Therapists who say parents are always to blame.

I think the conversation might be drifting away from estrangement to more general parental accountability for everything. Linked topics for sure, but my comments are focused specifically on estrangement. Of course sometimes parents are responsible for that. Sometimes they aren't. In my own experience, it's mismatched expectations and the reaction to the disappointment of expectations not being met that drives many estrangements.

I do understand parents reluctance to assume responsibility for estrangements, as they would anything else related to their parenting practices and personalities as well- But parents that fail to do so more often than not gravitate towards blame and then eventually estrangement-

I am not estranged from my parents or my adult children. My MIL estranged from us. It was one of the classic cases of mismatched expectations. Typically that she wanted my household to be an extension of hers and wanted free reign over the grandchildren. Mine that we were separate households and grandparents were not over continually or making parenting decisions.

I do think parents need to accept responsibility for their failings but children bring their own personalities and flaws to the mix too. They need to look at their own reactions and ways of communicating too.

Over the years I have learned to view my parents more compassionately than I would have in my younger years. They are just as human as I am, doing their best, with their own imperfections, just as I have.

I suppose you could say I do blame MIL for estranging us. I am willing to look at my own part of any of that but I can't feel I did anything wrong by raising my family in my own way. It's not that I wasn't willing to include her, just not in the way she wanted. As I've matured though, I've also come to see that my DH had a role in it through his refusal to communicate with his mother and preference to try to throw me under the bus so he wouldn't have to deal with his mother himself. Then maybe my role is not insisting DH deal with his mother to nip things in the bud. Blame is complicated.

My daughter went through a very troubled patch in her early to mid teens and she was frequently angry and abusive towards me. As a mum, she is enduring the same thing now with two of her sons. It is, of course, deeply distressing and terribly undermining. I believed in our shared past and still believe that a) puberty and adolescence are hugely unsettling; b) while young people often present as entitled and demanding, they are also often deeply insecure; c) they will always challenge, anger, abuse the person with whom they feel safest and that is usually mum. The latter is as if their feeling of worthlessness and/or failure – and I truly believe that is often what it is – will be "authenticated" if mum finally rejects them. If the one person on whom they could rely for unconditional love rejects them unless they comply to certain conditions, that confirms the belief and there is no longer any point trying anything, especially family. It justifies them and their troubled behaviour as "right". As far as I am concerned, "tough love" isn't love.

I never did that rejection – at some cost to myself – and I rejoice in the close and loving relationship I have with my daughter now. When I needed to offer comfort when she was on the phone in a great state of distress about her eldest son, I reminded her of my attitude, response and thoughts when her life was troubled, which totally matched hers about her son. She found that reassuring and it helped her. She has a psychology degree, so I reckon "I done good" on both counts.

OceanMama

I think the conversation might be drifting away from estrangement to more general parental accountability for everything. Linked topics for sure, but my comments are focused specifically on estrangement. Of course sometimes parents are responsible for that. Sometimes they aren't. In my own experience, it's mismatched expectations and the reaction to the disappointment of expectations not being met that drives many estrangements.

Yes I agree. And boundaries - boundaries are really important. It took many years to establish appropriate boundaries with my MIL. Once those were established then I could just laugh at the comments about me. Before they were there then they had the potential to be deeply damaging. Some of the boundaries were around her actual behaviour but a lot were around me - so getting to a place where I genuinely did not care what she thought of me and realising that we do not value the same things.

Anyway we will never be close but we can rub along okay and it allowed the children to develop their own relationships with their grandparents growing up. At one stage I thought we were heading towards estrangement so I see what happened as a success.

Nezumi you posted "...we will never be close but we can rub along okay and it allowed the children to develop their own relationships with their grandparents growing up". It is indeed a success, to have found a way to maintain the boundaries you needed without preventing your children from having a relationship with their GP's.

As has already been said here, it's not always parents who are responsible for estrangement and as you have posted OceanMama "I do think that parents need to accept responsibility for their failings but children bring their own personalities and flaws into the mix too. They need to look at their own reactions and ways of communicating too".

absent I had the same with my daughter and it spiralled when she found herself in an abusive relationship.She wouldn't leave him,we were in constant fear of her life and it was an attack on her that eventually resulted in her leaving .I should say we had brought her home several times and he'd turn up at our door and promise he "wouldn't do it again" and like a lamb to the slaughter she went back.

She was counselled by a fantastic psychiatrist who after a few appointments asked if we would join in and of course we did.Her take on it was that parents are not routinely blamed ,its an old fashioned lazy theory that should have been discarded decades ago (this was 25 years ago) and she assured us that we had in fact been good parents.
We had done as you describe ,been there all through the awful times tried to support without interfering no matter how much we wanted to .
Like you we have a wonderful close relationship with our daughter who sadly has chronic illness now but is a great mum to her 3 children .She says having experienced the drama from her side in her teens makes her able to see things from their point of view and she has a lovely open frank relationship with her two teens and 9 year old.
However I wouldn't wish our experience on my worst enemy .It was a nightmare for 5 whole years .

Fault and blame are of course considerably different than accountability and responsibility-

It's great that you D eventually managed to get out of that abusive relationship paddyanne.

One has to acknowledge fault in order for there to be accountability and responsibility rosecarmel, the absence or lack of which does seem to be an issue in a lot of estrangements.

Fault and blame are at the core of estrangements- They result in reluctance, defensiveness and argument rather than productive communication -- opposed to discussing flaws, inadequacies and lack- They're subjects that are difficult and uncomfortable to talk about but are not accusatory like fault and blame-

Yes of course they are.

Watts watt, your very inaccurate and judgemental post served no purpose. You know nothing of my or any others individual circumstances. The saying, better be nice than right, comes to mind, your comments were unkind. If someone is estranged from a loved one, it is only natural you look at it very much from how did it get to this. To be estranged or ghosted as it’s called now, is cowardly when there are no reasons given or opportunity to work together to put things right. It is a living bereavement. There isn’t a switch which turns love off. You can be a loving parent but dependant on circumstances, a possessive spouse, alcohol or mental issues a very different picture emerges. I do know one thing, if someone is deeply unhappy, you don’t rub salt in the wounds. If you can’t say anything nice it’s best to let it be.

You can be a loving parent but dependent on circumstances, a possessive spouse, alcohol or mental issues a very different picture emerges.
Sparkling, that comment highlights that parent blaming is alive and well and often seen here. If an adult child gets into an abusive relationship, is dependent on drugs/alcohol, all too often the parents of that adult are blamed. Blame really doesn't help anyone.

Wattsiswatts. What you said would work very well if the parents were perfect, completely flawless.....but none of us are ....are we? We’re all learning on the ‘ job’. We get it wrong. ALL of us, no exceptions.
Healing comes from being able to talk about this, and try to sort it out. Lack of discussion, and acceptance, is the slippery slope to estrangement. Discussion is a two way street, the same as refusing to.
Often, it’s about time passing, when the adult children reach our point now, and then the realisation starts...just maybe too late.

Toadinthehole, whilst I do agree with the sentiment of your last post and wholeheartedly agree that no-one is perfect, I feel your last sentence is a bit patronising to AEC.
I apologise in advance if I’m reading too much into it, but are you implying that when an AEC gets older they’ll be wiser and regret their decision?

I think it is good for us (although painful) to try to recognise our own failings as mothers and the impact this has had on our children.

We all have failings don't we; no one is perfect. Mothers, fathers, sons and daughters have failings all of which can impact on those around them but not everyone sees estrangement as the answer.

Sometimes EAC do seek reconciliation with the parent(s) they estranged, there are some posters on GN where this has happened, so it's reasonable to conclude that they came to regret their decision.

Smileless - I don’t dispute that people can reconcile, however that’s not necessarily an indicator that they regret the initial decision. As is so often pointed out here the circumstances around estrangement are so diverse it would be a sweeping generalisation to assume that.

And also, that was not my point - what I took from that statement was that EAC were being told that they’d “grow up” and learn better - hence the question. Again, if that wasn’t what Toad-in-the-hole was insinuating, then my own bias is affecting how I’ve read this. My problem with that sort of statement is that it implies that there is a level of immaturity around those who estrange that they’ll grow out of and in my own particular circumstances, it feels like a patronising assumption to make.

Lolo81, hello there, and yes, I suppose so, but as usual, it doesn’t apply to everyone. We were estranged from both sets of parents. Didn’t see them at all for the last 15/20 years. I can’t say I regret it, but as I’ve got older, I can identify more with how my mum, MIL would possibly have felt at the time. I think going through the menopause opened my eyes. I still say, they should have known that, and not expected me/ us, to understand, because we hadn’t got there yet, as I said in my first posts. I try to make allowances for my children with that in mind, because I’ve learnt from parents. Sorry if it hurt you in any way. Wouldn’t it be a good thing though...if the AEC did regret the estrangement, and try to mend things? Again, I suppose it really depends on the reasons behind the estrangement. In our cases there was no abuse for example, just the driving force to control and manipulate everything. Hope this helps answer your question, and once again, sorry if I caused offence in any way?

Toad-in-the-hole, no offence caused at all, as I said I have my own bias. I estranged from my MIL for the last 10 years of her life, the narrative I got from that side of the family was the condescending “you’ll learn” it felt like a patronising pat on the head - so that’s why I asked.
Like you I don’t regret my decision, and I have done more work to try and figure out where it all went wrong.
I think for me the issue is that I can see that I did sometimes make the road harder than it had to be, however there was no give at all from the other side - I mean that woman would not budge an inch on anything, and I tried - by God did I try! DH and I were together for over 10 years before I slowly but surely pulled away - and when I did it was because I had to. Like you there was no abuse, it was a constant undermining, petty comments, overstepping, manipulation - the list was endless and it got to the point I would be ill every Sunday because I knew she expected us there for a minimum of 6 hours and I just couldn’t take it any more, it would affect me the day before dreading it and then the following day trying to recover - that was half my week every week in emotional turmoil, it was after working with my counsellor I realised I couldn’t keep up with it and retain my own sanity.
So I think my point (after that word vomit lol) is that in an ideal world there wouldn’t be estrangement at all, but unfortunately there are many people like my late MIL (both EPs and EAC) who either aren’t capable or are too stubborn to make changes or compromise and that leaves the other party in the relationship with 2 options: either withdraw or continue to damage their own mental health in an effort to keep up the happy family facade. It takes 2 willing parties to resolve conflict and even if (like I did) one side keeps trying, when they’re met with a brick wall I really don’t see any other recourse. So even though I do want to understand and I would hate for anyone else to go through what I did (the reason I come on these threads) I genuinely don’t think I’ll ever regret my actions, I’m sad it came to that, but I doubt I’ll ever grow out of it.
Thanks for replying to my question - exchanges like this are why I love GN, getting other peoples perspectives is hugely important to me.

You obviously tried to have a better relationship with your m.i.l. Lolo and it's a shame that in the end you had to estrange for your own well being.

I didn't have a relationship with my m.i.l. for about 7 years and she sounds very much like your m.i.l. Mr. S. and the boys continued to see his parents on a regular basis and it was when my f.i.l. died that we started to have a relationship again.

She was very supportive when our youngest son estranged us. Never really being demonstrative or one for showing her emotions I was completely bowled over one day when she put her arms around me and cried, because she was so upset by what we were going through.

We've been very close now for about 16 years which has been possible I think because the problems that we had with one another weren't allowed to impact on her relationship with her son and our children.

You’re welcome Lolo. It sounds like we had similar experiences. I’m still not brilliant talking on the phone....and I think that comes from being scared to death it would be my MIL, every time it rang when I was newlywed!?. It was difficult for my husband for so long, and that’s why we took 25 years of back and forth talking, to try and resolve things. Left to me....I would have turned my back a lot earlier. What didn’t help, was his older sister more or less saying ‘ get on with it, it’s the way she is’, as if that somehow absolved her of behaving decently. As soon as my mother started....I was off, no messing! Don’t get me wrong...we only saw them intermittently before the final estrangement. We could still go a few years here and there. One thing I said to our children.....tell me if I ever do something to upset/ annoy them etc, when they’re grown up, and also, they were free to see who they wanted once old enough to do it by themselves. The former’s never really happened, perhaps a few things here and there.....the latter, they, apart from one, have never wished to see any extended family. The one that does have some contact does though I think, because we all had a brief estrangement from her, all resolved now.
I definitely think, no matter what or who your parents are....you’ll always learn something from them, whether it’s to be like them, or in our case, and probably yours....definitely not! All the best and take care.

That’s lovely to hear smileless, I’m glad you were both able to come together like that, I think generally I’m in agreement that every effort should be made (as long as it’s physically and emotionally safe) to make a relationship work.

My DH also continued to see his mum, the only person I removed from the situation was me. She wasn’t dangerous or abusive in the traditional sense and although my DC found her dreadfully overbearing and judgemental they both knew she loved them as best she could. One thing that did come out of my refusal to go was that the balance of visits changed from all day every Sunday to a more manageable once or twice a month, my DH always felt dreadful because he’d say without me there he had nothing to say to her. It’s sad looking back now, there was such an emotional disconnect with everyone around her, even when she passed away, my DC were more upset for their dad and he felt relief more than anything.
Gosh that was a bit of deep soul searching for a Monday afternoon!

I think it helped Mr. S. during that time that I wasn't seeing anything of his mum Lolo and probably our boys too as they were old enough to pick up on the atmosphere.

The day my f.i.l. died we were the first to get to their house, and it was purely instinctive to embrace her seeing her in such distress. She's still as difficult as ever, more so in some ways but that said, we've ended up with a relationship I'd never have thought possible.

Sparkling I listened to Bethany Webster's "7 ways to heal the mother wound". I nearly dropped out when she talked about having to give birth to herself before she gave birth to a baby! But I stuck wth it. She not only misinterprets and misleads she uses inaccuracies. She blames patriachy for an inability to tackle grief, but the Victorian era (surely the most patriarchal society) positively wallowed in grief. I wouldn't pay much attention to her. I do think the advice to try and work out why you have behaved as you have is useful sometimes, but human beings are fallible and parents are human beings.