How awful that much-loved 30-year-old son cut all contact

[soupsetpleasehelp]

I'm actually writing as I have a very, dear old friend whose DS has completely cut her off. He is in his early 30s and he grew up between his parents (in a different country so no risk that this is outing) after his dad left the mum, shared contact which is common over there. The dad has since then had numerous relationships, and was horrible towards my friend in the early days, and wouldn't provide enough economic support etc. All the main care really came from my friend.

Anyhow, she was always extremely close to her son and was (is) the most warm, loving mum (person) you could imagine. Her son was always her first priority (but I wouldn't say he was spoilt) and we, her friends, always used to meet up with him and he was super cuddly and loving with his mum. No wonder, she was always very encouraging. However, over the last few years he's gone into modelling and has had a few girlfriends, the most recent one who is from a wealthy family.

My friend's son has slowly cut contact from last Xmas until a hard cut off earlier this year. He kept bringing up old (what I would have considered normal experiences) from when he was a child, when he felt she didn't meet his needs with regards to taking him e.g. to the doctors immediately after a fall (she did the next day when he complained of more pain, he initially said it was OK) and he had a fracture. Well, I'm sure lots of parents would have been the same. She is the most far from neglectful you could imagine, a wonderful person.

My friend has taken onboard that perhaps she and her parents at times talked about her ex husband (the father) in not too rosy a terms but I don't think it was a bad case of it at all, just a few occasions (tbh we all knew how awful the father was to my friend).

I wonder at times whether he due to mental health issues is gaslighting his mum, and now that he is in the modelling world and with rich girlfriend and parents, he somehow is embarrassed about his mum (who is very overweight and lives in a small flat) and that this has created some sort of dissonance which have led him to almost create false memories of how awful she was when he was growing up.

I hate seeing my friend upset and I would like to offer to write a letter to the son (and perhaps to his girlfriend and her parents as they only have his word) as I know both my friend and remember seeing her son grow up from 0-5, then seeing them regularly almost every year until he was in his late teens/early 20s. She honestly is a natural with kids and the kindest friend.

I would like to hear from all of you out there that have been affected by this either as the person being cut off, or the person dropping contact. What would be the best way to approach this letter?

A narcissistic abuser wouldn’t show their true colours to their friends or they’d have no friends. They only abuse those that they think don’t have the ability to detach from them. I suspect you’ve only seen the nicer “Jekyll” and not the “Hyde”. Writing a letter is probably only going to piss off the estranged son.

Because it's not their business and will only make it worse. Now OP' s friend's son will feel they are working together on this and will only cause him to feel justified in cutting contact. I think OP is yes wanting to help her friend but far more wants to be the hero of the situation. Not likely, far more likely to blow up in her face. I've done a ton of counseling over this and what has been stressed by professionals is give the person who cut contact the respect for their choice. That does not mean don't make attempts but it sure doesn't mean have an outsider write a letter.

Absolutely. You do this to try and be loved. To know you get some attention. To ensure you don't have any problems later on when you get home and get in trouble for having a 'face' on you.

Also, I didn't realise the extent of my trauma well into my 20s when I started getting more maternal and imagined my children going through what I went through. Before I met someone I loved and trusted and spoke to them in depth about my childhood and realised just how abnormal it was. What scary situations I was in. How lucky I was to be alive. That's why these things often kick in at that age, because you think it is normal for such a long time, then you bury your head in the sand and then you finally see things as they were when some life experience kicks in.

It still angers me when people congratulate my mum infront of me for doing such a 'fabulous job' raising me. Like when I graduated and got my dream job ect. She didn't raise me. I raised myself. I did it in spite of her. But I bite my tongue and then get resentful again for a while. Then I calm down and the cycle continues!

It's always the child's fault for going NC isn't it? No mother ever admits to her own narcissistic tendencies.

I’m sure she would. Having someone outside the situation that feels sorry for you, write a letter is a classic “sending the flying monkeys” move.

All I’ll say is this: it is astonishingly rare for a child to cut off a parent for no good reason. My bet is that there is a lot you don’t know.

I could have written this. I only realised later in life and when I had children myself, how wrong my childhood was, how none of this is “normal” and what other parents do for their children. And I also mostly raised myself.

I mean, if someone has cut contact, there's ultimately nothing one can do but accept it. If someone did that to me for no reason, I would accept it, but I wouldn't respect the choice, if I really and truly thought there was no reason for it. Cut-offs for no reason aren't a respectable choice. It seems there's a school of thought that says cut-offs are never for no reason, but I don't agree with that.

I'm sorry your family member did that to you.

I adored my mum. Still love her (though she's deceased now). I'd have defended her to the hilt publicly til the day she died and now still after her death. I loved her and still do because she was my mum.

But the abuse I received at her hands was horrendous. My life was horrendous. She loved me but she was a terrible mother. She most certainly appeared to be an excellent mother to the outside world though.

When mum was in her 70s one of my siblings (the one she most impacted and who developed v serious mental health probs as a result of the way he was treated as a kid) went NC with her. I never did but I understand his decision. She was mortified and I know she will have talked to her friends about it. About how he has MH probs and that's why. She absolutely will not have said anything about how his mh probs were her fault in the first place, or anything about how abusive she was.

Genius... thats exactly how stupid toxic people sound.

That's of course assuming your making a point with the blatant hypocrisy not that your just an idiot. It seems obvious your making a sarcastic point but being mumsnet you never know.

My DH has no contact with his father and hasn’t for years. His father writes to my DH sometimes and it’s always ignored and in fact makes the estrangement even more certain. If one of his father’s friends wrote to ME or MY MOTHER I would call the police and ask my solicitor friend to write them a cease and desist. I’m not joking. It’s completely completely wrong and will only do more harm.

Many people on this thread have said that adult kids never cut off contact for no reason.

I'm wondering if they also feel the same way about people that leave marriages. Must it always be the fault of the left spouse? That they wouldn't be left for no reason, same as the parents wouldn't be left for no reason?

And spouses who have affairs, is that always for a reason, too?

I'm just curious as to why we are always blaming the parents, and if we therefore blame other types of betrayed people the same way we blame parents.

Disclaimer: I'm NOT saying that abusive parents don't happen. They absolutely do. I'm just wondering why some feel that the parents must always be at fault in these situations.

I assume OP is the mum and has asked one of her friends to write a letter

Well, like you said, I'm stupid, which is probably why I can't make head or tail of your meaning in the second paragraph.

IMO you are now trying to compare two different things.
We will never know what your sibling's 'truth' is, in the same way that we will never know what the OP's friends son's truth is.
I have known people that have refused to go to their dying parents bedside and their reason was 'I'm not giving them the satisfaction'. No doubt the people like you that were there would not know this, or any of the background other than what you have seen in front of you.

Do you realise how hypocritical you sound? You disagree with family estrangements but cut off long term friendships because they didn't treat you very nicely? Maybe engage your one lone braincell to think that perhaps those who chose to go no contact with family don't just do it for fun, but because they no longer want to tolerate poor treatment. In the exact same way you went no contact with long-term friends because you didn't want to tolerate poor treatment.

Making a post calling people out for being 'disgraceful', 'badly behaved', 'utterly selfish', 'endlessly about themselves', 'atrocious behavior' and how its uncalled for to cut people off.

Then in the SAME post about how you cut a bunch of people off recently because you think its stupid to accept being 'treated like shit'.

The irony is beyond hilarious so I assumed it must be a joke, because no one is that blind to post to exact opposites of being the cut off and the cutter off calling both ways out with vitriol and yet not linking it and still think they are the innocent victim in both cases.

And what makes you think they won’t “give it with both barrels” back, @NoisyDenimShaker? Or simply not give a shit?

I don’t know why you think you, or the OP, or anyone has the right to stick their oar in and “call them out on it” - and why you think they’ll care.

One in eight men have no contact with their own children!

In my experience women are far less likely to do that, and far more likely to stick out abusive or neglectful parenting relationships and when they do cut off, it's for self-protection. Some men the same, but some men just prefer to cut contact with family, spouses and children rather than go through very tricky times or experience unpleasant emotions.

We can't know what's going on here any more than you do, and dragging in other people into delicate family relationships is never a good idea.

More blame-the-victim. Why can't people accept that sometimes people do bad, selfish things for no reason?

I suppose the blame would make sense if you believe that personality is 100 percent nurture.

Sorry that should say no contact with their children after divorce and separation. Estrangement of all types is more common amongst men/relatives than women (IMO).

I think it is highly likely that one or more of the following is true:

• He is suffering from poor mental health and that is impacting on him maintaining relationships with his mum or

• His relationship with his mother wasn't as good as you think and there is a reason he has dropped contact or

• He is a social climbing selfish person and is ashamed of his mum

Which of these do you think your letter is going to "help" with?

Please don't write to him and certainly not to his partner or her family.

Support his mother if she is a close friend. Help her come to terms with this reduced contact and encourage her to keep no-pressure lines of communication open - sending birthday or Christmas cards etc and let him know she is thinking of him and hopes he is well. Encourage her to have other interests and activities. You can sympathise with her but don't encourage her to become bitter or blame the girlfriend if you don't have good reason to.

My advice? Stay. Out. Of. It.

I have - after years of agonising over it - cut off all contact with my mother.
Her forever narrative is that she always did what she thought was best - leaving out the FOR HER. I’m sure my mum is a wonderful wife and friend. She isn’t and wasn’t a wonderful mum.

People always ask “why did this child cut all contact with their parent?”
When really the question should be “what on earth must have happened that an adult child felt the need to cut their parent out of their live?!?!”
The blame in my experience doesn’t lie with the offspring.

Edited to add: It wouldn’t help (but also not make it worse, because how) if my mother’s friend contacted me. I’d either ignore it or politely explain that they have no clue what they’re talking about. Then I’d seethe about the audacity for a minute before I’d get over it by necking the biggest coffee I could find. 🤣

I didn't call anyone here out for those things you list above, I said I've witnessed those things IRL. And you know nothing about those cut-offs, and they weren't recent. They were at least ten years ago and happened after 10-15 years of provocation.

The only call out I've done here is when I've been called a cunt, a coward, and selfish merely for my viewpoint that cut-offs are not ALWAYS the fault of the person being cut off. I will not sit quietly in the face of that bullying. Read the thread carefully. I was not rude to anyone until people were disgustingly rude to me first.

About estrangement, there's some guilty consciences on here for sure. Whew.

We don't know who the "victim" is.

I don't think people should be allowed to get away with badly hurting others for no reason. (If it is for no reason, of course.) They should be called out on it.