My DD hasn’t spoken to me since early August 2025

[KJCP]

For years I would have said my daughter ( now late 40s) and I had a good relationship. She would ring me several times a week, send videos, ask my opinion about clothes she had bought, have a moan about work, friends etc and on Mothers Day would send the loveliest messages in cards. When she got married three years ago, she and her husband asked me and my husband ( her father) to go on a safari holiday with them ( at our expense!) but we were pleased to and had an enjoyable time. Then in July 2024 she was getting stressed about work and decided to see a therapist using the company’s health insurance scheme. The result was she was told to “set boundaries”. I was told in a text that my anxieties (???) were affecting her. I needed to address these “ anxieties” or she would cut all ties with me. Since neither I nor my husband had any idea what she was talking about, she cut off contact with me. ( she has sent the odd photo of holidays to her father but never to me) To say I am upset is an understatement. As my husband says we can’t force her to contact us but is this how my life will be? Has anyone had the same experience and has anyone any advice?

The continued assertion that “young people these days” are trivial, narcissistic, spoiled brats dates back to Socrates for fuck’s sake. “Kids these days” have been accused of not respecting their poor elders almost continuously since the Jazz age in the west. The sobbing elders of mumsnet lore—I am myself 65–were once the selfish youth of the “me” generation or the hedonistic post war generation in the UK. Its all bullshit. Just look at any sampling of mumsnet posts? Women describe years of service to abusive parents, grandparents, and inlaws and very few of them even nerve themselves to complain, let alone go to a full cut iff.

The accusation that this time for sure the OP’s daughter is a selfish rando who cites her mother off for no reason is like the accusation that the next village over are cannibals. Head down the river and you will find out the next village are perfectly ordinary non cannibals.

Sure there are some bad kids—but so what? People are entitled to cit even parents out of their lives.

You’d be surprised

Yes I would be surprised.

I work with some difficult people: bipolar, EUPD, narcissistic, schizophrenic. They sometimes lash out or abandon relatives and relationships. If they are young enough then the primary focus of their ire is often parents or siblings. But if they have formed connections or had children we call them parents and then we see the problems in family life that lead their children, sometimes, to estrange. This focus on the odd young adult who chooses estrangement free m parents is just some weird moral panic—its full of second hand stories (I heard it somewhere) and spooky effects (on the internet!!!) and that old standby “the outside agitator” (the social media evildoer, the greedy therapist, the book writer).

People sometimes grow away from parents or siblings. Sometimes they don’t love them. So what? People have free will.

So what? I can tell you that if you had experienced this personally you wouldn’t be saying that.

People are very familiar with the concept of coercive control within abusive relationships and cults a- where a young woman is gaslit and pressured to separate herself from friends and family.

Religious and cultural traditions where marriage is focused on a wife's duty to - and subordinate status within - a new family can play into this.

Ideological differences, ie parental unwillingness to agree their son has become a daughter or vice versa, may also lead a young person - with the support of their peer group - to reject a parent.

I would be looking at her dh. The timing that she got married and within 3 years has cut all contact seems very odd.

This.

This happened to us. DH's son got married and within two years they had separated off from us. There were a few texts from his son from which it was clear that he didn't want to remove us from his life but he was dominated by his new wife and we haven't heard from them since 2016.

We have changed our wills now and have accepted that he has chosen this for himself and that is that but it's sad all the same. I thought he was a great person until this.

@KeepAwayFromChildren

There were a few texts from his son from which it was clear that he didn't want to remove us from his life but he was dominated by his new wife and we haven't heard from them since 2016.
We have changed our wills now and have accepted that he has chosen this for himself and that is that but it's sad all the same. I thought he was a great person until this.

To be honest you don’t come across well yourself here - for his wife to be “dominating him” hints at a coercive controlling relationship, you said he himself indicated he didn’t want to remove you from his life - but your reaction is to accept that and I assume altering your wills means cutting him out of it. In your shoes I would want to keep the door open incase he wanted (needed) to come back, not get my revenge through my will. Unless deep down you don’t think the wife is behind his decision in reality . . . .

Fair point. To be clear, we didn't mention the will to anyone and didn't change it for two years to see if things would change. In that time DH became very ill and we knew the son was informed of this and that was the point we knew it was permanent.

We have no idea why they left our lives. If you had told me that he would do this before he met his wife, I would not have believed it. He was close to his Dad.

There was clearly an element we were unaware of but they have split off from family members on her side too so it's not just us.

To prefer to be cut out of a will rather than associate with his parents speaks volumes though, surely? I'm quite sure I'm not in my parents' will either. But I'd rather that- I'd rather lose thousands upon thousands of pounds - than have to be in contact with them again. Doesn't that tell you anything?

My mother might say the same too but she’s a textbook narcissist with the self awareness of a hippo.

No, it does not tell me anything. They were fine. We loaned them money and all the usual support within families and there was a good natured, good humoured relationship. At the point they dropped us, they weren't even living in this country. We hadn't seen them for over a year due to DH having C and me needing several surgeries. The banterous emails continued and all was genuinely well.

DH emailed his son to tell him I was in hospital and he had no reply. He emailed again and had no reply. He wrote to them but heard nothing back. He was then diagnosed with a different C and had a load of treatment and we never heard from them. DHs sister told us they had probably gone NC. They had gone NC with her sister and BIL too.

There was genuinely no reason that we or any other family member could lay a reason to. We then gave them two calendar years while DH had prolonged C treatment and I had a long recovery from surgeries and by the end of that, we were just in survival mode so their going NC felt, frankly, not that important in the big scheme of things. We changed our wills to include those that were in contact and the thing was done with.

We are pragmatic about it now. If they were going to go NC over something that had to be minor, probs best gone. This was my point in this particular thread. Some people will go NC over next to nothing.

My BIL married a very odd woman who has never had any friends . She encouraged him to cut off his parents and she didn’t see them for fifteen years before they died. He barely ever saw them or his siblings either. When they died he suddenly started talking about his mother in particular as though she was a saint. It was extraordinary. The two of them are now retired and live in isolation. They spent every minute with each other. Have no hobbies or interests outside their relationship and no friends. He spends his time doing family research online. God knows how she spends her time. They are very wealthy but when one of them dies the other will have absolutely no one. She didn’t want more children as she already had a son from a former relationship, so he never had the chance to have his own kids. It’s very sad. Some people get brainwashed by their partners and it is definitely coercive control in some cases.

Thanks. There is masses of evidence of coercive control in our case with these two and a lot of living beyond their means. We had bailed them out a couple of times and they live a far richer lifestyle than we do. I think it's a case of DSS doing exactly when his wife demands.

The bit I don't get is, if you are sure it's coercive control and your son is innocent in it all, why would you punish him by cutting him out of the will? Unless you think he has some agency in this.

He had two years to get in touch during which his father had three surgeries for two different types of cancer. He knew this because DH took part in the Genome Project regarding one type and his son was informed to get checked out because the C in question is highly inheritable. Meanwhile, I (who, despite not being related to him, had loaned him a lot of money so he could start his own business, which he did not, he went on holiday and bought a Mercedes instead) had also undergone repeat surgeries. This he also knew about.

Are you seriously expecting me to leave a brass screw even to a dick like that? He lives an extravagant life. He literally turned his back on us when we needed support the most. There are limits.

So yes, of course he has agency. He is a grown man and highly educated. He just decided to toe his wife's party line and drop contact. I think him sending the 'I wish we could all be friends again' style text messages was him trying to keep a (well heeled) foot in both camps but life doesn't work like that.

We didn't want him or her to do anything physically. I have family that have really supported us in that respect, through our various crises. I wanted him to stay in touch with his father during the darkest four years of his life.

No, I completely understand your reasoning and find it odd that without a strongly identifiable reason, your son wouldn't get in touch when his father was so very ill. That's very hurtful.

What I'm getting at is that you've stated (or how I read it) that your DIL has exercised coercive control over your son and this is why he isn't in touch. Your posts read like he's a victim and it's not his fault. Yet, in this post, you say he had two years to get in touch and does have agency. Either he can't get in touch because of his wife, or he's choosing to in spite of being capable of it. That means he has agency and has chosen not to get in touch himself. So why blaming her?

I wouldn't punish someone who was a victim and didn't have any agency to determine their actions. I do understand that you might choose to leave money elsewhere if he has agency and has chosen not to get in touch. So - which is it?

I have no issue with your choosing to disinherit your son or anyone else you choose. The issue I'm raising is the blame of the DIL.

How is she supposed to tell?? Her son isn’t in touch with her.

News: These men always have agency. A lot of mothers just don't want to accept their darling boy could do such a thing so blame the DIL. It's very common.

He has agency. The decision to go NC was almost certainly his wife's but he has chosen to follow her example rather than stand up to her over this.

Did it have to involve an active decision? Maybe it just happened naturally that things drifted apart?

I'm sorry he didn't get in touch when his father was so ill though. That is very painful for you both.

There was a very clear point that it happened. Regular once or twice a month cheerful contact to tumbleweed. They went NC with the wife's sister at the same time.

This was my point to @KJCP . Sometimes it's done on a whim and no-one can fight that.

It might have been that DSS's wife decided to 'cut contact with everyone who hasn't asked me how I am in the last six months' or some batshite thing like that - a whim. The result is the same. Devastated people on the receiving end.

I blame them both equally. I'm not the parent of either.

Ask the liars.... not me.

It seems like there has been a catalyst moment in terms of some of their relationships. If they don't tell, you'll possibly never know.

I'm sorry for your pain.