Was Estrangement ever thus?

Oh gosh yes. Estrangement is nothing new.
Just read 19th century novels.

My paternal DGM hated the idea of her son marrying DM. She was a Catholic, she was Foreign. After DM died, we found letters she'd written to her son (my dad) imploring him to give her up!

Yet when we children arrived the ice was slowly broken and after dad died, his mother helped to look after us 3 small children.
No love existed between the 2 women but they tolerated eachother for our sakes.

I didn't know the extent of the dislike until I read those vile letters.

I am estranged from my mom. Once I met my husband and realized what it felt like to actually be loved, it was hard to ignore how she treated me. I imagine that is a reason why many people who estrange family when they meet a spouse.

Before I made that call I was going to therapy. All my therapist did was ask why I never bring up my family. That brought on a lot of introspection. You're trapped with family growing up and if they aren't good to you there is really no escape. You learn to adapt.

I had a whole narrative in my head about how close I was with my mother and told everyone we were best friends. It was a carefully constructed lie that helped me survive. In truth, I was her stand-in spouse after my parents divorced. She leaned on me from when I was 9. She became so attached to me and wouldn't let go even after I moved across the US and built my own life. She made so many demands on my time and wouldn't back off. She talked down to me, shoved her religion down my throat, and insulted basically every decision I made for myself.

She probably blames my therapist. I made the mistake of telling her I was starting therapy for depression and she said "you're not that far gone are you?" followed by "they'll probably blame your mother."

She also fell into far right conspiracy theories. She made it very hard to keep her in my life even at a limited capacity.

Sometimes it is the behaviour of an AC that causes the Estrangement, an example being financial abuse!

Indeed so, Oreo. I know two sisters, in their sixties, living in the same town, who do not speak to each other.
Disputed ownership of mother's jewellery was the trigger for this.

And separations and divorces.
My mother's parents never saw their son's children after his ex-wife moved away with them... and neither did my mother or their father (mum's brother). They never said they were "estranged" - but they were.

In the past there was a lot of fall outs over wills.

It’s always been there in families but I guess wasn’t always talked about.
What’s different now is that strangers on the forums encourage each other to go no contact, relatives are labelled ‘toxic’ and often over the slightest offence.It’s really sad isn’t it?

Estrangement is too big and complex an issue to attempt to do justice to it. But it does cause heartbreak and suffering to many in our society. We have suffered estrangement as a family and the wounds go so deep it is often hard to heal, but thankfully, over time, healing can take place. Is in effect a living bereavement.
I do think that social media and poorly trained therapists and counsellors who are not monitored can cause terrible damage by simply advising or encouraging someone to go no contact. Where abuse is involved obviously it is the only way to survive , but petty fogging fall outs allowed to fester over time or one family member’s feelings of anger over an incident that grows legs and runs away with itself are not reasons to go no contact.
From advising people to talk about everything we seem to now be adopting the opposite approach.

Jaxjacky

GoodAfternoonTea why is it always the DIL’s, what are the sons doing?

The sons are supporting their wives, which is as it should be.

About 70 years ago my mum and her mother in law, my nan, fell out. I had and have no idea why. Sunday tea at my Nan’s stopped. My dad used to take me in the afternoon and then we’d be home for tea.

After about a year, maybe more, my mum came with us one Sunday. What had happened? No idea. Neither had a phone to be able to chat to each other, we lived too far apart for them to have met. We still went home for tea, superficially at least we all got on well again. Estrangement, a term that has the ring of permanence, wasn’t a description used then. A falling out had been overcome, I suspect largely for my benefit. Gradually a relationship was rebuilt. Quietly with no fuss. Thank goodness there was no social media to encourage estrangement.

GoodAfternoonTea why is it always the DIL’s, what are the sons doing?

I think that’s a good observation above.

When travel and communication were more laborious if people didn’t get on they just moved away and kept a casual contact - Christmas cards maybe.

Now, if you don’t want contact with someone and they continue to contact you, you have to make it much more explicit.

I do think the younger generations are more assertive and women particularly don’t feel the same obligations towards parents, that former generations had. Perhaps because they expect us to have the right to independent, busy lives too.

Golly, love0c- politics affecting estrangement...?

I agree, Franbern it is since the advent of FB and mobile phones with instant contact possible that some people feel the need to go NC.
Perhaps it prevents standup fights!

The old adage that we choose our friends but not our family is true still.
Often the firstborn is the one who has more of everything than the younger ones.
More attention, more expectations, more resentment, more responsibility.

Looking back I realise how much I expected from my DS#1. Luckily we are still friends. He's in his 50s now.

Term 'enstranged' was not used in pre-fb days.

My brother (older than me by 12 years), however, back in the 1990's. just disappeared from our lifes. Relationship between him and our Dad had always been bad - he had been born 12 months after Mum & dad married and my Mother had rather pushed everything and everyone else aside. My Dad was only 22 at the time and was not happy at sharing his new wife with a baby. As his own Dad had died (Spanish flu) when he been just 10 years old, so he had no real experience of what a father should do. From what I heard from other family members many years later he was far too strict a disciplinerian.

By the time I was born, it was a completely different. ALthough Dad was always the disciplinerian, it was never too much with me, and was delighted in having a daughter.

He and my brother never got on in adult life, and one of the last things my Mum said just before she died in hospital was to my Dad to 'make it up with J....'.

My Dad, him really tried, But within four months my brother had done is oft-repeated trick of borrowing money from our 80 year old dad, and disappearing.

I did track him down at one time about seven years later, Dad had long since died, but it was made quite apparent to me that my brother did not want to know.

Out of the bluem, five years later he contacted me - in what he thought of a jokesy phone call. It was as if we had only seen each other a couple of days previously. Sadly, his relationship with a lady had ended with her death and he was feeling lonely, suddenly remembering he had a sister.

For the next few years he was a constant presence, never going more than two days before telephoning me - forgetting he had been away for eleven years.

Indeed it was my eldest daughter who actually walked down with him to the operating theatre when he was unwell. He never came out of that anaesthetic.

I do find this sort of behavior strange, not saying you need be close or best friends with your AC/parents, but no reason to make any sort of official declaration.

Families are quite often different if you are "inside them" it seems to me.

Had a strange conversation yesterday with a lady in a charity shop. She said she was estranged from her son. She said she belonged to a support group. She said the the people in the support group had stated that their estrangers were left leaning. There was an odd one or two that didn't know which way their estranger thought politically. Interesting. I can not comment either way. I have no knowledge.

My late brother was estranged from my parents.

I can hear my mother say “ I did everything for that boy, the sacrifices I made”.
The reality is my mother was a narcissist and my father an agressive bully.

I was the scapegoat, my brother the golden child so his no contact made my life a living hell.

Everyone thought my mother was a charming hard working pillar of the church and community.
She was a nasty, manipulative, witch behind closed doors.
Her ability to lie was off the scale.

I should have gone NC years ago, thankfully she is dead and finally I have peace.

There are always two sides to a story and I would bet my bottom dollar in cases of estrangement there is usually a narcissist parent, child or partner.