Gransnet forums

Estrangement

Christmas without Son, his wife and 2 Grand Daughters

(103 Posts)
Rad14 Thu 26-Dec-24 15:25:29

My story is as follows.
Male, Married for 45 years. Living in Northern Ireland.
My wife has suffered from Chronic Fatigue Syndrome for the last 33 years.

2 Sons. Youngest has autism and learning difficulty. Lives about 5 minutes from us in his own flat.

Oldest son, 41. married an Australian girl after meeting on the Internet. They have 2 daughters aged 7 and 10.

After a fall out after their wedding, in 2007, our son has chosen to drop us totally from his life. He doesn't speak to us or corresponds in any way. We see our grand daughters once every fortnight on Zoom calls for 45 minutes.

Sometimes we don' see them for weeks at a time.

We have written to our son numerous times, have apologized often for the family rift, but still he refuses to have anything to do with us.

We see our other son on Christmas Day and Boxing Day for a few hours, but due to his condition, conversation is practically non existent and extremely limited.

Our hearts are broken, especially when we might have had the chance to go to Australia to see our grand daughters for a short holiday, and their parents told us not to come, that they didn't want us there.

BTW, I might add that our oldest son has also chosen to ignore his only brother. He doesn't even send him a Christmas card! My wife deals with all this by closing her mind to it all, and won't talk about it. I, on the other hand, have now developed a drinking problem, which has accelerated over the last number of years.

Happy Christmas

Cossy Fri 27-Dec-24 11:41:15

Please do get help with your drink issues. My husband had a heart attack at 65 mainly due to drinking and smoking.

He’s cut right back, but still cannot give up either drinking nor smoking. His saving grace is his low BMI/cholesterol/BP.

He wasn’t a “nice, funny drunk” he was utterly horrible.

I have ME/Osteoarthritis/Fibromyalgia/Type 2 diabetes and high BP, my stress levels were off the scale.

Please address those issues, look after your wife and be grateful for the zoom calls.

Our children will never forgive their father for wrecking their childhood, but they are civil to him and support me, we are all very lucky.

Good luck flowers

Smileless2012 Fri 27-Dec-24 12:28:29

Not all of her posts were incoherent petra and a few of us had our suspicions. There were similarities in the posting style; often goady, looking for an argument and at times very anti EP's.

If this is the case, as you say Grunty '^an own goal^ tchgrin.

petra Fri 27-Dec-24 12:33:15

I must have read the posts where violet was having a good day 😂

Grunty Fri 27-Dec-24 13:09:16

Good days here followed bad days venting their spleen on Reddit petra! The craziness had been expunged! 😂

Babs03 Fri 27-Dec-24 13:58:45

Cossy

Please do get help with your drink issues. My husband had a heart attack at 65 mainly due to drinking and smoking.

He’s cut right back, but still cannot give up either drinking nor smoking. His saving grace is his low BMI/cholesterol/BP.

He wasn’t a “nice, funny drunk” he was utterly horrible.

I have ME/Osteoarthritis/Fibromyalgia/Type 2 diabetes and high BP, my stress levels were off the scale.

Please address those issues, look after your wife and be grateful for the zoom calls.

Our children will never forgive their father for wrecking their childhood, but they are civil to him and support me, we are all very lucky.

Good luck flowers

Thanks for sharing Cossy, that must have been extremely difficult for you and the children, I know families ripped apart by an alcoholic parent, so will do as so many have now done and advise the OP to get help or risk losing what he has right now.
🙏🏾🙏🏾

Luminance Fri 27-Dec-24 16:41:15

Good afternoon

Gransnet has been through the process of verifying my account so please put your minds at rest that all is well. I did not understand the reference to another name so ignored it. As should we all. Rather a strange morning. I hope the dear poster is doing well.

User138562 Fri 27-Dec-24 16:57:56

Now if only people would stop detailing threads to have their little witch hunt. It happens on every thread!

Smileless2012 Fri 27-Dec-24 17:58:30

Ensuring that a banned poster has not returned using another name is not a witch hunt User, on the contrary it's to keep these threads as safe and pleasant as possible.

Grams2five Fri 27-Dec-24 18:24:11

Smileless2012

Ensuring that a banned poster has not returned using another name is not a witch hunt User, on the contrary it's to keep these threads as safe and pleasant as possible.

No but unless there’s some truly atrocious trolling going on - and there has been on some threads that I’ve seen - it’s strange to bring it up on every threads and takes attention away from the original post. Perhaps I missed it but i never saw any bizarre trolling on this piece. Just people trying to work out of they “knew” a poster and others trying to address the actual post

Babs03 Fri 27-Dec-24 19:14:22

User138562

Now if only people would stop detailing threads to have their little witch hunt. It happens on every thread!

That would be the awful trolls who are often abusive and stalk certain members, as someone who only joined this forum a few months ago I can honestly say that the regular members are kind and welcoming to those who need help. And it isn’t regular members who say Luminance is Violet Sky but the trolls.
They are the ones derailing threads and operating a witch hunt.

Babs03 Fri 27-Dec-24 19:22:09

Also it is very difficult to ignore personally abusive remarks after being through a painful estrangement, some members have left as a result and others have posted once then disappeared. I have also felt offended and upset. We are not made of stone. So if we sound cautious about certain posters we have only the vicious and venomous trolls to blame.

MirrorMirror Fri 27-Dec-24 21:19:28

Estranged parents often lack the ability to properly self-reflect. It's how they're able to blame everything and anything under the sun before blaming themselves.

This thread is a clear demonstration of that (excluding the OP who doesn't blame anyone but himself).

Smileless2012 Fri 27-Dec-24 21:41:02

So if we sound cautious about certain posters we have only the vicious and venomous trolls to blame exactly Babs.

No idea where that 'observation' has come from MirrorMirror because no one's posted on this thread about their personal experience as an EP tchconfused.

MissAdventure Fri 27-Dec-24 22:12:30

MirrorMirror

Estranged parents often lack the ability to properly self-reflect. It's how they're able to blame everything and anything under the sun before blaming themselves.

This thread is a clear demonstration of that (excluding the OP who doesn't blame anyone but himself).

"My wife deals with all this by closing her mind to it all, and won't talk about it. I, on the other hand, have now developed a drinking problem"

Babs03 Fri 27-Dec-24 23:11:27

MirrorMirror

Estranged parents often lack the ability to properly self-reflect. It's how they're able to blame everything and anything under the sun before blaming themselves.

This thread is a clear demonstration of that (excluding the OP who doesn't blame anyone but himself).

I would never say that all EACs are often unable or able to do anything without firstly having done extensive research including test groups of EACs from differing backgrounds, and even then I wouldn’t make such a sweeping statement.
Is as uneducated as it is risible.
Perhaps I should start making sweeping generalisations about EACs in order to even the balance. But am afraid that isn’t what this EP who obviously has an inability to self reflect has a tendency to do.

Whiff Sat 28-Dec-24 06:45:49

MirrorMirror same old story estranged parents bad estranged children good . Really ? Change the record .

Madgran77 Sat 28-Dec-24 08:39:30

Estranged parents *often lack the ability to properly self-reflect. It's how they're able to blame everything and anything under the sun before blaming themselves*

A complete generalisation! Leading to easy assumptions that they must have done something

There will be EPs like that. There will be EACs like that. There will be external factors/people causing Estrangement. There will be financial abuse, mental abuse, physical or coercive control or mental illness or drugs or poor parenting or a lack of listening or .... Because the cause of Estrangement is so varied and every story has it's own nuances and personalities involved. So that word often as a complete generalisation is emotive and not particularly helpful to EACs or EPs.

Madgran77 Sat 28-Dec-24 08:41:10

The top of my post above is a quote from *Mirror Mirtor. No idea why it didnt highlight to show that. 🤔

Smileless2012 Sat 28-Dec-24 09:17:38

Having read your post again MirrorMirror I think a little 'self reflection' on your part might be a good idea.

Oreo Sat 28-Dec-24 09:36:19

I really don’t get much of what’s going on with this thread but to answer the OP, do something about your drink problem and back up your wife who has the same upset as you do.
Look after your son who has autism, which isn’t his fault or yours and enjoy your own life.
You have to accept that your elder son and wife don’t want to see you again, that’s just the way it is unfortunately but they don’t stop zoom calls with you and your grands, so be thankful for that.Who knows what the future will bring.

Madgran77 Sat 28-Dec-24 10:09:58

Oreo

I really don’t get much of what’s going on with this thread but to answer the OP, do something about your drink problem and back up your wife who has the same upset as you do.
Look after your son who has autism, which isn’t his fault or yours and enjoy your own life.
You have to accept that your elder son and wife don’t want to see you again, that’s just the way it is unfortunately but they don’t stop zoom calls with you and your grands, so be thankful for that.Who knows what the future will bring.

Good advice for the OP Oreo.

NotSpaghetti Sat 28-Dec-24 10:44:55

I hope you are still here Rad14

Try to take care of yourself first - that way you can better support the rest of your family and will find some positives out there more easily. Alcohol is a depressant.
Wishing you a better year ahead.

JaneJudge Sat 28-Dec-24 10:52:07

Oreo

I really don’t get much of what’s going on with this thread but to answer the OP, do something about your drink problem and back up your wife who has the same upset as you do.
Look after your son who has autism, which isn’t his fault or yours and enjoy your own life.
You have to accept that your elder son and wife don’t want to see you again, that’s just the way it is unfortunately but they don’t stop zoom calls with you and your grands, so be thankful for that.Who knows what the future will bring.

I agree with this. I think if you stop drinking you might find it all sorts itself out. We have an adult child with a disability I understand how worrying it all is.

stillawip Sat 28-Dec-24 20:27:14

I really don’t understand why people don’t just ignore the troll posts and not engage in any exchange at all with the poster - threads can only be derailed if someone lets them be! Just pretend they’re not there and stick to the original point of the thread…
So, OP, has your son given you any reasons for the estrangement? Any clues at all?

Smileless2012 Sat 28-Dec-24 20:57:12

Perhaps if you felt you were being targeted, you may not wish to ignore the unpleasant posts stillawip.

Why should we allow unsubstantiated negative sweeping generalisations to go unchallenged? It's not the ones who challenge these posts who are responsible for any derailment, it's the posters who make them.