estranged son

You never know. Perhaps the letter from his grandfather will make him think. I don't know what it says.

Yes, I do think you've made mistakes. Who hasn't?

I hope that your son gets in touch. Perhaps things will never be completely healed but I hope you get to see him.

MyPlacentaTreatedMeBetter

I feel sorry for you. Given that your son has a happy life now why does he not share that happiness? Happiness is all about sharing happiness, not being mean with it. He is a grown adult and if I were to guess I would surmise he now knows full well how complicated it can be to bestow love to four individual demanding children and be misunderstood. He undoubtedly knows how any parents good empathetic intentions can be misread as bullying, intrusion, control, guilt tripping and all manner of accusations children hurl at parents. I suspect that because he now sees how difficult parenting can be he now may feel uncomfortable about how he demonized you in his juvenile years. He is maybe not avoiding you per se but is avoiding how uncomfortable he feels. You bring all that to the surface and that may be why he feels a need to push you away, its not you he is rejecting but his own uncomfortableness. Please be kind to yourself and put yourself first...you need cossetting now. There are NO PERFECT PARENTS. What you want is love and THAT IS NORMAL. Dont punish yourself anymore. You must have done something brilliantly, after all he seems to be well adjusted now. Buy an adorable, loyal, forgiving, considerate, caring pet dog. You have a lot of love to give.

OP cut her son off almost 20 years ago.
I understand why she did this, but it must have hurt him horribly.

Why should he now “share his happiness” or be accused of being mean with it.

Everyone made their beds, and are now living the consequences of it.

MrsH, I wouldn’t write again right now honestly. I’d write a short note, and have your solicitor send your son the letter. That way there is no direct contact, and no one can say you are holding out for contact to give it to him.

What a hard situation all around. I hope you find peace.

Well, this will teach me to read the full thread.

Hold on to the fact that your son is happy and loved mrsH

I’m sorry his wife’s letter hurt you, but I’m glad you now have the closure you were looking for.

Please look into therapy for help on how to move forward if needed. It’s immensely helpful

Its quite clear that you really need to just send the letter to your son and then let him be. We can all be clever with hindsight and there's be too much water under the bridge. I also think that your son has made a success of his life because he actually had to find self reliance within. Be happy that he has managed to turn his life around. I would now focus on the life that you have made and let bygones be bygones.

“What has it got to do with you madam?”

It has EVERYTHING to with her. She is your sons family and is protecting him from someone who kept a precious letter of forgiveness from him, from someone he loved for 10 years.

I’m honestly gobsmacked that you could let him go all this time without letting him know his grandfather loved and forgave him. Did you not think about how he would feel to know that? Did you not think how your father would feel knowing you kept that letter from him?

You saw him 8 years ago in a restaurant. You could have told him!

Your poor son.

Yeah, the discovery that she saw him 8 years ago made me drop my jaw in shock. He deserves better than you, and it sounds like he got it.

I’m certainly not the one to give advice on relationships of any kind. Failed marriage, relationships with children, hanging by a thread, but I will say this... You should not have kept your father’s letter to him, for all those years. It was not yours to keep.
But I do feel so sad for you. Take comfort (and a bit of credit) from the fact that your son has done so well....you must have done something right.

Agree with babyshark and amber

You should appreciate his wife took time to address you and try to give you closure and your reaction is "this is none of your business". Another jaw dropping moment for me

Plus OP mentions her youngest tantrums when he hears you mention your oldest son's name and how your dh doesnt want to hear about this - could they be tired of this after so many years?

Why do you risk upsetting your youngest son? It could be you who is tantrumming, not him.

This poor boy. His father died, he didn't have a close relationship with his brother and within 2 years his mother replaced her family with her new husbands. That is not a good way to start adulthood.

I applaud him for turning his life around after his family cut him off. I also applaud his wife for so fiercely protecting him. I can imagine that the contact was a huge trigger for him. Especially because he learned that his mother had withheld a heartfelt letter that could have aided in his recovery from him for 10 years.

Time to move on. You made your choice long ago.

it was your duty to try to get that letter from his GF to your son, out of respect for your father's wishes, like an inheritance.
you could have engaged contact tracer, or the salvation army. or told him about it in the restaurant.
you present everything in a very self-justifying manner; the letter from your son's wife is more enlightening.
and your initial reaction to it is also telling.
i think you might benefit from some counselling, it can be done online. with the right person is well worth it.
how did you fall out with your GS and his mother.

I’m glad you’ve had some resolution OP.

I find it interesting that you say nothing happened when you saw son 8 years ago and then in the next sentence admit that your other son was glaring at him to the point his wife told him to knock it off. This totally confirms what your sons wife said in her message.
I sincerely hope you can respect their wishes to leave things be and I’m glad your son knows his Grandfather passed with no ill will towards him.
I also echo others encouraging you to maybe seek some counselling to help you leave this situation in the past and cope with the consequences of the behaviour of all involved.

I m afraid this has been handled so badly since the original teenage years which many of us can get wrong, he did go off the rails and you tried (not hard enough in my opinion after the new husband came on the scene) but since then you gave up on him to placate your new family and other son
You pinned your colours to the mast when they were young by favouring the ‘good one’ and your older son sounds a nasty piece of work the restaurant scenario was truly awful but you still sound very supportive of your eldest glaring at him ....such appalling behaviour

I think that was a wonderful letter your daughter in law wrote to you she sounds level headed and incredibly loving to your son and yet you say what’s it got to do with you madam my goodness ....it’s got everything to do with her... she’s his life

Yes we all make mistakes, but you gave up on your son because your new husband and eldest son were more important, you have your answer now from your daughter in law ......it’s your loss, he sounds happy leave him alone, you made your choice long ago you have to live with it now

I am concerned about confidentiality. I wonder if you should get this post taken down. It would be awful if your DS or his wife saw it.

Mumofmadboys especially as the OP has put her sons name up now.
OP please get the Mods to delete your sons name.

I also strongly recommend that you rask HN to remove the thread. The letter to you was private and you have shared it word for word on a public forum. If it is seen by them or your DILs relatives then any tiny tiny chance that your son might in the future reconsider will be gone for ever

I also suggest counselling to help you move on from this and to help you let them move on as well.

This is a very sad tale.
I think it says it all when you hid behind a pillar in the restaurant. You should have shown your new family and your son that all was forgiven and gone over and spoken to him.
Unfortunately you have rejected him on countless occasions and now he should be left alone to enjoy his new life as you get on with yours.

Good grief this has been hard to read.

I am well aware of my failings and what those failings have done to my son and wanted to contact him to try and make it right because its tortured and is torturing me.

I have to accept it probably won't happen and live with it. I just needed someone to talk to thats why i came to the forum.

I have answered honestly and flinched while typing because i know how it sounds and i didnt mean it when i said i wanted to say what has it got to do with you madam to my sons wife. I was ashamed and embarrassed and lashing out is easier than admitting it.

I didnt and wont respond or contact them again.

I have long been aware that my eldest son had jealousy issues with my youngest but wouldn't describe him as a nasty piece of work. they are polar opposites with my eldest like me quite short and a bit rotund these days with light hair and my youngest like his father and paternal grandfather tall with black hair and very dark brown eyes. My eldest was bookish and awkward at school and found it hard to make friends or talk to girls where my youngest was popular with loads of friends and always had girls after him some of them were my eldest sons age which i know he was very jealous of. My eldest could be a bit spiteful but my youngest was always very passive and very sensitive so i just thought it was a clash of personalities and i don't know when it became such spiteful bitterness in my eldest son.

He was very hasty in wanting my youngest cut off when he went off the rails and in the thick of it its hard to know what to do. I admit that pressure from him and my husband has influenced me and that i have been weak. the truth is i was desperate for normality after my husband and sons father had been ill for so long and passed away. I should have got my fathers letter to him before i know i should and want to shake myself.

At the very least i know my son is happy and loved and perhaps better off away from a dynamic that screwed him up so badly to begin with. Nobody plans to fail at anything least of all being a mother and i am so sorry i did.

I will find out about having the post and letter removed.

As I posted earlier MRSH it's good that you recognised that your initial reaction to your son's wife's letter was due to anger and hurt and so you didn't make that response and have forwarded your son's letter from his GF onto him.

"I was ashamed and embarrassed and lasing out is easier than admitting it". This is something we can all identify with I'm sure, and the openness and honesty of your posts IMO shows that you will be able to move on from this.

I agree that counselling maybe something you would find beneficial and also that you should request your recent post, due to the personal information it contains.

MRSH it is to your credit that you are able to admit tthe truth of some hard comments to read. I feel sad for you but hope you can move on. ?

Children have long memories. You don't know everything about the relationship between your two sons when they were children. 5 years can be a big age gap when you are a child.

The last week of my mother's life were spent by her bedside with my sister. My mum had had Alzheimers for several years but that last week she had pneumonia. We talked a lot about things that we'd done when we were children. We remembered them differently. My younger brother when he was a child was seriously ill. At the age of 10 he went to a long stay orthopaedic hospital in Hampshire. Every Saturday my parents visited him - we lived in Essex so quite a long journey. They took him comics and sweets and other stuff. I was about 14 or 15 and my sister about 7. Chatting to my sister 30 or more years later by my mother she mentioned this and said that she had felt left out. She still remembered it. I was gob smacked.

I remember my childhood as being happy but the 4 of us have fallen out for a number of reasons. I haven't seen my two brothers since my mum died which was 42 years ago. I am reconciled with my sister and have been for a while, although I haven't actually met up with her for many years. We now correspond regularly.

I think that the OP's son probably had a more difficult time than she thinks when he was a child.

As regards the dirty bedrooms, if he didn't share it, why didn't you just leave. I remember an old friend having arguments with her son when he was about 17 or 18. One of the causes was the state of his bedroom. He would leave dirty crockery and dirty clothes. I suggested that she just leave it and put some powder down along the threshold of the room so that any crawling insects would get killed! In the end he would get fed up because of the mess. Needless to say she didn't follow my advice!

Oh I don't think you will ever truly move on from this. I am also the mother of a son who is estranged now, coming.up for 9 years. I am the one with the mental health difficulties wh developed alcoholism. It was peaking at the time when his little girl was coming up for 1 year old. During those days it would have been my window you would have looked through to see the mess and the empty vodka bottles. I would send abusive emails to many people in the small hours of the morning. Family members would find me lying drunk time after time. This son could not handle it and clearly wanted better for his little girl. I cannot say I blame him. I did go through the wringer with him in his teen years. Borrowing money from me and not repaying, smoking cannabis, becoming unwell with hypothyroidism, 3 major car crashes in less than a year, wrote off 2 of my cars, girlfriend had an abortion. My mental health was too fragile to cope. The thing is though I always made allowances for my son. Knew it would be all right. Today he runs a very successful business and is loved by his partner's family. What was clear in reading your post was that you were coming over as favouring the eldest son and you used some derogatory labels about the youngest. This is not uncommon where people are drinking and mentally unwell. That does not make it right. If your son had been experiencing physical illness I doubt very much you would be in this situation. I hope he comes forward to you, I really do. I hope my own son recognises one of these years that his mum is living a healthy life and one in which she wants him to play even a small. Most of the people responding to you here have not lived your experience and therefore have no qualification to advise you.

Thistlelass.

What an absolutely heart breaking post, MRSH74 and I am sorry that you have lost your son. It does rather sound like he had mental health issues and that you unwittingly walked away when he perhaps needed you most. I wonder if some of the things you have read here will help you to see that he may have felt that he disappointed you compared to his brother. It might not have been how you saw it at the time but reflection might make you understand how he felt. Addiction does tend to make you a liar and a thief but maybe the rest of the family do not realise that.
On one hand, I would not allow anybody to dictate whether I saw my child no matter what they have done. I am their mother until the day I day and if there is an afterlife, I will still be watching out for them. On the other hand, I can understand how you might have felt the need to remove yourself from the hurt and shame. I would think that it might be time to visit Al-Anon so that you are amongst people who have been in the same place as you. Until you have that full understanding, you would be doing your son a disservice in pushing for contact. What if he fell off the wagon?...sadly it happens. Could you stand firm against the rest of the family whilst his life disintegrates again? Would you have still wanted contact if his life was in a downward spiral? I think you have an awful lot to think about. I hope you can find peace one way or another.