"Kids With Great Dads Don't Randomly Ditch That Dad": People Say This Dad Who Cut Off His Daughter Is A Walking "Red Flag"

Family dynamics are...messy — especially when it comes to rocky parent/child relationships. And with a rise in adult children going no-contact with their parents, I'm fascinated by the directions that led there.

This is why I and thousands of others couldn't look away from a post by dad NaturalFixing, who is wondering if he's wrong for cutting off his daughter both emotionally and financially. Here's his story: "My ex-wife and I finalized our divorce last year. Long story short, she was having an emotional affair with a guy at work. She’s now in a relationship with him."

"We also have a coparenting arrangement for our daughter, who is 14. My daughter is very close to her mom, and she even sided with her on her affair."

"For the first few months after the divorce, I did try to maintain a friendly relationship with my daughter. I gave her gifts, I never blamed her mom, I tried my best. But my daughter was always extremely cold with me. After a few months, she just straight up told me that she liked her stepdad much more than me, and he was the man my ex-wife deserved as a husband and the man she deserved as a daughter. I had no clue why she even said that to me, and that was the most painful thing anyone had ever said to me in my life."

"I broke down really bad that night and took the next couple of days off work. After a couple of days, I decided that I wanted to emotionally and financially distance myself from my daughter and that I would do the bare minimum possible and fulfill my legal and financial obligations till she was 18.

All this time, my sister was the only one there to support me. I had no other family; my parents were long gone. My sister had gone through a similar thing a few years ago; her husband had cheated on her. Luckily, she had no children, but that experience had devastated her so much that she said she wasn’t going to date ever again because she had lost trust in all men."

"After I had made the decision to distance myself from my daughter, I started removing her as the primary beneficiary from all my financial accounts, my 401(k), etc., and instead put my sister as the beneficiary. I started withdrawing from the college funds I had saved for my daughter and used it on myself and my sister."

"This wasn’t a one-way thing. My sister earns more than me, and over the past few months, I have received more gifts from her than I have received from my ex-wife in my entire life. We also went on a two-week vacation to Europe."

"All in all, I have emotionally and financially distanced myself from my daughter, and I am doing the absolute bare minimum possible. I have plans to never speak to her ever again after she turns 18."

"I just want to finish off my legal and financial obligations to her. My daughter has noticed this change in my behavior but hasn’t said anything yet."

WELL! I wouldn't blame you if you had to read the story twice because, to me, it feels as though we're supposed to believe his daughter just woke up one day and decided she liked her new stepdad better with no catalyst or bad behavior made on her father's part. And I'm just not convinced.

I'm not alone here. More than a few people asked for some gaps to be filled in:

"I sense some missing stairs," redditor deadlyhausfrau said. "Kids with great dads don't randomly ditch that dad. It sounds like, whether you saw it or not, you were not a present or connected parent. You haven't been someone she feels safe with or reliant on. Consider this: You wrote your daughter off completely after just a few months of bratty teen behavior. And she noticed. And she hasn't said anything. You did what she expected."

"I dunno. It's WEIRD for a child to want to cut off a parent without something major affecting it," user Firefly211 agreed. "All of us [kids who went no contact] tried maintaining relationships for years and years before cutting parents off. I don't think this is the whole story."

"To be honest, the fact you're feeling justified by punishing your 14-year-old over one comment by withdrawing her entire college fund seems pretty red flag-ish," they continued. "What else did you do for discipline as she grew up?"

But not everyone agrees with those of us who think the dad may be leaving some unflattering parts of his out of the story.

"Not the asshole," user MangoSaintJuice said. "This sounds like her mom is poisoning her against you. You might want to talk to her one last time and tell her you're about to leave her alone for good if she continues to act this way."

People either go one way or the other: believing her mother is either manipulating her, or that her father isn't as much of a stand-up guy as he's claiming to be.

"This is impossible to judge. I'm always very wary of a story when a kid acts this way. Mom could have manipulated her, or you might not have had much of a relationship with her to begin with. I'm having a hard time picturing you two being close if she casts you off this easily. And it's weird how you said you 'gave her gifts' as one of your two examples of trying your best. And then you remove all financial ties — which seems very manipulative. But I'm not going to judge your whole circumstance by reading between the lines. That's not fair," user FictionalContext said.

Regardless of which side you land on here, most did come to a general consensus on one point: Withdrawing his daughter's college funds for gifts and vacations was a bad move.

"I have two kids with college funds. I honestly cannot imagine them saying something hurtful enough to me as a teenager (going through a divorce situation) that would make me take out all the money and spend it on myself and my sister," user Perezoso3dedo said. "To be sure, there are circumstances where I might pull the money out (a major medical emergency, the child explicitly expresses they don’t want to go to college and we have a talk about what to do), but some shitty comments…that’s a huge consequence for a kid."

"Grow up. The fact that you’re plotting revenge on your 14-year-old child, is very immature," user watermelon-jellomoon said less sensitively.

"A father who actually cared about his kid would attempt therapy or practice patience. Your first instinct is to abandon her."

Overall:

This is a dynamic meant for therapy, not Reddit.

What do you think about the situation? Let us know in the comments.