HELP!! Still struggling a lot every day.

[NKe46007aX11c7a5685f2]

I know no one has any definitive answers, but any advice on how to get through this would be appreciated. I don't even know what I am asking for tbh, some support maybe?

I have no one I can talk to IRL.

I have written about this before so hope I am not boring anyone, but I feel so desperate, and it's been such a long time and nothing is changing and I don't really know how much longer I can keep going.

DS stopped having anything to do with me last year, it was sudden, I don't know what triggered it, he refuses to engage with me at any level. The situation has not improved at any time since he chose to cut me off.
I have spent days, weeks, hours of my life thinking about what possible reasons why he chose to cut me out and have come up with nothing. I know some of you may find that difficult to understand because believe me, I find it impossible to understand.

I find myself mulling over it a lot, every day, multiple times a day. I try to put it out of my mind but it creeps back in.

I feel like I am being punished for a crime that I have no idea I have committed. I don't understand what makes a person treat another person this way.

I know there is nothing I can do, well I can't seem to think of anything I can do to make any progress, except I am finding it intolerable to live this way, I am finding it impossible to live with this situation.

I wonder if I would feel any better if I even knew why, maybe I wouldn't. All I know is that I am really struggling to get through each day, and it isn't getting any easier. I lurch from feeling utterly bereft to feeling so very angry, to feeling desperate to understand.

I wish I could go to sleep for a very long time.

How do I reconcile with this? I have taken a step back whilst letting DS know I am here, ready to listen when he is ready to talk, but he is no nearer talking than he was when he first cut me off.

I have not seen his face or heard his voice in over 6 months now exceot on videos I have stored on my phone and photo's I have in my house.

How do I accept that I am quite possibly never going to see or speak to him again??

His anger towards me has not diluted in over 6 months, and the gap between us just gets wider and wider.

I think I have lost the relationship we had forever, and I don't know how to live with that.

I think my DM has resigned herself to not having any relationship now. She's tried so many times to get in contact and she will continue to send birthday cards for him and his child but she knows there's not anything more she can do to get him to talk.

She hopes that one day he'll get in touch but she also knows that their once close relationship is irreversibly damaged because she now knows what type of man he really is and she will never forgive him for depriving her of the opportunity to know his child.

FanFuckingTastic Your post has made me think. I am saddened that you regret giving up your DC, and I can't imagine how sad I would be without my DC, but I feel selfish keeping DC with me just to make me happy. I have fucked up my DS's life, and I do not ever want to go through this again, ever.
Perhaps part of it is because I am a coward, because if I lost all of my DC, I would have no reason to carry on putting one foot in front of the other, so I have to keep going so long as my DC are here with me.
I have had DC, that is my life. It is all I have done. I am not a particularly nice person, nor a particularly friendly person.
I am hard work. I have been told this throughout my life, mainly by my mother and sister, but also by xp.
Without my DC, I am alone in the world. I thought DS would always be in my life. I could not bear it if I was anymore alone than I am now, but without my DC, I would not have to bear it IYSWIM.

Don't get me wrong, I always expected DS to leave home at some point, maybe get married and have DC of his own, but I always thought, hoped I would be a small part of his life. Now I know I am not.

I am annoyed at my patheticness, but this is me. I wont admit how pathetic I am IRL but on here, it is somewhat easier.

I wish you peace FanFuckingTastic and I hope you have some sort of relationship with your DC. I feel for you.

DragonMamma I can relate to what your mother feels. I am saddened that my once close relationship with DS will never be the same. I can't imagine trusting him again and that makes me sad. I am sad also for what he has lost. I may not have been a great parent, but I loved him with every fibre of my being. I cannot say the same now, because I no longer know who he is, it is like he is a stranger. He looks the same I'm sure, he sounds the same, but it is like an imposter who has taken him over and the man I knew is no longer there.
We are virtually strangers now, we have different memories of the past, we remember different things. All of the things I did because I thought they were important to DS were actually meaningless to him.
He claims not to remember his childhood, except to say how shit it was without elaborating of course.
All of the times I was there, went to school plays, spent hours playing with him, reading to him, sticking up for him, taking him places, laughing with him, he remembers none of them.
He had difficulty with his school work and I spent hours helping him, comforting him, like you do, yet he remembers none of it, and says his school days were the worst of his life, and all that time, I thought we had a good relationship and I thought I knew him well. Turns out I didn't know him at all.
I seem to cope ok, then a song comes on the radio, or I read something somewhere, and I am in tears again.
I was driving along yesterday and came on the radio, and suddenly I can't breathe again.

I am struggling a lot lately. I don't want to be on pills, I want my son to explain what I need to do to fix just a little bit of what has gone wrong.

How could it be so important to me, yet mean absolutely nothing to him.

I don't know how I got it so wrong, but I did. I just know I cannot live with this situation for the rest of my life.

I often wish I had never had DC. I don't know what I would have done if I hadn't had DC.

I did not realise until 6 years ago how much pain your own DC could inflict upon you and how that pain never leaves you. I was naïve.

It is because of this that I have chosen never to have any more DC, despite wanting more. Imo, DS has never accepted the fact that I had another child after him. I don't regret having my younger DC, because without younger DC, I would have no one.

I've been where you are...I'm still there but I still have hope. I haven't seen my eldest for almost 16 years - more than half her life, but i still love every bit of her and every precious memory, and I still hope that at some point she will seek me.

The pain of a fiercely loved child deciding that you have done something so indescribably awful to them that all the happy childhood memories mean nothing, and the refusal to allow you to understand - the big secret of the awful - is simply the most cruel thing a child can do to a loving parent.

although you wish you had never had DC, your thoughts will be dictated by your depression. Hang on in there - the pain is always there but eventually, I promise, you will realise that of course you are glad you had them, despite the pain that causes. You have loved and raised a wonderful child and you will have treasured memories of that child and of how much you love him, even although it isn't reciprocated just now. Keep your head held high and keep faith.

From another loving mum.

Thanks t3rr3gl35. You have described how it feels so well. There's few who understand, and the person I want most to understand cannot.

Would you be able to tell me your story t3rr3gl35?

What happened for your daughter to cut contact?

I understand if you feel you'd rather not or can't explain.

my dsis did this to my parents when she was in her early 20s- i suppose they had some explanation though as she sent them both a letter blaming them for her dreadful childhood.
this was the same childhood that me and my brother had. it was not perfect as my ddad had depression. but it was the best childhood they could give us. and they loved us.
she grew up about 3 years later and made some peace with them.

My story is at it's simplest a child who was shunned by her father for almost all her childhood, desperate for even the slightest acknowledgment of her existence, desperate for approval. A child who would proudly show her dad pictures or stories that she'd written to be instantly deflated (not quite the right word...not emotive enough but can't quite find the correct adjective) when he would pass scathing judgement on her childish lack of perfection.

By the time she reached adolescence, I was suffering from depression - largely caused by my inability to please her father. I could never achieve the standards of perfection he imposed on me, and couldn't quite keep my head above the quicksands of constantly shifting rules of perfection. There was also the issue of my own childhood abuse, which her father blamed me for "allowing" to happen - and he would openly condemn me for this in front of her.

My daughter discovered that she could please her father by being increasingly confrontational towards me. Fuelled by teenage hormones this confrontation reached a level of physical violence towards me, culminating in her trying to break my arm. Her father took the opportunity to remove her from the house at this point to her half sister's house. He refused to allow her back home. He would tell me that he wanted her to return home but not until he could trust her not to hurt me. He would be telling her that I didn't want her back. She had his attention and didn't want to lose it, he had absolute power over both her and I, I didn't understand the game. We went through the court system and i fought tooth and nail to have her home but my husband refused at every hearing. I was so ground down in my marriage that I didn't realise that a stable home was greater than 2 parents when one of the parents was abusive. With hindsight I know that leaving him then would have been the best course of action for all of us.

My daughter has gone through hell and come out of the other side, but she wants nothing to do with me. Her relationship with me was arrested at the adolescent hating mother stage and i was too weak to recognise that when it happened. Not a single day has passed that i haven't tried to bargain with some deity or other to give me my daughter back, or to allow her to have some understanding of the situation that we found ourselves in. I live in hope that at some point in the future she will remember how much she was (and is) loved by me, that she will be at the seaside with her children and remember us building castles with moats and waiting for the tide to come in to fill them, or that she will remember being wrapped up in fluffy towel and cuddled on my lap while I combed her hair after a bath, and that she might be drawn to ask where that mother went. If she never wants to see me again, I hope with all of my soul that she is happy and that she never, ever, for a moment, feels the pain of rejection from any of her children.

I am so sorry to hear your story t3rr3gl35. I hope your DD understands your side of things very very soon. Does your DD have any DC herself? Do you have any contact with anyone who has contact with your DD? Do you hear news about her? How have you got this far?

I struggle to understand how any child could disown a parent who loves them.
It has made me incredibly angry with DS as well as depressed and sad. I had one main aim in DS's life and that was to ensure he was as happy as possible. I strived to give him as many experiences as possible, he went without nothing, emotionally, physically, financially, materially. A few of his friends have since told me they were envious of his childhood.

greenfolder I'm glad your sister ended the estrangement. Do you think it irrevocably changed her relationship with you and your parents? What made her come back? Was it out of the blue?

Are you absolutely 100% sure the allegation against your partner was unfounded?

I ask, purely because I am NC with my parents, because my father sexually abused me, and my mother refuses to believe me.

It was a couple of things. Firstly she just plain grew up and realised that actually childhood is not perfect and parents did their best.secondly she left her manipulative other half. But it did affect the whole relationship. My parents trod on eggshells convinced one wrong word and she would cut contact. Ddad died a few years ago and now my m mum is less willing to cope with the emotional blackmail.

HanSolo I am as sure as I can possibly be. My sister rang the school to say I was living with a convicted paedophile. I had been dating this man for a while when he moved in, he had a job which required an up to date CRB, because he was working with DC, which my sister knew about yet had no issue with, although she did scream at him outside his workplace in front of parents that he was a paedophile which was rather embarrassing as you can imagine.
Secondly, I called the police to ask their advice, and they verified that my xp was not and had never been on their radar for paedophilic activity.
Thirdly, my partner was never left alone with DS. This was my choice, as I did not feel it was my partners responsibility to parent DS, nothing at all to do with any concerns about DS's safety around children.
DS was 13 years old when I met my partner, and DS probably felt his place in my life was less important although I certainly stressed to him that this was not the case many times.
I always felt DS wanted me to remain single though. He felt he was the Alpha male if you like and he enjoyed being the man in the house.

After xp and I split up, DS would go drinking with xp and told family xp was an alright bloke.
I struggled to understand how he could go drinking with a man he had resented at times, and a man who I had had an acrimonious split from by then, but DS can do things and say things which confuse people.
DS appears to take sides if you like with anyone who has openly disrespected me IYSWIM.
I think DS sees me as weak and despite thinking, believing he would always be there for me as I am there for him, he has no respect for me at all. I don't know how to change that or even if it can be changed.

I've read both threads and all you've discussed how you put discipline in place and consequences. Is that bad parenting or good parenting. You were doing your DS no favours by letting him get away with things. Your mother is the root to this and to be honest you need to cut her out. She is trouble. You DS sounds depressed and troubled and so do you and it is down to your mother. He is 22 stop ill young but should be standing on his own two feet.
I'm afraid that you will probably have to play the long game now. I think you need to accept that at this moment in time you are non contact with your son. You then need to work on yourself. Send your son a letter and say that you live him, are there for him and would love to resolve this situation. I think you and your son could do with family counselling and suggest this.
You need to get yourself some counselling as you have major issues with self esteem and I think this is caused by your mum.
What about getting yourself on a parent craft or nurturing course as this will help you get some confidence in parenting your younger child.
Realistically your son will probably come back when he is settled himself with his own family.

I hope this doesn't come across as critical? You put boundaries in place and stuck to them. You sound like you tried your best to instil discipline. That is a sign of a good parent.

I can't imagine DS ever having his own family tbh. He is both intimidated by and disrespectful of women. He has never had a relationship that has lasted more than 3 weeks. He sees woman as a commodity or to be obeyed.

My mother falls firmly into commodity mode, whilst my sister comes under obey mode.

My sister has not had a particularly close relationship with DS, and as yet has not seen the side of DS which does not comply when he doesn't feel like it. He sees a lot more of my sister since he cut me off, but she still hasn't seen the side of DS which is disrespectful and rude. He has been absolutely awful to my mother in the past, but sister has yet to see that side of him. Despite this, DS does not respect sister, just resents her and freely admits, although not in front of her, that he cannot stand her DC.

I like the idea of parentcraft classes. I am very interested in joining those.

Sure start childrens centres run them and some primary schools do. People I know who have been on them have found them good as people share their experiences. I hope you find a way through this horrible situation.

Hi NKe46007aX11c7a5685f2 (I've got to confess, I find that a difficult NN to get my tongue around )!

We're back in the midst of the working week, but I do hope things are okay with you. Do I remember you saying that you are working f/t during the day? And presumably your youngest DC is at school, so hopefully the routine of weekdays makes all this a little easier to get through.

I see you're thinking of parentcraft classes. Is there one near you? I'd imagine that it would be really useful to have some RL support (that ISN'T your family), that would allow you to off-load a little.

Have you considered, at all, going back to your GP to ask for a referral for counselling in support of your depression/medication?
I think someone upthread mentioned family counselling, also. Great idea and I understand that, in some areas/organisations you can go to family counselling alone, to begin with, if (for example) your DS didn't want to go.
Are you able to say wherabouts you're situated? Maybe someone on MN would have some recommendations to make.