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?

So sorry to read this. This must be very hurtful. I hope your son will get in touch soon 💐

Firm boundaries are one thing, but a wholesale hard cut-off? That's horrendous, unless the friend is secretly a monster, and OP knows them well enough to be very doubtful that that is the case.

Nah, he's just another selfish person who is behaving badly due to their awful personality.

Op it's absolutely none of your business to contact the son and it would not go just er well and his mum would get the blame .

It's very obvious from your posts that you're longing to interfere, OP. Well, don't.

You can't possibly do any good from the postion you are in, and you might very well do harm. If this is still a temporary estrangement then any friend of his mum's putting a spoke in the wheel (and that is how he will see it) could end up making it permanent. You'd be doing your friend no favours.

The rest of the world thought my not so darling daddy was wonderful. Brilliantly clever (in his own estimation). He had many friends. His parents and siblings adored him. His colleagues respected him. My aunt wondered why on earth, during his final illness, he had huge swathes of fabric bandaged around his wrists so he couldn't strike out at the nursing staff - why on earth would the nurses do this, she wanted to know? He was a gentle man who wouldn't harm a fly.

I chose not to destroy my aunt's memories of the dying brother-in-law she thought she knew. But I, as his daughter, knew exactly why. He mentally abused me for years making me believe I was worthless. He beat me senseless when I was just four. He was violent to me. He smashed my head down a door and concussed me when I was fifteen, and told me I deserved to be raped (I had actually been raped) because I was a slut.

I'm not suggesting your friend is a monster on a similar scale, but in no way can you vouch for another person's childhood.

Don't assume appearances are as they seem.

No, nopety no and no again.
No buts, no excuses, no reason. You do not get involved. I'm shocked his mum has even considered this. If he is going through some psychological challenges then that's even more reason NOT to get involved.
Unfortunately I think you are going to, because you don't seem to be listening to any of the posters who are pretty much unanimous in their 'don't do it', and how often does that happen on here?!
Seriously support your friend, but do not contact her son, you'll be throwing petrol on the fire 🔥, and you'll do far more damage to their relationship because he'll take his mum telling you about their relationship as huge disloyalty and in his mind you'll proving his point that his mum isn't 'deserving' of his love.

Yes, but OP knows her well. And these people's masks usually slip a little if you spend lots of time with them, as OP has.

Not necessarily.

There are none so blind as those who don't want to see.

Never, ever get involved in a row between two family members; they may make it up, but the person you took sides against will hold a grudge against you. And that’s the best case scenario, it’s much more likely that by expressing your views, you pour petrol on the fire and prolong the problem.

The kindest thing you can do is trust them both to work it out. Be kind to your friend, and offer a distraction from the situation rather than an ear to go round and round the hamster wheel. Especially if she’s seeing a therapist. She needs the freedom to have insight into these issues, and it can be very difficult to risk losing face to a friend if our narrative starts to shift. And the discomfort of cognitive dissonance can cause us to shore up our established cognitive patterns and lose a vital opportunity for personal growth.

It sounds like you have a lot of interest in psychology, and you might find it very interesting to look at small group dynamics.

You sound like a very kind friend, but be cautious because it’s just too easy to cause untold damage, even with the best of intentions. Change the subject, if you can, and help your friend focus on all the good things in her life and you’ll be doing her a huge favour in the long run.

MIND👏 YOUR 👏 OWN 👏 FUCKING 👏 BUSINESS

Jesus. Did you report her to the police? And the hospital? There's a safeguarding issue. What if she visits other people she knows who are in hospital and does a similar thing to them?

Gently op, you’re a friend… what could you possibly know except what your friend tells you and how she portrays herself to you? Maybe he is a gaslighting twat but I would say that’s unlikely, more likely your friend wasn’t the mum she’s made out. I don’t know a single person who has cut off a loving, kind parent. Not one.

I can tell you this much, if some interfering friend of my Mum's wrote me a letter outlining why I should talk to her after what I went through in secret I would lose my shit.

Leave well enough alone, it is NONE of your business. You didn't live in that house, you have NO clue for sure what went on. It is disrespectful to stick your nose in when you have not been privy to what that boy could have potentially have gone though. My mother hid her nastiness well, so well that nobody would have believed in a million years what she is really like. Nobody believed me except my sister who remembers bits and pieces of my abuse because she was a lot younger than me. Butt OUT.

Support your friend by being there for her, listening to her etc.

Stay out of things with her son.

Unless you were a part of that family and lived with them all through his childhood which, if that were the case I think you'd have mentioned it already, then you do not know what his childhood was like at all.

You have a very limited view of how he grew up and what life was like in his house with his Mother. You have seen what she wanted you to see, and nothing more.

IF he has gone no contact because he is not well mentally or because someone else is pressuring him to do so, you will not help matters by getting in touch.

IF he has gone no contact because truly, his childhood was in fact horrible, you will still not help matters by getting in touch.

If it is the former, he may well sort himself out and come around in his own time, and you (and his Mother) must leave him the space to do that.

I say this as someone who should have gone NC with her own mother - her friends absolutely would not have believed some of the things she said and did to me. Some of them in hindsight, might have... but at the time they absolutely would have defended her and declared it not possible.

On the outside my sister and I were well behaved, angelic children who got taken to all sorts of wonderful places and experiences.

Behind closed doors we were emotionally and physically abused. She would hit us, hold our heads under cold taps, force us to stand on ice cold tile floors in bare feet without moving for hours, leave us without food for a whole day, sometimes more in order to force us to eat food that made us throw up.

She would delight in telling me how my father raped her, what an awful person he was (he's not great but he's no rapist), got a kick out of (and admitted such, with great glee) changing the goalposts whenever I almost reached or reached a target of any kind. Would offer wonderful things, going to events and then on the day change her mind for no reason at all (again admitted to this later!).

She drank to the point of passing out in a pool of her own piss, and falling down stairs (which she would later claim we'd pushed her down) she was the queen of gaslighting, and yet her friends thought she was wonderful, capable, kind etc etc.

Stay out of it. It's 100% none of your business and you only have your friends side of the story. Having one of her friends write what would likely come across as a very patronising letter isn't going to help.

I just think it's naive that everyone is immediately on the son's side. It's statistically much more likely that he's an arse than that his mum is abusive. Mums are far less likely to be abusers than dads. Of course, it happens, but being the sort of arsehole who dumps your mum is much more common than the mum being this dreadful person. Don't forget he's a model so he's probably been fawned over and is now full of his own self-importance.

You have no idea what the situation was behind closed doors.
Support your friend but do not send any letters

I think you need to take a step back, it’s got nothing to do with you and you’re only getting one persons version of events- your friends.

I went no contact with my Mother when I was in my 20’s. I’m sure she tells her friends she was mother of the year and she never did anything to deserve it. It probably looked like that to them, I would hug her and hold her hand when we were out with them because if I didn’t she would make my life hell when we got home. The reality was when no one else was around she was emotionally and physically abusive and people outside were only seeing a snapshot of life.

You have no idea what went on behind closed doors and whether you agree with it or not, her son’s boundaries deserve to be respected. In my experience, people generally don’t go NC without good reason. Sending letters and getting involved is going to help nobody and is only going to make the situation worse

Don't you remember the old saying: "Shoot the messenger " ? Stay out of it.

And what does the therapist think about the idea of you writing a letter?

My parents' friends think they are wonderful too. They also think that I don't speak to my parents because I'm being very silly over a few minor things that happened when I was a child. This is far from the truth.

If your friend's son has been reducing contact over the last year, what has your friend actually done to mend relations during this time? Or has she just rubbished everything her son has to say, much like you have?

I do. I know two loving parents who were cut off for no reason - mine.

Completely untrue. Mums can be just as abusive as dads. You are spouting rubbish. VERY VERY few people will completely cut off a kind or caring Mum.

You are making up statistics to back up your baseless claims about people you don't know.

Go and have a look in the Stately Homes threads here and come back and tell us that it's more likely that it's her son at fault and not her.

I’ve cut off a family. One who would look to the outside world to of been great to me and gave my the world. Who her friends would say she was lovely and I suddenly turned on her.

But she knows exactly what she did. She made her choices and they came with consequences and she can go to the grave knowing it was her actions and in actions that caused the issue no matter what sob she tells her friends.

A letter from her or from her friend as soon as I realised would be binned before it was even finished reading.

I don't agree. I think atrocious behaviour should be called out.

@NoisyDenimShaker why?