Adult Children

[RaquelCC]

I wish someone would invent a word for them. My daughter is currently 'ghosting' me. Despite my best efforts she is refusing to communicate with me and I really can't see it changing for the foreseeable future. There have been attachment issues since she was a little girl. My dilemma is as it's her 35th birthday in a few weeks time do I carry on as normal and send a card and gift or just a card or a card and token gesture small gift like a smelly candle. Would appreciate your advice please.

Please send her a card & gift, she will still want her mum to show she cares about her on her birthday.

Today is my birthday & I am in regular contact with my shit mother, I haven't received so much as a text from her. I can't even explain how hurtful it is to know my own mother doesn't care enough to wish me happy birthday 😔

I don't mean paragraphs of soppiness, I mean just something simple like...
Happy birthday daughter.
I love and miss you.
Love mum.

That kind of thing.

This is quite a severe take on a very common problem? Also one person doesn't 'estrange themselves'. It is usually a two way street where two or more people become estranged from eachother inho

imho

I've just gone NC with my mum. I'm 37 and she is 65. I wish she'd fought for me. I went NC upon legal advice because one of my siblings made a malicious report to SS. It's acknowledged by the authorities that it was malicious but it was still scary! My mum seemed to think she couldn't take sides or something but she did in not speaking up for me. Anyway, I don't think I'll ever see her again now but she could have fought for our relationship. I would with my children :-)

I'd send a card!

That is sad. I'm sorry she didn't fight for you and I will take your advice

Send a gift

Send Freddie's flowers or bloom and wild

Send a card . Keep
Trying , do t give up

You're focussing on the wrong thing. Birthdays are trivial in themselves.

The important question is why she is ghosting you, when this pattern of rejecting behaviour started, and how you've reacted to it in the last. Ghosting a parent is a painful and very deliberate thing to do and your daughter wouldn't be doing it unless she found your behaviour not only profoundly hurtful but also incapable of alteration. What happened, and why do you think she's not willing to give you another chance?

Adult children are ghosting their parents all over the place at the moment. On this board people are telling other people to go no contact and quite often the other person might be a bit irritating but hasn't really done much at all to warrant that.

I think I would send a card and write in it something like "hello, I've been thinking about you so much lately. I really hope you have a good birthday and spend some time with people you love. I am so sorry you feel that you can't talk to me at the moment, and I hope that sometime in the future you will feel that you can, whether that's face-to-face, with a counsellor or just in a message. I'm always thinking of you and I love you."

Should you send a birthday card? Well that depends:
Do you know the reason why she is going no contact?
Do you think she's justified?
Did you do something which perhaps wasn't great, but you were struggling at the time yourself, (just a random example of what I mean; you were widowed when she was thirteen, you struggled to come to terms with being widowed, fell into depression and couldn't be there for her emotionally; she's now angry at you and feels you weren't meeting her needs having already lost a parent. Or perhaps you had been divorced, met someone fell in love and got married and your dd, suddenly finds herself thrown into a turmoil of emotions, and feels you put your own happiness ahead of hers. In these sorts of situation or similar where there have been very good reasons for you perhaps not always being emotionally or physically there for her, I think you need to look at the situation from her perspective and actually think bout what it must have been like for her.
If you feel something like the above happened then I think you should send a birthday card with an apology BUT DO NOT excuse your behaviour, because the minute you say "sorry but..." is the minute you've alienated her again. You need to apologise, because although you had good reason for doing X,Y and Z, she still feels you failed her as a mother, it doesn't matter if you had a reason, you needed to be there and you weren't, that what matters to her.

If you really, really genuinely don't know what you've done to upset her, then I don't think you should send a card.

Op my mil had a very strained relationship with her daughter. They were / are complicated characters. But from an outsider perspective, the first time I met MIL it was obvious that DH was her 'golden child'. Mil never saw it, vehemently denied it even, and yet to an outsider it was as clear as day.
MIL and SIL would also have 'competitive' Ill health competitions too, they both had / have health issues, SIL has to be very careful with her diet or she's extremely ill, MIL had rheumatoid arthritis so was in a lot of pain and discomfort, the arguing between them was something else.
I'm not saying this is your situation, and maybe your dd is currently pissed off at the world (for whatever reason) and taking it out on you, but if that's the case definitely do not send the card.
Anyway good luck to both of you, I hope it gets resolved.

For a bit of context I’ve been NC for some time with my mother. You’ve said that you don’t understand why your daughter might be ghosting you and communication has broken down.

For me it took a long time to come to terms that I couldn’t go on having a relationship. I wasn’t listened to, boundaries were trampled on and there was emotional and financial manipulation going on. Demands were constantly being placed on me regarding my time ( to spend more with her after she divorced my dad ) although it was incredibly difficult to spend time with her as I was walking on eggshells all the time.

It got too much, she wouldn’t listen to me trying to tell her about anything and it came to a head when she was challenged about a situation. None of it, predictably, was her fault and she’d taken decisions regarding aspects of my daughter future without consulting me. I cooled things rapidly to try and see if we could work through it later and decided not to after receiving a letter which was basically her calling me all sorts of things.

Only you can know what has happened in the past. The end situation brought about the NC with me but it really was a build up of a lot of things that weren’t right - but maybe some of the things I’ve detailed might give you an insight if you unpick your relationship from your side about what may have gone wrong between you. I’m certainly not a saint, but for me and my mental health, going NC was the right choice.

As for birthday / Christmas, the cards I receive go in the bin now, she isn’t really interested in making any changes to herself and they feel more about her than me as she’s still not acknowledging my boundaries. Any cash gets spent on my children.

Presents for my children are just another attempt to emotionally manipulate. She will only see my eldest ( older teen ) if she’s got something to hand over to me or the others. And as she’s off to uni soon stated to her that she’s lost her middle man and to tell me that if I wanted gifts for the little two I had to call her. ( on the flip side if she really wanted to gift things for her grandchildren she could make arrangements ). I’m not calling.

As others have said though it isn’t a decision taken lightly to stop contact with a family member, and if you do want contact to resume you will have to be patient and wait for her to come to you.

@girlfriend44 when my Mother died, I was relieved and pleased a) because she could no longer cause any suffering and because b) death released her from her own suffering (alcoholism, addiction to pain medication and, at the very end, brain and lung cancer, I'm told).

Was I sad? Yes, for the Mum I never had; yes, for my sister, who saw her die. Did it make me happy? No. And, what do I feel now about her? Like she never really existed.

The automatic assumption by many people that the mother must be terribly at fault and the dd have valid reasons is bizarre.

We don't know these people and there is nothing in the little the mother has written to indicate that she is horrible.

Why does the order they came into the world mean that mothers are always baddies and daughters are always victims. If the daughter's daughter goes no contact with her, does that mean she is suddenly evil?

I was no/low contact with my mother for most of my adult life.
She was always incredibly manipulative, but the main reason was that I believe she knew about sexual abuse when I was a child, and she remained close to the rapist. A conversation with her when we were talking confirmed this.
She is long dead, but the rapist still sends cards. Every birthday, every Christmas. Moonpig, so he hasn't physically touched them, but seeing them drop through the door makes my stomach churn, fifty years on. They never get opened after the first ones, and one year when Moonpig (I assume) mistakenly sent two.
Do not keep sending cards/gifts as if nothing had happened - "least said soonest mended" is not an appropriate attitude - unless by "least said" you mean dropping the fucking cards and stop spoiling her birthday.

In these sorts of situation or similar where there have been very good reasons for you perhaps not always being emotionally or physically there for her, I think you need to look at the situation from her perspective and actually think bout what it must have been like for her.

Nicely said, @anunlikelyseahorse. I forced my mother to discuss this, in detail, over several days. I was in therapy and fairly confident I could handle the confrontation as gently as she needed - though it wore me out! She was a kind & caring woman in an unkind marriage, unable to deal with the harsh realities of her family life. I knew this, of course.

I needed her to recognise the harm done to me. I didn't expect her to fix it - I was doing that, in therapy - or even to alter her deluded view of her marriage, as I knew she couldn't. I wanted her to properly hear me, not 'moaning' or blaming her, but telling her what I wish she could have done to protect us. And to be sorry for the damage I suffered.

We got there. The issue isn't 'resolved' like it would be in a film; the point is that it is aired and our understanding of our shared history is now an honest one.

If you leave things under the carpet, they build up dust & spiders!

the rapist still sends cards. Every birthday, every Christmas

God, that's grotesque. Like he's pulling the stitches in a wound he caused 😡

But - gently - it isn't the same as the absent/ignorant mother sending cards, is it?

I would definitely send a card and gift- but in the mail, don't turn up on the doorstep.
If you don't send anything, she could use that as 'proof' that you're a terrible parent or whatever it is she's telling people.

Honestly OP I would just leave her alone. She's made her feelings clear and all repeated contact is doing is sending the message that you don't respect that. As for turning up on her doorstep, if someone I had repeatedly ghosted did that to me I'd slam the door in their face. I speak as someone NC with my father for decades, and no, I didn't care a jot when he died.

Mother's are held to different standards. Some of the most neglectful absent fathers get a free pass but not mothers.

My DD isn't speaking to me right now and I'm not phased anymore. She's mad as I wouldn't give her a bunch of money so she verbally abused me and stormed off.

Ouch, @RantyAnty!

Paradoxically, that sort of thing really shows how much she trusts that you love her. First, she expected you'd give what she asked for. Then, she's confident that cutting you out will hurt you.

I love the way humans are so different in all sorts of ways but, man, we are weird!

I'll always love her regardless.

So sorry to hear this and belated happy birthday. If I knew you in RL I'd want to make a fuss of you- so sad your mums not being there for you esp on your birthday.

Very sorry to hear this.
I have a semi similar situation with one of my dc.
I would say send a gift, send a card saying you love her and text a happy birthday message.
She's not blocked you or specifically said don't contact her so I would keep trying.

Please send her a card & gift, she will still want her mum to show she cares about her on her birthday.
I agree. Continue to show her you care, but stay back. A birthday card and gift isn't intrusive.

@moveoverhogger Happy (belated) birthday. Treat yourself with love and care. It's not everything, but it helps.

So sorry this is all happening - is NC definitely right if you're sad about it? You might change your mind in a few weeks/months. Going NC seems like a permanent decision with so many people sad but saying "too late now" etc. If your parents are crap they might be at home sad too but scared to get in touch with you.
Could you upwardly parent them and tell them you'll see them in a few weeks/months/even years but for now you're having a break? Keep the lines of communication open maybe.
I know it can be exhausting and it all depends on the issues involved but you never know people change, and maybe even once in a blue moon good times with parents is better than never at all.