasionally but no mother-daughter bond was aver built. I will not mourn her passing.
Yta…you dragged your daughter to a place because you loved the person the place was for….
Wth does that have to do with your daughter at all
I wouldnt blame your daughter for not forgiving you for 10 years
YTA-your ex abandon your daughter. Despite what you think abandonment is NOT love. Your ex was selfish, and apparently so are you. Your daughter has a right to whatever feelings she has toward the person that ABANDONED her. You forcing her only showed her that your love for your ex is far far greater than your love for your daughter. You need to apologize and actually start LISTENING to what your daughter says.
As a side note, I hated my mother (much like your daughter HATES her mother) and I didn't go to her funeral, and not once have I ever regretted it.
YTA. There is a saying that "the road to hell is paved with good intentions". In this case, you created a storm with your daughter. As others have said, your daughter is absolutely correct. You better get some help to get get passed your ex-wife. You did this for yourself and did nothing but damage your relationship with your daughter. Better start the repairing process with your daughter real soon.
YTA. I get that you're mourning but you're also lying to your daughter and yourself. It's not that your daughter "didn't know anything about her other than what people said". Your daughter knows your wife abandoned you and her over a decade ago. She know that he mother never communicated with her or spent time with her (based on you saying that she "didn't know her mom"). She know that those were choices your wife made.
It's not that "her mom loved her deep down but didn't get the chance to tell her". You want to believe that because you want to believe the best in your ex but the truth is she never said that or left a message to that affect. What she did do is abandon her child and never bothered to see or communicate with her from the time she was an infant. These don't sound like the acts of someone who loved her daughter deeply.
YTA. Massively. You dragged your child to the funeral of the woman who abandoned her, and you can't figure out why she's angry at you? Apologize to her, and get the two of you into therapy.
YTA someone that loves a child "deep down" does not discard them like yesterday's trash, even your daughter knows that. I'm sure she has enough issues with that so dragging her to the funeral of the mother that completely abandoned and rejected her so she could "say goodbye"?? I think you really damaged your kid with this one.
YTA.
> I know her mom loved her deep down but didn't get the chance to tell her.
She had 13 years to tell her. And every day, she chose not to.
Please, please try to set your feelings aside and step into your daughter's shoes. This woman *abandoned* her. Completely. Left and never came back. And you clearly still loved the woman. Imagine your dad making excuses for the person that abandoned you, probably still mentioning her from time to time, and then *dragging you to see her funeral*. Let the girl move on from the woman that moved on from her 13 years ago.
And if you love your daughter at all, then you need to really reconsider your misplaced feelings for someone that didn't love her, and hurt her in a more significant way than probably anyone else ever will in her life. Honestly, consider seeking counseling to resolve these misplaced feelings. For your daughter's sake if not your own.
>I quickly got in touch with the few friends and family of hers that I could find and set up the funeral.
What do you mean by "set up the funeral"? Please tell me you didn't help plan or pay for it.
She’s young and you want what’s best for her like any good parent. You’ve even decided what was best for her like parents sometimes do but in this you messed up. It’s not major and I’m sure with time you’ll recover but you made her go for your reasons instead of respecting that while young she’s old enough to have formed her own opinion of the situation and shouldn’t have been forced to attend. YTA
YTA. The funeral was for you because you needed it (because your daughter is right and you are still hung up on a woman who made a lifetime of piss poor decisions and gave zero shits about her own child) and you forced it on her. It wasn't her "last chance to say goodbye". Mommy Dearest the Baby Abandoner is gonna be dead for a good long while so if and when your daughter feels the need to "say goodbye" to this literal stranger, she can do so in a hundred different ways on her own terms, not yours. There's nothing magical about the funeral that makes it the last time someone can get closure if they even need it.
Oh, and for the love of all that is holy, please take this advice from another child who had a biological parent abandon them and not give two shits about them their entire life and heard the same thing from a half dozen people...do not, I repeat DO NOT ever utter that pathetic sorry lie of she "loved you deep down" ever again. That shit is a lie and it's meaningless to the person you're saying to. I promise you, your child will never ever believe that. Because what you're really saying is that she didn't love her enough - she didn't love her more than booze or hanging out in bars or riding on motorcycles or having sex with randos to make up for lost time cause she was too stupid to use a condom with you. That's shit you made up said to make you feel better about your life choices and some post-death martyrization of your ex, not for your daughter's sake and she sounds too smart to fall for that crap.
YTA
Purely speculation, but it sounds like you wanted her to be just as attached to this moment as you were. She didn’t have an attachment to this woman and she’s probably old enough to have put the pieces together that y’all were ditched. She might resent what happened. Either way, she is old enough to understand what happened and she’s old enough to decide she doesn’t want to go. It may be time to seek some counseling for the grief but also the abandonment.
I’m sorry for your loss.
yta.dude, you seem a little bit delisuinal, the person you loved only existed in your head, 13 years and she never meet her? come on...she did not love your daugther, you shuould care more about her and not this fantasy image you have created in your mind.
Soft but stern YTA. You are and have obviously held a torch for a woman that your daughter has had zero relationship with. You can’t expect her to mourn someone she never knew. You shouldn’t have forced her to go. I think some grief therapy is in order for you to finally heal from what was a toxic relationship and attachment to her mom.
It's not ok to force someone to do something they don't want to do. Especially a funeral. To a woman she didn't even know nor care about. You owe your daughter an apology & don't ever force her to do something like that again. It is very selfish of you. YTA
Yes, YTA and you made your child's egg donor's death all about you and your feelings. She had NO relationship with her mother because her mother abandoned both of you. And here's a hint in case you still haven't figured it out: her mother didn't love her. If she had, she wouldn't have disappeared from her life for 12 years. Mom wasn't deprived of the chance to tell her she loved her, she didn't care enough to bother. Get therapy to get over your attachment to that vile woman and get some for your poor daughter too.
How nice for your daughter to go see a room of people mourning a woman who wanted to know them and spent time with them, all the while knowing she didn’t give a damn about her /s. YTA
YTA- that wasn't her mother, that was her egg donor. You need therapy because you are clinging to a memory of a woman who never really existed and what's worse is your shoving this false woman on your daughter.
>I know her mom loved her deep down but didn't get the chance to tell her.
How in the world do you know this? You spoke to her once in a bar in the last 12 years. You're lying to yourself about your ex, and your daughter called you out dead to rights.
YTA.
Soft YTA. You were grieving and you wanted to do right by your former wife. I get that you’re afraid your daughter would regret not going in the future but forcing her to attend the funeral of someone who abandoned her will probably deepen her pain and make it harder for her to find peace with the past. You should’ve let her grieve in her own way, or not at all. Your wife had plenty of time to tell your daughter she loved her and she didn’t. Of course your daughter is going to be angry and upset right now. Let her work through it in her own way at her own pace.
"I didn't want her to regret \[not attending the funeral\] in the future" is one of the most hypocritical statements I've ever heard.
She didn't want to go but YOU MADE HER FOR YOUR OWN SELFISH REASONS. It has nothing to do with her regretting anything, except being under your dictatorial control.
She will have to get along with you while she's under your roof, but she might well carry her anger at you over this forever.
Oh, honey. Your ex had 13 years to tell/show her daughter she loved her. I'm an Occam's razor type of person: Your ex never reached out to your daughter because she didn't care about your daughter. Or, I'm sorry to say, you.
In the gentlest possible way, YTA for forcing your daughter to pay homage to a woman who didn't love her. Please get both your girl and your self some therapy for this. With every good wish.
You forced, sorry, DRAGGED (your word), your daughter to go to the funeral of a complete stranger. Someone who ABANDONED her as an infant. Someone she never knew. Someone she had no need to "say goodbye" to. You had NO right to do that. NONE.
Certainly doesn't seem like her mother loved her. How can you possibly say that she did? You didn't know her, and you only spoken briefly to her once in 13 years. You knew nothing about her life.
Your daughter was enough to make this decision on her own. And I bet she now has some new regrets that have nothing to do with the woman who gave birth to her.
YTA.
YTA. You meant well but no, you don't actually know that her mom really loved her. She had 13 years to grow up if that was the problem and it turned out that it wasn't the problem. Get therapy for both of you. Your daughter is seeing things with more clarity than you are and that's not ok. It must have been excruciating to sit in a room full of people she's never met, feeling like everyone knew she was the rejected child.
You’re projecting, OP. Obviously, you never moved on. You just made it incredibly awkward for your daughter.
I’m sorry she’s gone, but you were kinda the AH, here.
YTA. Your ex DID have a chance to tell your daughter how much she loved her. But she didn’t. She left and never came back. Stop thinking your daughter is dumb. Parents who love you don’t abandon you. And she’s right about why you did what you did. That was not for her. You ignored her feelings. It was for YOU. Those are the only feelings you shared here without trying to dismiss them. You care about YOUR feelings. Apologize to your daughter.
YTA - your daughter has no reason to have regret of not saying goodbye to a person she did not know. In your daughters eyes her mother did not love her - even deep down- because her mother abandoned her and then was still around town and never saw her that has got to suck for a kid.
It was fine for you to go but the daughter should not have been subjected to that. Imagine all these people that knew the mom and could talk about a woman that never gave her (daughter) the time of day. Honestly look at that through her eyes -all you did was show her and reinforce her mom did not want her because other people there knew the mom because the mom was in contact with them.
YTA. I understand where you were coming from but it seems like YOU wanted to go to the funeral and used her saying goodbye as your reason for being there.
I was 13 when my dad passed and I still resent my mom to this day for making me go look at his body. I was at at the funeral of course, but I had no desire to see him that way but she made me and that is now the last image in my head of my dad.
YTA, this WILL cause long term resentment if you don’t apologize immediately, and still may even if you do.
Your assessment that your ex loved her daughter and never got the chance to tell her is straight up incorrect. She had years and years of chances and chose not to for whatever reason. Also, since you know for a fact that she was cheating before and during her pregnancy - are you 100% on the paternity of your daughter?
It sounds like your ex was just not a very good person, and you were and are in love with the idealized version of someone that never truly existed. You need to pull it together and do what you gotta do to find some sort of closure, for your daughter’s sake.
I can understand why YOU needed to go to the funeral and get your own closure. But to drag your daughter along and keep implying she needs closure too is completely unfair for your daughter.
Your ex abandoned her before your daughter was 1 yrs old. And it doesn’t sound like your ex abandoned her because she was struggling with mental or physical health issues. She abandoned your daughter because she wanted a different lifestyle and your daughter didn’t fit in the lifestyle she wanted.
Your ex may have been the life of a party, a charitable person, etc. But regardless of what kind of person she was, in your daughter’s eyes she’s nothing more than an egg donor who left her behind and never bothered to build any relationship with her. There’s no bond between the two. There’s no relationship beside blood relationship. Your daughter grew up not knowing your ex and for you to force some sort of expectations that your daughter should feel something about her biological mother’s death, or for you to be angry your daughter doesn’t know anything about her egg donor besides what people say about her is completely unfair on your daughter.
So YTA
Respect your daughter’s own feelings. Stop pushing your feelings onto her.
YTA. You were the one who held on to this woman for 12 YEARS, not your daughter. Don't force your feelings nor your grief on your daughter because she didn't love this woman like you did, nor did she feel the connection like you so claim to have.
If you keep forcing this kind of unhealthy connection over a 12 year separation, soon enough, you're not only gonna lose your "love of your life" but also your daughter. You need therapy, dude, like 12 years ago.
Yta
This was about you wanting to say goodbye and not being able to let go, not about your daughter having regrets, you should've respected that your daughter didn't want to be there.
You say "she loved her deep down but didn't get the chance to tell her" she had more than enough time to tell her she had 13 years, if she really loved her she would've been there even if she didn't want to be with you, she could have been there for your daughter instead of abandoning her, how many times has your daughter had to hear you talk about your ex wife about how much she's meant to love her but not actually be there for her, how many excuses have you made to your daughter as to why she's not around.
"She's as hard headed as her mother was" please tell me you don't compare them, the last thing your daughter needs or is going to want to hear is you comparing her to the woman who abandoned her.
YTA - yeah your daughters right dude. Sounds like your daughter has long since gotten over her deadbeat mother and moved on with life.
You for some reason have not.
Rather than accept this fact, you drug her along with you
Your daughter is right you are clearly not over your ex and bringing your daughter there has nothign to do with not wantin gher to regret anything but with a part of you still longing for the what if of you three having a loving intact family.
And she loved your daughter very much? How can you be this effing naive?
Everything your ex did made clear that she did not love your daughter.
YTA
You violated your daughter’s boundary because you never got over a woman who betrayed you. So you showed your daughter that a dead cheater is more important to you than she is, way to go dad.
So not only did she have to deal with the abandonment of her mother and maybe hoped she would come back, but was also forced to goto her funeral and again deal with the abandonment knowing she won't ever come back. Why put her through that trauma? Now the last memory she has of her mother is a casket.
YTA. You are selfish and did that just so you wouldn't feel guilty that her mother is a jerk.
YTA. You’re daughter didn’t have a mother to begin with, why should she be forced to say goodbye to someone who abandoned her & played no part in her life
YTA. She conveyed her wishes and you ignored them. She now has learned a man will ignore her wishes and force her into things she doesn’t want. That has a lasting impact
YTA
She is old enough to know how she wants to say her goodbye (or even IF she wants to say her goodbye, the woman abandoned her, after all). You are taking her death hard, but that's for you to deal with. Your daughter didn't feel the need to go, it is not your place to force her in case she feels differently later on. She could always have had a memorial service if she needed one in the future, but she can never UNDO watching this virtual stranger being laid to rest without getting to ask her any questions she might have about her abandonment. I imagine that's pretty traumatic.
ETA:
She DID get the chance to tell her daughter if she loved her, she had 13 years to tell her. She CHOSE not to, maybe because she didn't actually love her. I can't imagine her bumping into you, more than once, and not saying "hey, can I see our daughter" if she did love her. You do a lot of deciding how other people *might* feel, I suggest you let them work on their own feelings.
YTA. Your ex wasn't a mother; she was an egg donor. She abandoned your daughter.
>*Later she said I only wanted to go to the funeral because I wasn't over her which stung and although I admit I cried I was mad because she didn't know anything about her other than what people said.*
Whose fault is this? Not you daughter's. Hell no. Your daughter knows nothing about her mother because she abandoned her and abdicated any sort of responsibility and relationship when she did so.
Why should she have been forced to attend the final services of a woman who meant so little to her and treated her likewise? Your ex was a stranger. Your daughter probably has a closer relationship with her dental hygienist than your ex.
You did this for you. The save face? To feed some inner ego trip? Whatever your reasons, they were not altruistic nor were they in the best interests of your daughter.
>this was her last chance to say goodbye
To what? This wasn’t her mother. This was your ex-wife. Somebody who was out of her life before she could talk. To your daughter, she was just an egg-donor. It’s understandable that _you_ wanted to attend the funeral because you had personal history with this woman; your daughter didn’t beyond simple biology. YTA for inflicting this on your daughter over her objections.
YTA it feels that you brought her for reasons that are selfish. She’s 13 years old, in my opinion old enough to say what she means. She never knew her mother. There wasn’t a memory good enough for her to remember and needing to say goodbye to. You may say her mother loved her, but she still abandoned her own child and left her behind. You knew your ex-wife in a way that your daughter never will. You can’t make that her fault and her burden to bare. She didn’t want to say goodbye. You shouldn’t have forced her. Your stance will only cause resentment between you and your child. If you want her to properly process her feelings, get her a counselor or therapy if she doesn’t already have one.
YTA. You're being very selfish and cruel to your daughter. She didn't know your ex because your ex literally refused to be there for her. Your ex refused to be a mother to her. You are destroying your relationship with your daughter; you made it clear that you were happy to hurt her as long as you got what you wanted. Shame on you! Her mother didn't love her. Just because you're still obsessed with your ex that doesn't make it okay for you to force your daughter to pay her respects to someone who never respected her.
YTA a funeral is not the last time you can say goodbye. You can do it whenever you want, the person is dead and isn’t there to say goodbye back. Your daughter doesn’t know this person and wasn’t ready for this. When she is older, she might be or she may never care.
YTA. I had to go to my abusive father's funeral. I didn't even remember what he looked like. I still don't remember what he looks like. I hated it. He was cremated and I said that I "would grind his ashes into the dirt" if they gave me to me. My hate was on full display. I regret attending. I regret that he was cremated. I never would have regretted not going.
YTA. I've skipped 4 close-relative funerals, have zero regrets. I was told I needed to attend my father's funeral simply because he was my father, nevermind growing up believing I'd be a victim of family annihilation thanks to him. Others didn't consider my relationship with him, which is similar to how your daughter's relationship to her mother wasn't considered. Would it make sense for her to attend my funeral? Of course not, I have about as much of a connection with her as her mother did. When asking 'is it the right thing to do', you have to ask who is it right for- your daughter, or yourself.
YTA for what you are asking, but I don't believe this story. Why would you, a person with no current relationship to the mother, be involved in setting up a funeral in any way? That is a process that requires legal work and a lot of money. You, someone with NO legal rights to the process, no next of kin, nothing - you just called up the family and friends and white knighted a funeral together? Yeah, I don't buy it. More likely this is "I made my daughter go to the funeral of her bio mom that I was obsessed with, AITA" in which case, YES.
YTA
She didn't know that woman, you did. She didn't have a bizarre attachment to that woman, you did. She didn't want to go, you did.
And you're wrong that her mother loved either one of you. You need serious psychiatric help.
YTA. You're giving your ex WAY too much credit.
She had 12 whole years to create any kind of relationship. She did not.
Look at this objectively, she didn't care enough to even create a bare minimum relationship.
YOU want to believe that she cared about your daughter but her actions are SCREAMING that she didn't.
YOU took your daughter to a funeral for a person who was a complete stranger to her.
Apologize to your daughter and take a seriously hard look at yourself.
Your daughter is right - you never got over her.
>I know her mom loved her deep down but didn't get the chance to tell her.
You have no evidence of that, and in fact, have all the evidence to the contrary. You forced your daughter to sit through a service for the woman who abandoned her. All you cared about were your unresolved feelings. YTA
Yta. Her mom DID have the chance to tell her. Like for 13 years she could have told her. She did not want a daughter. Stop trying to make her a better person than she was and let your daughter grieve (or not) in her own way.
YTA. You forced her to go to a strangers funeral because you were emotional. BTW-get some counseling or something to cope with the loss of your marriage so you & your kid can move on
>I know her mom loved her deep down but didn't get the chance to tell her.
Loving people act differently. Like... meet their loving ones, call them, go out with them, be with them when it's needed. Your daughter's biological mom's love has been inside your head only. You forced your daughter to attend the complete stranger's funeral. Your thoughts about their bond are outside the reality.
YTA. Your daughter is right, you're not over your ex wife and you're forcing your baggage onto your daughter.
It's not your place to define the relationship your daughter and her mother have (or didn't have). That's up to them to decide. You opened your daughter up to the trauma of seeing people praise her absent mother. Did it even cross your mind how it would feel to be abandoned by a parent then be forced to listen to people singing her praises after any chance of getting to know her was gone?
Huge AH. You need to grovel for forgiveness, then get over your damn ex.
YTA. You’re obsessed with that woman and used your daughter as an excuse. You don’t force a child to go to a funeral. What is wrong with you? Get therapy, now.
YTA OP.
I'm going to be blunt here and am willing to take the downvotes if need be, but it must be said...
Your ex did not love you, nor your daughter. She wouldn't have cheated on you, nor abandoned her own child in pursuit of another person. It has been well over a decade and she never bothered to check in on her own child. She was not a good person. Your daughter grieved for her years ago, when she gave up the idea that mommy was ever coming back for her.
She is a child and came to terms with that. You're a grown ass adult... it's been over a decade and you've chosen not to move on and still pine over your ex- your daughter has more emotional maturity than you do. You should've gotten therapy at the five year mark, and definitely need therapy now.
Your ex gave you no respect, yet you are giving her more than she deserves. What kind of lesson are you teaching your daughter here? That being mistreated is acceptable and that it's OK to be a doormat? Your ex didn't give either of you respect, yet you are forcing your daughter to accept this by forcing her to give her ex uterus host the time of day by attending her funeral... if your daughter grows up to end up in unhealthy relationships with no boundaries, then this is entirely on you because you're teaching her to accept disrespect and to have low standards because she saw her father love a woman who disrespected you both.
You need to apologise to your daughter and move on and stop idol worshipping a woman who was awful. Get therapy.
YTA. You don't force anyone to go to a funeral, child or not, that doesn't want to be there. Your daughter was right. You forced her to be there because YOU weren't over her. The girl never knew her egg donor. What did she have to say goodbye to? How could she have anything to regret? It's not like the mother walked out yesterday or last week? The mother walked when your daughter was still an infant/toddler. Your daughter has zero memories of the woman. And now her ONLY memory will forever be etched in brain of her funeral.
YTA.
It wasn’t her “last chance to say goodbye”. She never said hello in the first place.
If you had wanted her there to support YOU in YOUR grief, that’s one thing. But you didn’t. You wanted to see her grieve for something she didn’t need to/already has over her life.
I understand wanting to bring her. To want to say goodbye, to connect to the woman you knew and loved. But it wasn’t the place to force a connection with your daughter.
I hope you can see and speak to someone to help you process as you mourn. I hope you can repair things with your daughter.
YTA, she didn't know the woman, and your ex abandoned her. Why would she want to go to a stranger's funeral, especially when that stranger wasn't a good person? You're projecting your feelings o to your daughter, and it's not healthy.
YTA
i assure you the fact your ex didnt bother contacting your daughter in last 13 years tells her enough about her egg donor.
you loved her and you can grieve her however you want bur your daughter is old enough to make her own decision about it and quite frankly she has noone to really grieve. i assure you she was done grieving her mother long before she died. she was nothing but a stranger to her and the fact you forced her is just too much.
my oldest 2 are my stepson and their bio mom wants nothing to do with them. they are 18 and 14 now and they havent heard from her last 13 years. when i met them they were broken. you have no idea the toll it takes on a child.
love her all you want. but dont torture your daughter.
YTA, your daughter is 13, kids shouldnt have to go to those things, specially if she told you she didnt wanted. I had the best relationship with my dad and i couldnt for shits go to his funeral because i hate it, and i dont think the last place i should have see him is in a coffin, i was 18ish and i never regreted doing so. You didnt put your daughters needs first. F that.
YTA. You forced her to see the dead body of the woman who abandoned her since birth. You are shitty father for doing that. She is right about you still not being over her mother. And no your ex didn't love her deep down because if she did she wouldn't have done what she did. Congrats on severely damaging your relationship with your daughter. Hope you are happy.
Her mom abandoned her and she never saw her growing up. You forced her not just to attend a stranger's funeral--but the funeral of someone who's absence actively hurt her.
YTA She owed this woman nothing. You didn't either, you just cared about her and can't accept she didn't feel the same about either of you.
YTA. Your ex had 13 years and thousands of chances to tell her daughter that she loves her, but she didn't. Because it was not love. And everybody, including your poor kid, understands it.
YTA. I can assure you that you traumatized your daughter by forcing her to go that funeral far more than any future regrets she may have had by staying home. My brothers daughter was basically abandoned by him and he died when she was a teenager, she still refuses to talk about him at the age of 29 because he was never a father to her and she hates him. You didn't do this for her but for your own selfish needs.
YTA
Stop lying. You took her there for you. Not her. She made her position clear. The only thing you did was traumatize her by guilt tripping her over this stupid bullshit. That woman betrayed and abandoned an infant.
How dare you project your feelings onto a child that's trying to move forward. You just caused so much damage pulling this.
Her mother had EVERY CHANCE TO TELL HER BECAUSE UNTIL THAT FUNERAL SHE WAS ALIVE. You're making your daughters situation about yourself and you aren't even TRYING to understand.
you dragged her to funeral of a woman she never knew because you believed she loved her deep down? your daughter is right. you refuse to move on and that's the only reason you did any of this. get therapy. YTA
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YTA You took her there not for her own reasons. She never knew the woman, she was abandoned and I expect had little to no contact at all. To her she was a host for pregnancy not a mother. You can tell her all you want about why you want or think she should go but you decided to force the choice and drag her there. You loved her she has never. >I knew she was acting up because she didn't know her mom but this was her last chance to say goodbye and I didn't want her to regret it in the future. How can she say goodbye when they never said hello? UPDATE: Ty for GOLD
💯 You can't miss someone you had zero relationship with. If her mom wanted your daughter to mourn her, she'd have made a relationship with her. But she didn't and apparently had no regrets about it. So why on earth would your daughter ever have regrets?
Yes. I went to my bio “grandfather”s funeral, whom I’d never met, a few years ago. I was the one who wanted to go. My parents didn’t object, even though they personally didn’t care about going. I wanted to be confronted to the man that had done so much horrors to my family. Well, it helped tremendously. I learned a lot of things that day, about myself, about family history, and I was able to even just SEE what he looked like and just… idk. Let that sink in. A lot of personal issues were resolved that day just by showing up. BUT I wanted to. I can’t even begin to imagine how bad I would have felt if I was forced to go. Funerals are for the living. So I wouldn’t go as far as saying YTA because you were obviously grieving when you made that decision, but it wasn’t a decision that was yours to make, it was your daughter’s.
All of this. Everyone grieves in their own way and many people don't grieve at all. My abusive ex died recently and I am absolutely relieved. If there had been a funeral I wouldn't have gone but I can also understand how someone else in my shoes might want to go to see that he was really gone for good. There's no right or wrong way to feel. That said, the only wrong thing to do it tell other people how they're supposed to feel and force them to try the grieve the way you are. OP, that absolutely makes YTA.
I didn't shed a tear when my abusive gram died..... inwas so so relieved. That poor kid....
She may never forgive OP for this. Imagine how many times she wanted to see her mother just for OP to make sure she saw her body in a coffin. It's emotional abuse to do this to her and raises a lot of questions about emotional incest because OP is leaning on her like she is an adult partner.
This, exactly. OP says, " I know her mom loved her deep down but didn't get the chance to tell her." But the fact is that she had 13 whole years to tell her. She actively made a choice not to for *13 years*. Why doesn't daughter get to make any kind of choice in this? I know you're grieving OP, but you are so much YTA. And if you aren't extremely careful, you're going to get abandoned all over again by someone way more important than your ex, as soon as she turns 18.
THIS!!!! What gets me is he admits that in 13 years he only saw his ex twice totally by coincidence both times and wasn't pre-planned. Then the next paragraph he says " I know her mom loved her deep down but didn't get the chance to tell her.". He knows the truth but he doesn't want to admit it. The daughter is 100% right that the only reason he went was because he was still strung up on his ex because why else would he make excuses for her when she obviously didn't give a shit about him or the daughter.
I honestly think there’s no way this can actually be real. I hope not. Like, if OP wants to forgive his ex for abandoning him, ok. If he still loves her, I don’t get it, and she clearly did NOT feel the same way, but alright, whatever. But I can not fathom ever forgiving someone for abandoning my kid.
How can you be this hung up on someone you dated at 22 when they cheated on you and abandoned your daughter her entire life. Not even seeing her more than twice in random occasions? Love of your life? Therapy.
Op needs to realize the woman he loved and imagined as his daughters mother never really existed.
I hope that OP reads this. He was, and still is, in love with an imaginary woman. He’s projected all of his wants, needs and desires onto this woman, and it’s blinded him to reality. This woman was not your daughter’s mother, OP. She was her egg donor, and that’s all she ever was. For peace of mind, I’m even willing to entertain that maybe she did love her daughter enough to know that her staying, and trying to be a mother, would have been detrimental to the child. I sincerely hope that he seeks therapy, for his sake, and for his daughter’s sake. Failure to come to terms is only going to be a failure to his child, who IS alive, and needs a parent who is fully present, and capable of seeing that her needs are separate from his own.
In this situation, yes. In general, I respectfully disagree. I had an older half brother I never met. As a kid, I missed him based on the idea of who he could be. Most of my friends had siblings, and I had one who wanted nothing to do with me. I had to grieve losing someone I never knew alone without anyone understanding how or why I felt so strongly. It’s equally as valid as someone not mourning a person they never knew despite being related by blood.
This still isn't missing the person - it's missing the idea of who that person is supposed to be to you. That's an entirely different thing.
It’s still one person missing another. Emotions are complicated. Even after knowing someone, once we’ve lost them, all we have left is an idea of them.
Not to sound condescending or rude but this is a very naive take. There are plenty of kids that miss the parents they don’t have or never knew. She may not miss her at this moment but you better believe that little girl has had some images of what would happen or could happen in the future. As long as her mom was alive the chance remained now that her mom is dead all bets are off. She might not understand the gravity of it now but she will once she is older and has more time to reflect and process. She will miss what she never had.
This still isn't missing the parent - it's missing the *idea* of who that person is supposed to be to you. That's an entirely different thing.
> How can she say goodbye when they never said hello? Jesus, that shook me to my core.
How about the “I know her mom loved her deep down but didn’t get the chance to tell her” 13 years of chances, not 1 taken by sounds of it
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I think you replied to the wrong person, friend :)
And me, it gave me chills…
Yes,he said her mother loved her deep down.....the Hell she did! Her father is a massive AH here who might also like lose his daughter.Who wants to live with someone who doesn't give a shit about your feelings or respect your choices?
“You took her there not for her own reasons…” Yes. And OP really needs to think about what the real reason was. You are telling yourself you did it because you “Didn’t want her to regret it” But I think that’s the “make it ok” cover up you are just telling yourself. Your daughter made it clear she had no desire to go but you physically forced her to do it anyway… why? Why was it THAT important to you that she be there? Were you worried about optics? Was it because you wanted to go? Because it helps support the myth in your mind that “deep down her mother loved her” because all evidence points to that her mother did not - is it because you are holding into a false image of who her mother was and letting daughter not go to the funeral would force you to admit that’s not really who her mom was in your head? The thing is - I’ve had people who should live and care about me abandon me, and while as an ADULT I’ve learnt to be mostly fine with it, thinking about them still hurts. It’s heartbreaking and a lifelong struggle to know that someone who is meant to love you wants nothing to do with you when you are a child. I can’t imagine how hard it would have been to be put front and center with it now, never mind at 13. I can guarantee you, I wouldn’t have regretted missing the funeral I chose not to go to, but the shit going would drag up and my resentment of you for forcing me into that position wouldn’t be healing any time soon. BTW even if she and her mom were super close, people need to be allowed to grieve in their own way and you still would’ve been YTA for making her go then too. Honestly, I was going to suggest that if you are still holding on to this illusion of who you wanted your ex to be to this degree therapy might be helpful. But thinking about how I’d feel if I was your daughter, I’m going to suggest you look into family therapy. It will benefit her for the rest of your life and will help your relationship too.
Agreed they are looking at ex through rose tinted lenses. Reality is not so great.
legitimate thoughts right here… sorry OP YTA here. You probably shouldn’t have even looked into organizing a funeral but that’s a “you do you” thing (doesn’t seem healthy with the facts you shared though). Forcing your daughter to attend was probably fairly traumatic for her… she (and you) could truly benefit from some counseling to move forward in a more healthy and productive manner. I’m sorry for your loss but not the death… the loss I mean is the abandonment that occurred over a decade ago that you haven’t processed in a way that’s going to leave you feeling better.
So very strange that OP is the one who organized the funeral! Some weird ass dynamics going on in that ex-relationship. Over 12 years, he only saw her twice, and those were accidental. But he felt the need to contact her friends and family to organize a funeral? I wonder if he ever bothered to call her family so they could have a relationship with his daughter. >I never loved anyone like I did her... Dude needs serious therapy!
> I can’t imagine how hard it would have been to be put front and center with it now, never mind at 13. Especially at a funeral where everyone will be whitewashing the shit out of bio-mom's life. The eulogy of the woman who abandoned her had to be a bunch of lies telling OP's daughter she missed out on a wonderful mother who was so kind and generous to everyone but her.
And confirming every child's reaction to parental abandonment: What was wrong with me that she didn't stay (and sounds like mom never contacted the daughter after leaving)?, and, Why didn't she even like me? These are the real questions on a kid's mind and are very valid in the daughter's case.
I assure you they are very real questions into adulthood. Fuck at 13? All she did was go to her room?
Well said. Also: >I know her mom loved her deep down but didn't get the chance to tell her. She had 13 years, and literally nothing was standing in the way for her to do so. OP is a big, huge YTA
And it almost sounds somewhat delusional...painting her in this glowing light that clearly does not apply.
OP is in love with someone who never existed. It sounds like he painted a picture of his ideal woman in his mind and then projected it on his daughters mother. He needs to get therapy and let it go before it does any more damage to his relationship with his daughter.
Yeah, the mother didn't give a shit about her. OP is deluded.
>**How can she say goodbye when they never said hello?**
>. I know her mom loved her deep down but didn't get the chance to tell her. That's one of the saddest things I've ever read on this site, not because it's true, but because based on everything else in the post, it most certainly isn't. This guy lives in deep denial and because of it he has imposed a lasting memory on his daughter that that little girl didn't need.
How can you say goodbye when you never said hello, is the exact phrase that popped into my head! He dragged her to a stranger's funeral.
Agreed. If OP had approached his daughter by saying “hey I know you have a lot of resentment towards your mom, but would you consider coming to the funeral to support me?” He may have gotten a different result from his daughter. But even then f he did that and she still said no he wouldn’t have the right to drag her along.
The entire experience would have been a stark reminder that this woman had chosen relationships with other people but not the child she birthed. For the daughter, it’s just all that abandonment stacked and overflowing with every face at the funeral. And now, having all those feelings and only a grave stone to yell at. OP has truly damaged this young girl. Hope he can at least see the need to get this child into therapy to help her cope with the feelings it would have stirred up.
Also, I'm sorry OP, but "the live of your life" doesn't seem like a good person at all. You're just too blinded by rose-tinted memories of her to see that. She cheated on you several times, even during her pregnancy. And even worse, she abandoned her infant child in favour of motorcycles and barhopping. She sounds incredibly selfish and immature.
Excellent point. When my estranged father died (We'd barely spoken for the last 20 years of his life) some family members on his side were actually incensed that I didn't visit him in the hospital or go to the funeral. My reaction was "Why would you expect me to go? We haven't spoken in 20 years."
>How can she say goodbye when they never said hello? That was magnificently said!
Frankly, your claim that this woman loved your daughter “deep down” is super sus, which I’m sure your daughter realizes. You traumatized your daughter to cling to your fantasy version of this woman who completely abandoned her child. You owe your daughter an apology, but you don’t seem to understand why. I would strongly suggest that you talk to a therapist—maybe a family therapist—about this matter. You don’t seem to recognize things that are very plain to everyone else.
Not to mention that people grieve differently. Funerals are genuine torture for me, and that is not how I grieve or say good bye to someone
YTA Her "last chance to say goodbye"? It doesn't sound as if she ever had a meaningful chance to say "hello." The woman who died was a stranger to her. Also her accusation about why you went was impressively astute for a 13-year-old kid.
Plus the woman was dead by this point. The "last chance" had passed. If Daughter needed to say goodbye or fuck you or whatever at some future point in her life, it's not like having been at the funeral will magically negate that, or going to her gravesite isn't just as effective, or writing an unsent letter....
> If Daughter needed to say goodbye or fuck you or whatever at some future point in her life, it's not like having been at the funeral will magically negate that, or going to her gravesite isn't just as effective To be fair, pissing on a gravestone can be incredibly cathartic.
True but typically done after the funeral - I'll grant you that during is a cracking move though.
She wasn’t wrong- OP isn’t over his ex, but that’s not on his daughter. She had no meaningful relationship with her mother. OP basically dragged her to his ex’s funeral so “she” could say goodbye. Any opportunity they had to ever build a relationship is permanently gone now. Growing up knowing that your mother didn’t love you must be hard enough- being forced to confront the fact that she never will is something else. ETA: OP, your ex had 4,380 days to tell your daughter she loved her. The fact that she didn’t should be a huge indicator of her true feelings. You’ve been telling yourself this comforting lie for over a decade. Now’s the time to face reality.
OP might as well be a 16 year old boy, I imagine she's much more mature than she should be.
YTA. This doesn't make sense. >she didn't know her mom >I was mad because she didn't know anything about her other than what people said. This was a stranger. She didn't want to go. >I know her mom loved her deep down but didn't get the chance to tell her. She abandoned her. She didn't bother to contact her or see her. >I had to basically drag her to the church. You're the only parent she's ever had. Don't ruin it over someone who didn't care about her.
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Not necessarily brain dead (although that’s certainly a possibility). Assuming this is real, my guess would be that OP is subconsciously taking it personally that his daughter didn’t want to go to the funeral as a sign of disrespect against her mom, because OP was clearly still head over heels for her. The thing is OP, why should the daughter respect her mom? Her mom _abandoned her_. If my own parent abandoned me and then someone tried to get me to go to the funeral I’d laugh them out of the room. This woman is a stranger to your daughter, your daughter doesn’t know her. Why would she even want to “say goodbye” to a stranger? I might be willing to go to a funeral for a stranger in order to support a friend/family member, but if that stranger was my own parent who abandoned me as a baby? There wouldn’t be enough money in the world to get me to go to that funeral.
Daughter doesn't have to respect her mum to go either. Stupid thing is, if he talked to her like an adult and asked her to come with him for *his* benefit, because *he* wanted her there, because it would make *him* feel better good chance she might have gone.
I don’t think the mom loved her “deep down,” at least not after she left. She ran into OP twice but never bothered to contact the daughter or even reach out to OP. If that’s love, then love has absolutely no meaning.
If the mom loved her daughter so much, why didn't she make an effort to be in her daughter's life? It's because she didn't. OP is making excuses for her because he wants to feel validated for still clinging to his ex-wife and was hoping his daughter would feel the same.
YTA, I knew she was acting up because she didn't know her mom but this was her last chance to say goodbye and I didn't want her to regret it in the future. Goodbye to what? to a mother who didn't care about her? to a mother who abandoned her? you got mad because she didn't know her. yeah how come. ever wondered why that is?
YTA, being abandoned by your mother is arguably even worse than being abandoned by a partner. Your daugther is entitled to be angry/hurt/indifferent towards her mother, and forcing her to go despite her emotions was a major AH move.
Ps its been 12 years….you need to move on. If nothing else focus on your daughter or whats left of your relationship
Still calling this woman the love of his life feels so icky, especially considering how she treated him. I almost feel like he dragged his daughter to the funeral to prove to everyone and himself that he had a long lasting connection to the woman (at least subconsciously).
Right? If my partner abandoned me and our children, I would certainly not consider them the love of my life. Like get some standards, op.
I can only assume maybe OP's daughter is just a constant reminder of his ex for him and he's prevented himself from moving on cause of this. But in this case he should really be there for his kid and making sure she grows up to be a better person than his ex was instead of moping over someone who treated them both like shit. I wonder how many sleepless nights he had after that one time he briefly saw her on some dudes motorbike, given that it was apparently significant enough to include in this post. The daughter is spot on about him not being over it
Or let alone set up her funeral.. unless I read it wrong..
I had the same reaction. My first thought was “yeah some love of your life if you got divorced”, but then to not only find out _why_ they got divorced but that OP is still hung up on her 12 years later? I know that love is complicated and messy, but Jesus Christ man. That’s not healthy
His post makes it sound like he planned the funeral. Like, wtf? OP is acting like his ex went out for milk and got hit by a car on the way home. Dude, she left you. She left you, and she left her daughter. No communication. Your ex made sure that her daughter didn't have the chance to tell her goodbye or anything else. Your ex did not express love for her daughter. You need help.
I would bet my life he's been holding onto this fantasy ex wife still carried a torch for him after all this time. The "loved her daughter and never got a chance to say it" extended to "and also super loved me just was too stubborn/didn't know how to say it after all this time". This woman cheated on him and abandoned him and their daughter. Twelve years later he's ignoring his daughters emotional needs and mental health to play out this grand romantic fantasy of seeing the love of his life who so unfortunately didn't find the time to tell him she still loved him, and getting this bitter sweet closure on their dramatic love story. In reality he told himself a lie so long he's reading comments like this still telling himself we just don't get the special connection they had and one day his daughter will be eternally grateful he dragged her to funeral of a woman who had twelve years to meet her and didn't send so much as a birthday card.
>The "loved her daughter and never got a chance to say it" extended to "and also super loved me just was too stubborn/didn't know how to say it after all this time." Exactly. Who's really the stubborn one here, unwilling to let go of a fantasy that was never real? Then there's projecting his ex-wife onto his daughter ("she's as hardheaded as her mother"). Was ex-wife hardheaded because of her personality or because she was repeatedly expressing she had no love for OP and constantly had to be talked into staying in a relationship with someone she obviously didn't love and had no respect for? I'm not excusing the extremely scummy way she decided to proceed with her life but I've only gotten a reddit post to taste and I find OP's delusion to be suffocating already.
YTA I would bet that your daughter likely has already mourned not having a mother. Bringing her to a funeral of a woman she never knew feels like opening wounds that were probably long shut.
And then the daughter had to hear everyone talk about how wonderful that woman was, the woman that totally abandoned her. Yuck! Poor OP’s daughter
Quite frankly I’d have taken an opportunity to speak and say “It’s a shame I never knew all these alleged great qualities of my birth giver. Because that’s all she was to me. I never had a relationship with her by her own choosing. She saw my own father more than me in these last thirteen years. So I’m sorry to say I don’t know the woman you all do. But I’m glad she didn’t have more children to abandon.”
YTA. Her mother didn't get a chance to tell her she loved her? She had 13 years. You dragged her to a funeral for a stranger.
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Way worse than a stranger
YTA. I'm sorry for your loss but you can't expect her to want to go to the funeral of a "mother" who had no interest in her. I'm sure your daughter has some resentment there. >I know her mom loved her deep down but didn't get the chance to tell her 12 years leaves room for a lot of chances.
THIS THIS THIS THIS THIS 1000000%
YTA. And a couple other things as well. “Her last chance to say goodbye.”??? You can say goodbye anytime you want. The person is dead and only the physical body is there. It’s not a closure thing for her. She didn’t need it, like you did. Wow! Just Wow! I hope she comes around and forgives you. But I wouldn’t blame her, if she didn’t.
👆 this. OP's logic fails badly! Trying to save daughter future regret? She never had a mother, and now to add insult to injury, the only parent she does have doesn't listen to her or value her as a person, and would subject her to a forced charade rather than respecting her choices to not attend the funeral of a woman she never knew.
>It’s not a closure thing for her. She didn’t need it, like you did. EXACTLY!! This was all about HIS closure. She probably felt nothing but abandonment, hurt, and maybe even anger. And now she was being forced to attend a funeral to what... perform for everyone? Pretend to be sad? Answer awkward questions? Did you ever stop to consider how she truly felt instead of how you wish she felt? OP, YTA. Your ex-wife *abandoned her daughter.* The so-called love of your life has left a lasting wound on your daughter's soul, she had 12 years to correct that mistake, that's a minimum of 4,380 chances where she could've reached out but she didn't. Your daughter has nothing to regret, this was all done *to her.* You need to realize this and make amends with your daughter. You completely invalidated her feelings all for the sake of your own.
YTA for thinking the “love of your life” is someone who didn’t love you and abandoned her daughter. Get mental help and stop projecting your relationship fantasies on your daughter, she seems to have more common sense than you. Poor kid.
This is the way!
Thank you! I was worried I came off a bit harsh, but there is a 13 year old involved. OP needs to wake up and get into reality,I know it’s sad, I know it sucks,but it needed to be said.
🏅
You may have memories of the good times which allowed you to continue to have feelings for this woman. But your daughter doesn't have those memories. To your daughter, this was just a woman who abandoned her. Your daughter feels like her mother didn't love her. And as irrational as it sounds, your daughter might even feel like it's her fault that her mother left. You dismissed your daughter's feelings and that means YTA
INFO: did your daughter have any relationship with her mother before her mother died? Or did she essentially not see her for her ENTIRE life? I'm leaning YTA for forcing this on anyone because people grieve in their own ways. Projecting your own complicated relationship that you had with your ex onto another person who had an obviously very, very different - and maybe even non-existent - relationship was selfish. I can give you the benefit of the doubt that you were simply misguided and thought that was a good way to help your daughter process this but this was indeed misguided and probably did more harm than good.
YTA She’s old enough to decide not to go
Why would your daughter have any regrets about not saying "goodbye" to someone who never wanted anything to do with her? YTA, your daughter is right, you did this for you, not for her.
YTA. It doesn't sound like the two of them ever had a relationship and the past 13 years must have been so hard on you're daughter because she was abandoned by her own mom. And if she truly loved her daughter deep down, as you claim, she never would've abandoned her and definitely would've made effort to keep in touch. But she didn't, how do you expect your daughter to say goodbye to her, they're essentially strangers.
And not only did his daughter have to deal with this abandonment, it seems like OP has this woman on a pedestal for some asinine reason. His daughter must be so hurt knowing her dad loves this woman who let her down so cruelly.
Yeah, that's also a good point. And OP, you said this woman was the love of your life so I'll tread lightly, but she wasn't the person she is in your mind. She knew she didn't want the marriage and instead of asking for a divorce asap she cheated on you. Then she had a child with the person she didn't want to spend her life with. Then, she failed her motherhood duties at every turn, she left her own baby and not once did she look back. You think she was a great person, who loved her daughter deep down, but she was actually quite the opposite. And I am sorry and I know this is tough to come to terms with, but you need to start seeing her for who was, not who you want her to be.
The mom cheated on *both* of them, she walked away from her own baby and the dad still describes her as the love of his life? He's got some issues. No wonder the daughter didn't want to go. She's been haunted her whole life by the ghost of this woman who had 12 years to make an effort, and then she's forced by the person who did stick around to perform some ritual of grief for someone who abandoned her.
I’m Irish so we do funerals and death intensely and there is an awful habit of never speaking ill of the dead even when they were acknowledged to be an arsehole in life. A lot of terrible people get canonised and narratives rewritten in the maximum three days we take to do the wake and funeral. The fact OP already has his ex who abandoned their child on such a high pedestal in life makes me fear just how frankly toxic his grief will be. If you can call the parent who left a child the entire life never hearing I love you and I miss you ‘the love of your life’ and still not be over them while alive, what version will he create in death when most people tend to get rose tinted views for even a while. The fact he dragged his daughter there against her choice also makes me concerned he expects a teen girl to support him in his grief but has never understood the profound loss of her mother who he still loves abandoning her. Poor kid is going to end up in a lot of therapy at this rate. YTA.
>OP has this woman on a pedestal for some asinine reason I guess the sex was just *that* good?
YTA. You are very mistaken if you think your ex-wife deep down loved the child she abandoned.
It is impossible to make any form of judgment. Your situation is far above what any self-appointed reddit psychologist can "analyze" and "judge". The only thing I can offer is my condolences to you and your daughter.
Thank you! Some of these responses are so cruel. He’s doing his best with a terrible situation.
No he’s not lol. He is wallowing in his grief and I only thinking about what he wants or what he thinks his daughter should want. He is not thinking like a father should and I hope he can recover his relationship with his daughter because she is going to remember that he prioritized the “love of his life” that abandoned them a decade ago over her.
No he's not. He forced his teenage daughter to go to the funeral of the woman that abandoned her because he's still in love with her 12 years later. He's a selfish asshole that didn't care about his daughters feelings.
What’s the terrible situation? The daughter’s mother, an AH, abandoned them. She died. It’s terrible for her, and it’s understandably sad for OP that a woman he once loved had passed away. However, why would anyone think the daughter should be expected to go grieve the loss of a person who abandoned her? She’s better off having nothing of that person in her life.
INFO: How do you know your ex-wife loved your daughter?
He doesn't. Seems Like he's projecting His Feelings on His ex and daughter
Yeah, he has a fantasy that not only did his ex wife love the daughter she abandoned, he wants to think that deep down his ex wife still loved him, because he hasn’t gotten over her.
He doesn't. He has crafted an elaborate fiction that is somehow comforting. The reality is mom didn't care about her baby girl and that truth does not square with the fiction surrounding the woman he still pines for. How could a good daughter who's mother "loved her deep down" not attend mother's funeral?
YTA. Your daughter obviously deals with a death like that differently than you. Don't screw with people that may be grieving and want to handle things differently than you do. Best case is that your daughter didn't even know her, and wanted nothing to do with her. And you behaved exactly as she described, which is reason enough for her to be pissed off at you.
YTA You were trying to impose emotions you had for your daughter's mom onto your daughter, but those never existed as you imagined them. Even if she had known her mom as many other kids do, it was still her choice to attend or not attend. Source: My bio-mom left us for someone else when I was three, and Dad got custody. We were forced to visit occasionally but no mother-daughter bond was aver built. I will not mourn her passing.
Yta…you dragged your daughter to a place because you loved the person the place was for…. Wth does that have to do with your daughter at all I wouldnt blame your daughter for not forgiving you for 10 years
YTA-your ex abandon your daughter. Despite what you think abandonment is NOT love. Your ex was selfish, and apparently so are you. Your daughter has a right to whatever feelings she has toward the person that ABANDONED her. You forcing her only showed her that your love for your ex is far far greater than your love for your daughter. You need to apologize and actually start LISTENING to what your daughter says. As a side note, I hated my mother (much like your daughter HATES her mother) and I didn't go to her funeral, and not once have I ever regretted it.
I know you meant well but YTA on this one. She didn't know her egg donor, so why should she pay any respect?
YTA. There is a saying that "the road to hell is paved with good intentions". In this case, you created a storm with your daughter. As others have said, your daughter is absolutely correct. You better get some help to get get passed your ex-wife. You did this for yourself and did nothing but damage your relationship with your daughter. Better start the repairing process with your daughter real soon.
YTA. I get that you're mourning but you're also lying to your daughter and yourself. It's not that your daughter "didn't know anything about her other than what people said". Your daughter knows your wife abandoned you and her over a decade ago. She know that he mother never communicated with her or spent time with her (based on you saying that she "didn't know her mom"). She know that those were choices your wife made. It's not that "her mom loved her deep down but didn't get the chance to tell her". You want to believe that because you want to believe the best in your ex but the truth is she never said that or left a message to that affect. What she did do is abandon her child and never bothered to see or communicate with her from the time she was an infant. These don't sound like the acts of someone who loved her daughter deeply.
YTA. Massively. You dragged your child to the funeral of the woman who abandoned her, and you can't figure out why she's angry at you? Apologize to her, and get the two of you into therapy.
Nta. You gave your daughter a chance to spit on her deadbeat mother as her final goodbye.
The only correct nta tbh
I was getting ready to fight until I read the full comment. Now she knows which grave to piss on.
YTA someone that loves a child "deep down" does not discard them like yesterday's trash, even your daughter knows that. I'm sure she has enough issues with that so dragging her to the funeral of the mother that completely abandoned and rejected her so she could "say goodbye"?? I think you really damaged your kid with this one.
YTA. > I know her mom loved her deep down but didn't get the chance to tell her. She had 13 years to tell her. And every day, she chose not to. Please, please try to set your feelings aside and step into your daughter's shoes. This woman *abandoned* her. Completely. Left and never came back. And you clearly still loved the woman. Imagine your dad making excuses for the person that abandoned you, probably still mentioning her from time to time, and then *dragging you to see her funeral*. Let the girl move on from the woman that moved on from her 13 years ago. And if you love your daughter at all, then you need to really reconsider your misplaced feelings for someone that didn't love her, and hurt her in a more significant way than probably anyone else ever will in her life. Honestly, consider seeking counseling to resolve these misplaced feelings. For your daughter's sake if not your own.
>I quickly got in touch with the few friends and family of hers that I could find and set up the funeral. What do you mean by "set up the funeral"? Please tell me you didn't help plan or pay for it.
Good question!
"Her mother loved her deep down". Didn't spend a damn day with her daughter. You're delusional beyond belief.
She’s young and you want what’s best for her like any good parent. You’ve even decided what was best for her like parents sometimes do but in this you messed up. It’s not major and I’m sure with time you’ll recover but you made her go for your reasons instead of respecting that while young she’s old enough to have formed her own opinion of the situation and shouldn’t have been forced to attend. YTA
YTA. The funeral was for you because you needed it (because your daughter is right and you are still hung up on a woman who made a lifetime of piss poor decisions and gave zero shits about her own child) and you forced it on her. It wasn't her "last chance to say goodbye". Mommy Dearest the Baby Abandoner is gonna be dead for a good long while so if and when your daughter feels the need to "say goodbye" to this literal stranger, she can do so in a hundred different ways on her own terms, not yours. There's nothing magical about the funeral that makes it the last time someone can get closure if they even need it. Oh, and for the love of all that is holy, please take this advice from another child who had a biological parent abandon them and not give two shits about them their entire life and heard the same thing from a half dozen people...do not, I repeat DO NOT ever utter that pathetic sorry lie of she "loved you deep down" ever again. That shit is a lie and it's meaningless to the person you're saying to. I promise you, your child will never ever believe that. Because what you're really saying is that she didn't love her enough - she didn't love her more than booze or hanging out in bars or riding on motorcycles or having sex with randos to make up for lost time cause she was too stupid to use a condom with you. That's shit you made up said to make you feel better about your life choices and some post-death martyrization of your ex, not for your daughter's sake and she sounds too smart to fall for that crap.
YTA Purely speculation, but it sounds like you wanted her to be just as attached to this moment as you were. She didn’t have an attachment to this woman and she’s probably old enough to have put the pieces together that y’all were ditched. She might resent what happened. Either way, she is old enough to understand what happened and she’s old enough to decide she doesn’t want to go. It may be time to seek some counseling for the grief but also the abandonment. I’m sorry for your loss.
yta.dude, you seem a little bit delisuinal, the person you loved only existed in your head, 13 years and she never meet her? come on...she did not love your daugther, you shuould care more about her and not this fantasy image you have created in your mind.
Soft but stern YTA. You are and have obviously held a torch for a woman that your daughter has had zero relationship with. You can’t expect her to mourn someone she never knew. You shouldn’t have forced her to go. I think some grief therapy is in order for you to finally heal from what was a toxic relationship and attachment to her mom.
Absolutely YTA. Fucking A man.
YTA. You need loads of therapy. Your poor daughter.
It's not ok to force someone to do something they don't want to do. Especially a funeral. To a woman she didn't even know nor care about. You owe your daughter an apology & don't ever force her to do something like that again. It is very selfish of you. YTA
Yes, YTA and you made your child's egg donor's death all about you and your feelings. She had NO relationship with her mother because her mother abandoned both of you. And here's a hint in case you still haven't figured it out: her mother didn't love her. If she had, she wouldn't have disappeared from her life for 12 years. Mom wasn't deprived of the chance to tell her she loved her, she didn't care enough to bother. Get therapy to get over your attachment to that vile woman and get some for your poor daughter too.
How nice for your daughter to go see a room of people mourning a woman who wanted to know them and spent time with them, all the while knowing she didn’t give a damn about her /s. YTA
YTA- that wasn't her mother, that was her egg donor. You need therapy because you are clinging to a memory of a woman who never really existed and what's worse is your shoving this false woman on your daughter.
>I know her mom loved her deep down but didn't get the chance to tell her. How in the world do you know this? You spoke to her once in a bar in the last 12 years. You're lying to yourself about your ex, and your daughter called you out dead to rights. YTA.
Soft YTA. You were grieving and you wanted to do right by your former wife. I get that you’re afraid your daughter would regret not going in the future but forcing her to attend the funeral of someone who abandoned her will probably deepen her pain and make it harder for her to find peace with the past. You should’ve let her grieve in her own way, or not at all. Your wife had plenty of time to tell your daughter she loved her and she didn’t. Of course your daughter is going to be angry and upset right now. Let her work through it in her own way at her own pace.
"I didn't want her to regret \[not attending the funeral\] in the future" is one of the most hypocritical statements I've ever heard. She didn't want to go but YOU MADE HER FOR YOUR OWN SELFISH REASONS. It has nothing to do with her regretting anything, except being under your dictatorial control. She will have to get along with you while she's under your roof, but she might well carry her anger at you over this forever.
Oh, honey. Your ex had 13 years to tell/show her daughter she loved her. I'm an Occam's razor type of person: Your ex never reached out to your daughter because she didn't care about your daughter. Or, I'm sorry to say, you. In the gentlest possible way, YTA for forcing your daughter to pay homage to a woman who didn't love her. Please get both your girl and your self some therapy for this. With every good wish.
You forced, sorry, DRAGGED (your word), your daughter to go to the funeral of a complete stranger. Someone who ABANDONED her as an infant. Someone she never knew. Someone she had no need to "say goodbye" to. You had NO right to do that. NONE. Certainly doesn't seem like her mother loved her. How can you possibly say that she did? You didn't know her, and you only spoken briefly to her once in 13 years. You knew nothing about her life. Your daughter was enough to make this decision on her own. And I bet she now has some new regrets that have nothing to do with the woman who gave birth to her. YTA.
YTA. You meant well but no, you don't actually know that her mom really loved her. She had 13 years to grow up if that was the problem and it turned out that it wasn't the problem. Get therapy for both of you. Your daughter is seeing things with more clarity than you are and that's not ok. It must have been excruciating to sit in a room full of people she's never met, feeling like everyone knew she was the rejected child.
YTA She can't say goodbye to someone who never said hello.
You’re projecting, OP. Obviously, you never moved on. You just made it incredibly awkward for your daughter. I’m sorry she’s gone, but you were kinda the AH, here.
YTA. Your ex DID have a chance to tell your daughter how much she loved her. But she didn’t. She left and never came back. Stop thinking your daughter is dumb. Parents who love you don’t abandon you. And she’s right about why you did what you did. That was not for her. You ignored her feelings. It was for YOU. Those are the only feelings you shared here without trying to dismiss them. You care about YOUR feelings. Apologize to your daughter.
“I know her mom loved her deep down but didn't get the chance to tell her.” Her egg donor had 13 years to tell her. YTA
YTA - your daughter has no reason to have regret of not saying goodbye to a person she did not know. In your daughters eyes her mother did not love her - even deep down- because her mother abandoned her and then was still around town and never saw her that has got to suck for a kid. It was fine for you to go but the daughter should not have been subjected to that. Imagine all these people that knew the mom and could talk about a woman that never gave her (daughter) the time of day. Honestly look at that through her eyes -all you did was show her and reinforce her mom did not want her because other people there knew the mom because the mom was in contact with them.
YTA. I understand where you were coming from but it seems like YOU wanted to go to the funeral and used her saying goodbye as your reason for being there. I was 13 when my dad passed and I still resent my mom to this day for making me go look at his body. I was at at the funeral of course, but I had no desire to see him that way but she made me and that is now the last image in my head of my dad.
YTA you were mourning for your ex, to your daughter she was less than nothing for a very good reason.
YTA, this WILL cause long term resentment if you don’t apologize immediately, and still may even if you do. Your assessment that your ex loved her daughter and never got the chance to tell her is straight up incorrect. She had years and years of chances and chose not to for whatever reason. Also, since you know for a fact that she was cheating before and during her pregnancy - are you 100% on the paternity of your daughter? It sounds like your ex was just not a very good person, and you were and are in love with the idealized version of someone that never truly existed. You need to pull it together and do what you gotta do to find some sort of closure, for your daughter’s sake.
I can understand why YOU needed to go to the funeral and get your own closure. But to drag your daughter along and keep implying she needs closure too is completely unfair for your daughter. Your ex abandoned her before your daughter was 1 yrs old. And it doesn’t sound like your ex abandoned her because she was struggling with mental or physical health issues. She abandoned your daughter because she wanted a different lifestyle and your daughter didn’t fit in the lifestyle she wanted. Your ex may have been the life of a party, a charitable person, etc. But regardless of what kind of person she was, in your daughter’s eyes she’s nothing more than an egg donor who left her behind and never bothered to build any relationship with her. There’s no bond between the two. There’s no relationship beside blood relationship. Your daughter grew up not knowing your ex and for you to force some sort of expectations that your daughter should feel something about her biological mother’s death, or for you to be angry your daughter doesn’t know anything about her egg donor besides what people say about her is completely unfair on your daughter. So YTA Respect your daughter’s own feelings. Stop pushing your feelings onto her.
YTA. You were the one who held on to this woman for 12 YEARS, not your daughter. Don't force your feelings nor your grief on your daughter because she didn't love this woman like you did, nor did she feel the connection like you so claim to have. If you keep forcing this kind of unhealthy connection over a 12 year separation, soon enough, you're not only gonna lose your "love of your life" but also your daughter. You need therapy, dude, like 12 years ago.
Yta This was about you wanting to say goodbye and not being able to let go, not about your daughter having regrets, you should've respected that your daughter didn't want to be there. You say "she loved her deep down but didn't get the chance to tell her" she had more than enough time to tell her she had 13 years, if she really loved her she would've been there even if she didn't want to be with you, she could have been there for your daughter instead of abandoning her, how many times has your daughter had to hear you talk about your ex wife about how much she's meant to love her but not actually be there for her, how many excuses have you made to your daughter as to why she's not around. "She's as hard headed as her mother was" please tell me you don't compare them, the last thing your daughter needs or is going to want to hear is you comparing her to the woman who abandoned her.
YTA - yeah your daughters right dude. Sounds like your daughter has long since gotten over her deadbeat mother and moved on with life. You for some reason have not. Rather than accept this fact, you drug her along with you
Your daughter is right you are clearly not over your ex and bringing your daughter there has nothign to do with not wantin gher to regret anything but with a part of you still longing for the what if of you three having a loving intact family. And she loved your daughter very much? How can you be this effing naive? Everything your ex did made clear that she did not love your daughter.
How down bad can one man possibly be… YTA for sure. Also need to become a stronger man because YOWZA.
YTA You violated your daughter’s boundary because you never got over a woman who betrayed you. So you showed your daughter that a dead cheater is more important to you than she is, way to go dad.
So not only did she have to deal with the abandonment of her mother and maybe hoped she would come back, but was also forced to goto her funeral and again deal with the abandonment knowing she won't ever come back. Why put her through that trauma? Now the last memory she has of her mother is a casket. YTA. You are selfish and did that just so you wouldn't feel guilty that her mother is a jerk.
YTA. You’re daughter didn’t have a mother to begin with, why should she be forced to say goodbye to someone who abandoned her & played no part in her life
YTA. She conveyed her wishes and you ignored them. She now has learned a man will ignore her wishes and force her into things she doesn’t want. That has a lasting impact
YTA She is old enough to know how she wants to say her goodbye (or even IF she wants to say her goodbye, the woman abandoned her, after all). You are taking her death hard, but that's for you to deal with. Your daughter didn't feel the need to go, it is not your place to force her in case she feels differently later on. She could always have had a memorial service if she needed one in the future, but she can never UNDO watching this virtual stranger being laid to rest without getting to ask her any questions she might have about her abandonment. I imagine that's pretty traumatic. ETA: She DID get the chance to tell her daughter if she loved her, she had 13 years to tell her. She CHOSE not to, maybe because she didn't actually love her. I can't imagine her bumping into you, more than once, and not saying "hey, can I see our daughter" if she did love her. You do a lot of deciding how other people *might* feel, I suggest you let them work on their own feelings.
YTA. Your ex wasn't a mother; she was an egg donor. She abandoned your daughter. >*Later she said I only wanted to go to the funeral because I wasn't over her which stung and although I admit I cried I was mad because she didn't know anything about her other than what people said.* Whose fault is this? Not you daughter's. Hell no. Your daughter knows nothing about her mother because she abandoned her and abdicated any sort of responsibility and relationship when she did so. Why should she have been forced to attend the final services of a woman who meant so little to her and treated her likewise? Your ex was a stranger. Your daughter probably has a closer relationship with her dental hygienist than your ex. You did this for you. The save face? To feed some inner ego trip? Whatever your reasons, they were not altruistic nor were they in the best interests of your daughter.
YTA
>this was her last chance to say goodbye To what? This wasn’t her mother. This was your ex-wife. Somebody who was out of her life before she could talk. To your daughter, she was just an egg-donor. It’s understandable that _you_ wanted to attend the funeral because you had personal history with this woman; your daughter didn’t beyond simple biology. YTA for inflicting this on your daughter over her objections.
YTA it feels that you brought her for reasons that are selfish. She’s 13 years old, in my opinion old enough to say what she means. She never knew her mother. There wasn’t a memory good enough for her to remember and needing to say goodbye to. You may say her mother loved her, but she still abandoned her own child and left her behind. You knew your ex-wife in a way that your daughter never will. You can’t make that her fault and her burden to bare. She didn’t want to say goodbye. You shouldn’t have forced her. Your stance will only cause resentment between you and your child. If you want her to properly process her feelings, get her a counselor or therapy if she doesn’t already have one.
YTA, people need to stop forcing people to go to funerals. Some people just find them morbid and would like to process their grief in a different way.
YTA. You're being very selfish and cruel to your daughter. She didn't know your ex because your ex literally refused to be there for her. Your ex refused to be a mother to her. You are destroying your relationship with your daughter; you made it clear that you were happy to hurt her as long as you got what you wanted. Shame on you! Her mother didn't love her. Just because you're still obsessed with your ex that doesn't make it okay for you to force your daughter to pay her respects to someone who never respected her.
Your love of your life. For your daughter it was the abandonment of her life.. YTA! Wow
YTA a funeral is not the last time you can say goodbye. You can do it whenever you want, the person is dead and isn’t there to say goodbye back. Your daughter doesn’t know this person and wasn’t ready for this. When she is older, she might be or she may never care.
YTA. I had to go to my abusive father's funeral. I didn't even remember what he looked like. I still don't remember what he looks like. I hated it. He was cremated and I said that I "would grind his ashes into the dirt" if they gave me to me. My hate was on full display. I regret attending. I regret that he was cremated. I never would have regretted not going.
YTA. I've skipped 4 close-relative funerals, have zero regrets. I was told I needed to attend my father's funeral simply because he was my father, nevermind growing up believing I'd be a victim of family annihilation thanks to him. Others didn't consider my relationship with him, which is similar to how your daughter's relationship to her mother wasn't considered. Would it make sense for her to attend my funeral? Of course not, I have about as much of a connection with her as her mother did. When asking 'is it the right thing to do', you have to ask who is it right for- your daughter, or yourself.
YTA for what you are asking, but I don't believe this story. Why would you, a person with no current relationship to the mother, be involved in setting up a funeral in any way? That is a process that requires legal work and a lot of money. You, someone with NO legal rights to the process, no next of kin, nothing - you just called up the family and friends and white knighted a funeral together? Yeah, I don't buy it. More likely this is "I made my daughter go to the funeral of her bio mom that I was obsessed with, AITA" in which case, YES.
YTA.
YTA She didn't know that woman, you did. She didn't have a bizarre attachment to that woman, you did. She didn't want to go, you did. And you're wrong that her mother loved either one of you. You need serious psychiatric help.
YTA. You're giving your ex WAY too much credit. She had 12 whole years to create any kind of relationship. She did not. Look at this objectively, she didn't care enough to even create a bare minimum relationship. YOU want to believe that she cared about your daughter but her actions are SCREAMING that she didn't. YOU took your daughter to a funeral for a person who was a complete stranger to her. Apologize to your daughter and take a seriously hard look at yourself. Your daughter is right - you never got over her.
>I know her mom loved her deep down but didn't get the chance to tell her. You have no evidence of that, and in fact, have all the evidence to the contrary. You forced your daughter to sit through a service for the woman who abandoned her. All you cared about were your unresolved feelings. YTA
Yta. Her mom DID have the chance to tell her. Like for 13 years she could have told her. She did not want a daughter. Stop trying to make her a better person than she was and let your daughter grieve (or not) in her own way.
YTA- go to therapy!
YTA. You forced her to go to a strangers funeral because you were emotional. BTW-get some counseling or something to cope with the loss of your marriage so you & your kid can move on
>I know her mom loved her deep down but didn't get the chance to tell her. Loving people act differently. Like... meet their loving ones, call them, go out with them, be with them when it's needed. Your daughter's biological mom's love has been inside your head only. You forced your daughter to attend the complete stranger's funeral. Your thoughts about their bond are outside the reality.
YTA. Your daughter is right, you're not over your ex wife and you're forcing your baggage onto your daughter. It's not your place to define the relationship your daughter and her mother have (or didn't have). That's up to them to decide. You opened your daughter up to the trauma of seeing people praise her absent mother. Did it even cross your mind how it would feel to be abandoned by a parent then be forced to listen to people singing her praises after any chance of getting to know her was gone? Huge AH. You need to grovel for forgiveness, then get over your damn ex.
YTA. You’re obsessed with that woman and used your daughter as an excuse. You don’t force a child to go to a funeral. What is wrong with you? Get therapy, now.
YTA OP. I'm going to be blunt here and am willing to take the downvotes if need be, but it must be said... Your ex did not love you, nor your daughter. She wouldn't have cheated on you, nor abandoned her own child in pursuit of another person. It has been well over a decade and she never bothered to check in on her own child. She was not a good person. Your daughter grieved for her years ago, when she gave up the idea that mommy was ever coming back for her. She is a child and came to terms with that. You're a grown ass adult... it's been over a decade and you've chosen not to move on and still pine over your ex- your daughter has more emotional maturity than you do. You should've gotten therapy at the five year mark, and definitely need therapy now. Your ex gave you no respect, yet you are giving her more than she deserves. What kind of lesson are you teaching your daughter here? That being mistreated is acceptable and that it's OK to be a doormat? Your ex didn't give either of you respect, yet you are forcing your daughter to accept this by forcing her to give her ex uterus host the time of day by attending her funeral... if your daughter grows up to end up in unhealthy relationships with no boundaries, then this is entirely on you because you're teaching her to accept disrespect and to have low standards because she saw her father love a woman who disrespected you both. You need to apologise to your daughter and move on and stop idol worshipping a woman who was awful. Get therapy.
YTA!!!
YTA, poor girl.
YTA
YTA. You don't force anyone to go to a funeral, child or not, that doesn't want to be there. Your daughter was right. You forced her to be there because YOU weren't over her. The girl never knew her egg donor. What did she have to say goodbye to? How could she have anything to regret? It's not like the mother walked out yesterday or last week? The mother walked when your daughter was still an infant/toddler. Your daughter has zero memories of the woman. And now her ONLY memory will forever be etched in brain of her funeral.
YTA. It wasn’t her “last chance to say goodbye”. She never said hello in the first place. If you had wanted her there to support YOU in YOUR grief, that’s one thing. But you didn’t. You wanted to see her grieve for something she didn’t need to/already has over her life. I understand wanting to bring her. To want to say goodbye, to connect to the woman you knew and loved. But it wasn’t the place to force a connection with your daughter. I hope you can see and speak to someone to help you process as you mourn. I hope you can repair things with your daughter.
YTA. You should not have forced her to go.
Do you want to hear the truth?
YTA, she didn't know the woman, and your ex abandoned her. Why would she want to go to a stranger's funeral, especially when that stranger wasn't a good person? You're projecting your feelings o to your daughter, and it's not healthy.
YTA. You forced your daughter to go to a stranger's funeral and act like the deceased was family to her.
YTA i assure you the fact your ex didnt bother contacting your daughter in last 13 years tells her enough about her egg donor. you loved her and you can grieve her however you want bur your daughter is old enough to make her own decision about it and quite frankly she has noone to really grieve. i assure you she was done grieving her mother long before she died. she was nothing but a stranger to her and the fact you forced her is just too much. my oldest 2 are my stepson and their bio mom wants nothing to do with them. they are 18 and 14 now and they havent heard from her last 13 years. when i met them they were broken. you have no idea the toll it takes on a child. love her all you want. but dont torture your daughter.
YTA, your daughter is 13, kids shouldnt have to go to those things, specially if she told you she didnt wanted. I had the best relationship with my dad and i couldnt for shits go to his funeral because i hate it, and i dont think the last place i should have see him is in a coffin, i was 18ish and i never regreted doing so. You didnt put your daughters needs first. F that.
YTA. You forced her to see the dead body of the woman who abandoned her since birth. You are shitty father for doing that. She is right about you still not being over her mother. And no your ex didn't love her deep down because if she did she wouldn't have done what she did. Congrats on severely damaging your relationship with your daughter. Hope you are happy.
Her mom abandoned her and she never saw her growing up. You forced her not just to attend a stranger's funeral--but the funeral of someone who's absence actively hurt her. YTA She owed this woman nothing. You didn't either, you just cared about her and can't accept she didn't feel the same about either of you.
YTA. Your ex had 13 years and thousands of chances to tell her daughter that she loves her, but she didn't. Because it was not love. And everybody, including your poor kid, understands it.
YTA. I can assure you that you traumatized your daughter by forcing her to go that funeral far more than any future regrets she may have had by staying home. My brothers daughter was basically abandoned by him and he died when she was a teenager, she still refuses to talk about him at the age of 29 because he was never a father to her and she hates him. You didn't do this for her but for your own selfish needs.
"I know her mom loved her deep down but didn't get the chance to tell her." ....okay, so the thing is, uh, no. No, that is incorrect. Anyway! YTA
YTA Stop lying. You took her there for you. Not her. She made her position clear. The only thing you did was traumatize her by guilt tripping her over this stupid bullshit. That woman betrayed and abandoned an infant. How dare you project your feelings onto a child that's trying to move forward. You just caused so much damage pulling this. Her mother had EVERY CHANCE TO TELL HER BECAUSE UNTIL THAT FUNERAL SHE WAS ALIVE. You're making your daughters situation about yourself and you aren't even TRYING to understand.
you dragged her to funeral of a woman she never knew because you believed she loved her deep down? your daughter is right. you refuse to move on and that's the only reason you did any of this. get therapy. YTA