I'm struggling with what to do now.
When I was 28 I met a woman, my age, who had two daughters, 4 and 2, from a previous marriage. The dad and ex-husband was not in the picture and I genuinely never heard of him beside what she told me of her previous marriage. Instead I was made feel welcome in their life, and within two years it felt like I was their dad. They were calling me dad anyway and thought of me for father's day and my birthday. We got married about three years after it was feeling like family, and we stayed married for 11 years.
We divorced because I had found out she was having an ongoing affair. Because she was not working she took everything. Half of the money, the house for which she got me a ridiculous evaluation of half of it, forced to sell the business I had invested all my soul in besides my marriage and my daughters so that she could get half of its worth. Also my daughters as I had spent my life believing that's what they were. It's not a custody matter as they were 17 and 20, but she accused me of being abusive verbally, emotionally, physically and sexually. People around who knew us could see through the bullshits, but the girls sided unilaterally with their mother and didn't want anything to do with me. I was left with nothing and invited to go try at life again elsewhere, which I guess I did.
At first I was still thinking of the girls I raised as my daughters and I reacted like they were making a mistake, an error of appreciation of the situation, manipulated by their mother, and I kept trying to keep in contact. But after everyone's birthday and holidays, and still no response, I finally let reality sink in. I grieved the loss of my fantaisy of daughters (worse than the loss of a fantasy of wife) and stopped trying. I had missed and was about to miss many of their important events anyway.
I have since moved to a different state, made new recent friends, reconnected with older ones who had moved there too, met someone to whom I'm about to pop the question. Also a new business I started here is starting to work and I might make it with it after all.
Five months ago, the younger girl reached out by social media (one local to the country). Calling me dad again, and asking if we could resume a dad/daughter relationship. Apologized for cutting contact. Said that her mother regretted not only the first betrayal but also everything else she did in the divorce. Also said that they both had a huge fight with the older girl and had been cut contact for months and she wasn't in the picture. She was asking if she could visit me, meet my new partner, and I visit her in her student apartment, without her mother around.
I responded with the truth. That I had indeed thought of her and her sister as my daughters, that was really what I used to think we were. But that when I had my heart, my soul and my life shattered, I was abandoned like no dad would be by his daughters. That wasn't about asking that they would pick my side instead of their mother's. It wasn't about sides. It was about caring about your devastated dad, offering emotional support, and generally caring whether I live or die, checking that I'm not about to shoot myself like I could have. Though my two little treasures and still growing, they were not really children anymore. They knew what was going on. They knew their mother was most likely lying, as when would that abused have happened? They knew what she had taken from me. Years of my life, ability to trust, my house, my calling. And they didn't care. They let me try to reach out as much as I could and ignored me for as long as it took. I used to think I was their dad, but they proved they never thought likewise. And now that they were grown adult and about to be, they would need to find someone else to finance college and whatever the older may need in her time.
She responded with a very long apology that I won't detail, mostly insusting that she wanted her dad not a wallet, and asking if I would reconsider my position if she could get back to me the half of the worth that her mother received of my old business and a fairer half of the price of the house. I thought that was never happening and I told her yeah, you do that.
Well it really looks like she did that. She emailed me a notariazable agreement that we could meet and sign in front of an official, that gives me a sum of money genuinely close to what my previous business plus half of the house was worth. Said she convinced her mother to renounce most of it, and also to use the compensation her mother got from the new guy who turned out provably abusive, to compensate for the house's price. And also that she was working a lot to save money as it was getting tight when giving me back what's mine.
I'm torn. Unless I'm very wrong on what their situation is likely to be, moving this money is a feat. But as far as I'm concerned it's just money. It doesn't compensate for the years of abandonment while they were perfectly conscious of what they were doing. Then again, I don't think anything can compensate, and even though it was in jest I did tell her to go for that solution if she feels like it.
Apparently she has renounced college and is working as she can. If I were to try and go for rekindling fatherly bonds with her I would obviously want to invest in a better education for her. But that defeats the purpose of her having proven she wanted to right the wrongs, and she knows all of this. Then again if she didn't really want to rekindle our bonds she wouldn't have needed to show me papers proving she can transfer to me that money.
I guess my real problem is it's too late and everything now is too little. I'm now only resentful towards the adult who could have chosen to have me as her dad but chose otherwise. I don't know how to try and think about it differently.
tl;dr: married wife, took her daughters as mine. Wife cheated, took everything for me, and adult daughters abandon me completely. Years later one of the daughter reaches out to restore father/daughter links, and offers to bring back to me huge parts of the finances taken from me as proof of repentence. I say yeah right, go do that, and she does. But I've moved on, my feelings aren't the same, and money can't change that.
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