Estranging all family

As I have said my son has cut all our side of the family out of his life. My daughter has washed her hands of her brother and no longer cares . But worries because it has hurt me. My brother and family don't understand what they ever did to him or his wife . My brother wanted to go round and in his words sort him out. But I said no. He broke the family it's up to him to fix it. Been 2 years and don't ever expect to hear from him again. But he is still my son and I love him and my 3 grandson's. I can never forgive him or my daughter in law and will never trust him ever again. But don't hate them don't need or want hate in my life.

The way my son decided we where surplus to requirements was by sending both me and my daughter an email and unfriending his uncle off Facebook and refusing to answer his texts and emails. Cruel and cowardly. Two things I never thought my son was . But he has chosen his path. I can't and won't live with what if's . Life is to short. As much as it hurts me I have to get on with my life and concentrate on those who love and care for me and who I love and care for.

Allsorts Why should it be your fault? You are not your son's keeper. Decisions like this made by an adult in their right mind and, in this case, over a prolonged period, are entirely the decision of the person involved. Incomprehensible, but entirely their responisbility

It is a tragic position to be in and you have my sympathy, but please do not make yourself more unhappy by thinking that, somehow you have contributed to it. If he thought you had, he could have discussed it with you, but from what you describe, it doesn't sound like that.

Even those we consider our nearest and dearest can on occasion, for no obvious reason make decisions that are cruel and unjust. Just do not blame yourself for them.

My son has cut my side of the family off altogether, including his siblings. It was almost a case of if they spoke to me, then he cut them off. The hardest thing for me is that he has cut my elderly parents from his life.

This isn't the son I raised and I still try to work out what went wrong, but he has chosen to do this, and I have had to accept it. Life is too short for me to wonder just went wrong [ especially as he refused to say the reason ].

My daughter and son in law estranged his family 15 years ago also his sister, she would never allow me to talk about reconciliation, I would talk to sil about how wrong it was but he went along with it , then 5years ago my daughter estranged her brother and stopped all contact with the two girls , then last year my daughter estranged my sister and her daughter deleting all contact from the 16 year old Facebook and phone , my sister really hurt , as for me my contact has been limited to a couple of invitations a year after daughter turned on me last June for no reason . So my grandaughtrs have absolutely no family members in their life .

I did blame myself initially but I know I've done what I could and always always loved them . I think it's who they have become as they grow away from us , we are no longer important in their lifes .

My daughter is very popular and the house is always full of friends, visitors, yet no family , I wonder if her friends ever stop to think, where are the family , why are they never here visiting.

Feel for you all , feel your loss and your pain ❤️

No personal experience of this but my heart goes out to all those in this dreadful situation. Not to understand the reason why must be very difficult.
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I see it from both sides, I am estranged from my mother for over twenty years, I don’t want any reconciliation, and I don’t want to see her ever again.
But that’s between me and her, no one else in the family has been affected.
I think my sister in law is a bit sniffy with me, as probably a lot more falls onto her, but not to sound bitchy, I think they do quite well financially from her, but that’s fine, in my opinion they deserve every penny

The trouble is, other people/family get involved and take sides in lots of cases. Also people lie. The people who are at fault surely know they are at fault. It can't always be someone else's fault. At some point surely other people realise this too

I understand why you feel responsible Allsorts, that you are some how to blame because that's how from time we are made to feel.

'You must have done/said something'. 'There are two sides to every story'. 'AC don't estrange loving parents' etc etc but they do don't they and more often than not other family members too.

Why other family members? IMO to make their lives easier by not having to deal with anyone who wont agree with what they have done. People who simply cannot understand why they've done what they've done, who know that they were loved and cared for and are witnesses to the heart break they have caused.

Yes JaneJudge and if people are lying to justify what they've done, then they wont want to be around those who'll know that's the case.

I still have full contact with my fathers side except from one uncle that everyone has cut off. Grandparents were abusive but are deceased.

My mum was estranged from most of her family during my childhood so I don't know them well. Unfortunately my mother painted a very negative picture of me to them after they reconciled. Grandparents I had a lovely relationship, although my mother treated them appallingly but are long deceased.

Two other family members would not accept my estrangement. One was very abusive about it and the other only wanted to talk about my mother and didn't ever ask after me or my children so I let that one go.

The other thing is that I didn't fight for those relationships. I could have blown everything up with things my mother said about people that were truly sickening.

I chose not to do that and not to hurt people or get involved in he said she said...

So now I have no maternal family at all.

I have estranged from some of my family members simply because I do not like them. There was no dramatic fallout, nothing specifically said they are just not the sort of people I like nor would have anything to do with if not related.

It was fairly gradual, no contact from my side but polite if they contacted me, no attending family get-togethers. I have been to weddings and funerals that they attended but apart from hi and bye did not have a conversation.

I do not know how they feel about me or the situation and do not care enough about them to find out.

I sound quite harsh but see no point in pretending to like them and am not rude enough to simply say I don't like you if I were asked directly.

Elizabeth
I feel the same, I don’t like my mother, and I’m sure some people take a dim view of me refusing to change my attitude, but I know I’ve done the right thing for me, and I don’t care what anyone else thinks.

Shelflife

No personal experience of this but my heart goes out to all those in this dreadful situation. Not to understand the reason why must be very difficult.
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Having no explanation is the hardest part. If you know the cause then you can start to rebuild the relationship if that is what both parties want. Not knowing why is cruel and deliberate and designed to cause the maximum hurt, and impossible to move on from.

Yes it is Normandygirl. If you want the relationship to end then say so and say why.

Some people are left hanging, contact gradually reduces until it becomes non existent which IMO is particularly cruel as the one being estranged doesn't know if it is temporary or permanent.

Hmm

That's certainly not true in the case of abusive people.

I very clearly explained why I was unhappy in the relationship, asked for joint counselling and when I was laughed at ended the relationship very clearly explaining why. Then, for quite an unreasonable amount of years I read all the emails and messages that came my way just incase there was evidence things had changed.

Ultimately doing all those things left me open for more abuse and made it more difficult to start to heal. I had to give up hope for a good relationship to completely walk away

I realise that an extreme example.

Yet it leaves me of the opinion that, family members are different people and growing up in the same household as someone is no guaruntee that you are going to like them as a person as an adult or that you will feel happy and comfortable in their presence.

This obviously works both ways, I am the child to my parent but sometimes it is the other way around and the parent cannot feel happy in a relationship with their child.

Some people are capable of moderating themselves around lots of different individuals to maintain good relationships and some are not and are more sort of, "accept me as I am or not at all" or just cannot bring themselves to see the perspective of someone else as different to their own.

I don't really blame those who try to make a relationship work, lose hope and just cut off contact without saying why. Perhaps the clues were there, perhaps there were disagreements that weren't as resolved as they seemed. Perhaps there was some pulling away first, perhaps contact gradually reduced. Perhaps their partners didn't feel welcomed to the family (which can be the child's partner or the parents new partner).

That's the time to fix the relationship, when there are signs it is not going too well. That may be the last chance to ask and really listen to the answers even if we don't like or agree with them or even believe they may be true. Because people are different and have different needs and coming from the same background just doesn't make us the same, nor does it mean others joining the family are the same.

I would have met my family half way is what I am saying and that would have been enough, unfortunately I was disagreed with and utterly derided on every point. If I knew then what I know now, I would never have tried to explain.

It is a worrying thought that another human being may look at us and think us not capable of hearing and understanding why they are unhappy in a relationship with us. That is something though that we would need to fix about ourselves though surely?

You may not agree with the reason(s) you've been estranged but at least you'll know why. The not knowing is particularly painful.

Smileless the problem I see with that is, if you don't agree with the reasons, why would that be any less painful?

For a genuine person obviously...my mother must know she said/did the things I was unhappy about

I have never intentionally hurt anyone but obviously we are all capable of hurting someone unintentionally. If that happens I would acknowledge and apologise for it. When your own child estranges and refuses to tell you why , they do so knowing how much hurt they are causing you and that seems to be the intention. As well as sadness and loss, we also have the constant anguish, bewilderment and incomprehension to deal with. Such cruelty is shocking to me.

Because at least you know why. You cannot imagine how awful it is to be estranged by your own AC and not know why; you have to live it.

If you don't know what's wrong, how can you fix it? How can you even try? We all say and do things in relationships that make others unhappy but to walk away without a word, or even worse IMO, manufactured 'reasons' by way of justification, is quite simply horrible.

I agree Normandygirl the constant anguish, bewilderment and incomprehension we have to live with is shocking and it never goes away. 9.5 years later as we still cannot believe what has happened.

Do you wonder what is going on with them though?

Obviously I think that would be painful either way because the relationship is still gone. It is impossible for me to measure that pain. I have lost relationships and I know why even if I haven't asked, they are gone because I estranged my mother.

In my case that is for the best and I accept that.

But those who have been given reasons and those who haven't...how do you measure between yourselves?

What is going on with adult children who either give reasons that aren't agreed with (because to me it seems giving reasons would be giving an opportunity for resolution that didn't happen) or don't give reasons and just vanish?

Why is that happening?

Are we all people capable of listening and does that show when we communicate prior to the loss of a relationship?

My first serious relationship I can honestly say I was desperate to know why he left me and desperate to know what was wrong with me. Yet, I was also a person not capable of listening to the answer without getting angry and defensive.

I cannot think of a more painful relationship to lose than parent/child or child/parent and wouldn't expect anyone to be rational in that situation... sometimes on both sides.

So how do we fix that and make sure we are people capable of listening?

Of course you wonder, that's why it's so horrible. You wonder, even when the answer is staring you in the face and you know it's because of their coercive controlling and emotional abusive partner. You still wonder; it's a life sentence.

You wonder and worry about your AC and your GC. You wonder why the love you had for one another for all those years and the closeness you shared wasn't enough. Sometimes you wonder if it was ever real.

That all sounds awful for you Smileless but maybe I haven't been able to get my question across properly.

No one would argue that being a parent is one of the most difficult, rewarding, terrifying, exciting, worrying, proud, sometimes sad and happy jobs out there...

So is it easy to hear when our children are unhappy with parts of that relationship and have we shown ourselves capable of listening? Do they think we can all listen to reasons?

Because it certainly isn't easy and I do know that from experience

It's so hard, isn't is. A member of my family has systematically fallen out with us one by one. The only member she is still in touch with is my Mum who has dementia but in clearing my Mum's house, I have found several documents telling Mum she wants nothing to do with her anymore. I appear to have been the last person standing until last week.
An earlier estrangement with her had been put aside because she had no-one in the family left but ironically has "abandonment" issues. I've tried, I really have but the re-entry into my life has just been stressful. Finally, after a vicious verbal attack, I have reluctantly decided that I will limit contact to the bare minimum. My empathetic side tells me that she is very damaged but if I carry on, so will I be. I have cried so much, had therapy to be able to cope but sometimes you have to protect yourself. I am lucky to have really strong relationships with the rest of my family and sadly, there is one common denominator with rest of the fallouts.

Violetsky
I’m sure we are all guilty of not listening, or perhaps hearing only what we want to hear
I’m pretty sure that most of us as teenagers remember yelling ‘you are not listening to me’
and we’ve probably had the same from our own children.