After my marital breakdown my wife took control of discussions around childcare with the children that I was not allowed to be party to. Against my wishes there was a separate plan for each child which was communicated as ‘what they wanted’. Within 4 weeks the plan didn’t hold and my 13 y/o daughter spent less and less time with me. She wouldn’t discuss anything with me despite us having a strong relationship throughout her life. She made strange comments about money that didn’t make sense. She used adult language and repeated phrases like ‘we are having a lovely time, I don’t want to talk about that now’ whenever I tried to discuss arrangements with her as if she’d been coached. She came less and less, 1 night a week, then not at all. The child maintenance bill kept going up, paying more to see my beloved daughter less. My ex blocked events with my family so my daughter increasingly lost contact with her paternal grandparents, her aunty and uncle. So far this year ( to June) I’ve only spent 2 hours in her company. GCSEs are used as an excuse but she spends weekends with my ex-wife’s parents. There is a constant flow of requests for money from my ex for a daughter I don’t see, with emotional messages that she thinks I love her brother more as I ‘spend more money on him’ (as he lives with me half the time and there is less child maintenance). Thankfully he chose to be 50:50 and has kept me sane throughout these last few years. I text my daughter regularly, tell her I love her, never say anything negative about her mum, and leave the door open but it feels like she’s been kidnapped and fallen in love with her captor. She is cold, closed and distant. Everyone says ‘keep doing the right thing and she’ll come back eventually’ but I’m missing her one childhood now and I truly believe it will be a decade before the penny drops. If it ever does. I can’t imagine the lies she’s been told to make her behave this way. But she’s my daughter, I miss her and I love her. There’s a massive hole in my life.