AIO Dad does not want to spend Father’s Day with me as to not upset my Mother
EDIT: I’ve been asked for some context about the fight I had with my Mother and how she’s treated me throughout the years, so here it is.
TW: emotional, physical abuse, sexual abuse
My mother has been abusing me since I was five years old in various ways. It mostly boils down to yelling/swearing at me, calling me names, inappropriately touching me without my consent, gaslighting, threats of violence, and denying the things she’s said/done when I bring said behaviour to her attention. To this day, she downplays the things she has done and expects me to get over the abuse, despite there being little to no long term accountability or meaningful change in terms of her past/present behaviour.
The last fight I had with my mother was about a boundary I set with her that she knowingly and actively crossed. To keep things kind of vague, I asked her not to contact someone who had hurt me and she did anyway. I found out that she had broken the boundary after my partner called her to thank her for something and she told them what she had done. I called my mother the next day, she later admitted to what she had done.
Me setting boundaries and her breaking them has been a pattern of behaviour with her, no matter how gently I set the boundary. I have been yelled at, called names, accused of not caring about her, and even threatened with violence when I have tried to set boundaries with her. Most of these boundaries boil down to “You’re trying really hard to do this thing for me that I did not ask and do not want you to do, please let me do this on my own.” She has a very “mother knows best” mentality and will take boundaries I set as a personal attack against her.
After our most recent conversation, she gave all sorts of excuses like “Everything I do is out of love, well I have been getting better haven’t I? you just need to not let things get to you so much” etc.
We argued for a bit, but the final straw was when she basically blamed me for being with an abusive partner past in the past (this conversation was not long after I had opened up about the abuse for the first time, during said conversation I apologized for the things I did during that relationship that had hurt my mother that she brought to my attention during said conversation).
I told her how hurt what she said made me feel and how it felt like she was making my abuse about her. She yelled/swore at me, then hung up the phone on me. She tried to call hours later but I was feeling too heated. I told her that I wanted to calm down first. She said she understood, but a few hours later she sent a long, ugly text message berating me for how I never acknowledged the growth she has made as a parent and how depressed that made her.
She framed all this like this was the route of the issues the two of us have, this was my first time hearing all this. She then said that we should just “leave each other alone from now on because we don’t see each other that often anyway.” She said a few other things I’m not comfortable repeating, before ending it with “thank god I have photos of you to look back on.” I did not respond, I did not want to escalate things. I knew in this moment that she was trying to hurt/get a reaction out of me. She has done this and admitted to it multiple times before. So I didn’t respond so as to not escalate things. Hours later, she texted again, saying she forgave me and begged me to forgive her. Again, this is a common tactic of manipulation for her: saying abusive things to me then immediately back tracking with love bombing, but not genuine accountability. I apologized about an hour after that text for some things she mentioned that had hurt her, but I knew after this conversation that there was no coming back from this. We had gotten into a similarly ugly fight 6 months prior to that one. I realized that no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t fix our relationship.
I wrote her a letter explaining why I was going no contact with her and implored her to go to therapy for the mental health issues she was having. According to my Dad, she has recently entered therapy, which is good. But my mother wants me to immediately go back to talking to her like nothing happened. My therapist has told me that the best way to re-enter an estranged relationship with someone so that the cycle of abuse does not continue is to take things slow with communication, and not just go 0-100. I told my Dad that I wanted pretty much what my therapist said, but he said my mother wants basically the opposite of that.
END OF EDIT
I (26M) made the decision to go no contact with my emotionally abusive mother earlier this year after a fight we had followed by some really ugly and manipulative text messages she sent to me after the fact. That was the last straw for me, so I let her and my Dad know I didn’t want to speak with her again. My mother and I have not spoken since.
Her and my Dad are still married and I have been trying to maintain a relationship with him. I’m angry at how he does not seem to understand why I’m NC with my mother (even though I have explained why to him multiple times in detail) and how he has allowed the abuse to happen since I was a kid, but he is my Dad and I love him.
We’ve been texting since my estrangement from my mother, but it feels as though I am the one who reaches out first 90% of the time and his responses are usually pretty short. We haven’t seen each other in several months as he lives 3 hours from me. Since Father’s Day is next month, I thought that would be a good time for us to get together. Not only does he not want to get together on Father’s Day as to not to hurt my mother (nothing in particular happened on Mother’s Day, I just am/was not in contact with her so we obviously didn’t talk at all that day) he also seems like he doesn’t wanna tell me when exactly he’s going out of the country later this year despite me asking twice? I’d like to know, for the very least because if god forbid there was an emergency whilst they were away, I would know where they are and when they left. But I feel like he’s avoiding telling me on purpose based on these text messages.
I feel really hurt and honestly abandoned by my Dad. I’ve been trying to maintain a relationship with him despite the circumstances, but it feels like he’s been drifting farther away from me ever since my maternal estrangement. I know my mother looks at his phone and has texted me through it pretending to be him (Neither have ever outright admitted to it, but I know it’s her who’s texting me based on how starkly different the texts read from my Dad’s usual style of texting) so I’m afraid to text him about how I feel. Same with talking on the phone, my Dad will sometimes leave his phone in another room and my mother will answer it for him if it rings, so I don’t want to risk any contact with her.
I get that my mother is hurt I’ve gone NC, but it feels a bit ridiculous and unfair to me that my Dad doesn’t wanna spend time together on a holiday that’s made for HIM with me, his only child. Am I overreacting to feeling upset/angry with my Dad over this?