Had an unexpected FaceTime call with SD19 last night. She says she misses me and the kids immensely. She’s here for one night next week on her way to a camp out with her mom and sisters and then is planning to visit at the end of August. She told me she has not talked to her dad in two months and doesn’t want to see him when she is here as she is “not ready”. She also said she is finding it difficult living in the city with all of us living here. She plans to stick it out until the end of the year but asked if she could come live with me for half a year so she could save up enough money to possibly go to Australia to work for awhile. She has been there before and has connections so it is a viable plan.
I am sad for her and STBXH. Their relationship has been significantly damaged by everything that has happened. Unlike her younger siblings, she is old enough to put two and two together and has realized I wasn’t the only person being lied to by him. She has thought about all of her events that he missed because of his fake treatments and is understandably angry and hurt about it. Conflict-avoidant STBXH, of course, has done nothing to repair their relationship except to send the periodic overly cheerful text that makes it appear that he a) hasn’t noticed that she is upset with him [he has] or b) that he has noticed but thinks she will just get over it if he continues to ignore the elephant in the room [this is his go-to approach - shows he hasn’t changed a bit. In the past, I would have bent over backwards to try to fix this for him and force him to do something but that is no longer my job. OW can have a go at it although she really won’t be much help in that regard as SD19 wants nothing to do with her either. My prediction is that STBXH will just let things go with the hope that she will eventually start talking to him and he won’t have to do anything. That is how it works between him and his dad. However, SD19 is not him. She has much to be angry about and is not just going to let it go without some sort of apology or grand gesture from him. Sadly, I doubt either of those things will ever happen.
