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?

But I'm not lumping them in together. I've said throughout that victims of abuse shouldn't be in contact with their abusers.

<repeats the words "not worth a ban" over and over in my head>

I don't agree that all cut-offs are justified. I do think that many are. Just not all.

Some posters think that all are justified and all are due to abuse.

We will just have to agree to disagree.

We do have a massive problem with child abuse but it's not a UK problem. It's a problem with men. The US has massive issues with child trafficking.

As an adult i believe i can cut contact with anyone i choose. Surely any cut off is justified, even if you don't agree with the reasoning.

I don't mean to upset you, Hopping. It's just that I've been right in the middle of a painful cut off that I'm as reasonably sure as I can be that it wasn't justified. We can only speak from our own lived experience, and my lived experience is that it's not always for a good reason. Your lived experience clearly differs. Both lived experiences are valid to each of us.

Well, sure. No one can force you to have a relationship that you don't want to have.

Have you?
Shocking

Just to take one thing out of your post NoisyDenimShaker, child abuse being a crime, you can't 'set the bar' lower, for a criminal conviction. The bar is 'beyond all reasonable doubt'. As for all criminal convictions, that aren't summary offences, that is.

People don't necessarily need to 'prove' their childhood abuse, via a hearing and conviction, with all the public trauma that entails.

What people often do need, is other people to respect their absolute right to do what they feel they want/need to do, to protect themselves, from old wounds being continually reopened, and salt poured into them, or new wounds being created.

Other people have the right to their opinions on their choices, and actions, but they have the right to wish not to, and refusal to hear them.

People who go no contact with their parents are exercising their right to their choices, their actions, and also, their consequences.

It's all just horrific. So you're saying that in the US, the victims are more likely to be transited through, on their way to being trafficked elsewhere? It just appeared less in the US because they don't seem to have lots of towns that are centres of decades-long abuse like has happened over here, with Rotherham being a prime example. And we have SO many towns with rings like that. If you extrapolated that to the US, with the equivalent number of problem towns relative to the population, it would be an insanely crazy amount. I know it happens everywhere, of course, and I'm sure lots of it goes on in the US too. It's just that the number of UK towns with this as a deep problem, relative to our tiny size, is INSANE. I don't feel I can be proud of the UK of today.

I agree with all that. As I've said many times, victims of any kind of child abuse absolutely should not be in contact with their abusers (unless they want to be).

But all cut-offs are (by definition) because the cutter off doesn't want to be in touch with the other person.
"Not wanting to be in touch" is a justifiable reason. People are not required to have relationships with other people, even if they are related to each other.

My observation is that people who like and get on with their families tend to enjoy spending time with them and actively want to talk to and see them. They don't suddenly decide not to bother with them any more.

You seem to think that people who aren't in touch with their parents (where there is no abuse) are "selfish". From which I infer that you think that they should be under some sense of obligation or duty to continue such relationships, even if they derive no pleasure from them and may actively dislike them.

@NoisyDenimShaker if you really are as naive as you claim about issues pertaining to abuse, have you ever considered the axiom, 'tis better to stay silent and be thought a fool, than to open your mouth and remove all doubt', when dogmatically making such sweeping statements and generalisations about such a serious issue that impacts so many people?

Many cutoffs are due to abuse.

Some aren't.

That's my lived experience.

I don't understand why this is so controversial.

The problem is that you consistently put your opinion over that of the abused person’s and make yourself the arbiter of what is reasonable or unreasonable.

As people have pointed out to you again and again your guesses and assumptions are not a good basis for determining who is justified or not justified in cutting off their parents.

You have no standing to use a legal term. You aren’t a party to the relationship, you aren’t privy to its secrets, and despite your bizarre essay in how we all suffer when parents are estranged from children society isn’t worse off because some dad gets rejected by his adult child.

On the contrary if you look at generational trauma and child abuse we owe people who cut off family members a huge debt of gratitude as they try to break the chain of transmission.

The thing you seem to be finding controversial, is that there are times, when friends, or even family members, would be adamant that there was nothing so untoward as to justify cutting contact.

However, they wouldn't necessarily know, or if family members, have the same experience, as the person doing the cutting contact. However, in the person who is cutting contact's mind, there was sufficient cause that they went down what is often a very difficult and contentious route, filled with the judgment and interference of others.

Just being in the same family does not mean that offspring have identical experiences with their parents, or relationships with them.

I guarantee you that one, maybe two siblings of mine if I went no contact, would say it was not justified. The other one most definitely wouldn't.

Its not controversial, your opinions and judging of people that you don't agree with make it controversial.

Many cutoffs are justified.

Some aren't.

That's my opinion, and it seems pretty reasonable to me. I don't like all the victim-blaming. Imagine if you're wrong and a parent WAS cut off for minor infractions, and they're completely devastated. Imagine the sheer pain of that situation for said parent. And then someone piles on the hurt by blaming them for it. The responses here have been an education in why people don't talk about their kids' estrangements - because they'll be automatically blamed for it whether they were to blame or not. That's awful, potentially.

No use trying to talk to people who are absolutely determined to try to force me to agree with them by insults, character assassinations, etc.

For the last time, I think that SOME estrangements are due to the personality problems of the estranger. MANY are due to abuse, and those are totally understandable.

I'm not allowed a reasonable opinion that not all estrangements are the same or are justified, so I'll bow out.

I agree with all that.

My problem is with estrangements that are NOT due to abuse, and those absolutely do happen, in my opinion.

"I'm not allowed a reasonable opinion that not all estrangements are the same or are justified, so I'll bow out."

Good plan.

Absolutely, you're allowed an opinion. Equally, others are allowed an opinion on your opinion, and its worth thereof, as anything other than your stated opinion.

I get the feeling @NoisyDenimShaker that you would only see clear descriptions of physical and sexual abuse or severe neglect as being "justified". There are many, many people who start realising as adults that although those factors may not have been there, actually their childhoods were anything but normal, that the emotional scars they've been left with are serious and worst of all it continues, sometimes involving their own children.It took until my late 40s to finally draw a line with my mother, after one too many repeats of the crap she'd been doling out all my life.

I have no doubt that had she not herself died almost a decade later that I would finally have been "forgiven" and she would have been back in contact, expecting everything to be fine.

I said upthread that perhaps the OP's friend's son is shallow and finds his mother an embarrassment. The fact is that OP (who saw him once a year) doesn't know, you don't know and I don't know that is the whole story and you cannot be the arbiter of what is "justified" or not.

I don't think I've judged those who don't agree with me. I understand that many here have justifiably cut off their parents due to abuse, and I've been very clear throughout that I support that.

However, those who don't agree with me have called me a cunt, a coward, selfish, patronising, insufferable, and a few other choice insults that I can't immediately recall.

So who's been doing controversial judging because someone doesn't agree with them? It's not me who's flung vile, misogynistic insults and carried out character assiassinations.

Some people really, really cannot bear it when they can't force someone to agree with them.

I'm not allowed a reasonable opinion that not all estrangements are the same or are justified, so I'll bow out.

Again, you are allowed your opinion. It's your delivery of it that's upsetting people. You've had victims of abuse telling you they are being triggered and instead you double down with hubris to have the final word to put them in their place.

Or what you have done is "triggering" to them and after many years of being told that they are wrong this is now how they respond.

That's not true. I count emotional abuse and things like OTT yelling, insults etc to be child abuse just as much as physical and sexual abuse.

Anyway, I'm not allowed a simple opinion that not all cut offs are due to abuse but that some are due to the personality flaws of those doing the estranging, so I really am bowing out now.