If your child has gone NC

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If you’re a parent of an adult child who has gone NC with you, do you know why?

I’ve read so many accounts, on here and elsewhere, of parents who seem completely baffled and heartbroken by it, can think of no reason at all.

But surely for a child to do something as drastic as cut all contact, you must have an inkling why?

I’m so sorry that you went through a childhood like that as well. With time and kindness and a life away from the people who subjected you to such cruelty the wounds can heal and stop bleeding but the scars never, ever go away.

I remember one session with a therapist where she asked me to go back and think what I would say to myself as an 8 year old - the age my own daughter is now - and that absolutely broke me.

Like you I spent many years thinking I could somehow make my relationship with my mother like the relationships other people had with their mothers, if I tried hard enough. I was so jealous of that and wanted to have a mother who loved me so badly so I told myself that maybe we could change it and start again. But she was still the same person, so that was never going to be possible. You have to go through something like a grieving process, for the mother in your head, in your dreams, the one you wished she was but never existed, and she can never be.

I am so sorry that this happened to you as well. Some damage can never, ever be repaired but the only thing to do is to try to my a new life for ourselves and it takes such bravery and strength to do it, especially when you’ve spent your whole childhood being told everything is your fault and you are worthless. You should be very proud of yourself that you have done so.

I have to admit, that’s not how I read it at all. It’s more about when a DC gives exact reasons for NC, and yet the parents say they have “no idea.” It absolutely does not mean those reasons are automatically justified; I mean, they may be complete codswallop. It’s making the point that people (not just parents) often have been told why someone is going NC, and then claim they have no idea and it’s just a big mystery.

There's a few things happening, from my perspective, on the child side.

One major thing is that often its death by 1000 tiny cuts rather than 1 or 2 major events. So it would be incredibly time consuming to explain, if not impossible. These words are shorthand for a lifetime of hurt.

The other is that if you start explaining these things, people will go 'oh but they grew up in a different time' or 'they were doing their best' or 'noones perfect' because in isolation, these things might seem so minor, but its the big picture that's the problem.

The other is that people overlay their own relationships, subconsciously. They will hear of a parent doing something and will go 'well, I would forgive my mum if she did that' because they have a good enough relationship foundation with their mum that a minor earthquake doesnt induce the same reaction that a minor earthquake has on a crumbling, shoddily constructed building (relationship)

Hope that brings a bit of clarity.

Absolutely this.

I’m NC with my mum and she has never asked why.

I read a really interesting quote once that explained how some parents would prefer to never see or speak to their child again rather than have to take accountability for their actions.

Even if I sat down and explained to my mum why I don’t have any contact with her she would deny, deny, deny and then just shout abuse at me.

She’d far rather live in her own fantasy world and paint me as the bad guy then have to face the truth.

Very few parents ever want to acknowledge that they know they were poor or neglectful, let alone actually abusive parents. Why would they? Better to live with the cognitive dissonance of 'we did our best' and our children are so ungrateful for everything we did than to look at themselves or recognise their failings.

If you read the link upthread, it is full of examples of parents claiming no one ever told them why. I told my father over and over and over again. He dismissed it every time because it didn't fit with his self image as a doting and benevolent father. Yet any minor perceived 'transgression' from me would provoke rage and coldness from him. But in his mind this was justified, to keep me in line and because his word was law. When I finally told him to leave my home and never come back, he refused because he could not comprehend that it was a 50 year old woman not a scared litte girl standing up to him. He stood and raged at me, with my MIL watching, then sat in the car (waiting for my mum) and sulked like a child when I told him that 'sorry followed by but' doesn't count as an apology and that until he could truly reflect and actually apologise, I was done with him. That was the culmination of 30 years of me trying to get him to understand my perspective. The last conversation I had with him was about 2 years before he finally died, when I needed to see my mum and he was too frail to be left home alone. My lack of contact came up, and he still couldn't see any fault on his side, all the above had been conveniently forgotten.

I don’t know what my father would say about why we’re NC. I suspect he’s re written history in his mind and blamed it on my husband or someone else. I can tell you from my point of view and am happy to discuss it in matter of fact way.

The reality is, it doesn’t really matter why he thinks we’re NC. We are and it won’t change. I wish him no ill will any more than I wish a passing stranger on the street any harm. He has no meaning to me. He is just another person existing on the same planet, another stranger I don’t know. He will never be close enough again to hurt my children and that’s all I care about.

@FFSToEverythingSince2020 I think most people do it and don’t give a reason though. The person doing it might think they have explained but I read it that parents didn’t agree with what was said and that was automatically wrong. It isn’t. It also shows the NC decision is often very judgemental on one aspect of parenting. It’s not seeing the whole picture from the parental viewpoint. There’s always 2 sides to this. Most NC people vent to others but go missing and say nothing to those they are NC from. Essentially they don’t like them and clear off. Thot doesn’t mean it’s a fair or sensible response.

Thank you for this explanation.
I have some family members who are NC, not my parents or siblings or anything though.
I don’t know the reasons because I only hear through others, but I have heard snippets of things which have happened and to be honest it appeared a bit mountain/molehilly.
However when you talk about things being built on unstable ground I can appreciate why things that appear trivial maybe aren’t so for everyone.

Most NC people vent to others but missing and say nothing to those they are NC from.

The purpose of being NC is to not have to say anything to them anymore, or have to endure them say anything more to you.

My mother told relatives that we were no longer in contact because I had always been difficult and didn't want to support her as she got older. At least a few quite obviously believed her. Didn't bother me - they had watched my brother and I being bought up in a violent alcohol fuelled household and had never once intervened.

I went on a massive rabbit hole exploration on this topic. I needed to understand, as an alienated child turned adult and later estranged from the other parent, the ins and outs of the estranged adult’s thinking and experience.

Estranged parents where the estrangement occurred once their child reached an age of independence seem to come in 2 distinct camps. The ones that know why, and those who do not.

Those who say they do not know why usually have a background where it is clear to an outsider that an explanation has been given, but they judge it insufficient or inaccurate enough to dispense with it as justifiable. Therefore they do not understand why. This group tends not to have much success for future rebuilding of a relationship with their estranged child.

I know exactly how and why I ended up alinetated and estranged from one parent, and every single detail of why I chose estrangement from the other parent. The latter parent subconsciously probably does know why. But her mind needs to protect her, so it does it with an empty space where the reasons were supposed to live. And I’m fine with that. I needed space, but I don’t need to cause her pain, and the why out in the bright light of the sun would probably be excruciating. I can live with a small town of people I will never meet believing I’m some kind of heartless, no reason having, ungrateful daughter.

Our family breakdown doesn’t need any more spectators having access to all the gory details.

Yes, we do.

We supported our alcoholic DC for 10 years, even through reckless decisions. We sought professional advice and counselling. We learnt about enabling and holding to account.

Contact was low rather than none existent. DC’s reinvention and ‘new life’ meant that with historic knowledge we were a danger to the new. Contact was controlled by DC so that we couldn't share anything we already knew. We were portrayed as the issue, new partners being rude and offensive before we had even met.

It is really difficult to standby and watch the same events happen again and again, new babies, new marriages. Quick, erratic decisions. Risks that create more risks. A downward spiral.

We were accused by one partner of ‘not telling them’ - between a rock and a hard place springs to mind!

Stopping lending money each month (ending the enabling), discussing a small monthly payment to repay money borrowed (accountability) was the catalyst for even less contact.

Very difficult, very sad.

I think that's probably because it's rarely just one thing. In most cases I think it's a long build-up of many, many things that might be relatively small in isolation but form a pretty gruelling and oppressive pattern of behaviour or indicate a really difficult, dysfunctional personality type. People don't want to start listing the million and one little 'death by a thousand cuts' incidents they can remember.

I also think that perhaps people who are talking to you about their own family estrangements just want to maintain a bit of privacy and give you the overview version (eg 'they've always been difficult' or 'their behaviour was narcissistic and controlling') rather than explaining specifics. It's not always an easy or pleasant thing to talk about and most people would probably rather gloss over it.

I think it’s difficult to say. Obviously, you and I have very different experiences and that’s going to affect our viewpoints; it’s okay for us to disagree. Yes, there are people who are very “NC” and “block” happy, and will block someone for anything. I know very few people who are NC with their parents without abuse. It’s an absolutely huge decision, and it affects you forever - there’s just this empty space in your life while everyone else has parents and is celebrating holidays with them. Maybe I’m just a big softie, but Father’s Day hurts every year.

@Accaron I get that! We were talking about who says what and to whom. If a NC person gives reasons, fair enough, but many won’t and don’t. Of course they don’t want any further communication but they are not always sensible or rational.

Someone giving you a reason and you not “agreeing with it” or thinking that it is “judgemental” does not mean they didn’t give you a reason, it means that you weren’t prepared to listen to or acknowledge the reason.

If there are “two sides to this” then please explain what the other side is, because from what I have seen, those of us who’ve had parents who were so abusive that it’s been necessary to cut off contact with them have only done so after years and years of trying to reset the relationship and desperately wanted it to be healthy and respectful but the parents in every case I know of personally absolutely refused to engage in this, refused to be honest about what happened, invented false realities and claimed that their imaginary version of events in which they are of course blameless is just as valid as what their child has told them about their memories and their actual experience of childhood. The parents are typically defensive, self-justificatory and angry with the child for having the audacity to criticise them, and try to gaslight the child telling them things like “recollections may vary”, trying to invalidate that the child is telling them that their childhood was miserable and that now, as an adult, they will no longer tolerate being treated in the same way. This is often met with astonishment and fury, rather than listening to their child and being horrified that they’d hurt them so badly and wanting to make amends, which is how any normal parent would react to their child telling them that they felt like this; they’d want to understand, to repair.

The parents generally show no remorse, refuse even to acknowledge what they have done, and continue with their denial and deflection of blame for their behaviour onto their child, who was a minor at the time this took place (the worst possible thing to do because to do that to someone who has been scapegoated throughout childhood again as an adult is re-traumatising and undermines any self-repair they have done to build appropriate boundaries and self-worth).

In my experience it is almost always these types of people who refuse to engage in any self-reflection and think it is beneath them to apologise for anything who try to claim they have “no idea” why their children no longer speak to them at all, or have cut contact to an absolute minimum, because any normal parent would be horrified to find out that their child felt like this about their childhood and rather than trying to blame the child to protect their own ego would be doing everything possible to comfort their child, apologise, and try to make amends. Those parents aren’t the ones who tend to get cut off entirely.

What is the mysterious “other side of the story”? It would be very interesting to hear it. Tell us some stories of the specifics of what happened as the OP asked in her original post, about how your relationship with your children was wonderful and then one day, bizarrely, when you’d always been loving and close and supportive and kind and not remotely abusive to them throughout childhood and adulthood and yet they suddenly decided to cut off contact with you forever? I would genuinely be interested to hear these perspectives, but as I said earlier I highly doubt that any such stories will be shared because somewhere deep down even those who try to convince themselves of the false narratives they’ve constructed where they are the victim know damn well exactly why their children no longer talk to them.

I see. So as the OP asked at the start of the thread, would you like to give some examples with specifics of people who have cut off all contact with a parent for no sensible or rational reason, detailing precisely what happened, the reasons that that the child gave for their decision (which you have deemed to be “something the parent doesn’t agree with” or “judgemental”) and how the parent responded to the child raising those issues before they cut off contact?

You really have no understanding of these issues but carry on with your smug self satisfaction

Yes absolutely know why (Dh’s kids)

divorce and parental alienation. We had a decent relationship even up to early 20’s until we reported a family member to the police. They took their side without even speaking to dh or the actual victim of the crime. They just believed we had done it from some self serving spiteful place, not even considering the truth. It was then we realised that Dh’s ex had been lying to them for years about some fairly significant issues, and placing the blame on dh. Money has a lot to do with it as well as they are under the impression the family member will leave them a lot of money, where we don’t have much.

and yes it was the truth. We had every safeguarding agency involved advising us on what needed to be done to protect the victim.

it’s broken dh but we had to do it. He’s proud he stepped in to stop it but it’s an enormous loss.

Why don’t you enlighten us?

Because I haven’t got the resilience to cope with the assumptions and cruelty that will result.

Aemds adult child has gone no contact due to mental health issues. He has invented a whole different upbringing to what actually happened. It's really sad for both parties

This is exactly why I am not posting my own story.

Slightly off track but for anybody struggling there is a really good and thoughtful podcast called Navigating Estrangement Situations by Forest Hanson and Dr Rick Hanson. I don’t normally go in for these sort of self help podcasts but this is very sensitively done and looks at the feelings from both sides.