To think it's such a shame that family bonds are being destroyed and going NC is becoming more and more common?

[PinotViogner]

Just that really. I might just be an old fart desperately yearning for the old days but I was raised to believe in the importance of having family around you and I find it horribly sad that so many people I know have family that haven't spoken to them for years.

Obviously in cases where some bad behavior has gone on it's understandable but surely there's nothing that can't be worked on? Going NC is so extreme and I think should be a last case resort if done at all.

Being related by blood isn’t a licence to abuse someone, OP. It’s good that people can make reasonable choices these days, rather than being forced by society to spend time with cruel relatives.

Most people who have gone NC have endured years of abuse and nastiness - you don’t go NC because a family member didn’t like your new wallpaper.

You are lucky not to have experienced a close family member abusing you - you clearly do not understand what some of us have tolerated for decades and finally cut ties. Count yourself lucky and don’t sit in judgement about something you very clearly don’t understand.

People don't go NC for silly reasons. They go NC after years of abuse, either physical, emotional, sexual.

Well in general you would suppose so. Certainly reading some of the shocking and heartbreaking experiences described by other posters on this thread it is easy to see why NC is the best solution for many people.

However, the only case of NC that I have had direct experience of was for none of these reasons. Nearly 30 years ago SIL (DH's brother's wife) fell out with the rest of ILs for various difficult to understand reasons and insisted her DH choose between her and his birth family. He chose his wife and son. Sure enough there has been no contact since, MIL is now dead and FIL in his 90s.

If PIL had been one of the toxic variety I read so much about on mumsnet then I might understand it. In fact, they are really not. I had a great relationship with them from the start and considered myself very lucky I had the ideal MIL - supportive without being interfering, always kind, always welcoming. Clearly former SIL saw it differently. But abusive? Never, ever.

I am not overly set on the importance of family but people in general just seem to be very unforgiving, refusing to accept anyone's imperfections and cutting ties very quickly.

'a dear friend'.

You are naive if you think that's the only reason they went NC. People usually do it after years of having their boundaries trampled over. Guaranteed this would've been the tipping point for them to go NC, not the start.

That explains why the DIL is no contact. What about her son/daughter, you know her actual child- are they NC also?

Come on, op, does it seem likely that a perfectly helpful and nice relative would be cut out in this way?

I suspect your friend is not telling the truth.

I don't think going nc is at all common, so when it happens, it happens for a reason.

I think with things like this you have to accept you’re only getting your friend’s version of events.

Of course she will say she only offered a few well intentioned suggestions, but it’s also possible she consistently crossed boundaries and wasn’t willing to accept that her own behaviour was problematic when told by her son and DIL.

Going NC is a hard decision and I think it is almost always a last resort. But the person whose behaviour is the problem is unlikely to see it that way if they aren’t willing to face up to their own flaws.

OP you say there’s nothing that can’t be worked on - well, that’s true, but have you considered that abusers don’t actually want to work on not being abusive?

You only have one side of this story.

I think YABVVVVU to be so judgmental about people who have family difficulties. for you.

Yeh your friend isn’t going to tell her friends what she actually did to get cut off.
my mil will tell everyone her dil is a shit and stoping poor son from contacting, they won’t say how they’ve emotionally abused said son for years as they don’t see it as anything wrong

YABU. People don't cut ties for no reason.

Not sure it is more common - do you have evidence for this? Plenty of people went 'no contact' before the expression began trending on forums like this.

Mumsnet has quite rightly validated the practice of separating your own life from that deeply unpleasant family. members who are never going to change.

If PIL had been one of the toxic variety I read so much about on mumsnet then I might understand it. In fact, they are really not. I had a great relationship with them from the start and considered myself very lucky I had the ideal MIL - supportive without being interfering, always kind, always welcoming. Clearly former SIL saw it differently. But abusive? Never, ever.

Not abusive to you doesn't mean they weren't abusive to her.
My relative was smiley, happy salt of the earth to everyone out of our house.
Classic Street Angel/ House Devil
No one would believe the utter demon of rage, violence and abuse heaped on us .
That's how they operate and get away with it.

they won’t say how they’ve emotionally abused said son for years as they don’t see it as anything wrong This is a major part of the issue.

Parent does/says xyz upsetting thing.
Child says 'please don't do/say that, it really upsets me'
Parent says 'oh, we didn't mean any harm'
Cycle repeats over and over.

Yeah my mum would come out with crap like that if you asked why I don't see her

She'd be lying

Because, you know, abusive people aren't really known for telling the truth about how shit they are

And white frankly your retelling this:

worth noting that dils insistence on breastfeeding caused the baby to end up underweight before she finally relented

Is quite toxic about a new mother trying to do the best thing for her baby. So I'd it's a retelling of the "dear friend" then that says a lot...

@PinotViogner You ve a point, i suppose, my sister stopped all contact with our mum, including the grandchildren over who repaired her car! went to the grave that one.

But just because someone is your brother, sister, mum or dad, doesn't mean you ve got to like them, personalities clash and i get on better with my friends than i ever have with my siblings.

Its a load of rubbish that blood is thicker than water.

Your friend has given you a very edited version of events (although she sounds overbearing in her watered down version too).

My mother tells her friends all sorts of things about her 'just' doing something and me over reacting as well. The truth is very different.

It's easy to judge when you only have one side of the story.

My Dad spent 15 years researching out family history back about 300 years.

Family rows, estrangements, and people moving 200 miles to never see the rest of their family again were very common

No contact has always been a thing.

Meh. In my grandfather's day, he and all 6 siblings left home at 14 to go into service/coal mining. It wasn't that long ago that folk were emigrating to Australia and the new world without any hope of seeing their families ever again. I think we've been lulled into this sense of 'family unit' because of phones, cars and the Internet making us all more contactable and accessible.

Also, some people are just cunts and I don't see why we should allow them in our lives just because they're 'family'.

OP perhaps if you'd had a mother like mine you'd understand why people go NC.
Why would I want to work on a relationship with somebody who was horrible to me.
All this stuff about "Christmas is for families" makes me sick.

I'd rather have had Christmas day all on my own than with that woman.

👏👏

NC with my dad. He sold drugs, took me to raves in a field as a young child, spent more time in prison than out of it. Even now in his 50s he's the same. I don't want that kind of lifestyle around my own DS.

People have been moving away from toxic family for generations where I am from, I’d have to wonder how people didn’t realise that difficult family dynamics was a wide spread reason for people in the past wanting to move away growing up. We have a language for it now but it was ever thus.