Smileless:
"Estrangement happens for all sorts of reasons, and not just because an AC had an abusive/toxic childhood so please don't come here and seek to undermine and invalidate what others share."
Please do show me where I did this.
Yes - estrangement does happen for all sorts of reasons. It's interesting that a theme that keeps repeating on this forum is along these lines: 'Why are my children tossing me away? I did the best I could. I never hit them or abused them. They never wanted for anything and all I ever did was love them. Why are they so ungrateful? In my day we honoured, respected and deferred to our parents/grandparents, simply because they were our elders'.
In this way, the EAC's reasons for estranging, because they don't fit the overt abuse mould, are dismissed.
"...neither do we want to see a parent being continuously verbally abused by their AC. To put themselves in a position where they'll be walking on eggshells for fear of saying or doing the 'wrong' thing because they may never see their GC, or have that relationship taken from them."
Well, it is interesting that you use the expressions 'verbally abused' and 'walking on eggshells'.
As I recall, VioletSky asked Ladysu several times on another thread to detail what her son said to her that was abusive. Not just 'he was swearing and shouting', but the actual words. 'My EAC is verbally abusive to me' is a common refrain on this forum, yet rarely does anyone actually repeat the words their EAC says to them.
My mother, when I finally confronted her with my frustration and hurt over the way she treated me, heard only that I used the F word (once!) in the course of a sentence (^I said something like 'I'm tired of hearing x every f'ing time
you call me!'^) and used it as a shield against every other thing I said to her in that conversation. 'You swore at me,' she told me the next time I saw her. I didn't swear AT her, I simply swore, but she decided it was so offensive that she wouldn't listen to anything else I had to say.
I read an interesting analysis of the phrase 'walking on eggshells' as used by EPs:
Parents who try to reconcile with their estranged adult children often describe themselves as "walking on eggshells." Their children make all the rules, blow up at random. They don't accept invitations enough, offer invitations enough, call enough, text enough, visit enough. The parents feel they're "begging for scraps." Eventually—after a few years, a few months, a few visits, a single visit—the parents back out of the relationship and tell the children they're willing to reconcile only on their own terms. As one mother said recently, "I am coming to realise that they don't want a normal family relationship with us. They want us to know our place and for the entire thing to be run on their terms. [....] So I've decided that we're not playing their games. They want to connect or they don't."
I will leave that to be taken as you wish.
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