9 months on I am grieving for the loss of my son - he has gone NC on us

[birdladyfromhomealone]

I will try not to drip feed, but I am devastated that our son has chosen to cut us out of his life.
Every night I go to sleep thinking about him and wake up in the morning with a pit in my stomach.
I have spoken to him several times since Feb on his terms, when he will allow me to but he refuses to meet us, as he says it will just be another arguement.
Our DS met his DW at uni 11 years ago, she is from a different culture but born here.
For 5 years she kept our DS secret from her family, she had to go home EVERY weekend. Even though she was living with our DS, having a relationship with us, lived with us whilst they flat hunted, holiday's, meals out, staying over etc
She was treated very well by us and was one of the family. Me and my 2 DD and her used to go for spa days, nights out etc .
We all got on.
Then my DS proposed with my DM engagement ring .
A huge diamond with rubies,
We arranged to have it made into a solitare and the rubies into earrings.
This was a huge thing for me to pass on my DM ring, I wanted my DS to give it to her as we loved her.
After they got engaged she told her family and my DS was welcomed into their family ( she said it would destroy her family for her to be with a white man)
Her parents arranged 2 weddings one for their religion and one civil white wedding.
We felt like guests at our sons wedding.
We were told what to wear and how and when to behave.
The next day 40 of the brides family turned up at ours for lunch. We invited her immediate family only.
I told my son off and he got very emotional. I admit I was cross
After that things were never the same.
A year after they got married he gave up a city job in London to work for her father, moved 300miles and moved in with them.
He told us 3 weeks before he moved although they had been planning it for months.
They then bought a house just down the road so she still sees her family daily.
I bought them a surprise of some furniture for their new home, she refused to let the delivery driver take it off the van.
We then had a huge row as she said I disrespected her.
We have not seen them since.
My DH told our DS it had made us ill.
My DH has gone on antidepressants and I have been diagnosed with stomach ulcers.
Our DS reacted very badly to be told this and said he does not have a DF anymore.
Our 2 DD are stuck in the middle as they still see their DB and DSIL (once or twice since) but cant try to resolve this for our family as DS goes off on one if our names are mentioned.
For the last 11 yrs we have been a very close family, holidays, nights out, weekend breaks.
We are devastated by this but there is no talking to our DS he hangs up on us or ignores messages.

I think the issue is that you want to be a benign matriarch of the family, helping them out financially and hosting family gatherings etc and your DIL wants to take that role with regard to your son. I think different cultural norms are also playing a part.

I think you need to accept that you will never be ‘needed’ in the sense that you want to be again and allow your son to make his own life decisions, without passing comment or advising him. The thing about his job stands out here. He is entitled to work for whom he chooses at the salary he chooses.

Some adults are very happy to be helped out by wealthy parents well into middle age, and this is evidenced by many threads here resenting parents not helping out. However some adults take pride in independence and don’t want help. You have to accept that.

Your daughter in law also sounds controlling and, from what you have posted, not very nice. Between you, it is unlikely you will ever have a good relationship.

However, if you step back and allow your son to come to you, he probably will in time. Then, if you respect him as an autonomous adult, you can probably rebuild a relationship with him. It will take time and self reflection though.

I do agree that you need to be honest with yourself. It’s interesting which bits of the story you describe in detail here and which you don’t.

For example, you give a very detailed description of the family heirloom engagement ring, but you don’t say much about the arguments you’ve had with your son - even though it’s surely those arguments which have built up to the current estrangement.

Mostly when people are describing a big row like this, they do recap the basis of the row to some extent. “He said this then I said this then he accused me of this which isn’t true,” etc etc. You haven’t done that here, it’s more like “we did this and this and this for them, and then he got very emotional/there were arguments and now he won’t talk to us.” I’m wondering why that is - are the arguments so painful for you that you don’t want to think about them? Or do you feel like whatever he said is not really as relevant to the situation as your actions of generosity, however he perceived them?

None of us can tell you who’s right and who’s wrong anyway, but when you skip so quickly over your son’s actual words and points of view it does suggest it’s going to be very very difficult for you to reconcile because reconciling means at least acknowledging why he felt like going NC. Maybe counselling would be a good idea, just to try sorting this out in your own head.

Ive nothing more to add in respect of your estrangement from your dear son.

However if I was you I’d ask to be tested for Heliocobacter Pylori (I think I’ve spelt it right). This has been found to be the cause of stomach ulcers rather than stress. Not wanting to alarm you; If left untreated it can be a precursor to cancer. Treatment is antibiotics.

birdladyfromhomealone
You sound like you have a big heart and have a lot of emotional energy. I think you have expectations of how you want other people to react. Except they don’t. And you find that very difficult to handle.

I commented on your thread about your daughter’s wedding. Both your children married into quite difficult families with lots of enmeshment, which makes me think that you also are similar but totally unaware. Therefore I really think you enmesh your children too thus significantly blurring boundaries.

It really isn’t acceptable to tell your adult ds and adult dil off. It also isn’t acceptable to disapprove of their life choices. Your children are both adults and therefore your equal although not financially nor in experience. Although they now have have very different experience and cultural references. And your poor dd by expecting her to sort out your issue with your son. Be careful she may also be slowly withdrawing.

As others upthread have said, you really need to get therapy. To work through your issues. You’re struggling to see your children and by extension their spouses as separate from you. Your ds and dil feel crowded, ding, magic wand, I’ll buy them a house of my choosing in the location I choose. Your ds and dil want a sofa, ding, magic wand, I’ll buy them that sofa. This behaviour whilst it’s lovely is also incredibly infantilising. Then when they don’t react how you expect they should react you get upset and angry.

Problem is, they aren’t you. They are people in their own right and they aren’t asking to be rescued so you need to stop rescuing them. You need to see them as individuals and not give when they aren’t asking.

As for the little girl voice from your dil. This may have genuinely been her way of begging you not to get angry with her. And you did it anyway. You have treated her and your ds as children, not adults so it’s understandable for her to react in this way tbh.

I really do think for every one thing you say about your dil she could also say something equally about you. She is from a different culture and you’ve expected her and her family to adhere to your culture when they aren’t from it. I see a list of things above (about the after wedding party at your house) that I find incredibly rude from British social norms. But from their POV everything is pretty normal and furthermore you were likely seen as the rude one. From who to include and exclude to the episode with the dog, you spectacularly failed to understand their culture before opening your door to them.

So get some therapy. Perhaps choose someone, who can help you navigate the culture - I’m not saying someone from her culture. Read up about her culture. Then when you are ready and are able to detach from them you try again. nB. You probably need to be in therapy for at least 12 months and to have made significant progress.

Once you have had a lot of therapy Perhaps one way back in would be to contact them and her parents. No expectation. Write a caring letter to both about how sorry you are that things have turned out this way. Thank her parents for welcoming your son into their lives (remember they know nothing about you doing the same for their dd). Tell your ds you are so glad he’s found people to love and care for him.

Good luck.

I am a mother in law, and I had a mother in law.
My mother in law told us we couldn't get married as we hadn't enough savings. She also stormed round when I became pregnant, to inform us that we had no right to have a child because we had no savings.
Over many years we got used to each other, and by the end of her life she told people how wonderful I am.
I was determined not to make the same mistakes. However it can be hard when you are no longer the 'go to' person for your son. It is important to remember that your son's primary relationship is now with his wife, and a parent's job is to support that.
I didn't find it easy, but I know if he thinks I have overstepped the mark my son will tell me.
I feel for you, OP but if you don't change your behaviour things won't improve.

Eeeevvvveee
My mother is similar. Except dh and I invited her for a couple of nights on a 4 night short break we booked and paid for. She completely ran the show. I’m chronically ill and disabled. Things like putting her bags on the only sofa in the house right infront of me when I urgently needed to lie down then was vile to me when I put them on the floor. Difficult to explain but I was was on the verge of collapsing getting back to the house. It was just one of her horrible power plays.

She has never booked and paid for a trip like yours. Her trick is to offer then withdraw the offer without telling me. Using the holiday example, when I tentatively enquired (dh needed to book time off work) if she had booked the holiday offered she made me out to be grabby and unreasonable. She had told me it was definite and she would go ahead yet 3 weeks later and having spoken to her a few times, it was radio silence on the holiday. What makes these situations even more infuriating is that I know what she’s like so I told her not to promise several times and she insisted she would definitely book the holiday. Lucky escape as far as I’m concerned.

She also gets very touchy about giving me stuff. I have to be benevolent and absolutely love it. The mere offer of something and me saying no is seen as rejection. Even when I tried my absolute best for years to give her lovely and well thought out gifts, she ironically snubs them and treats the generic cheap shit from brother and sil as nice. ‘Oooh look at my lovely pot plant’. And yes, I’ve tried the pot plant as part of a gift.

Lots of posters coming on and blaming the OP here. The truth almost certainly lies halfway between though IMHO. It is rare that in situations such as these there is one person at fault and thus a blameless party. From the get go the Op has been aware that the DIL has been less than honest with her own parents so there is a secret at the heart of all this. Kindly catering for N number and then well ver twice that number arriving and someone expecting to boot the dog out would fuck me right off too! She may have over reacted but it's not such a shock if she feels she and her son have been 'managed' by the DIL from the get go and here is her family doing yet more of it. No way is the OP solely to blame here but as I alluded to earlier. Chances are the son is choosing to placate the wife and is making the binary choice of wife over mother. It happens all the time in cases such as these I feel. He would probably love to have his Mum in his life but he knows his life would be a living hell if he did.
Anyone wanting to boot my dog out can get to fuck anyway. No matter what culture they are from. If I am gracious enough to invite people and they accept the invitation they accept my house as it is.

Op, I am NC with my father.

It's a situation I am not proud of, in fact I feel a lot of shame and guilt about it, though it is for very different reasons to your situation.

I remain NC because psychologically I am not at present equipped to deal with the huge can of worms that would have to be opened up were I to contact him. Again, that is different to your situation.

But, I will say one thing. Were you to get my fathers side of the story I would be a disappointing and thankless child, and he would have done nothing wrong, in fact everything he ever did would have been "for me".

However, that is not the full story. HUGE things happened, which have never been acknowledged by him either because he is in denial that they happened, or because quite simply he could not face that they happened. What he did do though is turn that around onto me, putting the onus on me to forget the (very painful) past (that has never been acknowledged by him), thereby making it extremely difficult for our relationship to resume because I would have to pretend that years of pain and abuse hadn't actually happened, and carry that all by myself in the face of his denial, with no support or understanding of what that has done to me.

Again, different from your situation - but I share this because, if you have done something that has hurt your child (even from good motives), but you won't acknowledge it, but want to pretend that it hasn't happened, you make it extremely difficult for your child to resume contact with you. If you won't acknowledge their pain (however trivial you think it is) you can't work towards building a future where it is resolved and dealt with.

I don't say this to hurt you, or because I think you are awful. I'm trying to explain what it's like from the other side.

It's not something I would wish on anybody, from either direction, and as I said above, I am not proud of myself for it.

TheObwald
Now I feel that way about my dog too. I used to think the same way as you about telling people to eff off in my own home. Then I became a parent and some of dds friends are scared of my dog (he’s only small so it’s just because he’s a dog) so I keep him away. So I now do the same with adults. I think some devout Muslims feel eating around a dog is rather like how you and I would feel about eating around a bunch of feral rats. It’s so off the wall to me. But I now choose to accept it even if I don’t understand it.

Having been a walkaway son many years ago, I can say upon reflection that it was one of the most stupid things that I did in my life.

At the age of 17, I didn't have much care for my parents, you could put this down to a somewhat disruptive childhood and divorce, however, as I grew older, I came to realise that we only have one set of biological parents and that arguments and disagreements are normal, but we should always remain open and try to engage throughout our life.

After almost 20 years, I now have a great relationship with my mum. Life is far too short.

I’m saddened to say but people don’t go NC for no reason, especially if things had previoously been good.

You mention the wedding and feeling like a guest (which of course you were) - I wonder what the wife’s experience of it was like. Two families coming together under these circumstances might have been VERY stressful for her, and you being annoyed was probably VERY obvious. She might think that on her most stressful day you played a victim rather than played her rock.

Yes the meal situation is frustrating but it was a difficult situation overall. You could have rolled with it and been part of their support base, or been a pressure point for them. You went with latter.

The furniture is controlling. Lovely to gift something but talk to them first rather than it just show up. And they might think that your genuine understanding and support is far more valuable than any piece of furniture.

If your end goal is to have them back in your lives then apologise, genuinely and sincerely for being unsupportive given the difficult circumstances of the meal and wedding.

Anyone wanting to boot my dog out can get to fuck anyway.

I agree. I think the op said one of the dil's relatives suggested kicking the dog. If a guest (invited or uninvited) said that in my house they would be shown the door immediately. Whatever the occasion and regardless of who I pissed off.

It is really sad that you have so little contact, and it will be hard to gain their trust again.

It might be too late but the kindest and most generous thing you could do is treat them as adults.

That means stepping back from your usual parental role. That might be your generous benefactor parent role - where you give them large 'surprise' gifts. It might be your disapproving parental role - where you feel free to tell them off.

Also, step back from playing the poor victim who they are making ill - this is always seen as being manipulative. As someone mentioned, go to the gp and be tested if one of you has stomach ulcers, don't blame it on your son and dil.

They are now adults. You need to engage with them on an adult to adult basis. This means being calm rather than blowing up over everything, allowing them to make decisions without undue influence, taking responsibility for your actions and reactions to them rather than blaming them.

You need to let your other children have a relationship with their brother that is not wholly tainted by your relationship with your ds and dil. That means they should be able to visit him without you and they should not be burdened with trying to reconcile everyone. That is your job.

It is (imo) odd that they seem to be so grateful at being accepted by her family that they are practically living in their pockets.

If they all get on, great-but generally you can have a relationship with both sets of parents if you want to.

I 'm sorry not read the entire thread, but the replies on here are so strange ... almost as though posters are reading what OP put and just totally projecting their own reasons for rejecting their parents onto OP.

To say the OP can not possibly an example of the incredibly rare cases where a healthy, loving parental/child relationship shatters and breaks over incredibly minor tiffs would be an exercise in over confidence of one's own infallibility. And there would likely be some projection involved.

However, what I think most of us, who are the child who initiated and maintained estrangement, are noticing is a known and studied pattern within the larger group where parental estrangement features.

The flags are

1 - The parent does not understand why the estrangement happened. They can think of nothing they have done that would justify a significant chink, let alone a gaping chasm between themself and their child.

2 - The parent focuses to a notable extent on all the lovely things they have done for their seemingly ungrateful child.

3 - The parent hones in on their child's spouse as an operator in creating distance, but cannot point to any overt evidence or history of manipulation, abuse, or other controlling behaviour. They only imply reasons for why the spouse must be somebody determined to create distance. This is achieved by contrasting the spouse's unfathomable responses with the warm loveliness and (this is a notable feature) CONSISTENT GENEROSITY towards the spouse of the child of the now estranged parent.

4 - The estranged parent has a history of other troubled, turbulent relationships that have also result in estranged or troubled contact. Which they present as not their fault.

It's not strange for posters who live on the other side of the parental estrangement coin to notice that pattern. Most of them have lived it. Most of them will have seen, or heard about their significant reasons being reduced to "over nothing". A lot of them will be aware of the extent to which the phenomenon has been studied and analysed in professional circles. And the odds are hugely on their side in terms of this specific representation of the pattern not being an outlier.

I don't think any of us want to see the OP locked into that pattern if the reality is she is not in the rare group of outliers. Not for her sake, not for her son's sake. It's not a club you really want to be welcoming new members into.

Unfortunately that pattern tends to be hardest to reveal to the people stuck reproducing it. Because, despite the estrangement seemingly coming out of the blue, for no real reasons, there is often an unacknowledged, consistent history of inter-family dysfunction. And a considerable trail of attempts of the child to set boundaries that get trampled as fast as they can put them up. The truth is these sorts of estrangement scenarios, where this pattern can be seen, overwhelmingly feature much longer term, unacknowledged, significant family dysfunction. Which is hard to untangle and resolve even when all concerned are still willing to be in the same room to participate in a professional led session aimed at achieving something better for all.

Banana I agree about people not going NC unless they have good reason but this isn't always so.
In our case my DH had a warm relationship with his son. From the moment the DS met his now wife he changed in every respect from being a happy, chubby expansive and laid back person with an almost hippy like attitude to life. He enjoyed living in his flat. He liked his job and liked driving around in a 'character' car. He turned into a thin stressed money obsessed individual that had to sell the flat to provide a three bed for the new wife. He started to claim that he hated his job and wanted to start his own business but the DW likes the income too much to allow this or a change of job so we can see he is led to feel dissatisfaction with his employer but is rendered powerless. This was because the employer made a comment about her that she took the wrong way. I was there at the time. Heard the comment and she spun it completely.
New wife at the age of 32 had never worked in her life (Daddy's money) and brought nothing to the table financially. DSS bought a top of the range car on HP and is now up to his eyeballs in debt and living a very different life to his original happy go lucky existence but a life of his choosing nonetheless. He has gradually lost contact with most of his family as the wife makes any interaction with them difficult for him. She appears to control him in every way. They now have a DS and she treats the child like a bargaining chip in ways that are utterly shocking.
I have put this to illustrate that sometimes a NC situation arises not because of what a parent of an adult child has done but by the manipulations and engineering of a wife or girlfriend. DH and I have been cut off by them and his other son has been told that if he contacts us, he can forget ever having a realationship with his nephew. The sibling has chosen a relationship with the DN over his own father even though the childs mother has treated him atrociously in the past also. It's a terrible situation and reads like a Shakespear play almost but any attempts by us at sorting it is instantly weaponised and we are made to look unreasonable. We have backed off and made the decision to not have anything to do with them ever now. Too many horrible things have been said and done and we need peace and happiness in our lives, not this festering turd of a situation hanging around us all the time. DH has been very ill and I think this situation in part led to it. We are protecting ourselves now. We are essentially her victims but refuse to accept the role. We have changed our wills and telephone numbers and are just letting the daft bastards get on with it. Watching her basically remove the little tiny bit of spine he had has been unpleasant. I really liked DSS before he met her too. I thought he loved his father. Clearly not.

Yes, it is worth pointing out that mils do not have a monopoly on being controlling and selfish.

The extended family sound very rude. DS was probably very embarrassed and probably felt very much responsible for you feeling uncomfortable (if he is a normal human being). However, ‘telling him off’ on the day was not the best move. It didn’t really achieve anything, other than allowing you to vent. It wasn’t an experience that would have been repeated, so wouldn’t have affected future behaviour. A few well-placed eye-rolls and a conversation at a later date would have been better (as you know). However, it is very easy for me to say that, knowing I probably wouldn’t have acted very brilliantly in a similar situation given the fact that I’m quite volatile too. I think you already know this.

I see many similarities with my situation with my MIL. DH and I got together at Uni and I spent many summers living with my future MIL. Things were fine at first. Uni is a weird time when you’re not a child but also not an adult. DH was financially dependent on his parents (they bought his house outright for peanuts back in the early 90s). It was very much a parent/child relationship and we sort of ‘did as we were told’.

Things went pear-shaped when DH and I started to become independent adults and build our family together. MIL and FIL just couldn’t step back from the parent/child dynamic. We would be lectured to about how we spent money, how we spent our free time, what we cooked, where we shopped and our political views.

Eventually, we just put a big physical distance (300 miles) between us. The relationship became more and more strained. They did nothing malicious - they genuinely thought they were being kind and helpful.

Things came to a head when I was 28 and gave up a well-paid career in engineering to retrain as a science teacher. I got an almighty lecture from FIL about what a mistake I was making and how I would end up giving up that career too when I found out I didn’t like it. I was within a hairs-breadth of going NC with them (and DH would have too). One ‘don’t you speak to me like that’ phone call and that would have been it. Instead, we just put a bit more emotional distance there and eventually the hurt went away.

MIL and FIL both came from very domineering parents. Now, in my 40s, I can ‘give as good as I get’ and have set some very clear boundaries as to what interference I will and will not accept. DH is the same - he approaches them in a different way. They are very easily offended and have to be treated with kid-gloves. We are still defining the boundaries, but it’s much easier with age and experience. They still like to tell us how to spend our money, and will turn up with ‘useful gadgets’ for the kitchen that never get used (would anyone like a waffle iron?).

FIL said something very significant last time we saw them. He said “The hardest thing I’ve ever learnt as a parent is that sometimes you children actually know better than you”. For someone with such a low level of emotional intelligence, this was remarkable.

I have to say MiL get a really bad time here. I am not a MiL but I have one. She is one of the most lovely, kind and generous people I know. We have a great relationship. Whereas my SIL hates her and has made her life incredibly difficult. From what I can see for absolutely no good reason at all.

If you listened to my SIL, you would no doubt be told a tale of a controlling, toxic MIL - which is not reality.

Some women seem to have great, great difficulty accepting a MIL relationship.

yes @CesiraAndEnrico, my grandmother was like this with the son she became estranged from. To hear it from her perspective it was: I did this and this and this for him and he turned against me for no reason at all, just because of this stupid little row over something insignificant, and I don’t even know why he won’t talk to me, that awful DIL has turned him against me and now he thinks he’s too good for us.

But the thing was they’d argued for years, and he’d told her over and over again what his problem was, and she didn’t listen and didn’t listen and eventually he gave up. And she still didn’t listen. They never reconciled in her lifetime and it took years after her death before the siblings reconciled with each other. It was so horribly painful for all of them, her included.

I think you sound like a nightmare MIL and they can’t bear having you in their life.

Perhaps in their culture, it’s not so much as counting an exact number who’ll come for wedding lunch/dinner (which is the case with many cultures).. you shouldn’t have kicked up a fuss about them attending. Perhaps you were perceived as not hospitable when they came.

Why would anyone in their right mind send a “surprise “ furniture to a newly wed couple?? Unless they’ve expressed they really wanted it. You should’ve given them money.

I think you lack self awareness.
They don’t want your interference.

Op I’m sorry but I feel you are getting a right kicking from posters on here who are projecting onto you. Just wanted to say that I feel you have done nothing wrong. I don’t see how you can be in the wrong for being generous and wanting to help them.

In my opinion she is behaving nastily and manipulating your son. I am, however, the mother of two sons, so I get where you are coming from.

If anyone had threatened to kick my gentle little shi tzu they would have been bodily removed from my home whatever their religion

So sorry OP for your pain. Just be kind to yourself and give it time, the great healer.

OP, there are very few posts here that recognise that no situation is black and white, that no conflict is 100% one party's fault. I feel very sorry for you and your son, the situation is hurting everyone.

The first thing I'd say to you is that the advice you've been given to focus on your life, your marriage, your other relationships is very wise. If you focus on your life you'll have less headspace for brooding on the estrangement. Let your son stew in his own juice, don't contact him or make amends, just let him get on with it.

Examine your actions leading to this point with brutal honesty, ideally with some support. You need to understand your part in this so you can straighten it all out in your head and come to terms with it a bit.

The furniture episode was over the top on your part but you know that. I'm astonished that so many people say they'd be cool with expecting and catering for 12 people and would just roll their eyes when 40 turned up. I wouldn't, nor would I be happy about guests in my house suggesting kicking my dog. Imagine if a dil posted that her MiL had done that.

From my perspective it looks as if your DiL was happy to accept your hospitality and everything else on offer when it suited her purposes but now she has her life exactly as she wants it you're superfluous to requirements.

I hope you both get your health issues sorted, OP. Live your life, have holidays and good times. Make your life a happy place and leave your son to do the same. The more attempts you make to reestablish contact, the less chance there is of doing it. And only discuss your son with your daughters if THEY raise the subject and then be very circumspect.