My daughter's mother has another daughter, my daughter's half sister. For simplicity's sake I will call her Barbara. I will call my daughter Lily. I will refer to their mom as Gloria.
Now I recently received and invitation to Barbara's wedding. I found this sort of odd as I have not had any contact with her in years. I'm also not a fan of weddings. I basically only attend them if they are for a close friend or family member. So I sent back the electronic rsvp declining the invite.
A few days later I get a message from my Gloria saying that Barbara was crushed that I declined the invite. Gloria said that Barbara was trying to extend an olive branch and bury the hatchet. Barbara had hoped that I would be there to walk her down the aisle like any dad is supposed to.
After reading this message I was immediately confused because I didn't know what the fuck she is talking about. What does she mean bury the hatchet? More importantly what does she mean by referring to me as her dad. Just to be clear I have never considered Barbara to be my child. I have never taken a parental role in her life. Sure, I was around a lot while she was growing up because I wanted to be as involved in my daughter's life as possible and sometimes I included Barbara when taking Lily out just to be nice. That really was the extent of it. I'm not sure how that translates to me being her dad. Especially since I would only have my Lily overnight half the week and only take Lily on vacations and to visit my family. I only took an active role in parenting Lily.
I didn't know how to respond to Gloria, so I talked to Lily about it to try and get some insight. Lily explained how years ago Barbara made a comment about her being the golden child in front of me. It was supposed to be some sort of dig at me favoring Lily. This must have flew over my head as I don't remember it and frankly why would I think it had anything to do with me. But Lily said Barbara thought I was really upset at her because of what she said and that's why I stopped coming around. Reality is that was around the time that Lily went to college. So without Lily being there I really had no reason to go over to Gloria's anymore. Lily said she hadn't said anything about it to me because the whole situation weirded her out and she didn't want to become more involved.
So I finally replied back to Gloria and told her that this was all a big misunderstanding. Gloria said even if it was (she doesn't think it was she still thinks I just abandoned Barbara after having been around her whole life) I should try to understand how it has caused Barbara so much pain over the years, how hard it was for her to forgive me, and how it would really be great if I could just show up so she doesn't continue to feel unwanted and can finally get closure.
But given all this information I feel far less inclined to go to the wedding than I did before. Like Lily I think the whole thing is weird and I'd rather not become more involved either.