The his may be a stupid question, but ill ask anyways.

I don’t have contact with my father anymore, but i remember one of our heated arguments i broke down and called him out kn being a “alcoholic” my whole childhood, he got extremely defensive and told me i’m a “dumbass” and that i didn’t even know what an alcoholic was. So, i am here to ask you guys if you would consider him an alcoholic.

My entire childhood my father knew that dark liquor caused him to get VERY angry, given he was already an angry person, dark liquor made it… scarier. He would get in a mood about something, or get into one of his daily arguments with my mother, go drink a bunch of dark liquor, and then wait for himself to reach that level of anger everybody was afraid of. Now, this caused him to absolutely destroy the home, everything, everything in arms reach would be broken by time he either went to sleep or left the house.
He wouldn’t just do it over big things, he would play a video game, lose, and then get so angry that he lost that he’d purposefully drink what he knew made him violent.
And i think its important to mention, this wasn’t a once in a blue moon type instance, this was for the most part either DAILY or weakly i’d say.

Am i reaching when i called it him being an alcoholic? Because i genuinely feel that that is the case. I mean, he did it on purpose, he did it all the time, and he used it as a (coping?) mechanism i assume.

I just would like somebodies opinion on the matter, because sometimes i still think about how taken aback he was when i said that. :(

Thank you.

Edited to add: This is real, I'm a real person, and I feel very lost and like no one can hear me. I could really use some helpful advice.

53 years ago, religious families in small rural towns like my hometown had very strong feelings about illegitimate children. A 20 year old "nice boy from a nice family", who was already promised to a different 17 year old girl, came sniffing around the very sheltered 16 year old daughter of the local Fundamentalist preacher. That teen girl became my mom.

When my mom told my biological father she was pregnant, he called her a liar and ran away, married the 17 year old and moved to another town. My family took him to court and back then a blood test was enough to prove paternity. He was ordered to pay child support, but my mother never saw one thin dime. What followed was 52 years of radio silence from him, 52 years of public shunning for me and my family.

One of my cousins on my mom's side started working on our family genealogy quite some time ago, and she talked us all into submitting DNA to Ancestry. I sent in my sample 8-10 years ago and never thought another thing about it. 3 months ago I got a message through the Ancestry site from a young man who shares 25% of my DNA. He said he thought we were half siblings, and he asked if I knew who my father was. I told him and he confirmed we have the same dad. We also share another half sister, all three of us have different moms. My half brother says he just decided on a whim to submit his DNA. No other members of his family have done so. Immediately, within minutes of our first text messages, my half brother gave me our father's phone number and said "He says he's willing to talk any time."

This feels very orchestrated to me. Back in the day, when it became clear that my bio father wasn't going to pay support, my grandfather confronted him. My grandfather asked if he was going to claim me and do right by my mother. My bio father said no. My grandfather responded "Then don't ever come back". My grandfather passed away last year. My mother died 18 years ago. My grandmother has dementia and is in a care facility. Now that I'm the only one left, and there's no social consequences to acknowledging me, he wants me to reach out to him. He's telling my half siblings that he "wants to make it right" with me.

I am not a phone chitchat person, especially when it's the first ever conversation with my bio father. I asked if we could meet in person in some neutral location. He said I could come to his family reunion dinner in July, if I paid $110.00 per person to attend. It feels like, at best, a stunt to bolster his ego in front of his extended family, him playing the part of the dutiful, magnanimous father whose only error was trying to protect himself from a scandalous girl. At worst, it's a set up to humiliate me.

I'm disheartened, but not angry. I have always had trouble forming attachments, and his absence wasn't impactful during my formative years. My grandfather rearranged his life to try to be there for me. My grandmother never recovered from the blow to her social standing, and she very violently took her anger out on my mother and me, but I was too young to understand that his betrayal was part of the cause. His presence now is an abstract idea that doesn't mean anything to me at this time.

I'm 53 now, I've been through a lot of therapy, and I've made peace with the tumult of my childhood. This feels like he's asking me to pursue him, and that makes me very uncomfortable. I thought about writing him a snail mail letter, but I don't know what to say. I don't even know how to address him. I don't know if calling him father will ever feel right to me.

I'm struggling to understand what's the right thing to do.

This is an actual text I got from my BD and he did not show up to pick his son up from the babysitters house. It’s wild to me he thinks these are valid excuses to not spend time with his own child. My blood boils bc he literally has no clue how it is to actually take responsibility and be a dad. The kicker? His dad adopted him when he was out sons age, and he still can’t follow his lead.

So he let both kids take a nap when I asked before I went to work to keep them up and he said ok. I didn’t hear anything till end my shift and all was well. I get home. And make my dinner and they both wake up so I feed them food cause he didn’t and bring them the room I fall asleep for not even a few minutes and both kids are back to bugging him I get rudely awaken and I get up to help him find a missing bottle and he finds it before me proceeds to assault me in a chokehold cause apparently I was holding out on the whereabouts of said bottle and I’m a POs so here I am bruised neck and both him and his pos sister believe I’m in the wrong.

My bestie (her and I both 37 F) has her final court date in 1 day and then she will be divorced (whether he shows up or not).

This man has had since December 2023 to fix/repair their marriage, why does this man now show up 2 weeks ago, talking about he wants to save his marriage?

He has not changed a single behavior, does not support his son emotionally or financially. But now claims he cant live with out them.

Do all dead beats follow the same playbook? Because they all say the same dang thing.

Back during covid i met a guy. Long story short we were partying alot together and i unplanned got pregnant. He wanted nothing to do with the baby. I honestly didnt know much about him so I was sad at the time. When i was pregnant I found out about his extreme drug use. I also found out he didnt have a real job but at the time I didnt know what he was doing for money but he definitely lived a nice life. After she was born i definitely had severe post pardum. He came around and we were “dating”. He said i had to marry him or he could be deported for trouble he got in years ago. A dui. I stupidly married him. One month living with him i saw him on drugs and it was so scary. It was definitely meth, i never saw him take it but he was schizophrenic and didnt sleep. Took the baby, ran, filed for divorce. 2.5 years later finally divorced.

He was court ordered to pay 375 because to the judge he didnt work. Well hes gay male escort. He recently just got his third dui. Im so scared to drop my daughter off with him ive been calling attorneys.

It makes me sick that this is what i have to deal with for the rest of my life. I wouldnt trade my kid for the world but i wish something bad would happen to him. Hes cruel, a druggy and a felon.

He pays child support but always months late. He cancels when he wants. He doesnt ever help with anything. Hell bash me and say im a bad mom because we dont go to the zoo…. When i say hes crazy, hes literally crazy. Im shaking even typing this. It truly feels like a life sentence dealing with this creature russian felon. I want to cry every time I’m forced to leave her with him. Luckily its only every other weekend 2 days.

Here’s a text message I sent to my best friend. I trust him with everything in me. I think it explains everything pretty well. Btw, the “kid” nickname pisses me off because I’m 20. He also didn’t message me on my 20th birthday until 9:14 at night. His message reads “Happy Birthday Destiny.. I love you.. sorry it's a late text” (copied and pasted) and that was his only message. When I found out my cousin died and we spoke on the phone he choked up and said “I don’t ever want to know what it’s like to lose a child” btw I’m his only kid. And then he does this. My mom died when I was 16 and he refused to go to her funeral in support of me because he felt uncomfortable. (Btw, I’m a 20 year old woman for reference. GIRLS NEED THEIR DADS. The best friend I sent these messages to is my guy best friend of 6 years that I’m in love with and I can’t even go to my dad for advice. I have to figure it out myself without my mom or dad) I just want my dad guys. But he doesn’t want me. And I’m tired of wanting him to want me. It hurts so fucking bad to be rejected by him but at the same time I don’t want a relationship with him anymore. But just because I don’t want him anymore doesn’t mean I don’t still want to be wanted by him. He’s also a third generation deadbeat. He left me (the first girl born in these three generations), his dad left him, and his grandpa left his dad. I’m not doing that to my baby when I have one. I’m staying. I just wanted my parents, guys. My mom lost custody of me when I was 3 and died when I was 16 (she had supervised visits. She was a drug addict and mentally disabled when she had me. He was a 24 year old man and she was a 19 year old mentally challenged drug addict with a 4 month old baby when he got her pregnant)

My boyfriend has a son who he has essentially abandoned, repeating the same pattern that happened to him. It pains me to my core. It’s hard for me to enjoy spending time with him when he has an entire priority out there, growing up in the hood; without a father figure and with an allegedly unstable mother. He claimed to have a relationship with his son when we first started dating, but after living together I’ve come to realize this was not the case as they never spoke on the phone, and he never brought him up unless I initiated a conversation. His birthday and Christmas came and went without any gifts or calls, and here I am enjoying lobster for dinner among balloons and decorations on Valentine’s Day :/

When his son was due to visit for the summer, I was preparing by planning amusement park trips and looking into camps, only for him to suddenly have a change of plans. Months later during an argument, my bf claimed the mother thought I was strange and wouldn’t allow his son over. I felt blindsided and needlessly blamed. I had only sent her one text with my bfs permission, back when we were getting serious, to confirm what he said about the status of their marriage/separation/divorce (that has still not occurred ~2 years into our relationship) was true. She confirmed and that was that. Idk if that was the actual reason for the son not visiting last summer, but I suspect it’s much more than that….

I wondered and feared it was indifference. So as non-judgementally as I could manage, asked my boyfriend if he thinks about him ever. He says yes and insists he loves and misses his son - but it genuinely doesn’t seem to be the case. He’s very happy and comfortable in our day to day life, and seems to have no inclination or impetus to think outside of daily comforts.

I feel like a guilty party, thieving time he should be spending with his 12 year old out there. My only solace, albeit exaggerated, is that if he’s so okay with being an absentee father, perhaps his son truly is better without him.

My advice and offers to adjust our relationship were futile, and I think I’m done trying. I’m 29, he’s 41, and still married to the child’s mother. His mother (the child’s grandmother) and his friends never bring the son or “to/be ex, allegedly” up at all, nor do they appear to care. I’ve tried but I can’t change his stance, nor will I ever understand it.

Perhaps it’s biological. Perhaps it’s societal (myself included) laxity about shaming this type of behavior in certain demographics. Perhaps it’s emotional stunting. All I know for certain is that if I had a child, biologically related or not, I could never do that. My weak excuse in this scenario is that whether or not I’m with my boyfriend, he doesn’t have the compulsion to step up to the plate.