This is really chilling, I think

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Namechanged for this, as potentially too identifiable to FOO stalkers.

I am NC with FOO, for a variety of reasons, none of which I particularly want to rehash here. Occasionally I lurk on a FB forum for parents of estranged adult children, because I find it morbidly fascinating and actually quite validating to observe just HOW bonkers the mindset is.

Today I found this post on there, which sent shivers down my back because it is SO similar to the kind of thing my NMother has sent to me:

The last time I wrote my daughter...a few years ago, I stated the following: "When a person is charged with a crime, the accused is presented with a list of grievances. As your mother, I feel I am entitled to no less a list of grievances in support of your claims of hatred towards me." I've never received a reply, because she has none. We as parents shouldn't accept responsibility for our adult children's short-sightedness and bad behavior.

As ever, it's much easier to see the crazy when it's not your own personal situation being hashed out, but OMG at the demand that the adult child justifies her emotions with a bullet-pointed list of grievances before there can be any question of her being permitted to feel her own feelings. And these people wonder why they are estranged. You'd think round about the time you wrote about your entitlement to a list of grievances to support your child's claims of hatred towards you, you might get a glimmer of realisation about why your adult dc didn't want to be around you. But apparently not.

Hope is a dreadful emotion. I would hope that my mum would be kind to ds2, hope she would love him, hope I would be good enough to love, hope my dad loved me, hope the abuse I suffered as a child wasn't abuse and it was normal, hope that we would be a large extended family. Again and again my hope was crushed as these things didn't happen. I kept going back for one last chance that things would change. It broke my heart when I realised it wouldn't change. I went nc and was ill for nearly three years. Starting to come out the other side. Most days are a struggle.

Missed a bit out. Being bitter & resentful, without using the anger as a catalyst to improve things, is harmful to the individual and those around them. Although, as PPs have noted, it often seems to prolong life!

((( ))) spanky

Nina, have you read any of this thread yet?

I think nina it's back to what we've been talking about throughout this thread (which I don't think you've read, apart from the OP), that people don't just wake up and go NC because of so little slight out of nowhere. It's not like I had a perfect relationship with my mother and then she pissed me off once so now I don't speak to her. We have all tried endlessly to repair the relationship, at a cost to ourselves and NC is our last resort, the only option left. So it's a bit annoying to be told to make an effort, to try again. To try again to repair a relationship with someone who just denies I have any greivances at all.

“I ask because I've researched estrangement for the last 5 years” Any research conducted from a perspective of bias will have a biased outcome, the first thing you learn about 'research’ is to consider who conducted it and why. At least that's what I was taught both times at uni. How did you conduct your experiments? Surveys?

“I just wondered why you go onto the groups where estranged parents post?” have you asked the EP why they do the reverse?

“The problem with estranging is that unless the background has been abusive and cruel”

eg please of where this ISN'T the case? - ah YOU DIDN'T READ THE THREAD!

“especially if it's a case of 'you don't see eye to eye”

A brief read of stately homes alone would show anyone ignorant enough to believe people go NC for petty reasons is wrong! Those of us who do have struggled for DECADES usually dealing with emotional and financial abuse, the ramifications of physical and sexual abuse, have done so more than once and been DRAGGED back in by false apologies and promises of change.

I didn't see eye to eye about:

Being battered age 3 for forgetting to wear the right pants, that's right age 3 I was expected to choose and wear the right clothes.

My sister being told repeatedly she was useless etc as she wasn't...a boy!

Me being told repeatedly I was useless, too much like my dad (an abusive alcoholic but again I have memories of this from the age of 3-4), weird (because I was shy and didn't socialise well) etc etc.

Witnessing my father beat my mother, my mother excuse and hide it.

Witnessed my father throw and break things over minor issues eg being fed 'foreign muck’ - spag bol and throwing the plate at the wall.

Being left alone with my drunk abusive father so my mother could attend an event.

Being groomed and molested. Then told I was imagining it, lying, trying to destroy the family…

But yes I was COMPLETELY unreasonable!

“Nina, I think most of us have tried and tried and tried for years to live up to our families' expectations of us until we can't take it any more”. AND to protect our children, my mother had started the GC/SG crap with her grandchildren - my dd was one of the SG. No way am I putting dd through that shit!

“Harping on to the past when "families stuck together" is a rose tinted view, often they weren't together out of choice, and it often wasn't a happy ending. I'm glad my children don't live in such a society.” so am I.

“The good old days, when people were less resistant to abuse.” EXACTLY!!!

“I'm not judging you.” yes you are - I repeat the quote “ especially if it's a case of 'you don't see eye to eye” so making assumptions too

“suggests you think there is a level of abuse that normal people should accept willingly?” I don't think Nina 'suggested’ this I think that's point blank what she's saying.

“People like you are dangerous” agree.

“I'm dangerous for suggesting that where there is a chance to heal a bond, people should consider it?”

Yes! On a thread where there are posting AND reading, people who have been abused and neglected in every way imaginable!

Who have already been told by not only the toxic abusers in their lives but also the ignorant (who haven't experienced or worked with those who've experienced it in a healing way) that THEY (the victims) are

unreasonable
Cruel
Imagining the abuse
Making out the abuse was worse than it was (any is unacceptable)
Outright lying about abuse (see mn we believe you campaign please)

That is enabling, perpetuating the damage so yes dangerous!

“I know all about abuse” you are astoundingly arrogant! NO you know about YOUR abuse! You have NOT done a psychology degree but believe yourself almost to this level (when doing a degree your views opinions and assumptions are challenged).

“No one really is to blame” if your daughter experienced or even witnessed abuse there IS at least one person to blame. You may not want to hear that but it's true.

I'm more interested in why your mother chose to go NC with you? I've personally never heard of that happening.

I don't really care about nina NC in her own family but I do get tired of people telling me what kind of relationship I should have with my mother when they haven't had to put up with her for 40 years.
There was no "abuse", I wasn't beaten or sexually abused. But she is a horrible, manipulative woman who made favourites out of my children and did her utmost to ruin my marriage because she can't handle not being the centre of everything. She was bloody horrible and when I wouldn't kowtow to the usual raging she left the country with no forwarding address, then accused me of stealing her grandchildren. I've told why i don't want to talk to her and she just says it's all lies /I'm making it up. Tells everyone else she doesn't know what happened.
I've had enough. There comes a point when you've had enough. She knows where I am should she want to make amends. She doesn't though.

Oh and it takes a lot more than an undergraduate degree to become a psychologist/psychiatrist anyway it's recognised even by the govt that helping people who have been through such crap as this requires extensive education training and experience. And even that doesn't always mean they 'get it'.

Goodtobetter please don't dismiss your experience as non abusive. Emotional abuse is JUST as valid and thankfully is finally being recognised as just as damaging as other forms of abuse. I do hope your husband and others are supportive

Lots of women of that generation fell pregnant young and were forced to get married. Is that the only reason she's given?

That's what this thread is about. Nobody has said, "oh my mum said she liked Britain's Got Talent better than the Voice, that's it I'm going NC" and yet, STILL people pile in with the usual bollocks of:
you should try harder
some people go NC for no reason
but it's your faaaaaamily
well, unless they beat and rape you you should also try again
It gets really fecking annoying.

And then if you explain that actually, NC is a last resort and there's always a _bloody good-- reason and people accuse you of being "bitter" or "entitled" or "angry".
Do people do this to victims of DV? I mean, seriously? It's not OK.

It is frustrating goodtobetter. Things ARE improving. I disclosed yesterday to someone i've known for years but didn't know how things were currently as I'd not seen her for a while. She's between mine and my mother's age roughly and I braced myself for the 'but that's your mum/sister/father' etc. She has not been (to my knowledge I may of course be wrong ) abused herself. Doesn't work in the area or anything, yet she was lovely and simply said 'You're have to do what's right for you and dd's. Nearly made me cry! That's how bad it is that a simple sentence of acceptance van have me almost in tears.

Sadly goodtobetter some do still do it to dv victims too. I've seen that on threads on here 'maybe if you did x y z he wouldn't be so angry' 'maybe he's depressed' etc

Nina maybe instead of ignoring us, you should read this and the stately homes thread? Consider it 'research'? You may learn something.

Actually, I have to say, the only person who's done the "but she's your MUM" crap was my uncle (her brother) and he had his own vested interests in getting me to crawl back for more crap. Every single person IRL has been totally understanding and in fact been more strident in the need for NC than me or has been angry on my behalf. It's only people on MN who have done the whole dismissive thing.

I'm not angry in my day-to-day life, NC has given me great peace. I do get a bit narked with people implying I have gone NC on a whim and that it's because I didn't try hard enough.

Nobody's ranting at you, but can you see that coming on to a massive, long running thread about estrangement that deals with the fact that EP seem incapable of listening to the reasons why we are estranged from them and basically saying that we aren't justified in NC and that we could have tried harder, when you ahven't even read the thread....that this could perhaps get on people's tits a bit?