To not want contact?

[SilverStripeyTabby]

So NC for this one and bear with me cos this sounds like the plot of a crap novel....

My mum has three children from a previous marriage - he was a highly respected professional man but massive issues with DV, raped her within their marriage, many, many dreadful things happened to her. She met my dad and they fell in love.
His parents (he was still living at home) loved her, but didn't want and didn't have the room for, three children who weren't their grandchildren in their little rented terrace with outside toiler. This being the suburban 1960s, what the neighbours thought was very much a thing. When the divorce came through mum and ex were offered 50/50 custody and mum considered it best and least disruptive for her children to leave them with their father in the family home full time.

So fast forward 60 years, and her first family would like to be be in contact with her. Mum is in her 80s, frail, early stages of dementia, and in sheltered accomodation, and she doesn't think she could cope with the emotional upheaval that it would cause her to resume contact - not to mention the possible disappointment for all parties after so long.

Seems they also want to have contact with me. Obviously we have the same mother but other than that we were brought up in different worlds, different backgrounds, different lifestyles. I'm not curious about them: I've grown up knowing about them but I don't feel that I'm missing a piece of my life. From what I hear of them we have nothing in common more than a shared biology. (That sounds snobby but that's not what I mean - let's say from what mum has been told they would not approve of my lifestyle.)

AIBU to want to leave sleeping dogs lie and to decline contact?

You have no idea whatsoever as to whether child abuse took place in this situation.

Why get nasty with the reading comprehension / fantasist comments Mariel? No one has said the children were abused, it's the lack of desire to know how 3 children fared under a man who was violently abusive to his wife and raped her hat surprises some people. It doesn't matter if it happened 60 years ago. The adults are alive and have memories.

Why get nasty with the reading comprehension / fantasist comments Mariel?

I explained that transparently clearly in my former post. When a person attributes commentary to me that I patently never made, I'll challenge them robustly and ask them to quantify their [false] accusation.

HTH.

You're also attributing things to other posters, Mariel. Maybe take your own advice as follows, eh?

You are making an enormous over-reach about someone's entire life given a few short lines of typeface on the internet.

Here is where you assume it didn't happen:

You have no idea whatsoever as to whether child abuse took place in this situation. A man can be abusive to one person and not others. I took the brunt of my father's abuse: he never once touched either of his wives or my sisters. You are making an enormous over-reach about someone's entire life given a few short lines of typeface on the internet.

But honestly you are now just resorting to personal insults claiming I can't comprehend properly and are far too angry to even bother attempting a discussion with. Care to explain why you think it's OK to leave 3 children with a known abuser?

mariel do you even know what fantasist means? Based on your use of the word, I don't think you do. Yet you insult my comprehension skills.

You're also attributing things to other posters, Mariel. Maybe take your own advice as follows, eh?

How? I'm asking someone to quantify inaccurate statements they made about something I wrote. Please explain how this is an over-reach about those people's entire lives? Always willing to learn something.

Nobody has said they think it's OK to leave children with an abuser. Nobody.

The posters saying they think the mothers actions were justified are. The PP saying the children likly weren't abused are. It's all between the lines.

mariel do you even know what fantasist means?

A person who makes up ridiculous accusations against someone else and can't substantiate a single one? That kind of fantasist?

I've not seen anybody say that at all. Pp, myself included, can see a bigger picture of a woman who was born with no say in the situation and a woman who now sadly has dementia so the woman who made the decision in the first place doesn't even exist anymore

Conscious now that challenging someone's BS is derailing what's otherwise quite a revealing thread in several senses of that word. For that reason I'd hope MNHQ will allow it to stand, and will allow any previous posts of mine to speak for themselves without derailing further.

As a PP has just quoted, Nobody has said they think it's OK to leave children with an abuser. Nobody.

Indeed. Wishing all good luck to the OP.

@MarieIVanArkleStinks you are being rude, insulting and quite angry. There is no point even trying to discuss this with someone like you. Also, you got the definition wrong on fantasist. Nice try though.

Op I think this is a sad situsiton all round. For me personally I would want to meet them to help them get information that might help heal wounds they have carried all their life. I can't imagine how hard it must be for them to reach out and not get a response.

I agree with @FizzyGreenWater

OP,
I think both you and your mother are in huge denial about exactly what she did 60 years ago.

Your mother chose to leave them behind because it was more convenient for her.

Despite being in this awful marriage, she had the emotional space to meet someone else and fall in love.

She gets 50/50 access. Despite having left them in a home she was happy to leave behind, she further made the decision never to contact those children again.

She has had MH issues since. Guilt I would imagine.

I have read your opening post a couple of times and it just reads as the extremely selfish actions of a parent who skipped off and moved on and put herself first.

Be as dismissive of those poor children as you, like but your mother was a very poor parent, who well and truly threw 3 children under a bus.
She found a new man and the children were too much baggage to be accommadated in her new life so she cut them out and moved on.

My sympathy is with those poor children abandoned 60 years ago because it was easier for your mother to start a fresh.

Men do it all the time and are a disgrace when they do.
I hold women to a higher standard because we give birth to children.
I think your mother behaved callously to those children, and I can understand you not wanting to know the finer details.

From what you have posted your mother most likely does not come out of it well.

You have no doubt been given a very conveniently sanitised version of events.

A person who makes up ridiculous accusations against someone else and can't substantiate a single one? That kind of fantasist?

That’s not what fantasist means

Men do it all the time and are a disgrace when they do.
I hold women to a higher standard because we give birth to children.

I agree with a lot of what you say @billy1966 but not the above. It’s not fair to hold women to a higher standard. That way lies a lot of problems (dare I say it, even a woman’s rape becomes her fault because she was drunk/wore a shirt skirt / encouraged the man etc and she should be held to higher standards in how much she drinks, what she wears and how she behaves).

You have no doubt been given a very conveniently sanitised version of events.

This^, and you've been discouraged by your mother to meet them, by telling you they wouldn't approve of you being gay. How can she know that, from a few social media posts that someone else relayed to her? It looks like she doesn't want you to meet them, to stop you finding out the truth.

I think, as many others do too, that as your mother knowingly left her children with an abusive man, she owes those children answers to any questions that she might have. I realise that times were very different then but I have a friend who is in a similar situation to one of the first children and he can never forgive his biological mother for choosing a new man over her children.

Wow I feel for those first children no mother and still unable to meet her since it would possibly affect 'her' .... everything has always been about her and still is.

They may want closure but if old and frail now she couldn't give them that and sounds like she couldn't really give them anything for their entire life anyway. Sad for them.

• they not she

Mother was a coward and could have sorted this years ago but took the coward way out and ignored. Now has dementia.

For you - a different matter - you had the 'benefit' of a mother they didn't. Up to you what you do but perhaps consider someone actually helps them for a chance and helps them with the answers they so badly still need.

This 100%

Be as dismissive of those poor children as you, like but your mother was a very poor parent, who well and truly threw 3 children under a bus.
She found a new man and the children were too much baggage to be accommadated in her new life so she cut them out and moved on.

I’m another who feels for those first children too. OP just try to imagine how THEY feel knowing that their mother conveniently forgot all about them.

Op, your mother owes her children some closure.

This must have been an incredibly painful and horrendous experience for them, losing a mother at such a young age - forever. They will have experienced the entire spectrum of grief and loss of their mother.

She may be old, and she may be reluctant to face up to what she has done, but I would ask her to reconsider. Her feelings (or yours) are really not the most important thing right now. The bravery of her children to get in contact, their painful childhood, they will be trying to make sense of their lives and the loss. Your mother owes them that at least before she dies. To give them comfort and closure, she may not be able to rewind 60 years of damage, but she has the opportunity now to put this to rest before it is too late.

My heart breaks for them. The very worst form of rejection surely.