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?

OP - your friend may find support here:

www.gransnet.com/forums/estrangement

He seems pretty well-qualified and has been working in the field for four decades, and I find the article long and considered.

As to the last part of your post, just as long as you would be fine with your kids cutting you off because, after all, nobody owes anyone anything and we're all islands, then OK.

Oh! I think you mean the fact that my post was edited, not that you saw a grammatical error that I then fixed. I was going to write that maybe your voice-to-text was rubbish, but then I decided that "being weird" was the better word choice.

Also, quoting/adding to my own comment, OP I've just seen you've said the mum is supportive of you writing the letter.

This is exactly what my grandparents would have been like. In fact they got loads of their "friends" to tell my mum how wonderful they were and how awful my mum was for not wanting to see them.

I repeat - she experienced severe abuse from them for years. They knew she was so downtrodden she wouldn't tell their friends about it and would blame herself.

Honestly you don't know the full story on this - maybe the son is awful, but maybe he's not. Maybe he's protecting himself.

The fact the mum wants you to write a letter is a bit of a red flag. Only someone who wanted to stir the situation would want you to do that

I know what you mean and I hope you're OK now.

For me, that poster's insistent voice in this thread reminded me of the voice in my own head that stopped me going NC earlier. The internal voice that told me only arseholes cut their poor old parents off and maybe I was the problem after all, and what would everyone think of me? The voice it took me 20 years to silence. (Funnily enough, none of my dear friends, my chosen family, thought any worse of me.)

Agree with the other posters who say you actually don’t know anything about his reasons. You’ll make things worse as hell know she’s been complaining to you and is in denial about whatever she may have done. You’ll make him feel more alienated not less. If it’s meant to be he will come around. Maybe mum needs counselling to uncover the roots of the problem which she may be unaware of. A counsellor will help her get perspective and see things the way a son might. Great for a really check and the chance to reframe things. She needs to stop hearing you reflect back that she did nothing ‘wrong’. There’s always two sides to the way things seem. ‘Recollections may differ’ and all that. Don’t interfere and aggravate things. Better distract your friend with different things and remind her that her adult Ds is at least doing well and in a place where he’s not dependent on her. It’s worse to have a Ds who is the latter. That’s truly distressing. She’s lucky at least to have a friend like you who cares about her and can help her find new interests in life.

But it isn't up to you to decide what a good reason is.

Do you really think that someone who's been working in the field for four decades and is fully qualified is writing "bullshit"? If that's what you really think, as opposed to rubbishing it just because it was me who posted it, then you should alert the professional body, because if he really is talking "bullshit" then he shouldn't be allowed to practice, should he? He could damage people if he's talking BS.

Co-sleeping till age 16 is unreasonable behaviour, as any reasonable person would deem it. (Not to mention abusive.) I think the therapist meant that the client, in those cases, was unable to come up with any such understandable reasons like that.

I already said upthread that I would be sad but not resentful if my (beloved) daughters cut me off. I would be sad because I love them. But they are autonomous human beings and I respect their independence. I gave what I gave freely because I love them. It didn’t create a debtor relationship.

Now in fact I don’t worry that they will cut me off. Just as I am caring for my elderly parents, mother with dementia, I fully expect that my daughters will do the same for us. Not because they owe me but because they love me.

If my children were narcissitic/selfish or had personality disorders that tendered them incapable of empathy then I would have no such expectations. And of course people do have personality disorders—all those horrid parents were once horrid young adults.

But I don’t think its necessary to assign fault even to those children who can’t reciprocate parental love. Who are we to assign fault? who are we to judge? Of what use?

what do you mean by this?
Of course it’s up to that pp to form her own opinion about stuff.

This article is interesting.

Your friend may find Joshua Coleman’s books on this subject interesting, and helpful.

I don’t think you should get involved, other than supporting your friend.

Well, I do hope you would remain so stoic if it did, indeed, happen to you.

@NoisyDenimShaker I completely understand an adult child wanting to do their own thing. If a child has to go NC in order to be autonomous, and live their own life, then is the parent really that loving? Loving parents let their children go and live their own lives. I would consider may be there is more going on than meets the eye.

Yes, there could be.

Christ on a bike are you still here?

We get it, your sister cut your parents out due to their lack of boundaries and you had to deal with them all by yourself which is why you are so full of bitterness and resentment. Yet you and your sister are best of friends now even thought she did she a HORRIBLE thing to your parents. Yada Yada.

How rude this reply is! Terrible

No one has gone NC with me. Not sure what you mean. The aunt with the violent husband? I think that's a function of his violence. I supported her for a decade and then was all OH THANK GOD when she rang up to tell me she was leaving him. They got back together, but I'd already told her how much I loathed the man who hurts her, so it was a bit difficult after that.

Why shouldn't I be here? Why are YOU still here, come to that? Goes both ways.

That's what happens when you disagree with the hive mind!

Bullying - “offensive, intimidating, malicious or insulting behaviour… through means that undermine, humiliate or denigrate the recipient.”

I've been gone living my life for the past 17 hours, you have been glued to the same spot spouting shite, then you announced you were going, then coming back, then making another departure announcement, yet here you are again.

I don’t want to get banned for being too blunt but it seems odd that you can’t grasp that professionals disagree with each other on the basis of different research, different experiences, and different philosophies of practice or health without it being a cause for one to be “struck off” some notional register.

I already read the article because its my profession and I formed my attitude towards it on the basis of my own work. If my client base were parents complaining that their kids were insufficiently attentive I, too, would probably try to explain ot to them in a non judgmental way since there is no point hurting the clients feelings.

But in my experience—and I highly recommend you read Issendai’s famous essay “the missing missing reasons” linked upthread—there are always good reasons why a child estranges themself from a parent but the parent/client is usually simply unwilling to accept what they feel is the blame or responsibility. I work in trauma and with clients who have experrelational abuse. Their parents never admit what they have done and do not agree that it constitutes abuse. These are the very clients who this psychiatrist is defending—the suppisedly good parents who did everything right and still were esteanged? Its vanishingly rare! Its gar more likely that the child has struggled for years before finally estranging than that it is done capriciously.

Having read the thread, I've revised my initial opinion on the young man in question. Men are in prison at far higher rates than women for child abuse, but the NCPSCC says that men and women emotionally abuse children at the same rate. That amazed me, because I've never known any woman who doesn't just adore her kids. I suppose this stat must mean that a good proportion of them are faking it. 😭 I'll be more on the lookout for such subtle signs of abuse in future.

But I still don't think that EVERY estrangement is necessarily reasonable, and in those cases, I think the hurt caused is terrible.

I accept that we cannot possibly know what caused the young man to go NC, and that I was hasty in judging him. I might be less hasty to judge similar in future, thanks to this thread.

So? You want to control my day now too, as well as my opinions?

Read through Empty vessels Make the most Noise's posts and you will get a perfect example, except she is doing it to victims of parental abuse.