Some relationships are tricky to understand.

Just like this son’s relationship with his dad over the years!

Find out how things got bitter between them.

AITA for having a bad relationship with my dad and not reaching out more?

This is a sensitive post about my relationship with my father. I (18M) have a younger brother. When I was younger, my parents were separated but had an okay relationship.

My brother and I mostly lived with our mom. About 4–5 years ago, my dad met a new partner. They quickly became serious and eventually had a child together.

This is where things get slightly tricky…

At first, my brother and I visited him every other weekend. After his new child was born, the visits slowly became less frequent and eventually stopped completely.

My dad would text us maybe once or twice a month asking if we wanted to come over. However, he required us to confirm about 1.5 weeks in advance if we were coming.

At the time, we were kids and didn’t know what our schedules would look like that far ahead. Plans would change, school and other things would come up, so we often answered honestly that we didn’t know yet.

Things got worse…

After a while, the contact became less and less. Eventually, he stopped texting us entirely. We were children and didn’t understand what we had done wrong or why our dad suddenly stopped contacting us.

Now we haven’t seen him in 3–5 years, and our younger half-sister probably doesn’t even know we exist.

Our mom has tried to contact him over the years, but it seems like his partner doesn’t want him communicating with her or with us.

Our mom has always told us that we didn’t do anything wrong and that she is here for us no matter what. Recent events (January 2026) On Wednesday, January 14, 2026, my brother and I received identical text messages from our dad.

UH OH…

In his messages, he said that after he met his partner and had a child, we “disappeared,” took distance, stopped visiting, and stopped contacting him.

He said he is sad and disappointed in our behavior and suggested that maybe when we become adults, we’ll realize that what we did wasn’t okay. In the same message, he also asked us to return a key to his apartment.

Over the next couple of days, he sent additional messages repeating that he was disappointed and asking why we hadn’t responded to the rest of what he said.

On Friday, January 16, I sent a long reply.

That’s INSANE!

In it, I acknowledged his feelings and told him I understand that he is hurt.

I also explained our perspective:

That we were children at the time. That we experienced it as him slowly disappearing from our lives. That visits became less frequent after he started a new family. That we felt confused, unwanted, and emotionally pushed aside. That we didn’t know how to handle these emotions as kids. And that it is the adult parent’s responsibility to maintain contact with their children, not the children’s responsibility to chase the parent. He has not replied since.

His last message was on Saturday, January 17, 2026. So now I’m wondering:

AITA for having a bad relationship with my dad and not reaching out more over the years?

OUCH! That sounds painful!

Why would the dad blame his kids for his mistakes?

Let’s find out how people on Reddit responded to this story.

Exactly! This user knows the dad is gaslighting his sons here.

This user knows the dad is fully at fault here.

This user knows dad could have made efforts to meet his sons.

This user knows these guys were just kids and their feelings were valid!

That’s right! This user believes the dad has failed to be an adult here.

Somebody’s being a little unreasonable here!

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.