Dear Inky:

This is my understanding: your relationship with your father is over and done with, has been over and done with for decades. It was probably never “a go” on his part. I would call it “unrequited love”. You loved him, he didn’t reciprocate.

I stated the above confidently because in relationship with him, you were, for many years, the child and he was the adult. Children naturally and necessarily love and reach out to their parent. It is so because the child is necessarily dependent and needy of the parent, not the other way around.

Whether you contact him more often, less often, or not at all doesn’t matter, makes no difference, and is a matter of no consequence (unless he requires contact so to keep you in his will?)

Unless there is a financial consequence, parenthesis above) this is a dead issue, done and over decades ago. It has been and will continue to be a one-sided affair. In other words, any value in past and future contact with him exists only in somewhere-over-the-rainbow/ wish-upon-a-star type thinking/ feeling in your brain alone.

* you often have such witty suggestions to others, but with all your wit, with the best of the-best-of-Inky’s, I believe there is nothing you can say to your father to change this unrequited love.

As far as talking to your sister, siblings, in the desert of very little to no love from parents, often compete for that very little. This may be the case here. If so, let her win that very little, or more likely, let her win and take possession of any illusion of love she wants to entertain. It may comfort her.

anita