Hi Chelle3
I think its great that your posting regularly on here. It helps everyone who reads/posts not only you.
I still live with my active AH. It was upsetting me a lot that my AH wasn't managing to have a reasonable relationship with our daughters 20 and 23 yrs. When I brought it up with him, he pulled the classic blame shifting, and then reverted the discussion so that it became about me and my own relationship with my parents. Since then, he has been trying a bit harder although more so with our youngest daughter than the other.
I discussed this with my therapist last week, that his negativity about our daughters hurts me so much and she said sure, that's because they are so important to you, but you should be important to you too. I am working through that.
My youngest daughter had quite a few nasty conflicts with her dad when he bullied her and upset her. She even went for some psychotherapy which helped her a lot. Then my AH got sober for a few months and became 'wonder' dad. He apologized to her and said that he realised how wrong he had been. My youngest DD and AH were getting along really well and then he started drinking again and bullying her - again! She moved out of home at 19yrs due to her dads bullying and emotional abuse when she could finally take no more.
Now she no longer lives at home, she doesn't have to put up with his negative behaviors and can decide when to interact with him or not. Its been much healthier for her. However, she knows what he can be like and sees him being nice to her as 'false'. She has some trust issues with her dad because of his past bullying behaviors. She also cant understand why I stay and put up with him (as she sees it) but that's a whole other story.
When I read your thread, I immediately thought that your AH sounds like he is afraid to be alone and is putting some effort into repairing a relationship with his daughters. Will he be able to sustain this - I doubt it. It doesn't sound like he is doing it out of 'realization' of the damage he has done (by ignoring them) in the past, more like he is doing it for himself so that he doesn't end up all alone. Manipulative and selfish!
Please get some help for your daughters either through Al-anon or therapy, it helped my daughter a lot to know that she wasn't to blame and that her dads verbal abuse had nothing to do with her. I do feel that both of my DD;s have definitely been effected by their dads drinking in many ways and also by their mums issues surrounding the drinking (I have been mental with it all) and its a relief to know that they are able to discuss this with a third 'rational' party and feel at peace with it.