Anyone gone NC with parents?

[Ignatioys]

DH and I have been LC with his parents for a while now, but have gone NC more recently. This was all led by DH following a big argument he had with them about their behaviour, they failed to accept their part in it, and he’s not spoken to them since. They haven’t attended to speak to him either.
I agree completely with DH’s decision but haven’t pushed it, and have kept a lot of thoughts to myself because they’re his parents and it needs to be his choice.

He’s been very “fuck them!”, ball is in their court etc, but earlier today he said to me
“All that bothers me is, what if they die?”
I didn’t get chance to repaint, but I want to talk to him about that again later.
They are older and not in the best of health, so it’s not a completely unlikely thing to happen.

Does anyone have experience with going NC with family and have any advice on what I can say to DH to put his mind at ease that he’s doing the right thing and not to feel like he needs to back down because of these fears?

TIA

They don’t sound at all bothered if no attempt to contact, so perhaps they feel the same way and would prefer NC

Is this about the in laws treatment of you by any chance?

I don’t think you really need to say anything other than, I’m sorry this is worrying you and I’m always here to support you.

It isn’t your job to find a solution to this.

I’m NC with my mum. Been NC for best part of 7 years. She’s in remission from cancer and 76, so no spring chicken.

If she dies, she dies. 🤷🏻‍♀️ She had many years to repair the damage she did to my life and to my children. I tried so hard. Tried to organise individual and family therapy. Was ready to offer her a place to stay to get out of her dysfunctional relationship (she’s married to a paedophile and has facilitated him abusing children, not mine). All the help was there. She just had to accept it. But she didn’t. I tried for years. To the complete detriment of my health (I developed several chronic illnesses and cancer during that time). She’s going to die one day, but me burning myself to the ground to get her to be a good mum in the meantime is not going to make her die any less. 😂

I have appreciated Dh being there to listen, especially in the worst times, but I would not have wanted him to intervene or give me advice or do anything other than listen when I wanted to talk about it.

Sort of. Only it was my DF that has gone NC with me. Things have been strained for a good few years. It’s a shame as I did have a good relationship with him (my parents divorced when I was very young). It didn’t follow a huge bust up but it did come after a very very hard time in my life (which he knew about) and he basically decided that would be a good time to go NC. At the time I couldn’t keep fighting for his attention I had too much going on. Then I thought oh he’s got himself in a hole and doesn’t know how to get out of it (not for the first time) then I was pissed off he couldn’t reach out and see if I was ok. Then I was angry. Almost the stages of grief I guess. Then he did something I can’t really ever forgive him for and now it seems we are NC.

to walk away from his daughter (and by proxy grandchildren) I just can’t fathom. I cannot ever understand walking out of my children’s life and never looking back. The whole ‘what if he dies’ aspect has crossed my mind a lot. But clearly he doesn’t want me in his life anymore. Recent events I know of suggest he may be ill but again there has been no contact so he is clearly ok with it.

im Not really ok with it and am about to seek counselling. The only thing I thank god for is that I didn’t push my children to have a decent relationship with him and they will not know the pain he has caused.

I’m NC with my abusive mother and it’s been hugely beneficial for my health.

Back your DH up. Have you had any flying monkeys sent in yet, to tell him how awful he’s being? Support him in staying safely away from them.

He doesn’t need to make a decision now about what he would do if one of them became genuinely ill and died. He can cross that bridge when he comes to it.

The thing that helps (I found) was actually thinking through ... indeed, what if they die?

Thinking through what he's done to handle things as well as possible really does help. If you've done everything you can, there's a lot less guilt. Handling things as well as possible doesn't mean being a doormat, btw, it means speaking his side fairly, reasonably and clearly, and being open to trying to have a relationship ... if his parents will do the same. If they won't or can't, then the responsibility is not on your husband. He's done all he can.

You haven't said exactly what version of toxic your in laws are. That makes a big difference.

A really, really good couple of books are "Toxic Parents" and "Toxic In Laws" by Susan Forward, you can get them from Amazon. She covers a lot of the problems of difficult parents and in laws and has some very good tips on handling both a difficult relationship and also cutting contact. It's well worth reading them.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Parents-Overcoming-Hurtful-Legacy-Reclaiming/dp/0553814826/ref=sr_1_1?crid=C9TMHBMXFBB0&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.ci7BDYU9Z1arCd_KcS7sCn8xFeM-6FgTSEj8vTyaXmBelGIq76v5zChiaLNEotE4lganJ3hn4LcSXn8FCkxAgHpdK2gF1aivG5pLQBRFT1uHpQM430VkcoZKz3CYkL6v1pSF77CdBpVROsyMy-TosXuYSU_ZOA47ymqqlKffaNevohWtfwk5jQ_HD4C0EZQ799yoLffV4gG334eql5kbAj6ZZA_wEbbL7KkoU2wAQ-w.cn_srRUhgWY9Qf9GYR5c8KQg80ad-S1d_5BmBzBNBJg&dib_tag=se&keywords=toxic+parents+susan+forward&qid=1792959845&sprefix=toxic+parents+susan+forward%2Caps%2C342&sr=8-1

sorry about the horribly long link !

I was. My dad remarried and it was as if I didn’t exist. He died a lonely old man. I do think about him but I had exhausted all avenues with him and it was making me ill.
He died, but he had left me years before. I didn’t go to his funeral.

This sounds like a decision on both sides, your husbands AND his parents not to be in contact with one another.

I’m not NC with my mother, she’s in her 90s now and my conscience just won’t let me go NC. But I really wish I had gone NC with her years ago and stuck with it. The toll to my mental health and self esteem after years of her toxic/abusive behaviour towards me is high.

You have suffered and presumably your own family has suffered as a result of you feeling like this. In your shoes, I would make the break now. But I suspect not going to happen. So I guess you just hope for the best…

They will die one day, that’s inevitable. What wasn’t inevitable was how the relationship now stands. That takes sustained unkind behaviour. I assume his childhood was painful in a way he cannot talk to them about? For sure he’s going through a heck of a lot of heavy stuff now with much of it rooted in a time he was very young. Is he able to talk about the dynamics of his early years with any clarity?

Thanks everyone for the replies and apologies I’m only just coming back to the thread now.
The LC was due to their treatment towards me, and the NC is because DH pulled them up on their behaviour because our DC had started to notice their behaviour towards me. They’d also started a bit with questionable behaviour towards DC, so it was time for something to be said.
NC wasn’t decided by DH, that wasn’t his goal. The hope was that they would acknowledge their behaviour and want to change it/ ask if we could work together to fix things. But instead they’ve played the victims. DH told them to think about everything he’d said and get in touch when they were ready to talk like adults. And we’ve not heard from them since.

I think it’s hard for your DH to learn that his parents aren’t the people he thought they were. It must hurt him to see you treated badly.
im assuming you’ve accepted that you’re not going to have a relationship with them? are you going tostruggle if moving forward he restores his relationship?
I would imagine he is thinking about what that relationship would look like. Things can’t go back to how they are so he has to think about what he wants the new relationship to look like. And how you and the DC fit in.
I think you have to be led by him. Allow him to bring them up in conversation.

Well, everyone dies eventually. But if he doesn't want to see them, then their deaths will surely make no difference. It might even be a relief to him, as then he can draw a line under the whole thing. We are not obligated to stay in touch with our families if we don't want to.

It's not that easy. Most people feel a longing for a good relationship with their parents.

Sometimes it just isn't possible because the parents (or occasionally the child/ren) aren't pleasant people.

But it's strange to hear that your parent is dead, however alienated you are, because it means that nothing can ever change, any more. The death might be a sadness for what could have been and wasn't, or it could be a relief. But the final death does make some sort of difference. It's an ending.

My son-in-law is NC with his parents, at the time I thought it was going to be a short term thing until his father had stopped sulking - it's now been 6 years.

During that time I have seen dsil flourish, he is a better man, husband and father and I love him dearly, he has had therapy and quite frankly the things that he has opened up to me about have been utterly shocking, it seems it's never one incident that causes people to walk away from their parents but a slow drip of cruelty, be it physical or emotional abuse or both (I'm not talking about sexual abuse, thankfully DSIL was not subjected to that and I have no first hand experience of it so I have no idea how people cope with that)

I have always said that I will support DSIL in whatever decisions he makes about the situation, thats really all anyone can do. FWIW, I do believe most families are fairly dysfunctional, mainly because parents are just human beings who get shit wrong, so long as family members love each other most things are sortable.

When things are not 'sortable' there is usually a very good reason for it.