Mumsnet discussions about estrangement

There are always 2 sides to every story

This reminds me of the time a poster made a thread about a poster/DIL on MN who who wouldn't even pick up a card for her MIL and she was ripped to pieces on here.

The poster hadn't actually told the whole story and the DIL had lost her mum and it was the first Mothers day without her. She had no need to buy a card and was understandably upset about the day approaching.

Define ‘constant’ - because my impression as someone who was on MN for over 10 years is that it’s a tiny minority of posters who cry NC at the first opportunity while the majority offer constructive alternative advice. Only in the most extreme circumstances is NC the general consensus.

Throwaway remarks or good advice? You don’t have to post everyone. Just give one example.

"know" not knock

Constant throwaway remarks like "I'd go nc" is typical of the comments I've seen on there.. Im not going to post every one I've seen but Ive seen plenty enough to knock this is the stock answer to many issues. Its prevalent on mumsnet.

I was on MN for many years and there were plenty of posts which questioned the wisdom of immediately going NC as a minority of posters seemed to suggest - it certainly wasn’t the default advice. OTOH, some family behaviours were so awful that going NC was eminently sensible and the OP probably just needed other neutral parties to give her the OK to do just that.

I find the posters on Mumsnet to be generally positive, well informed and direct in their comments.

You'll see some angry/upset/ comments about relationships with partners or with parents. I've seen some awful comments here on gransnet about competition between grandparents as well as relationships with adult children. Family life is complicated, relationships can be challenging. It's rarely all down to one difficult person (though I accept that can happen)

I look at Mumsnet quite often, and to be honest I've never seen anyone told to "go no contact" for no good reason. I often read of horrible situations where parents or in-laws are really dreadful people, making the OP's life a misery. In many circumstances, "no contact" is the only way forward.

In my own younger life , I put up with a mother who was really horrible to me - I'd never heard of the idea of "going no contact" then but I wish I had. Our generation was brought up to tolerate our older relatives out of respect, but sometimes the respect only went one way. Many young people put up with horrible treatment , which only ended with the death of the older person. "Going no contact" would have saved a lot of heartache I'm sure.

Can you give an actual example? I’m on MN daily almost and can not relate at all to what you’ve posted here.

I haven’t noticed this trend on Mumsnet but I have noticed a lot of negative comments about daughters-in-law on Gransnet, sadly.

Struggling to make something work is part of everyday life. And truly, if we wrote down every bad character trait and every situation we didn't like and embellished it enough, we could create a story to make anyone look terrible. Tell me, would you take advice and act on it based on online advice?

I see this said a lot here. Do you have any examples? Because I've only ever seen nc advised in really horrible situations.

The sort of person who goes no contact because some random on the internet tells them to is no loss to anyone.

I look at mumsnet sometimes and haven't seen too many posts like that.
I've seen far more where someone has been struggling to make a relationship work but it's clear their best option is to reduce contact with the person, if not cut it off completely.