In a perfect world, all parents would give all of their children the love and attention that they need, but sadly, that is not always the case.

What would you do if your father was very neglectful while you were growing up, but now that you are approaching adulthood and your dad got remarried with a new family, he is trying to make things right?

That is what happened to the young man in this story, so he is refusing to forgive his father and wants nothing to do with him, which is making his father upset.

AITA for saying if my dad wanted a better relationship with me he should have focused on that instead of getting married and having more kids?

My (17m) dad was never around for me. He and my mom were married, he lived in the same house as us, but he felt more like a roommate than a dad/husband.

Sometimes you have to work a lot to make ends meet.

He worked full time and mom worked part time and eventually full time when I turned 8. Even when they both started working full time he was more interested in fixing up cars and working than being with us.

It wasn’t like he was a great provider either. There were times we didn’t have enough and he would tell mom there wasn’t more money to buy groceries or whatever.

Wait, so he did have money?

Those were times mom had to go to her family and ask for help. But something I found out after mom died is that he always had money. He saved a lot of money fixing those cars and selling them. He just kept that money away from us.

When I was little I so wanted him to be more of a regular dad who spent time with me and would let me hang out with him. But he locked himself into the garage most nights and the few nights he didn’t do that he invited his friends over and they watched a game or something.

Ok, this is just mean.

Whenever I tried to join he’d tell me to find my mom or play by myself and I was too young to hang out with him or them. He wouldn’t let me help when he was fixing up cars either.

There were times he’d yell at me to get away because I was trying to get him to let me in.

Many people do this type of thing with their kids, and they often regret it.

My mom would always try to talk dad into doing more with me but he dismissed it. Sometimes I wonder if she was afraid of him or whether she had really bad self-esteem because I could never figure out why she stayed.

She threw everything into filling in the gaps he left in my life and she did everything else she could for me expect leaving him. I loved my mom. I still love my mom.

This would be absolutely heartbreaking.

When she got sick it broke me and when she died it shattered everything. It was after mom died that I gave up on dad.

Even me losing mom at 13 didn’t make him wake up and do better or try because I was now without the only parent who truly raised me.

Of course, he has time for a woman, but not his kids.

It was two years after mom died when dad started spending time with a woman. It went from her to her and her two kids and then they suddenly lived in the house and then they were married. Then she was pregnant.

Seeing my dad be such a different husband and dad/dad figure was awful. He helped his wife with chores, spent time with her and praised her.

I can imagine this would be very painful.

He spent time with her kids like he never did with me. He even went to the different appointments. He put a photo of the ultrasound and his wife and stepkids in his wallet. There was never one of me or mom in there.

It was almost a year ago that dad started reaching out to me. I rejected him and he signed us up for family therapy. We go twice a month.

I suppose it is a good thing that dad is trying to change.

He says he wants to make our relationship better and that he wants to be a better dad to me. That he regrets not being there when I was growing up and he’s sorry I felt like I only had one parent and then none.

That he’s sorry he wasn’t better and more engaged and for all the times he pushed me away and cursed at me and reacted in anger to me wanting time with him.

Hopefully he really means it.

He says he wants to finally do the right thing and be the dad to me that he was always supposed to be.

But all of this came after he moved on and started a new family. It even comes after he spent a lot of that money he saved while mom was alive on his wife’s kids and on their new baby. He even bought his wife a new car from it.

I can see why this would be painful, but honestly, it is his money to use as he wants.

I got nothing and that money was saved largely when mom was alive. It was such a mean thing to see.

I didn’t say anything in therapy for almost a year. I didn’t want to be there. I told him that before we started therapy. But I wasn’t given much of a choice.

In some cases, forcing therapy is not actually a good thing.

I do make it hard for him to get more sessions in because I work a lot when I’m not in school. Over and over again I have been asked to speak or to say how I felt about what dad said or to respond in some way to his apology.

But I never said anything.

Hopefully this therapist can be helpful in some way.

Then the therapist asked to speak to me alone and she told me she knows I don’t want to be there but at least if I open up and say something, anything, she could help dad to accept the reality and that she didn’t know if I wanted to fix things but make him suffer first or wanted nothing to do with him.

So, the session after that one I told him that he was too late and if he wanted a better relationship with me he should have focused on that before marrying again and having more kids because it was just me coming last again.

It may not have been his intention, but it is the reality.

He swore it wasn’t true and he was sorry if that hurt me but he wanted to make it work now and he’d work on it now. I told him what I said stands.

The therapist tried to make him accept it but he told me I was punishing him unfairly.

AITA?

On the one hand, he is not wrong for being hurt and upset, and he is not wrong for dealing with it how he wants. On the other, it would be good to leave the door open to forgiveness if his father truly has changed.

Let’s see what the people in the comments have to say about this.

This commenter thinks it might be too late for a relationship.

Dad neglected him his entire life. Forgiveness won’t come easy.

Yup, he should have been a better dad all along.

This is the root of the problem.

Yeah, dad was in the wrong for years.

Too little too late dad.

If you liked that story, read this one about grandparents who set up a college fund for their grandkid because his parents won’t, but then his parents want to use the money to cover sibling’s medical expenses.