I have two children, a daughter aged 21 and a son aged 19. I last saw them about 8 years ago and miss them terribly and always have done.
When they were nearly 4 and nearly 2, their mother finally got fed up with me getting depressed over my low-paid dead-end job in a bookshop. While I was away for a month visiting my brother and parents in Australia, she invited in her lover for a couple of weekends. When I got back my marriage was over.
Within three weeks she was expecting his child, and wanted me out of the house. She said if I didn't do what she wanted, she would slam in the divorce and s***w me for everything. She knows the Law is on her side, knows what she wants and how to get it. She got assertiveness training from Relate, and was being advised by a lawyer well versed in Womens Rights. She also had her allies among the women's group and playgroup mums but I was isolated socially.
In the end I left rather than have a full nervous breakdown, but I promised the children I would visit them several times a week. But as soon as I left, after each visit their mother used to turn the page in her diary and say "you've already seen them this week, you're not seeing them again".
So for 5 years a pattern of weekly contact was established until she decided she wanted fortnightly contact and told me of her decision on handover. We had a blazing row and stopped me seeing the children at all. I took her to court, and after a 15 month battle finally won an order for fortnightly contact.
By that time my relationship with my daughter was broken. Her mother's favourite ploy was to arrange my daugher to visit her friend on the day she was due to come to me, and when I insisted on the visit, she would tell my daughter "your Dad is forcing you to go with him, and not to your friend's. But you don't have to go with him if you don't want to". With my son, he would be kept up until the small hours, and then on handover his mother would say "he is very tired, so you had better bring him back early".
Contact was eroded, and I went back to court a further two times until my son told the Court Official that he'd had enough of all this court fighting and wanted no more to do with me. My daughter had already said that a while earlier. After their mother married her lover (and father of her third child) all contact was stopped. He was to be their father now, and I was no longer important. The court washed their hands of the whole matter. They then changed their surname to his. I last saw my daughter in October 2000 and my son in March 2001.
Now they are grown up, I have tried to get in touch with them. I found my son's MySpace page and my daughter's YouTube and Blogger pages where she posted her artwork (she did a portrait of CJ from Eggheads, and he left a link). As soon as they discovered I had found it, they deleted all their web pages.
I wrote to my daughter explaining about a dormant savings account my mother set up for all her grandchildren. If she does nothing, then the Government will take the money, so I wrote to her giving her the option to claim the money. I also explained that I was cutting her and her brother out of my will, and asking my mother to do likewise. I have no intention leaving them anything unless they at least make some effort to get in touch. I also told them that as soon as I can get my girlfriend a visa, and if we decide to marry each other, then she has promised me children to replace the ones I have lost.
Now, quite a few answerers are sons and daughters of estranged fathers, do they feel it likely if they were in the same shoes as my children, that they would one day wish to make contact with me?
Or shall I call it a day, and throw out all traces of them from my life as soon as I can start afresh with my girlfriend?
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