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?

One reason - to get the sympathy and nurturing of the therapist.

If the lie is discovered, you can then work with why they needed that in the first place.

Absolutely this.

I think this is very true. Attention and validation.

Thanks for that. DH cried every day for a year. I'm convinced his middle bout of cancer was triggered by the stress of all of this.

We have no way of knowing why they did it & that is the frustrating and upsetting element. No chance to defend ourselves.

If a woman was forced to cut ties with her parents by her coercive partner, would you say the same? That of course she has agency but her mother just doesn't want to accept that she could do go NC by choice?

I doubt it.

I’m I sorry. I know first hand how incredibly painful it is.

I have just found out why someone in the younger generation of my wider family went no contact.

She had embarked on a bloke at work 20 years her senior, told her husband she wanted a divorce when he stumbled upon of this - and knew that her oen parents would express some concern about the two young children if she were to be up front about what was going on.

To prevent this , she told her parents that they had never really loved her and she didn't want to see them for the foreseeable future..

I do think it's harder for women as they are more physically vulnerable and I'm well aware of the factors that keep women and men in abusive relationships. In the end, we all have the power to make a choice. It's a hard choice to make if you're in fear for your life (of that of your child and pets though).

You're blaming your child cutting ties with you for your husband's cancer?!

My God.

I can't imagine even my parents doing that, and they are utterly brutal.

In fairness, there is an association between stress and cancer. Stress has big effects on the immune system. However, there's no way to prove any kind of link and it would probably have happened anyway.

Yeh, and I'm sure the child who feels the need to cut their parents out felt a lot of stress too. I know I do. My parents fully deserved to be cut out of my life - they are incredibly nasty and selfish - and the idea of them blaming ME for one of THEM getting cancer... just wow.

Stress is stress. I'm sure there's stress on both sides. Even positive changes can be stressful. I think cancer is more complex than that single factor though, so blaming someone else isn't fair, for sure.

Well, precisely. Unbelievable.

Did you son tell you that he was planning on therapy? @Differentforgirls