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AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

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

522 replies

birdladyfromhomealone · 25/09/2018 15:00

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.

OP posts:
MyShinyWhiteTeeth · 26/09/2018 18:26

I don't think there is any way of getting through to 'THE MATRIARCH'. I'm verging on giving up as I can't deal with the pointlessness of it all. There must be some knowledge of where she's overstepping because she tries to minimise and hide some of the obvious interference and bad behaviour.

I don't know the OP's situation but I really get the sense there is a lot more behind it. My friend grieves the loss of her children - but won't change herself to fit in with their plans. She obviously cares more about getting her own way and not what her children want.

Bornlazy · 26/09/2018 22:02

Not sure if you’re still reading OP but you have my sympathies. I have 2 ds and would hate to find myself in your situation. I have a friend who has had three serious relationships and each time her partners have ended up no contact with their parents. Her side of the stories are very plausible and I’m sure she doesn’t set out to do it but she has very little tolerance for MIL interference, which lets face it there is always going to be a bit of, and she takes offence at something or another and then bang - that’s it - nobodies talking. I know that in her situation I might be irritated and would have a moan to my dh but would not let it get to the stage that she does. It is not always the MIL’s fault.

You were good enough for your DIL when she was hiding their relationship from her family but now that she doesn’t need you she has cast you aside. I’m sure you are aware that there are times that you could have handled the situation better but to be honest you are now in a situation where she is gunning for you and nothing would be right anyway. Hang in there, at some point he will come to his senses, and he will need you to be non judgmental but welcome him back.

wizzywig · 27/09/2018 18:46

Of course your son is under his in-laws thumbs. They employ him. If he kicks up a fuss, he loses his job. Live a great life (and ensure he hears about it as I'll sure it will hurt him)

birdladyfromhomealone · 27/09/2018 19:36

Wizzy - I dont want to hurt him, he's my son!!!

OP posts:
genivert · 27/09/2018 19:51

All his friends from school , uni and his 2 DS's say he has alienated himself from them.

Have you been discussing your estranged son with a lot of them?!

Its very odd he should do this to a once very close family.
Yes, odd. Aka a massively one sided narrow perspective being presented.

genivert · 27/09/2018 19:55

CesiraAndEnrico has hit the nail on the head and articulated the behaviour/red flags in a way I never could. She sees straight through the OP's skewed "I've been so badly treated I'm getting I'll as a result" BS and has identified the behavioural patterns that are clearly the triggers for so many posters on this thread who are in a similar position to the OP's DS.

welshmist · 27/09/2018 20:08

I think the OP should perhaps concentrate on her husband who is not coping well. Also her other children so that she does not make the same mistakes she has made with her son.

user1457017537 · 27/09/2018 21:49

How did the Op “make mistakes” with her son. How is buying them a house, letting them live with you and supporting them making mistakes. The mistake has been made by the DIL and Ops son who have thrown Ops kindness in her face and broken the family and parents

MadMum101 · 27/09/2018 22:40

Agree User. Wish I had a mum like that, who'd gift me a piece of furniture I'd admired but said I couldn't afford, as a surprise. Obviously few share my view of that being a lovely gesture?

Perhaps the DIL got annoyed because she might have had to tell her family who it was from and this is nothing to do with the OP's behaviour at all and all to do with the DIL's obviously prejudiced family's reaction to her continuing to have a relationship with them. They may grudgingly have to accept their SIL but they don't have to accept his family kind of thing.

Estrangements like this can cause deep emotional pain which impacts physical health. I know this from experience. Why shouldn't the OP let her son know what impact his behaviour is having on his father. Having the guts to tell his parents why would be a start.

OP, do you think you've raised your DC to be a bit spoilt? Not deliberately obviously but by being a good, constantly available, and generous mother? I skimmed your thread about your DD's wedding and it seems your DD and DS have little respect for you. Familiarity breeds contempt and all that. Maybe your and your DH should take some time to regroup, process your son's behaviour, decide on a way forward either forcing a meeting by going to him and demanding an explanation (what I would do but maybe not advisable for all) or accepting that this is his choice and it's up to him to find his way back to you, then start concentrating on yourselves. It's time for you now. Obviously grandchildren coming along will add another layer of pain if you're not going to be allowed to see them Flowers.

MediocrePenguin · 27/09/2018 22:46

Even reading your own version of events I think it sounds like he has a right to be upset with you!

  1. You are cross when additional members of her family turned up for your celebration (how does that even happen?!)
  2. You make quite a rude remark about feeling out of place at her family celebration leading me to think you didn't really try.
  3. You order surprise furniture for them which is absolutely crazy!
  4. You sound like you are blackmailing them into feeling guilty re. Your medical conditions.

I'd love to hear their version of events!

user1457017537 · 27/09/2018 22:49

I completely agree with you MadMum101

CesiraAndEnrico · 27/09/2018 23:33

How is buying them a house, letting them live with you and supporting them making mistakes

It's making a mistake when it is done in order to exert overt, or covert control. When it is done to establish the power to both give and withdraw support based on the child's compliance with parental preferences/demands. When it is used to throw in somebody's face if they start to resist the response "how high?" when required to jump.

I cannot tell you if those were (conscious or sub conscious) motivations for the OP specifically. But they do exist prominently in the narrative of a specific sub set of estranged children and parents.

Those motivations feature in the accounts of the children who cut ties. Who recognise that what looked like generosity to the outside world was a form of attempted imprisonment into ongoing control and compliance. They talk about choosing to be free, regardless of economic impact, due to the increasingly unbearable drama and tension of trying to negotiate their parent's ongoing need to control them.

Those motivations also feature in the narrative of the estranged parents. There is typically a notable contrast in how specific elements get communicated to outsiders. The parent usually offers few, vague, minor and seemingly unjustifiable reasons for their child's decision to exit sharply from their lives. In contrast they tend to offer up more, and much more precisely detailed, examples of their economic support of the child who left. They offer a strong degree of clarity with regards to their generosity. A clarity they fail to match when explaining the motives for their child's departure. They tend to prioritise a focus that leaves the audience with the distinct impression they are unusually generous, and their child particularly ungrateful.

Have you ever heard of the saying "There's no such thing as a free lunch ?"

Within a sub set of estranged parents/children the strings on the not so free lunch are often one of the main reasons for the estrangement. In the sense that however nice the lunch, the strings of control are a significant element of the family's dysfunction. Eventually the need to escape that control becomes one of the primary reasons for a child's exit.

To outsiders who are more used to string-free, or more reasonably-stringed parental generosity it looks like cutting off your nose to spite your face. But for those of us who lived with far more onerous degrees of parental control, it looks more like taking a knife to the noose around your neck.

A vastly reduced standard of living, or an exchange for a lesser stringed lunch at a partner's parents' table, can feel like a small price to pay to breathe again.

toomuchtooold · 28/09/2018 06:01

Cesura you're spot on. And to add: as well as "cutting your nose off to spite your face" you hear "if you dislike them so much, why did you accept their money?" But adult children in this situation will know that there is no way to politely refuse these offers of "help" without causing such deep offence that a rift opens up anyway. For me it was part of a whole thing where we pretended that our relationship was perfect, that all offers of help on either side were always received with enthusiastic gratitude and there was never anything that we disagreed on no matter how small. I don't know what that felt like to my mother, but for me the reality was completely different: when I was a child my mother had reacted to the smallest instances of misbehaviour with terrifying rage binges that were occasionally physically violent and often ended with two or three days of silent treatment, which taught me to do exactly as she said, and after a few times of trying as a teenager to move our relationship onto a more honest and equal footing, I learned that the only way I could get along with my mother was to hide most of my life from her and outwardly comply. It was like, the smallest of boundaries would send her into a two day sulk. "I need those apples for the kids' packed lunches, would you mind taking a banana" would be enough. I think my mother just kind of filtered these episodes out of her memory and for my part I would just remember to get in extra apples for next time. You know? So she never had to hear the word "no" in our relationship. So I suppose maybe that felt like a good relationship. Not long after we went NC my aunt told me they'd met and she'd been talking about how much she loved us all, and I suppose she did, but the version of us that she loved was the one that never asked anything of her, worked very hard to make sure she never experienced any discomfort or resistance to her wishes, and showed gratitude for every form of help she deigned to offer, whether we wanted it or not.

Sometimes I wonder if I didn't do her a disservice by trying to oppose her and get her to see how one sided our relationship was. But it was clear that she already found it incredibly challenging to be around us: with us making our best efforts, she would still experience enough bruising to her ego that after a day or two with us she'd be struggling to be civil with us and little and not so little things would start happening like stuff going missing in the house. I think somwhere in the back of her mind she was trying to defuse the tension the way she was most comfortable, by having a fight with me (thinking I would accuse her and she could deny it), and because I didn't rise to it the tension would become almost unbearable. I would happily Bhavesh found another way to handle this stuff, shorter visits for example, but I had no way of broaching the subject without offending her further. Eventually she started being nasty to my kids - saying confusing and unpleasant stuff to them about who was best at this and that, and then eventually finding ways to be cruel under the guise of caring for them (don't want to say more as it would be completely outing) and I decided to stop contact. I suppose it did probably come as a surprise to her.

Mummyoflittledragon · 28/09/2018 06:33

Cesura
I also learnt to not say no to my mother. She trained me and confused me all at the same time. So I had nowhere near the clarity of mind you appear to have had.

She totally controlled me with offers and withdrawal of money. As a younger child it was pocket money and any behaviour she deemed inappropriate (I did try so hard to be good but good wasn’t good enough) and subsequent anger from me would escalate it to a month or more loss of money. She also baited me just so that I would lose money.

As a teen and young adult she was even more confusing because she’d offer, I’d accept then she’d withdraw the offer and when I queried it I’d be accused of money grabbing. Or after querying it she’d say she’d changed her mind (for a totally legitimate reason in her head) and decided to set me a challenge that she would give me something if I did x, y and z that she didn’t think I’d do. Then when I did it she would withdraw the offer and accuse me of money grabbing.

She went ballistic a few years ago when she asked me if I wanted her sports socks and I said I didn’t wear sports socks. She started shouting and screaming at me that nothing she has is good enough for me. Turns out she meant those cropped socks trainer socks, which she knew I wear. So I took them. We are talking about a two pair pack of M&S socks, which had gone bobby btw.

No, there’s no way I’d refuse an offer of anything of hers and I’m mid 40’s.

Mummyoflittledragon · 28/09/2018 06:34

Oops that was to toomuchtooold.

OliviaStabler · 28/09/2018 06:49

They employ him. If he kicks up a fuss, he loses his job.

More importantly, if they choose to have children, her family have more leverage to influence the child's upbringing. More than likely why they gave him the job.

dustarr73 · 28/09/2018 06:55

Op i have no idea why you are getting a hard time.Who turns up with 40 people thinking thats all right.

Goes in to someones house and is rude about the dog.The same dog presumably the dil was used to living with.

Both cultures have to give and take.Its not only the ops job to be flexible.Dil and her family have to be as well.Their needs dont trump the ops.

EwItsAHooman · 28/09/2018 07:36

Op i have no idea why you are getting a hard time

Try look at it from the other side too. The OP

  • arranged to have the engagement ring made into a solitaire and earrings (nothing is said about whether DS/DIL wanted this to be the case?) and it was a "huge thing" for OP to give her DS the ring so has she harped on about this fact over and over to make sure everyone knows it was a huge thing?
  • OP says they felt like guests at the wedding but that's exactly what they were! Everyone is a guest! Told what to wear and how to behave, well yes if it's a wedding from a different culture you would need some information beforehand about your role, traditions, standards of dress, etc. Has the OP been rude or has she made it clear with her behaviour at the wedding, things she said, or did that she wasn't happy about it
  • When 40 members of the bride's family came to the house and OP invited immediate family only, was it made clear? Did the OP say "it's for the immediate family" or did she say "bring your mum, dad, and siblings?" because to some people those 40 relatives are their immediate family and lots of cultures include aunts/uncles/cousins as immediate family.
  • OP told her son off and he got emotional. What exactly was said? For him to get emotional I'm betting it was something hurtful. Was it in front of the guests or within their hearing? In front of his new wife? Or was something said about the wife? This seems like a turning point as it was then that "things were never the same"
  • the DS moved 300 miles away and despite knowing about it for months he didn't tell the OP until a few weeks before. Was this to protect himself from months of complaining about it? OP has shared her feelings about the move on MN and they weren't "good luck".
  • she bought them a surprise of "some" furniture which is, to many people, an overstep of the boundaries. When surprising someone you have to accept the fact that they may not like the surprise and may react negatively. DIL was well within her rights to send it straight back.
  • you blamed your illnesses on DS and told him this

I can guarantee that if we got the DS' version of events they would be very different to the version given by the OP and the objective truth of it would lie somewhere in the middle of the two. DH and I both grew up with a controlling, emotionally manipulative parent who would always twist their version of events so that they were the victim. If I read back through the first post with that in mind, MIL could have written it. No gift was ever given without strings attached, no kindness ever came without constant reminders of how kind she was being and how appreciative we should be alongside consequences if we "failed" to recognise those two things (and what constituted a failure was arbitrary and often completely batshit like "you only said 'thank you' instead of 'thank you very much'"), if we made our own decisions about things like our wedding or where to live we were "excluding" her, even now that we are NC she tells people - sad eyes, wobbly bottom lip - that she gave us her all, she opened her heart to me, she devoted her life to DH, and she can't understand how we could be so cruel but it's all bullshit. In fact if the fact that the DIL was from a different culture hadn't been mentioned I'd wonder if my MIL had written this!

I highly doubt the OP is an innocent in all of this as she appears.

user1457017537 · 28/09/2018 07:38

CesiraandEnrico but the Op’s DS and DiL took the use of the house and lived with her for several years. You are projecting that the Op is how you described, you don’t know. Neither do I, but I do feel that the Op and her DH have been treated appallingly by them. The DIL sounds to me like she is the abusive, manipulating one, not the Op.

Re parents controlling DC with money, you can always say ‘No’, I would rather you spent your money on yourself.

53rdWay · 28/09/2018 07:38

Having the guts to tell his parents why would be a start.

But MadMum101 she says he’s argued and argued with her about this, and now he won’t speak to them because he thinks it would just turn into another argument. So presumably he has told them why. She just doesn’t consider it relevant information to include here for whatever reason.

Bluelady · 28/09/2018 07:39

You write an excellent essay, Cesara. How do you explain OH's son becoming dependent on his wife's family if the strings of his own were so irksome? He no longer even has the independence of his well paid job know.

Bluelady · 28/09/2018 07:41

Now, not know.

CesiraAndEnrico · 28/09/2018 07:56

So I had nowhere near the clarity of mind you appear to have had

Have now. But did not have for the majority of the estrangement.

The dormant seeds of dysfunction in my family sprouted in a traumatic life storm in 1984. The sprouts went Triffid at the speed of light and intense dysfunction replaced what by most standards was a happy enough, good enough, functional enough family dynamic. So I have had a very long time, most of it with the relative peace of cast iron boundaries erected around me, to allow gut instinct to eventually settle into actual words.

I think most of us tend to feel some degree of shame at the extent of our family dysfunction. Estrangement tends not to be something you want to advertise about yourself. So it is quite isolating. For a very long time I had assumed it was just us, or so vanishingly rare it might as well be just us.

However after the belated stumbling upon news of my father's death the ferocity of my grief and my inability to know what to do with it, I was led to professional circles. Via those circles I gained awareness of the existence of an array of professional analysis of what is a far far less unusual phenomenon than I had realised.

It was very strange. You think you are the weirdo oddballs with the unique family dynamic. And then you see yourselves replicated again and again and again, in numerous studies and analysis, that reveals threads and patterns that aren't rare at all. They are in fact as common as muck in a specific sub-set of dysfunctional families.

So all those fears of being odd are squashed, and replaced with the startled recognition that your background is actually "cookie cutter" similar to god knows how many thousands of other (former) children.

SnuggyBuggy · 28/09/2018 08:02

I just find myself thinking how abusers often try to isolate their victims and this man has is NC with parents and also friends, living away from a support network and dependant upon his in laws for work. Even if he has valid reasons for going NC with the parents it's not a good picture.

LifeInPlastic · 28/09/2018 08:40

I’m completely confused how some people here have built up such a vivid picture of the DIL and her family. The only person the OP really reveals any information about is herself. (And it’s not like her view is unbiased in the first place...)

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