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 would also recommend the book Rules of Estrangement by Joshua Coleman . It’s excellent .

Thank you for this. My DS went non contact 12 years ago. I know exactly why, and for all those people assuming that it must be the parent at fault, it's not always the case. And believe me I tried as I absolutely adored him.

When a relationship breaks down, it’s always the other person’s fault. That seems to be the conclusion here.

Is it surprising that the people responding are going to be saying that though? Think about how many people you've met in life, what % of them will readily accept they are wrong, are able to reflect on their behaviour, are quick to apologise, or have any of the emotional intelligence to tools to even try? In my experience its quite a small %. Think about relationship breakups, how the majority of people will think someone's to 'blame' even though its a complex situation with faults on both sides.

Not to say every NC child is automatically in the right - but very often the trigger for going NC is the hard-won realisation that one's own experience of things will simply never be recognised, and efforts to heal/explain/discuss/change things in any way will inevitably be deflected, distorted and lied about. Going NC for real isn't taking a position in an ongoing negotiation, or fishing for a reaction - it's opting out of a relationship in which your own feelings and experiences are disregarded or used against you. The parent being "baffled" is often part of the exact pattern of denial and misrepresentation that has brought the child to this point.
I'm not NC with my mother but very LC. She knows exactly why, but she'd tell anyone who'd listen that it's a mystery, I'm weird, family isn't what it used to be - whatever might benefit her case in the moment. Playing into that sort of thing is exactly what I've stopped doing!

Out of curiosity what do people think of these reasons for a child going NC:
Allowing your brother to abuse and bully your child and doing nothing.
Flying into psychotic rages and directing it all at one child.
Slapping your ‘child’ across the face at 22 for waking you up
Stabbing her in the head with her wedding veil comb on her wedding day due to jealous spite
Storming out of your adult child’s house the tiniest slight.
Slamming doors in her face. Telling her to piss off. Flying into psychotic rages.

Do these qualify as good reasons or was this mother just doing her best and it’s probably just as much her child’s fault as she deserved it?

I have an adult son who has gone no contact with me without warning, subtle or otherwise. We had a good relationship, saw each other and spoke on the phone regularly and we messaged almost daily. The last messages we exchanged were discussing a TV show we were watching simultaneously. Messages I sent from the next morning have remained unread, phone calls ignored and his front door unanswered.

I'm under no illusion that I'm in the wrong as I'm the one not being spoken to although I don't know what and I can't put it right if he won't tell me what it is.

He isn't cruel, I'm not a victim and I'd love to be able to sort out whatever is going on.

I'm so sorry that you've been left wondering what you did wrong. That is truly awful. I least I know the reason that I no longer have contact with my son.

I am close to my exP's adult daughter who no longer speaks to her mother. She married young to a much older man, and when they got together her mother went nuclear and refused to have anything to do with either of them until the relationship was over. I think she thought that her daughter would just roll over and end the relationship, which she didn't. She didn't attend their wedding, just posted sadly about it on FB. Now her daughter is pregnant, and she contacted her to try and resume a mother/daughter relationship, as long as she didn't have to have a relationship with her daughter's husband and the father of her grandchild. Her daughter refused, and sent her a mature, measured response about how she was fed up with living with the drama, the alcoholism, the hot and coldness and she was determined to protect herself and her unborn child. Needless to state, her mother is weeping and wailing and claiming she can't understand what she has done wrong.

I think some people simply are incapable of self reflection and apology.

Yes I know why sd has chosen nc with us. The events that led up to it were over many years

Yes I know.

I have 3 ds. The oldest now an adult won’t speak to me. I am well aware of my failings. I didn’t always put him first when I should have done. (But I am not an alcoholic, I didn’t beat him or neglect him etc)

exdh has certainly helped to stick the knife in.
im very close to my youngest two so i am not a terrible parent.

I try repeatedly, I have apologised, I have offered to talk, I’ve tried everything I can think of.

it breaks my heart.

I’m NC with my family.

IME they know. My parents know and have been told at the point I went NC and many times after when they’ve harassed contacted me.

And the reality is when someone abuses someone, they know what they’ve done unless it was during some sort of psychotic episode.

Also I don’t think many people would admit the awful things they have done to their adult child in order to make them go NC. It’s easier for them to use words to others such as “baffled” - because it creates an implication of them being the victim, rather than the monster they generally are.

Sadly for some, it is easier to sweep under the rug and bury their head in the sand. I could never do that with my children, I would be on the doorstep asking, write a long letter, try and salvage a relationship, and I wouldn't give up.

Which is why nobody in my family or who knows my family has my address.

OP I'm virtually NC with one person, they'd 💯 say they didn't know why, despite organising and being there for the worst of the reasons why, and knowing about all the other reasons, and continuing to treat me badly in the present on the rare occasions I am in their company.

I wonder if it's because I was too under the thumb and didn't realise the extent of the messed up family situation I was in, so didn't leave home and go NC at 16. Maybe they think I accepted it all then so it must be ok and must have always been ok. Or because they've always been the way they are now and I tolerated it before, first because I had no choice and later because I knew no better, so they can't understand why I'm not still tolerating it. Any opinions different from theirs are "wrong", so it doesn't matter that I haven't spoken my reasons, there's no point because my opinions would be "wrong" and they still would say they didn't know the real reason because I'm "wrong/unreasonable" so it couldn't be the reasons I gave. Because nobody is allowed to think different to them, they've got no concept that I could change as a person or that I could have learned a better healthier way of being that doesn't involve tolerating other people's bad behaviour.

Our AC is NC because they are in a coercive controlling relationship. There is NOTHING we can do as parents to change this until they leave the relationship.

The pattern of abuse is textbook and it has been a slow, painful realisation that as parents we have zero agency. From loving parents to outcasts - it can happen to anyone and if you've not experienced it please don't judge.

I’m sure it is.

However, in that case, there was little point in you responding to the thread at all was there, given the purpose the OP has stated?

If this happened then most people would be calling the police to report a missing person and out searching the streets for their child thinking they’d collapsed or died, rather than jumping to the conclusion that their child with whom they previously had a loving relationship had randomly cut off contact with them. Therefore, it’s quite hard to believe that this is the whole story.

Well yes there was a bit more to the story. The extra bit that I didnt add was that after the first day I assumed he was busy with work and hadn't had a chance to look at his phone but by the second day after I'd called a couple of times and didn't get an answer I spoke to his siblings who confirmed he'd been active in their group chat.

Completely understand your position. Take care, it's a hard road,

There is a NC situation within my extended family. The reason is known but felt to be disproportionate by the person cut off, and it based on assigning motives to action that the people involved dont agree was their motive.

Seems to depend who's asking I think! 😂 Another thread people were getting jumped on for not being abuser apologists because "menopause". Apparently to some of the posters menopause makes all that type of thing ok 🤷 and is perfectly understandable. I'm with you though, NC all the way (regardless of cause, I'm not saying your situation was blamed on menopause). Hope you're feeling better now the monster is removed from your life 💐.

There's one a few posts below yours literally describing neglect of the child then in the same breath claiming they didn't neglect them.

People will excuse anything they want to themselves.

When a relationship between a parent and child breaks down it is almost always to do with childhood trauma, and that is of course entirely the fault of the people who were adults at the time.

I think sometimes when people say they don't know why their relative has gone NC with them, they know exactly what actions/events (often a constant stream of small actions) led to the decision. What they don't know/understand is why the person has taken their control away from them (instead of arguing/giving them another chance etc) and/or why they've done it at this time.

Often I think the person who makes the decision to go NC does it after a long period of putting up with being mistreated, and attempts to try to discuss it being met with denial/minimising/accusations etc. So by the time they make the decision it often seems to be based on an insignificant issue (which just happens to the last in a long line of issues) and they won't offer any option to discuss/explain/rebuild because they've already done that too many times. In the eyes of the person they break contact with, this is a sudden change from a 'normal' (for them) relationship to being cut off with no warning and no opportunity to work things out.

NC/LC with parent 1 for many years. Their choice and I was ok with it. And then NC/LC with parent 2 for many years - which meant the relationship with parent 1 improved enormously after that.

In both cases mental health issues and addiction were at play (theirs, not mine). Parent 1 spent the NC/LC years putting themselves back together, doing therapy, acknowledged we had a broken family and did their very best to make ammends. He wasn't perfect but I am eternally grateful to him for trying and loving me enough to try. It was sad that it took Parent 2 to be out of the picture for us to be able to have that level of honest relationship though.

Parent 2 did not, could not, would not accept they had MH and addiction issues. Even to the point they were diagnosed in 90s and hid it from everyone including their long term partner. They chose to gaslight me, turn wider family against me, and contorted themselves inside out to try and prove to everyone I had the issues. I was totally enmeshed so when I finally snapped (pregnant with DC1) and refused to help them cover up their issues, it came as a huge shock to everyone. Myself included. I know for a fact Parent 2 did not ever believe they had done anything to trigger this and their ability to mask the addiction and MH issues was second to none. I was always honest with Parent 2. They just could not cope with it. Indeed I think their MH issues probably meant they didn't remember their poor behaviour at times, which - now I know more, have seen the diagnosis and discussed it with their clinical team I understand - is common. But it was highly convenient for them when wanting to play the victim in all of this. It also meant they could very convincingly tell people they didn't share my experiences and I had made it up, because in their head I had.

Going NC with a parent is never a decision taken lightly. It always brings pain. My hypothesis is there is frequently some deep trauma behind it, either in the individual going NC, the parent who is estranged, or even perhaps in the partner encouraging NC. It is the ultimate response to a toxic drama triangle, where the only option is to remove yourself from the pain - even if sometimes the source of the pain is misplaced.

For all my own experience, I really feel for those of you juggling NC issues due to coercive control of another. I have had friends in similar situations and it nearly broke them. Be "Parent 1" in my scenario for your child... do what you need to, to be there when things change. Don't be Parent 2. It hasn't had a happy ending in my world.

Precisely: “the straw that broke the camel’s back” scenario.

Then these parents try to misrepresent this as their child being deranged or unreasonable or cruel and pretend that the decision to cut off contact was solely about the very last thing that happened before they did so, conveniently ignoring or neglecting to mention the fact that they treated their child appallingly for years or decades prior to the final straw. Then it’s all “woe is me, look how they’ve overreacted! I don’t understand.” etc.

Nobody with a modicum of intelligence or rationality would believe it.

If he were asked why, would he give the same reason as you?