Younger Relative Doesn't Want Contact?

[FunderAnna]

I don't quite know how to read this one.

Because of various upheavals in the wider family I spent a lot of time looking after one of my relatives when she was a child. She also lived with us on and off in her late teens and early twenties.

She is married now and lives in another part of the country. I try and keep in touch with her, but not by ringing her landline. She works long hours and she's out or else tired.

But I don't have a smartphone - just an old fashioned PAYG one.

Most recently after someone who was close to her died, I sent her condolences via email plus a couple of scanned photographs where she was with this person.

She didn't reply at the time or later. Next time I saw her I asked whether she got the message and she said, 'Oh it must have got lost among the junkmail. Just text me another time.

So I said that I mainly just text for urgent stuff, but that with some other people I use FB Messenger.

To which she said, 'Oh I use FB even less. I suppose I ought to better at sorting through my junk.'

In my situation would you feel that she just didn't want much contact with me any more. (It hardly seems worth getting a smartphone just to be in touch with someone who basically wants to let things drop.)

I don't have emails on my phone.

OP, you didn't answer my question about her wanting to forget or run away from her chaotic childhood.

Does she talk about the past?

Who have you sent pictures of, to her?

I don't speak to relatives who down play my childhood. They all watched me suffer, whilst 'putting a sticking plaster over it'.

She hasn't rejected you, without there being a reason. You don't seem to be communicating well with her at all.

"I'm on a minimum wage - though my partner has a good income."

I bought a smartphone for £100 and pay £12 a month for my contract. If that is the barrier, then it's another kick in the teeth for her that you won't put the effort in.

I'm on a minimum wage - though my partner has a good income.

He earns good money and has an iPhone and an iPad, you are on minimum wage and have a basic phone... any chance your relationship is reminding her of her upbringing? Was abuse a factor?

She's told you what suits her. You don't want to do it. You are deciding that you'd rather not contact her just as much as she is.

OP Facebook messages and emails (particularly FB) are not necessarily there on your phone. You have to have FB messenger installed, which if she doesn't really use FB she won't have, and she may not even have an email account linked up if she isn't a big emailer.

It does seem a bit like you are insisting on contacting her in the way you want even though she has told you those are not really platforms she checks. I have an aunt who does not use WhatsApp (the main method for most people these days - and crucially free) or have a smartphone and we do speak less than we otherwise would as it means a sit down landline phone call of a certain length which is more difficult to plan time for.

You don't have to spend lots of money on a smartphone, you can get a phone that will WhatsApp etc cheaply, a basic android one or something secondhand or as PPs said, your friends most probably have an old one lying about, and you can still use PayG - a proper bundle with data and texts will probably cost you less than you are paying now. It will benefit you with your relative but other people too.

Thanks for the replies. I think the key issue for me is the feeling that my younger relative no longer wants to communicate with me for reasons that aren't entirely clear to me. (I do get that she is very busy and has other priorities. But even on her infrequent visits, she avoids asking me any personal questions. If I felt she wanted some kind of face-to-face relationship with me, I'd probably be less bothered about whether technology could be useful in enabling us to keep in touch.)

I think the best thing for now is to text her from time to time using my partner's phone.

Somebody implied there might be some kind of sinister backstory where during the time I'd helped bring her up/look after her she was in poverty. Or we'd had to look after her because she was abused. Or that I'd sent her pictures of someone she didn't want to be reminded of.

My partner has a good income and we have a comfortable if shabby home. She's always had clothes, food, a decent roof over her head, a phone, a laptop, holidays etc. We looked after her during times when her own mother was unwell - and it maybe that she has negative feelings about this, and I'm mixed up in this negativity somehow. But, particularly during the later periods when I was involved in caring for her she was actually very appreciative of my support.

I asked my daughter about the issue of whether she found it hard communicating with me because I don't have a smartphone and text her she said the only issue was at the times when she didn't have access to wifi - ie when she was out somewhere, so couldn't pick up messages immediately/give . But otherwise it's fine. Oddly, she's been very supportive about my not having one. It's as if she would like to her use own rather less.

While being very aware of how useful smartphones are in terms of being able to access information and communicate quickly and freely - after initial purchase and contract, I do have big reservations about how addictive they are, how they're involved in tracking us, collecting data and selling it etc. They stop us being in the moment etc. So I'd probably get one for the next time I go abroad on my own.

But I'm not sure that spending a couple of hundred for something I don't currently want just because I'd like to believe it'll salvage a relationship that probably needs to be left - or mended in some other way - is the right way forward.

I'm wondering whether her reluctance to be in touch could be because her partner is a controlling abuser who's steadily isolating her from her support network.

If that is the case, there's little you can do except keep the lines of communication open and be a soft place for her to fall if she ever needs it.

I do hope it's just because she's heedlessly happy, though!

You sound very defeatist, I think you bed to try something. I find it hard to keep in touch with some people actually, who I do care about, but they aren't really involved in day to day life. So they give me a spiel about a bunch of other people I half know and ask ridiculously broad questions like "what have you been up to", which all takes thought to respond to. So I'm slow to respond and give brief nothing-y answers. I say a lot more to specific questions; asking about DS / house renovation / explicitly asking about work out whatever. This may not be relevant, just commenting in case.

Write her a letter!