To cut contact with DS and DIL

[LaurentheLemur]

Today is the first birthday I have had since my husband of 40 years died. My birthday is flagged up on FB. Today my DIL has sent me a link to click on a website to help her get a referral bonus. She has not wished me a happy birthday.

Apart from a brief message of condolence via FB at the time, and both of them missing the funeral because they "couldn't afford time off work", I have had no real contact with her or DS for years.

Background - DS was brought up by his father, my ExH, and his darling stepmother told him I was dead. ExH moved abroad for a while and we lost contact (deliberately on his part). I managed to track down DS just before his 40th birthday, but of course he hardly remembered me. Initially I tried to rebuild a relationship but it fizzled out after a while. I think DIL wears the pants in their relationship. DS never contacts me and I don't even have his phone number since he changed it a couple of years ago. I know it takes 2 to have a relationship but honestly I am wondering why I should even try when they have made it clear they aren't interested.

I'm hurt and upset that they don't seem to have any understanding of how much a simple message would mean to me. But is cutting them off completely an overreaction at a time when I'm still grieving for my DH?

Sounds to me like you think its DILs fault.
Thats probably really not the case. DHs family lives overseas and we see them 1-2x a year for several weeks.
DH face times his mum everytime i tell him to with the kids. If i remind him weekly, then he will call weekly. I didnt remind him for 3 months at one point, because i was so occupied i simply forgot.. Guess what? He never contacted them and neither did they 🤷🏻‍♀️
It takes 2 people to keep up the relationship: you and your son.
I mean, DIL would have to actively prevent him from messaging you, then you could maybe blame her. But if youre honest with yourself, you really think she does that?

Eh? Where the fuck did you get that from?

Hi OP,

Given the timings (you didn't meet him until he was 40, your late husband of 40 years) it sounds as though there was a link between the lost relationship with your baby son and your marrage to your late husband?

If that's the case then I do have sympathy with your son and DIL not attending his funeral - it's a complex situation and they are within their rights to have ambiguous feelings about it.

As for missing your birthday - it's unfortunate but again, things sound awkward and complicated between you.

It sounds like there is barely any relationship here as things stand. You are getting upset about things that would be an oversight if you were close to your son, but given that you aren't it seems an over-reaction on your part.

In your shoes I'd be trying to repair and rebuild the relationship, not end it. But it's your call and perhaps you're not ready to acknowledge the pain and harm done to your son at the time you were separated? Without you acknowledging that, and taking responsibility for whatever part you played, there can't really be any reconciliation.

I'm sorry for what you've been through and for the loss of your DH. I hope you can find peace and wish you all the best.

Unfortunately you have missed the early bonding years with your son, through no fault of either of you.
You can not make up feelings.
They don't remember all your important life dates. Remembering such things often accompany associated memories. How many birthdays did you share with your son?

Do you remember all dates important to them?
Do not cut them off. Do not aportion blame. They are regular people - show each other consistant respect and over the next forty years you might grow closer and share fondness for one another.

Your penultimate sentence is just a little bit too perfect really. If anyone understands how much it would mean to receive a message from a close family member - then it's your DS. Who (allegedly- according to your OP) didn't hear from you for decades.

You didn't have any relationship with your son as an child and didn’t contact him for 40 years, of course he doesn't care about your birthday and wouldn’t have attended the funeral of your partner.

I can only assume you’re trolling as no one could have zero involvement in their child’s life for 40 years then be genuinely shocked there’s no attachment there. If you don’t form any bonds during childhood there’s no base of trust or love to fall back on later. Please leave them in peace and focus your sense of entitlement and demands elsewhere.

If you had nothing to do with him for 40 years, I'm not surprised he's not falling over himself to build a relationship.

And if you were married to this other man for 40 years... how old is son now? I suspect he might feel like you "replaced" him and his dad rather quickly. How and why did you come to have zero contact with him for 40 years?

Your son barely knows you from adam, and your deceased DH is even more of a stranger to him. If you want a relationship with him, you need to meet him where he is, and stop blaming everyone else (the step-mother, the ex, the DIL) for your lack of relationship.

Clearly there's a whole TON of backstory here (40+ years worth probably!), but either you want a relationship with your son, or you don't. If you do, then you need to let some stuff go, and stop hoarding your grudges.

I suspect that OP has given us approx 12.7% of the actual story here

Indeed. A friend of mine - who had a distant relationship with her father (nowhere near as "distant" as the OP with her son, however) used to say of how much of her time she spent on him "He's getting out what he put in."

The saying "blood is thicker than water" with regard to family relationships is nonsense.

I'm sorry but this is on you. Your son was an abandoned child in his eyes. He owes you nothing. He was brought up by his dad and stepmum.

He regained contact with you but you aren't his mum. You are the person who gave birth to him. And didn't maintain a relationship.

I know that's tricky reading

You need to build a friendship first before anything else can happen. You need to put the effort in. Not him

Of its too painful for you then you need to back away

You’re thinking of cutting them off? Sounds like they’ve already cut you off.

Reply saying "thanks for the code. What a lovely birthday present. I shall treat myself with an order. Thank you.

How are you?

It hasn't stopped raining here I'm still waiting for summer "

Nice , light no pressure

Actually o would t say the birthday present I would say as it happens it's my birthday so I will that myself. Thank you

IME rebuilding a relationship after alienation is hard going without 2 things in your starter pack.

1. A full throated, honestly proffered (no strings attached) apology for any part (big, or teeny tiny) the alienated parent played in creating the context in which the alienation could occur. And that can only be given once a parent has stepped back enough from their own hurt to take as honest as possible look at how things would appear from their child’s perspective.
2. An understanding that all the barriers of time, fatigue, frustration, hurt, lost hope, tenuous trust, long carried grievance, grief the parent experiences are also the lot of the alienated child.

I wish you the perseverance, hard-won insight and stamina to move forward into a path that leads you where you want to go. For your sake and for your now adult child’s sake.

If I had a do-over, I would have taken a more active path towards looking more clearly at the tangled web from the perspective of the adults involved. In order to allow forgiveness to arrive. Anger and hurt to dissipate. From there being willing and able to face being the one making the running, with all the personal risks that entails.

Because as much as it might have resulted in rejection, luke-warm reception, or disappointment it would have been better than the death of hope, when the sands of time ran out.

It’s OK to ask for help to navigate this. There are no road-maps. A lot of the grass-roots “expert” advice is crap, biased and agenda ridden. And it can feel quite a lot like being in an emotional tumble dryer. All whirling around and no knowing which way you are up.

But the high tide kind of grief never stops until some kind of genuine resolution, one way or another, is reached. Only then can you get yourself nearer to shore where the waves of loss don’t batter so hard and you can keep your feet on the ground.

God speed to the coastline. For you, your boy and any children he has, or may have in the future.

When were you there for him?
You can't expect him to rally around you and be all loving and supportive, when he had to live most of his first 40 years of life without you around to love and support him.

Unless there was a lot done on your part to repair the fractured relationship, I can 100% appreciate why he is so distant to you now.

Of course the father and step mother who told the boy that is mother was dead get off scot-free, as per MN normality.

There are so many unanswered questions here it's difficult to say either way

It's very unusual for children to be raised solely by their father....why was that? And when your son became 18 why did it then take you a further 22 years to make contact?

At the end of the day - sad as it might be - he hardly knows you and your husband means nothing to him. I wouldn't have taken leave in those circumstances either probably

I think the failure of the relationship goes deeper than “ boo hoo, they didn’t say happy birthday”. If that is your priority I can understand why they don’t want to be part of your life.

Can anyone on this site read and comprehend? The child was told his mother was dead and steps were taken to deliberately keep it that way!

Ok.

Let's say you were making only enough to make ends meet. In a bedsit for 40 years because you and your husband are both disabled, unable to afford court or lawyers to try and get contact with your abducted child.

You had no friends or family who would lend you money for legal aid.

As you had no friends or family ties, you were living in the cheapest part of the country. But even then, you could not afford a lawyer.

Fine.

The day he turned 18, it became your 9-5 to try and find him online.

But his name and surname had been changed. Right?

So after a good 20 years of paying a private investigator, you finally found him. You gave him 40 years worth of birthday and Christmas cards you had set aside.

Anything apart from the above, and you better have a good reason for not contacting him until he was a middle aged man.

Like you were in an iron lung, or something.

That explains what the ex did. It doesn't explain what OP did for the decades she wasn't in contact.

Ps, if he hasn’t given you his new phone number after a few years I think he has already gone NC with you. Your DiL probably sent the link to her entire Facebook, she didn’t single you out , it is a coincidence it came on your birthday.

Why would they bother with you? I wouldn’t. He was a child. You were his mum. It was your job to be there, and you weren’t. The boo boo poor me story about your ex taking him means nothing. You could have had him returned to Britain as a British citizen, or moved out to be with him, arranged contact and visitation etc.
It was your job to do it. You didn’t. Then didn’t contact him until he was 40.

I wouldn’t see you as my mum, and I wouldn’t have much to do with your husband either so the funeral wouldn’t be on my list of things to use holiday from work for.

Sorry, but you weren’t in his life so this is what happens.

And the 'd'm had no proof for 40 years her child was alive and ok and appears to have been OK with this!!