I’m sure to most people this would be self-explanatory and I should support him no matter what because I only get one father, etc etc.
My father (55 – put 52 in title that was a typo) divorced my mother five years ago after 25 years. He cheated on her with a woman hed met on a business trip, and he got married to this woman two years later, and it was quite obvious he was unhappy with her (she was more or less a gold digger). I better point out that my father took the time and effort to have this woman meet his sister and mother (who live accross the world), but he never cared to have her or my siblings meet her. He got married and we didn’t find out until almost 6 months later, and I felt like a fool that he’d told everyone but his own kids.
He was married for 2+ years, and in December (that’s right, less than 3 months ago), he met another woman. He prompty divorced his new wife, and is now engaged to this new woman.
I love my father because he is my only father, and he said this time around he wants me and my siblings to attend his wedding in June.
My dad lives pretty far away, and it costs approximately $500+ to fly to him. He has offered to buy my siblings and myself our flights to him. If he lived nearby us, I would think to show my face as a formality, but as it stands, it is an expensive trip for something I don’t even feel anything about.
My siblings and I are all in university, and he has left us in the dirt with money issues, and we all harbour resentful feelings towards him. I am studying chemical engineering (undergraduate), and my two siblings are in medicine (one is post grad). Needless to say, this is very expensive for schooling. My brother got turned down for student loans during his undergrad because my dad earned a lot of money (he comfortably makes 160k+ yearly), and my father promised him to help him cover his schooling costs and for him to dedicate himself to fulltime schoooling. 8 months later, his school bills were left unpaid, and he had to extend his degree to take an extra year, as he got a job to pay for his schooling. Normally this would have been okay, but the principle of breaking a major commitment like that and causing my brother to almost have his credit tarnished, in turn made us very distrustful of him as a whole.
I should have learned from this mistake, but when I started school a couple years later, I went to a university far from home. I was legible for student loans but not living costs, and once again my father offered to step in and help me pay for my living costs (my mother also helped me, but she earns a lot less than my father, so she only offered what she could). Throughout the year, my mother was always prompt with her promises and gave me as much as she could, but my dad would leave me in the dust, and some months it was horrible scraping enough to pay rent but not being able to afford anything else. Eventually I also had to drop a couple courses to get a job to make up for the money I needed, and this experience left me pissed off at my dad. I met my boyfriend a year later, and I currently live with him, and thankfully he has been great help as we split bills, and this has allowed me to go back to school full time.
All of this aside, I went to visit him a year ago for a couple weeks, and I was seriously shocked to find out that while screwing over his own children, he was paying fully for the education of his (now ex) wife’s kid abroad, which is CONSIDERABLY more than mine and my brother’s education.
If this all weren’t enough, my father is currently indebted to each of us. He owes me over $500, and my brother and sister over $1000 each. I don’t know what he does with his money, he doesn’t even own a house or a car, but sometimes he’ll be so in shit he’ll ask to borrow money from us with a promise to “pay it back next paycheque.” He never does, and if he does, it’s half of the amount we lend over.
I guess what I am trying to say… my dad has not been kind to us these past years, and despite all this, I still love him because he is my father. But I do not wish for him to spend $1500+ on my sibs and I to attend his wedding (again, he’s known this woman for 3 months and only met her once or twice in person), when he already owes us so much more. Is it reasonable for me, or my siblings, to say no? My sibs share my feelings, and they say they do not wish to attend a wedding for a marriage that probably will not last, considering my father doesn’t have a very strong record.
But I also share the fact this is my father and the only father I will have, and I am torn between my unconditional love for him, and my feelings towards his treatment of us.
Thanks for reading.
TL;DR: Father is getting married in June for the third time to someone he met in December. My father does not have a good track record with women so I don’t expect this marriage to work out, and he has not been kind to either my siblings or myself, always putting us in the backburner to the rest of his business. I love him, but I do not love the way he has been. I am torn on whether to make the sacrifice and attend the wedding FOR him, or to say no.
