Anyone else's dm walk out on them when they were a young child never to return?

[SplinterSplit]

Mine did. Just upped and left over night with no warning when I was 6. One minute there, next minute gone. Never to be seen again. Has anyone else experienced this? I've never met anyone else like this during my life.

exWife I am so sorry to read what an awful time yòu have had. I also feel like I can't wait to hear my "mother" is dead as then I'll know my children will be safe from her. She didn't want me but want my kids . I'm going through some difficult times right now and also feel like I wish I hadn't been born but more truthfully I don't want to live.

I know people say that children are resilient but I look at my two children and wonder how it has effected them and how it will effect them later in life. My ex-wife, their mother, walked out on us seven years ago. At the time my daughter was 8yr old and my little boy was 4yr old. The image I will never forget is the evening that I told them that Mommy wasn't coming home and my little boy laying on his back in bed, quilt up to his chin, eyes open looking up at the ceiling and tears running silently down his face, and then saying one word "Mommy" before breaking down into bawling sobs. I sat with them each night for a week as they cried themselves to sleep every night. Seven years on and we are a happy strong family father/daughter/son unit, both children happy and doing well at school. Their mother see's them three or four times a year, but as my daughter gets older she seems to be losing all interest in her mom. When we got divorced I was awarded full custody of my children. Their mother was more interested in what money she was getting. But as I said at the beginning of this post I often wonder what goes on inside their minds, and how what happened will effect them in the future. Life eh!

I've heard of similar happening to someone I know - when her parents split up, neither of them wanted custody of the child so she was raised entirely by her grandmother. Whilst she did know where her parents were (not far), and probably spoke to them, it must still have felt awful as both her parents remarried other people and had other children.

I'm sure it's natural to blame yourself OP but it's not at all your fault - a lot of people have mental disorders, hormonal issues, perhaps post natal depression confounded with it, causing them to do irrational things.

Another one here. When my mum met my dad she had my 2 sisters from a previous relationship. They then had me and my twin sister and brother. When we were 5,5 & 8 she left my Dad for his brother (after having countless affairs with other men and family members). Took my older 2 sisters but within a year or two had put them into care. My Dad did his best by us but he just didn't know how to be a dad. He ruled by fear. We were the only kids in school with no mum (early 80's). She visited but always with a different man in tow. Sometimes it felt like years but I am assured it was never more than a few months. It just felt so long when we were so young. Over the years it came out that she knew how my dad was and that was why she left him. She just hoped he wouldn't be like that with his daughters (emotional and mild physical abuse). He met someone when we were about 17 and as lovely as she is I still have issues with his treatment of me. Then and now.
But it's my mum I really can't forgive. She is very lucky to have a relationship of some description with all 5 kids. Although she is oblivious and has never admitted any wrongdoing. She has been awful and abusive emotionally to us all. She decides who's turn it is to be picked on and off she goes. When we were around 14 she told us that our dad had sexually abused our sisters. It was an awful time. We wanted to believe our sisters but then didn't want to believe it iof our dad. We were so torn and the feeling that we were betraying our sisters by even talking to our dad was so difficult. It took her years to correct her drunken ramblings that it was never sexual abuse. She let us believe that of our dad and effect our siblings relationships just to be a bitch and hurt us again. Just one example of her nasty lifelong abuse of us. She is becoming increasingly lonely and I find it hard to forgive her. I have 3 dd now and she is the fakest most absent grandma in the world. But talk to any of her friends and she is super mum and gran. She portrays that because the truth that she is a shit mum and a shit person is just too hard for her to admit, even to herself.

My mum never left us but would threaten to, we would walk the streets in the night looking for her. She would hide then we would find her (obviously all of us kids in tears). This is just one of the many things she has done which I think has causes me years of anxiety and other MH issues.

to all of you whose parents abandoned them x

@YogaWannabe

Your diary post struck a nerve and in my case it ties in with the trigger idea
I had a breakdown which started with nightmares due to repression and denial of childhood memories.
It may well have occurred then because of my DDs age.
When I was her age I was first put in care, I knew about it but couldn't remember it. I remember thinking that my daughter would be frightened in those circumstances and wasn't it lucky that I had been a more independent 3 yr old.
I wasn't independent I was traumatised and barely spoke because of neglect and frequently being left alone.

I believed she had an illness that would strike suddenly and required immediate hospitalisation,ambulance etc.
I made that up very early on, she wasn't ill, she wasn't hospitalised she just did what she wanted which meant she stayed out or didn't turn up to collect us.

I genuinely worried about how sad she must have felt as she watched the tube start to move, I thought she must have run to get to the next tube station, I believed she must have been terrified.
She denied we were her kids to the passengers who followed her.

I cried for that woman my entire childhood, the unfairness of how misunderstood she was and even how wretched she must have felt to have overdosed because in my head it was missing us that drove her to it.
She maintained contact with my older siblings but refused to see us 2 in care and the night she died she was on Amphetamine, it was an accidental overdose not a cry for help

Denial and Repression are underestimated,when the cracks start to appear in the edited version of memories it is truly devastating to confront the truth your brain went to the effort of hiding.
I got my social services records in my early 30s and am amazed at how my brain twisted horror after horror into relatively normal memories

@Snotwotallmumsdo Funny (tragic) I was actually just thinking about all this.
For years people said to me “I can’t believe you’re normal” “How you turned out the way you have...” etc etc and I always wondered when the wheels would come off because I was genuinely never hung up on any of it. Like you, I pitied her so so badly.

She took me to a women’s refuge when I was about 5 or 6 and she snook in bottles of wine for all the women and got herself absolutely pissed and left me there. Months later, whenever she returned, I remember being tucked up in bed with her, the two of us giggling about what she’d done.
Like you I thought, jeez DD wouldn’t have handled that half as well as I did!

DD is in the crucial ages I was when things were going badly awry and my mental health has taken its first beating over the past year. I haven’t been able to make sense of it as all the major events that would have spurred depression etc are long over but maybe it is all just the realization that things weren’t as I forced myself to believe.

I know men leave all the time, I know this and I’m a feminist and I think they’re bastards but god I don’t think I’ll ever get my head around a mother doing it. Yet I’m weirdly fascinated about what the fuck possesses a mother to commit pretty much the ultimate taboo.

This thread makes me aware how much we expect of mother's and how little support there is for struggling or overwhelmed mothers. When I lived in Germany (recently) your GP could send you to a spa on the coast for a month or months if necessary. You can take your children who can attend school there and have full time child care. So it is actually a break for everyone. My friend got divorced and went away for 8 weeks. My German GP offered it to me but DH's schedule didn't seem to support it. I think now I should have made it work so see what it was like.

My mother left when i was two and my brother was four. However, she was very young, my father was having an affair and being older and wiser, got full custody of us through the courts. She had visitation rights but maintains he made it so difficult and she had no transport. She moved away to the other end of the country with a guy and i didnt meet her until i was 12. I was brought up believing my step mum was my mum and her children were my siblings.

Unfortunately, my brother and i went on to have traumatic childhoods, he was regularly beaten by my father on my step mothers insistance. I would try to help him and pull my father off him. My father didnt hit me, instead he liked to punish by refusing to talk to me. For days on end. Until i was literally begging him and hysterical. When I was 7 i began to be sexually abused by an older cousin and disbelieved when after three years of it, i told my step mum and father. Subsequently when i was raped at 18, i didnt tell anyone because i had learned that there was no point.

When my mother did come back into my life, she was a drinker and had a horrible temper with it. There were many horrible things she said and did, such as if my brother died she would be devastated but if i did, she would just feel a bit sad. When i had my first dc, i was young too, married to an older man etc. But i knew, no matter what the situation, i could never walk away from my child and would fight tooth and nail any courts or person that tried to take her away from me. I felt pretty worthless from then on really, between my mother leaving me and my father disbelieving me about the abuse.

However. In the last ten years she is now probably my best friend. Pretty much since she went through the menopause. She has been there for me when noone else has, is a wonderful grandmother to my dc. I have forgiven her, she was only 14 when my father began a relationship with her, he was 22. My eldest is turning 14 next month and she is just a child.

My earliest memory though, which i thought for years i had dreamed, until my mother confirmed it, will always be of standing on the steps of my grandmothers house, watching a car driving away and crying. I was 2 and my mother had tried to take my brother and i with her after the courts awarded custody to my father.

It surprises me that people have found this thread sad because for a number of us it is just a reality.

It took me many many years to come to terms with my mother disappearing. Not only that she left us in a situation that was a hotbed for abuse and neglect while she went on to lead a very comfortable life.

I would echo others in saying that it is only when you have your own children that the emotional impact really hits you. I also identify with those who say that it was unusual - I felt completely isolated. I lived in a middle class, affluent area where even divorce was rare.

I left hone and moved away when I was 16 and rebuilt my life but my siblings are very damaged. I am very damaged too but over the past 35 years or so I have learned so much about myself and what happened. Accepting that your mother is faulty and damaged too takes a while.

I've always looked for her in other people, I've looked for her on holiday, in town, on TV. I've picked out Mothers that I wish were mine. I have learned to be a Mother to myself and of course my lovely children.

Now I'm glad I don't have the complications of a mother / daughter relationship- I have enough on now caring for my Father!!! I was 8 when my Mother left, for another man. I'm grateful for those formative years though- she was a good Mother until a man swept her off her feet.

Yep. I was five and my little sister three. Never seen her since and she's dead now.

It explains a lot of my mental health issues!

This thread is beyond heartbreaking. My OH's great grandmother did this. She had four children and just disappeared one day. The consequences were devastating. One child was put in the care of a couple who presumably adopted her. Two were shipped off to the UK to live with relatives (from Oz). The other joined the Navy at 14 I think. No idea what happened to their mother . I would love to find out what the real story was somehow.

You have all brought a tear to my eye reading this thread this morning. I hope you all find peace, I need to give my DCs big hugs now,

My Mum left home for a man that she was having an affair with. I was ten, away on a school trip to find her gone on my return. I fought hard to maintain a relationship with her, visits were sporadic and I realised that I came after the relationship with the OM and her job and social life in terms of priorities, if it wasn’t for my tenacity we wouldn’t have a relationship.

My Dad is complex, mental health issues, I left home at 16. Struggle with relationships and friendships.

This was in the 80’s, As others have said it was unusual, only one other family in school with living with just a Dad (their Mum died). I was mocked, stared at, pitied etc

Mine was having an affair with a friend's husband and left us all to set up home with him on the other side of the country.

She initially took my youngest sibling (aged 6) with her, and then came back for the others (8 and 10), but didn't want me.

After a couple of years, she chucked the older 2 back out, so 3 of us were living with my dad and having no contact with her, and the youngest one was living with her and wasn't allowed any contact with us. He had to beg to use the phone on playdates to call us.

My dad nearly bankrupted himself going to court to try and get contact, each time they would award him an order and she would subsequently ignore it with zero consequences.

The youngest moved in with my dad when he was 16, and we have all been NC with her for nearly 20 years.

We heard on the grapevine recently that the man she ran off with divorced her last year, and their house is in the process of being sold so we are half-expecting her to come crawling out of the woodwork now she is on her own again.

Remarkably, all 4 of us are really close as adults...

sparechange what will your response be if she does come crawling back? It's nice to hear you and your siblings are close, please don't let her come between you. People like her have all manner of nasty manipulation tactics so be prepared

carpet
I wouldn't even dignify it with a response. She is dead to me, and has been since I was in my teens. The narcissistic bitch can rot in her own hell for what she put us all through

Since having DC, I have lost any shred of wondering if there was an underlying issue that drove her to abandon us, or pity for what must have been difficult for her.
Nothing would separate me from my DC, nothing. And definitely not a tawdry affair

MN seems to be: dad leaves family = bastard. Mum leaves family = MH issues.

Someone who's story I know well, I don't want to give away all the detail as it gives me away but I've been told a lot more detail than what I'm about to write, all in confidentiality. The DF has told me this.

Mum leaves DD1 on her 9th birthday. Moves a few hundred miles away, I'm not sure if it was to be with a man, but at the time I tell this she is now with someone. Also has left DD2 aged 7 behind.

DD1 is now 16. Her DM leaving has sent her off the rails. She has been self harming for 4 years now, as well as other MH issues. DF has been working with school and counselors to support and hopefully improve the issues. DF has also had his own counselling for his own MH issues triggered by this situation.

DM still has sporadic contact, goes through phases of blackouts of contact, then messaging out of the blue after ignoring messages, reappearing either down near DDs home, or asking for DDs to go to her new location and spend time there in holidays. This contact often resets the work done by DH, school, counselling etc, DD1 is off self harming again etc. Not only this, but it creates constant fighting at home, DD1 & DD2 against each other sometimes, against DF sometimes.

DF is at his wits end, he loves his DDs so much and wants them to have a happy stable home, but this keeps getting undone, all because DM is selfish.

But yeah, must be MH issues.

One of my friends had this happen to her as a teen. She hates her mum now and I know it’s affected her adult life as well.

Nah my mum is a dick.

A friend of mine at uni jad this happen to her when she was nine. It affected her very severely even though at a glance you'd think she was doing well, at a good uni, lots of friends.

She tried to trace her mother when shebecame a parent herself, as she wanted to try and understand why her mother had done this. Sadly she discovered that her mother had committed suicide some years before. The lack of resolution after she'd psyches herself up for it all left her in a bad place for a while. Just heartbreaking, I don't know how anyone can do that to a child though her mother clearly had serious mental health issues.

@YogaWannabe
@Snotwotallmumsdo

I think a huge huge crunch point is when your kids reach the same age as you were when big things happened. I went through similar a couple of years ago when my kids were similar ages to me and my sister when we were taken into care/adopted etc
I’d never really emotionally let me self grieve for the life I (and all children) deserves. I’d been angry over the years, in denial sometimes, sometimes a bit sad but this was the first time I sat and sobbed and sobbed for the 6, 7, 8 year old me. Just seeing my kids, my daughter especially, the same age I was, it hit me like a tonne of bricks how much I lost, and how much I didn’t deserve what happened over the years, and just how damaged someone has to me to treat a child like that.
Unfortunately for me I ‘lost’ various parent figures over the years so I do suffer greatly with a fear of abandonment as an adult

• biological father was largely absent, was around a bit but didn’t live with us. Oddly enough at our adoption hearing he fought for custody - of me only not my younger sisters
• biological mother was neglectful and not for to have kids. She had a child adopted before I was born and another after me and 2 sisters were adopted.
• youngest sister at the time was taken into care seperately as babies easier to adopt on their own rather than with siblings
• once me and my sister had settled into our foster home, we were adopted after 18 months so we’re taken away from everything we knew for the 2nd time.
• adoptive mother wasn’t fit to have kids either. Beat us etc
• when I was 12 she had an affair and basically left us with our dad for a year. We would see her once a week for about an hour when she came home and did laundry, waxed her legs etc
• then my dad got a job in Germany so left us with our mum and new stepdad. Seen him maybe 10 times in the last 25 years.
• when I was 15 I came home from school on the Thursday to be told I wasn’t going back and I was going to boarding school on the weekend
• when I went to uni I was told I no longer had a place at home and not to visit in the holidays.

So being ‘rejected’ many times over the years has greatly affected my sense of self and the way I deal with relationships and friendships.

So far I think I’ve been able to give my kids everything I didn’t have in terms of love and security and happiness.

In my adult life I have gone NC with my adoptive mum, first time DH convinced me to get back in contact as he has a lovely family so thought I should make amends. He then met her and completely understands now!!!
2nd time I was pregnant when I got back in touch as felt my child should have a full family, and what if me and DH split up I would have no one etc etc
3rd time is currently and it’s been about 8 years since we last spoke.

A girl we knew through extended family/friends did this to her kids.
She's be around 30ish now. Married fairly young and had 2 kids. Left her DH and kids about 2 years ago to pursue a career as a web cam girl and a babestation style sex chat video channel. No idea why this meant she'd have to abandon her children. Made nonsense.
Her whole family went round to talk her into coming home for the sake of her kids. She refused. Her mother said 'please, this will never end well, it will ruin you and your kids' lives.
Her response? 'It's my life so I'll do what I want, I'll cross that bridge when it comes'.
Her children are around 5&6 now. The grandparents on both sides of the family are raising them. They are very loved. But those poor kids. You can see the grief behind their eyes. Utterly heartbreaking.

My mum left home when I was 9. There were 6 of us, the eldest was 10 and the youngest barely a year. She left us with a violent alcoholic. We spent two years with me and my older sister looking after the rest, stealing money from dads pockets when he was passed out drunk to buy food. The house was filthy, as were clothes and bedding etc. It was a nightmare but no-one helped or intervened. After 2 yrs we were taken into care (which, sadly back then, was little better than home) 50 miles from home. We had very little contact with him after that. We never heard a word from mum, even after we were in care. 3 years later dad died and she miraculously reappeared and wanted to take us 'home'. All of my siblings returned to live with her, I refused and stayed where I was. I could never understand why she didn't send a letter or cards etc, even if she hadn't wanted to be found she could have sent stuff from different places.

As an adult I can see that he would have killed her had she not got away from him. The daily beatings he gave her were horrendous and he often made us all watch. But, even as an adult, that doesn't excuse her for not sending a card or a letter especially after we were in care.

My eldest sister has a great relationship with her now (we are all in our 50's), 4 of us have a sporadic online/phone relationship with her and one is no contact at all. It's affected us all in different ways but we aren't allowed to discuss it with her (or her husband of 35yrs) because she has wiped it all from her memory.

I'd like to honestly say that it hasn't affected me, that I am a confident and happy adult with my own lovely family now, but in reality I can see the effects when I am feeling insecure or panicky and know that my childhood has a bearing on those feelings. Thankfully they are few and far between and I decided a long long time ago that I would not let them or it dictate my life.

to all who have similarly sad stories

Reading this thread is heartbreaking