Son wants nothing to do with me!

[Wilf1975]

I was married to my first husband, we had a son & daughter together. My husband was mentally, physically & emotionally abusive to the three of us. I eventually found the strength to leave him when my son was 8 and my daughter was 6.
Six months of him leaving my husband took an overdose and ended up in a vegetative state in a nursing home for four years until he died in 2013.
The three of us were always close until my son started going out with his girlfriend 3 years ago. He walked out 2 years ago and I have not really seen him. I have tried everything to try and be included in his life but he doesn’t want that. He totally despises me and blames me for his childhood. My daughter told me yesterday he is getting married in February and will not be inviting me.
I miss him so much, can’t help but think there is something wrong with me. I have a rubbish relationship with my own mum and didn’t want to end up like that.
I feel tired, the people close to me treat me like rubbish and I don’t think I deserve this. It is just one thing after another, I just want some peace and be a family. It feels like I am always picking up after other people and have no say in things. I feel so sad..........

I'm so sorry for you, op. It's very sad that your son doesn't want to have anything to do with you right now but it may change in the future. He obviously had a rotten time with his dad - you all did - but you did end your marriage which was a big thing to do.

Try to be happy with your daughter and husband and leave the door open for your son.

Let him find his own peace. Any contact you try to establish now will just be interpreted as an attempt to get a wedding invitation. Maybe send one message, wishing him well and making it clear that you will follow his wishes, whatever that means, but then stop trying.

Maybe in time he will come back to you, but maybe he will never be able to cope with a relationship with you, because of the damage his childhood caused. His father's suicide makes it all so much more complicated and your son probably feels confused and hurt even all these years later- it's hard to blame someone who was so distressed that they killed themselves, and they can also never be called to account for their actions, so a lot of blame is bound to be deflected.

Counselling may help both of you, separately at first and perhaps together later if he is willing. But don't discount it if only you can go- it may help you to understand his perspective. Your son sounds like he has been very badly damaged and it's really hard to undo that without professional help. I hope that you can work out a relationship with him eventually, but I think you may have to accept that it is simply too painful for him to be around you, and he needs to put some distance between himself and any reminders of his childhood.

I have a close relationship with my daughter she lives at home and sees her childhood completely differently.
How differently does she see it and who do you agree with? Is it possible he feels that you and his sister, who live together, are maybe minimising the way he feels?

hi op,

some of this must be tough to read.

councilling could be really helpful to get some perspective. i wonder if there's any books you might find helpful.

being in an abusive relationship as an adult is very different from suffering abuse as a child and your son is going to feel very differently about it than you do.

have you asked him why he is distancing himself and if there's anything you can do.

as pp advised, as difficult as it will be, you need to listen to what he says. don't get defensive and try to justify. just listen.

OP "Couple of months ago he ranted at me for 30 minutes about how useless I am."

oh dear. May I ask whether this was about something current or still about his childhood?

My dsis is in an abusive relationship with the most horrific man I've ever met.
He's abused her and her children and social services do fuck all about it.
I have no sympathy for her anymore she's lost one son from her previous relationship as he's refused to go home and lives with his dad and now the younger son is 11 and told me the other day "he would be sat all night if he told me all the things that were wrong" I hope he leaves too and goes and stops with his dad so he has a chance at a normal life.

I think that unless the abuse continued after you left your husband (as in you continued to abuse your children and take off where he left) then your son is being a bit unfair.

My own mother left my father after he hit her.... only once but she left. Before that he was physically abusive. Before and after that she physically and verbally abused us kids. The fact that she protected herself while failing to protect us from herself is what leaves me unable to have a relationship with her.

If you have apologised to your children for your part in what they lived through and then gone on to provide them with a loving and stable environment then you deserve forgiveness in my eyes but that is up to your son alone and none of our opinions will change his, nor should they as only the two of you know what he truly lived through.

I think you’ve spoken a lot of sense @OhHimAgain and opened yourself up by sharing some very personal and painful experiences. OP is looking for answers and should be looking for insight, which you have given her, and that can only be valuable even if she doesn’t see it now. I hope you’ve managed to heal and find the happiness you deserve in life.

I would like to echo this. Your posts have been both moving and measured.

It would not have been helpful to simply pat the op on the arm and encourage a view that her son has wronged her. He hasn't. It is possible both to have suffered but also to shoulder responsibility for some of the suffering of your children.

Adults have the power to protect themselves and to leave abuse. Children do not. The sense of threat to their life a child experiences is also greater than for an adult in the same circumstance. Children are entirely at the mercy of both their abusive parent and their abused parent. They are profoundly helpless. The nature of that trauma is completely different.

OP, you are a victim of DV. Your Dc were also. For people to dump MORE on you is unfathomable. One point concerns me. You say.... Couple of months ago he ranted at me for 30 minutes about how useless I am.

I worry that your ds may be displaying the same aggresive and abusive tendencies as his father.

But from your sons perspective, maybe he feels that you as an adult had a way of leaving (no matter how difficult) whereby they as children had no way of leaving.

I’d say this is the crux of it. We can all rationalise it and acknowledge that OP was a victim of DV but this is probably how the son see’s it. When kids get older they question this sort of stuff, then they get angry and I’d say that’s where he is at. It may take him many years to work through and he may forgive or he may not. He has absolutely no obligation in this respect though so it’s just a case of sitting back and seeing how it pans out and being prepared to accept either scenario.

I worry that your ds may be displaying the same aggresive and abusive tendencies as his father

Alternatively, his mother has repeatedly been contacting him against his wishes with a narrative that’s all about her pain and feelings of rejection and he’d had enough.

you were a victim of this man's abuse. You quite possibly were vulnerable to it because of your own childhood - you mention a difficult relationship with your own mother? Its not unusual for women whove been involved in abuse to discover the different types of dysfunction in their own childhood. This may also be at play regarding others treating you badly now.
I suggest that you find a councellor to go through this, unpick what happened to you and keep it seperate from your relationship with your son. It may explain it. But it wont change what he has experienced, whatever the motives at the time.

Your son is a victim of an abusive childhood - yes, the abuse came from his father, but the whole relationship will have been dysfunctional, and whether you tried to protect him, whether you finally left, those formative years are what they are, and as parents you will both have coloured that experience for him. Thats not even going near the issue of his dad's death.

It is going to be hard. And, given that you left and felt you did your best, its going to be particularly hard to face the accusations. But you will need to do that - to put your reason, and your justifications, and your own feelings about what you suffered to one side and really listen and own what both your children went through. Your daughter still lives at home but it is very possible, especially if she has a child of her own, that her own feelings about her childhood will surface.

I would also encourage your daughter to do the freedom programme, because even though you escaped, unless you have recognised where your vulnerability came from, unless she has dealt with her own childhood, she is very much at risk of falling prey to an abuser herself. This is how these things just carry on down the generations. Children who's 'normal' is tainted by abuse.

OP l am sorry to upset you but have you thought that maybe your DS has inherited some of your Ex DH nasty genes and knows this is the way to really hurt you ? Just wondering why he would treat you like this otherwise .

Unless your ds know the full extent of your marriage he is bu. Spell out to him how your life was back them. Give him full disclosure then leave him to digest it.
After leaving exh he filled my dc's heads with utter shite.
When they hit teens and worked him out for themselves our relationship began to improve and flourish.
Don't give up op.
I feel for you - being estranged from dc is unbearable.

Just wondering why he would treat you like this otherwise .

Is that a serious comment?

Read the thread, that might give you some idea!

@Wilf1975 I suffered childhood trauma..i understand replies full of anger. As an adult,I was stuck in the void of a physical emotianal abuse relationship. ..so i understand the helplessness and inability to walk away.its not as simple as that.
I have 2boys. i can absolutely understand how hellish it must be to be cut off entirely.
I think for now ,you have to accept how he feels. you have the emotions of a traumatised 8year old displaying from an adult. Perhaps the starting seeing the girlfriend\is now getting married is relevant..not because she influenced him to hate you..as much as from the point where you left,remarried,etc he was ok..you and sister were ok...the threat was gone ... (i pretty much blocked all feelings/emotions for years...)when he developed feelings for girlfriend it might have triggered having to deal with every one he'd shut out/adapted to /managed to live with.
Perhaps,call local womens aid.i realise this all happened long time ago..but the result is ongoing.they might at least be able to suggest someone to talk through it all that can help you understand where hes at.
xx

The support a woman gets on these boards whilst in the middle of it is one thing but her experience doesn't negate the valid experience of her child who has a different experience - but no one said it did @OhHimAgain - clearly you had an appalling experience which you will never really be able to put behind you, I know it doesn't work like that. But because you have shared your experience I think people are a bit loathe to say hang on you are out of order - we have no idea what the son is actually blaming the OP for, and I wonder if its the death of his father. Which wouldn't quite fit your narrative

My Dad was an alcoholic; my mum stayed with him till she died aged 54, when I was 13, because she had no choice at all.

I repeat: are we supporting women who leave/are trying to leave (ok so we can also tell them that their kids will need help to come to terms with their childhoods quite right too) or are we telling them they are to blame, and that they need to remember that? Maybe saying that we support them to leave, but then telling them exactly what lowlife they are? You've basically told the OP that she was to blame for her husband abusing the family. Odd that as I thought the abuser was to blame, not the woman who managed to get the kids away from him?

Is there anything he has specifically asked you to apologise for?

I ask because my parents would give you a similar story of abandonment, but always omit the part where they behaved shittily when I was at my lowest ebb and then they resisted all requests for an apology. Just a thought.

Can you write to him? Can you say what you said here:

Congratulations on your wedding. I love you and am proud of you. And I want you to know that if you ever want or need to get in touch, I'd love to hear from you or see you. I understand that right now that's unlikely to happen, that you feel my behaviour during your childhood is something you can't forgive. I can't change the past, but I promise you I will always be here in the present and the future, to love and support you. You're my son and I love you.

That's what I'd say. It acknowledges that he perceives your behaviour in childhood to have been damaging but it doesn't say that you agree or accept the blame. It doesn't ask him to see your side (which is what parents usually do when children go NC. They make it all about them, their problems etc. Don't do that. Just sound strong and sane and show love.

I agree with many other posters. It must be so hard for you OP and I bet you wish you had been strong enough to leave earlier but there's nothing you can do about that now.

If your son's reasons for leaving are that he resents you for his childhood experiences then I can relate. I have a good relationship with my mum now but I don't think I will ever get rid of the element of resentment that lurks in my head.

As a result of my childhood I suffer from anxiety, panic attacks and low self esteem. My dad was an abusive drunk and she stayed with him until I was 28 (only when his abusive treatment of her escalated). He shouted, screamed at was physically aggressive (when he was sober enough to stand up). I will never get over that.

My advice, as PP have suggested is to LISTEN to him if you get the chance. Don't make it about how you suffered. You were an adult and (to an extent) had choices. Your children had no choice but to stay and suffer. Acknowledge the mistakes you made and apologise that their childhoods were not as they should have been and that you regret this now (if that's how you feel of course). It was not the three of you together in this, it was you and your partner together and the children caught in the middle.

I could completely forgive my mum if only she listened to me and didn't go on about how it was worse for her. It wasn't.

I wish you lock.

@Mrsmadevans WTF? “Nasty genes”? Abuse isn’t genetic and it’s not inherited, good grief. If it were, nobody would ever break the cycle of abuse and become the parent they needed and wanted as a child. I can’t quite believe that you said that.

The OP’s son sounds very angry. This is a natural response to a traumatic upbringing, especially when the abusive parent is either dead or it’s not possible to get through to them. The son can’t express his feelings to the father and it sounds as if he’s also angry with @Wilf1975 for “mistakes” she’s made. I wonder if he’s ever been truly listened to, and had his version of events acknowledged? That is a powerful step forward.

@Wilf1975 I agree with pps that you should take a step back. Accept your son’s version of what he experienced in his childhood - it doesn’t matter that it’s different from your daughter because both their memories are valid. My brother received different abuse from our mother than I did - I was her scapegoat and he wasn’t targeted in the same way BUT he acknowledges that. We are both angry with our Dad though who passively enabled the abuse and put his feelings ahead of ours.

If I were you I would send a wedding card and gift with no hidden agenda. Then maybe a separate card saying you are here and will listen to him if and when he wants to see you.

And I agree, get counselling yourself. What you see as your son abusing you could be him desperately trying to set boundaries or express his feelings - it’s vital that you learn to see the difference.

it ignores and diminishes the children’s experiences when the mother says that she was a victim too.

I disagree.

My mother was beaten up and abused by my father and I went through that anger with her for putting up with it and not protecting us from his violence. When I was younger.

But I'm an adult now. I understand that she was a victim of his abuse as we were. I understand that there was nothing she could do, her psychology and society and upbringing and beliefs, all stopped her from protecting us.

I don't know, maybe it comes with age. I haven't forgiven her exactly (how can I, she hasn't asked for forgiveness, she doesn't know she's done anything wrong), but I understand that from where she was standing, there was simply nowhere to go and nothing to be done except endure it and hope it would stop. She just didn't have the psychological, emotional, or economic resources or support to leave him. Expecting her to have done that, is like blaming a dog for not being able to miaow. It's totally unreasonable.

I don't blame her. I blame the society which put her in that position, a society which blames women for enduring male violence, while bolstering and upholding the men who inflict their violence on women and children. A society where family courts routinely allow sole contact with fathers who have a history of DV and punish women for trying to protect their kids from those fathers, which has cut funding to refuges so that more women are dying in their homes. FFS it's grotesque to blame individual women for not having the resources to fight a structural system which throws its weight against them and behind the men who abuse them.

FWIW IME the children who don't talk to their adult parents, is because those adult parents refuse to acknowledge their kid's pain, refuse to acknowledge that their kids have any right to their feelings and therefore in the child's mind, are continuing the abuse which is the reason the kids went no-contact in the first place. If you're doing that, stop it. If you're not, there's nothing else you can do for now except acknowledge that your child has the right to not see you at the moment, let him know you're there for him when he wants you to be and get on with your own life (which might include counselling).