Reconciling with Dad After Parents’ Divorce: Guide

Reconciling with Dad After Divorce: If you’ve ever felt like your parents’ divorce was why you don’t have a good relationship with your dad, you’re not alone. In fact, it’s pretty common for kids whose parents are getting divorced to feel a little hurt and angry at first.

In many cases, this can lead to an unspoken acceptance of the situation—and a feeling that there’s nothing that you can do about it. But there is something that you can do about it! 

By learning how to work through your feelings and reach out for support from others, you can finally start to heal from the pain of your parents’ divorce. In this article, we dig deep into these situations and how we can help you reconcile with your parents, especially your dad.

Why You Don’t Want to See Your Dad After the Divorce

Although divorce is never easy for anyone involved, it can be particularly overwhelming, especially for children. They may feel abandoned by one or both parents.

So, they may resent that their parents have chosen to separate rather than find a common solution. And the situation may escalate to a point where an adult son or daughter may resent any of the parents, especially the dad. They may even avoid seeing him, leave alone talking to him. 

Here are some reasons why you may not want to see your dad after divorce.

You have a hard time forgiving him for what he did

In your thoughts, you might even hold him responsible for the divorce. As you attempt to comprehend the situation, it’s difficult not to consider that if your father had been less significant, less stubborn, or less selfish, things would have turned out differently.

You want to know why your dad got divorced, what happened between him and your mother, and how they managed to stay together as long as they did. After all, they went through together.

He has a lot of baggage, and you don’t want to deal with it

Your dad may have a lot of baggage due to his divorce, especially if he was the one who filed for it. Maybe his ex-wife was manipulative, or he had an affair and wasn’t honest about it. Maybe she cheated on him, or maybe he cheated on her.

Whatever happens, it’s best to avoid your dad unless you have to see him. He could be sensitive about the whole thing, so he might be reluctant to tell you what went down in their marriage because he doesn’t want to upset you.

He might be resentful of your new relationship with your mom

It could be that he doesn’t want to share you with anyone else, or maybe he has issues with his ex-wife and is concerned about how she will treat you if she gets custody of you.

Your parents were never the same after divorce

Your dad might have changed and become a different person than you knew before. Or he might be the same, but just different in his personality. It’s hard to say which it is, but it can be difficult either way.

Your dad might be mean-spirited and pushy about his views on divorce in general

This can make you feel like he doesn’t respect you as an adult and that he doesn’t believe you can make decisions on your own. It could also make you feel like his opinion is more important than yours because he knows more about the situation than anyone else.

How To Reconcile with Your Dad After Divorce

You might wonder how to reconcile with your dad after your parents’ divorce. But all in all, reconciliation is possible, although it takes time, effort and patience. 

Reconciliation doesn’t necessarily Reconciling with Dad After Divorce require you to stop being angry at your parents — it just means trying to understand their motives and motivations and accepting them for who they are, even if you disagree with them.

Here are some tips on reconciling with your dad after your parents’ divorce.

• Discuss it

You can start by talking to your dad about how he feels and what he thinks about the situation. If there’s an issue between you, you must discuss it openly and honestly.

It may be helpful for both of you to write down your thoughts and feelings about the situation so that you can see where each other stands on certain issues. This way, if misunderstandings or miscommunications occur, they will become clear immediately instead of festering away in silence and resentment over time.

• Let Go of the Past

It may be hard to let go of old feelings and emotions, but you should try. You must realize that both of you have changed over the years, which cannot be changed by either one of you alone. Your dad will also need to get past his feelings about what happened in the past and understand that it was not his fault for what happened between your parents.

• Make amends

Once you’ve had time to talk through everything that went wrong in your relationship and why things ended up as they did, it’s time to make amends. 

This can include anything from apologizing for any hurtful words spoken during arguments or having an honest conversation about what happened when one of you was away at work or school — whatever needs fixing and whatever caused resentment between you. 

• Don’t cut off communication

Not severing all ties with your family members after a divorce is important. A healthy relationship with your parents is essential to form a strong support system for yourself as an adult.

• Make Time for Him

As much as possible, make time for him when he is available so that he knows that you still care about him and want him around even though trying to rebuild your relationship after divorce may be difficult.

• Don’t blame him for how he feels or thinks about the situation

Your dad is hurting, too, so don’t try to make him feel guilty or responsible for something that isn’t true or fair on either side of this equation.

All in all, accept that there’s no easy way out of this situation and no perfect solution to fixing things between you and your dad after your parents’ divorce. This means there’s no magic formula for solving all those problems associated with living in close quarters with each other again after years apart.

Bottom Line

Reconciling with Dad After Divorce Talk to your dad. Tell him how you feel and give him a chance. If it doesn’t work out, then at least you tried. They’re your parents, love you, and want what’s best for you. But maybe if they talk to each other, they can see that what’s best for you is having an intact family.