In a personal account, Inbal Martin, 52, a personal and couples coach from Ra'anana, says she stopped speaking to her father for 16 years after he skipped her wedding. Martin, now married to Roni Martin, 52, a salesman, and mother of three sons, said she once felt like a devoted father’s daughter and had grown up believing her parents had a perfect marriage.
The break began in 1993, when she was 19 and serving in the Military Police. During a visit to her base, her father told her he was leaving home for another woman. Martin and Roni, who had been her boyfriend since they met at age 16, had already decided to marry, and when she brought her father the wedding invitation, he returned it and said he would only come if his partner was invited. Martin refused, saying the woman had not broken up the family, and her father then said he would not attend. Other relatives on his side also stayed away, apparently at his request. The wedding went ahead without him, and Martin decided that night never to speak to him again.
For years, she says, the abandonment shaped her life. She became suspicious of her husband, checked his phone, questioned him about outings, and struggled to trust him. The turning point came when she was 36 and joined an empowerment workshop after Roni took one. A family exercise made her realize she missed her father, that life felt incomplete without him, and that the choice to sever contact had been hers.
She called him in the middle of the night and told him she missed him and loved him, though she said she would not forgive him. Her father interrupted to say the blame was his, not hers, and that he had left home while too absorbed in the divorce to see his daughter. Martin then met him and her siblings in Italy for two weeks, where he said a psychologist had urged him to leave so the children could grow up with their mother. He later acknowledged he had failed to notice her on her wedding day. Their relationship was repaired, and he later attended her brother’s wedding in Israel and met his grandchildren for the first time. Martin later became a coach herself, and says her father supported her through her breast cancer recovery three years ago. She now says their bond is strong again, and that he will be with the family when her eldest son marries soon.
