Most people dream of some form of happy family.

And when those plans fail to come together, for one reason or another, the way they come together in our heads, it can be massively disappointing.

Feelings of frustration, jealousy, inadequacy and failure can start to creep in.

But at the end of the day, maybe the expectation was just…never realistic?

AITA for walking out on my dad when he told me he finds it hard to love me because he knows I don’t love his wife?

I (19M) was supposed to be spending the day with my dad a few weeks ago only for him to turn around and tell me he wasn’t sure he wanted to.

That he finds it hard to love me because he holds the knowledge that I don’t love his wife and by not loving his wife I don’t love the family they have created the way he wants me to.

He said this makes it very hard to keep our connection alive.

This was totally out of nowhere.

We’d had the plans for over two weeks and I drove three hours just to be told that.

I didn’t really have anything to say to any of that so I walked out and went back home.

Dad is acting surprised at this, somehow.

He has texted me a few times since then asking why I left, saying he wants to talk.

His wife and I texted a bit and she told me she didn’t understand what happened.

I told her she might want to talk to him and I filled her in on what happened.

That took her by surprise and she said she’d talk to him and get his head on straight.

She later texted and apologized that he did it supposedly on her behalf and she wanted me to know there are no hard feelings.

He wants to talk it out, but son says “do you?”

Dad has told me he wants to talk it out and he wants me to understand that walking out like I did wasn’t the right way to handle it either.

But that we can’t leave it like that.

I asked him what the point of talking is when he doesn’t know if he wants to spend time with me and finds it so hard to keep the connection going.

BG info for anyone who wants it but if you don’t need it then AITA?

Essentially, he was just never excited about the new family dynamic:

My dad married Lil when I was 10.

I didn’t want her around at the start and got really upset that dad was married 2 years after my mom died.

Lil told me she understood me not wanting a new mom or stepmom and that we could be friends if I’d prefer that.

For a while I didn’t but then I came around a bit.

We developed a not super close friendship but it’s there.

We’re not the most natural fit around each other but we’re both pretty open and honest which meant we didn’t hurt each other’s feelings or anything and we like each other.

And that had all worked out ok until now.

My dad never got involved really.

The only time he said anything was when Lil was pregnant with their first and I was about to have a half sibling.

Dad said he noticed I wasn’t very excited and I was like yeah I’m not really.

He told me he wanted it to be an exciting time for me as well and I told him it just wasn’t.

But I did later get involved a bit to make him happy and that was basically it.

They celebrated both pregnancies and kids, I was never excited but developed a fondness for my half siblings and everything was good.

My relationship with dad was super close (or so I thought) until this.

Here’s what the comments made of this:

It’s a weird choice to be making when no one even seems to be presenting and ultimatum.

One person had a psychological theory:

But in essence:

It’s hard to imagine what would make a parent love their child less.

Something this small? Kinda unthinkable.

If you thought that was an interesting story, check out what happened when a family gave their in-laws a free place to stay in exchange for babysitting, but things changed when they don’t hold up their end of the bargain.