When you are NC with a parent, what happens with the rest of the family?

[Coffeeaddict1992]

I’m NC with my mum. We haven’t seen each other for 5 years. For context, she’s been a rubbish mother and she’s an alcoholic. We text sometimes but I only really text back to keep the peace and some part of me is just a pushover who always gets sucked back in. I used to care many years ago, but I’ve gone NC a few times and have always forgiven her previously. The issue is, she won’t take responsibility for anything she’s done. Also because she’s an alcoholic, she won’t change either. After around 10 years of me trying to forgive her behaviour I chose not to see her anymore and it’s been nearly 5 years. I genuinely have stopped seeing her as a parent. There is no relationship or connection there anymore.

I’m interested to hear other peoples stories about how you handled family events, and other family members giving their opinions. I receive the comments like (she’s still your mum).... all the time. Or (if she gets too drunk we’ll just get her a taxi home)! Or (your gonna have to see her eventually). The truth is, I don’t judge them for these comments because they’ve all got great supportive parents, they genuinely couldn’t possibly understand what it must be like.

My mum is a selfish alcoholic, emotionally unavailable, bitter, narcissistic, and very stubborn. My father has never been in my life, and my step dad has been in prison for years. I’ve had to survive with no parents to care for me and no support from so called family, who never extended a hand to me through my teenage years when I had nowhere to go, or now that I’m an adult. They are all too afraid of her cutting them off. I don’t see that as a bad thing, she’s really not very nice to be around. I think she has also told them her version of events of why we have fallen out. That’s what worries me too, I have no idea what they’ve been told.

Aunties, and cousins text me and also talk about me behind my back about why I don’t go to family events. The reason I didn’t go before was because me and my mum weren’t speaking at all for a couple of years, they continued to invite us both to gatherings despite her ruining every other event she’s been invited to because she got so wasted. Every invite has involved a pub, usually her local pub to make things even worse. Everything is planned to revolve around her because they know it’s easier for her to get home drunk if it’s from her local pub down the road. It’s almost like they are enabling her behaviour and her drinking. Any other events have been summer drinks in someone’s garden or a bbq type of thing, all involving alcohol. I chose to make excuses not to go and only met up with my close cousins. The wider family see me as a mystery, and ask why I don’t see them. I’ve never been invited anywhere alone, not for dinner or for a coffee.

I was trying not to make it awkward for any of us and I didn’t go to family events. So I’ve effectively isolated myself even further and it looks like I don’t want to be a part of the family. Now that me and my mum text sometimes it’s not so raw, I will be able to show up if I’m invited to something soon. I won’t be best friends with her but I think I could manage to be in the same room as her. If she gets drunk or starts any drama I will just keep myself away or I will just leave early. My problem is, that in my mind, she’s not my mother. She’s just someone that I used to know. I don’t want to carry on like this, but my family will always choose her. I don’t think they know the whole truth and I don’t want to tell them my side of the story because it will seem like I’m trying to get them on my side.

If I go NC with most of them, they will all say that I was clearly the problem all along. I have nothing against them, but I don’t want my suffering to be minimised to make it more convenient for them. I don’t want a relationship with my mum, I don’t see her as my mum anymore and I came to terms with that years ago. I don’t want to fall out with my family but I can’t keep passing up on invites, I’m worried that if we are in the same room together family members will try to get us to make up with each other. Again, minimising my trauma and my issues. They don’t understand and don’t know the truth about what I’ve been through. I just want to feel at peace, but this is playing on my mind.

I think I need therapy but I don’t know where to start. Please help me to navigate this awkwardness. I don’t want to distance myself anymore from my wider family but at the same time I don’t want to be around her. I don’t think I’ve got a choice. I know I will be invited to a gathering soon as summer is coming up. These events are usually aunties, uncles and cousins. So around 15 of us at a time.

I don’t attend family events except for funerals. I have no issue being separated from the wider family because they enabled and perpetuated the lies and abuse of my parents. They are no loss. I don’t concern myself with anything they may say about me. Should anyone ever decide they want to tell me things they have heard I stop them immediately.
I have worked very hard on setting my boundaries, learning how to enforce them and respect them.
I have worked very hard on forgiving myself. And moving forward with my life.
therapy is wonderful, please find a qualified therapist local to you and make an appointment.

people who haven’t had to cut off parents can never understand the strength it takes and how many chances are given before we get to this point. They have no inkling how difficult, how perverse it is to realise your parent is incapable of a loving parental relationship with you. I have found it is pointless to try make them understand, it’s like trying to tell people that grass is blue. And honestly at this point I am thankful so many people don’t understand, it means they have not suffered from emotional, physical, mental parental abuse.

@Frolicinameadow thank you for sharing your experience and advice. I wish I had the strength to stand up for what I believe. I’m going to work on trying to do this. I just wanted confirmation that my thoughts were valid. After a while, I’ve started to believe that I’m the issue. I know deep down I'm not. I think I care a bit too much about what others think. I suppose we can’t control what they think can we.

thanks again

I really feel for you op.

I think you would benefit from counselling - none of your family have listened to you.

By ignoring your pain, they hope you will just fall back in line. They are truly minimising your suffering.

I would let go the whole family. If there is one or two who you think are decent enough to support you, then maybe see them separately.

Society as a whole prioritise a Mother's feelings over her child. It is a form of social control imo.

I am NC with my Mother and do not love/like her. The only emotion she instills in me is fear. I have blocked her, my auntie and her best friend. One sibling is also NC (and we are close which is wonderful) but the other two just think we should 'do our duty'.

Ultimately, they all dislike my Mother too and don't want the responsibility of caring for her.

You survived without parents and wider family. You owe them nothing. You have actually done an amazing job of surviving, but I think with counselling and going NC with them all, you can really start to live

@Minimalme thank you 💐 it’s sad but I’m glad I’m not alone. Everyone around me seems to have great parents. I always knew my parents were drinkers, I knew they were selfish etc. Growing up I loved them more than anything. Like the previous poster said, people don’t understand that usually we have not just decided to cut them off straight away, it’s been building up for years and so many chances have been given.

Stately homes thread in relationships might be a good place for you

It’s caused me issues now because of everything I’ve been through I’m terrified to have children. I don’t think I will become a parent. It’s so sad but I just can’t understand being a mum or a dad because my experience of that was so bad. I’m worried that I will turn out like my parents, or that my children will abandon me like I have done with my mum. It really messes with your head I think. I know I want to be nothing like her. My husband says that I will be an amazing mum because I will want to do the total opposite of what my parents have done. I just can’t get my head around it.

Another thing is, my mum in particular won’t take responsibility. She’s text me in the past saying things like “Don’t judge other people by your standards.” Basically meaning that her drinking and being at the pub every day of her life is normal and my standards are way too high. She genuinely believes her sad little life down the pub with her drunk alcoholic friends is a good/normal life. I think my family don’t know how bad things are because she hides it well. They just think she got drunk a few times at family events. They’ve got no idea what she’s done to me over the years.

@Bounceyboing I’m going to have a look now thanks

I am in a very similar situation 💐

there's so much to unpack, so well done for thinking it through and standing up for yourself. so, for me, and hopefully you can take something from this I found the following to be helpful -
think of the situation from all ways, all outcomes... eg if/when she dies and you are NC, will you be able to stand by your decision to stay NC (yes. I'll be sad but that doesn't change the need to protect myself now)

If you don't get invited to events and people cut you off, would you change your mind and not be NC with your mother so you can maintain those relationships (no, I try to maintain contact with other family members but the firm boundaries are in place for a reason. they need to respect that, or cut me off if they think I'm wrong. but I'm not having a conversation about it every time, or being persuaded with pithy one liners )

Good luck figuring it all out. in my situation the peace I've known over the recent years is priceless. not having to argue with people, however well meaning, about my value, and right to live a safe, secure life. I expect the same for my children so the decision to be NC with my family is easy. just the implementation of that needs more maintenance work. but it's worth it.

@LemonSqueezy0 thanks 🙏 I totally agree

Not sure I can really offer advise as I have a small family and pretty much everyone went nc with my mother too apart from her mother who would have you thinking she was a saint despite witnessing her drunken house trashing antics etc

I would also cut off anyone else who enables her behaviour and who negatively impacts on your life

Is there any chance you could uproot and go to a totally new area and start afresh?

As for having children , it makes you a better parent as you refuse to let your children go what you went through

When I was NC with my mum I had years of my grandmother doing everything in her power to convince me to talk to her again. To be fair she lived in a different country and never really knew how bad it got with my mum but she also refused to listen when I told her about how bad it was.

My mother and I talk now but it's LC and on my terms - but at least I'm not being harassed by my gran regularly anymore.

I’m in a very similar situation to you, including my wider family not accepting my reasons for the estrangement and putting pressure on me to reconcile whenever I have a big life event (marriage, baby born etc.) as my mother is upset at not being included in these events.

They don’t recognise the years and years of effort I put in trying to have a nonabusive relationship with her, the further years of therapy required to be able to detach from her web and the abuse I suffered as a child. Acquaintances also judge me for not being in contact with her as they just can’t imagine a mother figure being anything but loving.

I went no contact in order to survive. To do this I had to grieve the relationship and accept that she could never be the mother figure I desperately wanted. It difficult to give up hope but it was the right decision and I’ve gone on to have a very happy family of my own and have broken the cycle of abuse. But the cost has been contact with the wider family, judgement from friends and family and having to stay the course even when extended family try to guilt me into resuming contact with her.

It’s incredibly difficult and isolating and I just wanted to post to say that you’re not alone and the fact you’ve been able to recognise that her behaviour is not acceptable and that your family is enabling / ignoring it is really a credit to you.

Therapy really helped me to work though my feelings about my mum and ultimately come to a decision about how to proceed. I hope that you can also get support from a skilled therapist and work out the best course of action for you.

All of this sounds really hard op, and going to see a licensed psychotherapist, particularly to discuss whether or not you have DC, sounds like an excellent idea. Hard though it is to overcome, you must not allow your mother's parenting legacy to negatively impact upon your own.

Speaking bluntly, you can't influence other people's relationships with your mother, you can only set your own boundaries. It sounds bloody obvious, but your aunts and cousins will naturally have a less complicated relationship with your mum because they didn't have to be parented by her. And hurtful though it must appear to you, they are allowed to navigate their own individual relationships with her. They are allowed to overlook her behaviour or forgive it, whatever their reasons, whether it's easier for them to do so (people often just do the easiest thing) or they have thought about it and made a decision in their own minds to see the good and not the bad, for whatever reason.

If your mother regularly gets drunk to the extent they have to pour her in to a taxi, then they must have some idea of how this impacted on you as a child. Could you not go and see them individually and have a quiet word over a coffee? Do not, whatever you do, go and see them as a group. Be serious and say you are struggling with your relationship with her and the affects of her alcoholism on you but at the same time, you don't want to cut off the whole family. Why not be honest?

One other thing, which I hesitate to say, for fear of offending you, which is not my intention; is that alcoholism or drug abuse is, at its heart, about avoidance. An inability to cope with the reality of life for whatever reason. My mother wasn't an alcoholic, but I had a difficult relationship with her for other reasons, and it took until my mid-fifties to see her as a flawed adult in her own right and to fully appreciate how her upbringing impacted on her. I am NOT saying at all that you should forgive your mother. You have every right to be NC or LC with her. What I am saying though is that I never thought I would forgive my own in a million years, but as I have aged, very much to my surprise, I have done so.

And I have to respectfully disagree with the pp who wrote:
Society as a whole prioritise a Mother's feelings over her child. It is a form of social control imo as I happen to think that society is very hard on mothers and they generally get blamed for a lot of things whereas fathers are generally let off scot free, and are absolved of every form of responsibility without a murmur!

Good luck op. In your shoes I would have a private word with the most sympathetic of your aunts and cousins. How they react might offer some insight as to how you should proceed with the others

just to add - I also decided not to have children very early on in life for fear of passing on the abusive dynamic that I experienced as a child. Therapy helped me to understand that it’s possible to break the cycle. Books like “the book you wish your parents had read” helped me.

I have children now and they bring me so much joy. It’s perfectly valid to choose to not have children of course but please make the decision knowing that it is possible to break the cycle of abuse. Don’t let your mums actions take away your choices.

I’m so grateful for the replies. It’s so helpful, I’ve got no one to talk to in real life who understands.

I found it very hard initially to deal with the smear campaign. I'm sure a lot of my cousins just believe what they've been told, that I cut my mother off, that I'm aggressive, that I shouted at my mother, that I am ''angry'' and UNGRATEFUL

IT did upset me to begin with but I had to assess. These cousins and aunts are so peripheral. They never contact me, so there's no real relationship. It's not like over time they're going to see the truth. They won't have anything to correct what they've been told. That hurt more to begin with but then I guess I haven't lost anything.

My mother wants me to play the part she wrote for me and these relatives, they're just more parts in my mother's play. I have to back away from all of it.

You always think that losing your family is going to be SO SAD and that it will deplete you and leaving you feeling bereft. But the reality is that although it's a sad idea in theory, in reality you can end up feeling a bit less derailed, experiencing a bit more peace.........

It is in theory very sad though.

We didn’t attend family events during NC for 2 years. It was immensely awkward for the rest of the family and put a strain on our relationships with people we were not NC with. That’s the choice we made and it was difficult but worth it.

''The wider family see me as a mystery, and ask why I don’t see them. I’ve never been invited anywhere alone, not for dinner or for a coffee.''

I notice this in my own family too. Initially I did want to race in and correct all the distorted views, but over time, I feel I've lost respect for them and I don't want to do that any more. But there has been no initiation of contact, I'm still just my mother's daughter, I'm not a family member in my own right it seems and there's no curiosity at all. nobody asks what I think, nobody wonders what I make of it all.

It's either show up and play the part your mother wrote for you or back away quietly.

@TryingNotToReact9to5 thank you for sharing your experience, it’s really helpful.

@TryingNotToReact9to5 exactly! They’ve never asked me around their houses or tried to ask for my side of the story. If they did, maybe I could explain to them all. I genuinely feel so unsupported. A coffee, a drink or just a catch up separate from my mum would have been nice. I think it’s pretty obvious to me who’s side they have chosen. And like you said, they expect me to fall in line. Im an adult now, not a child. Maybe I should start standing up for myself.

I cut my mother out of my life when I was 18 when my parents separated and divorced. She was highly abusive in virtually every way possible but my dad never 'believed' me because he never saw anything - he did but I think that he just put blinkers on and pretended that he hadn't because then he didn't have to intervene. For the next five years I had the maternal side family flying monkeys constantly telling me: I didn't know what I was doing; I would regret it; she was ill; she had cancer (utter lie); she had rights; I was causing a problem for everyone else and that I was a stupid child who didn't know what was best for me. There were many more. I then cut all contact with her side of the family.

It stopped until I had my first child. I then had: she's got rights; she's got legal rights (no, she didn't); I'll regret not having her help; I'll come round once I realise what being a mother is (I did realise this but not in the way they anticipated); how can you deny your child their grandparent etc etc etc.
I then caved and allowed her contact facilitated through my dad and stepmother because I wanted to see if she had changed (Dad & SM promised that she had which was puzzling as they always said that she'd done nothing wrong). She had not. After two contact sessions she demanded overnights (child was about 2) and spouted off about her rights again. I cut all contact again immediately.
When I became pregnant with my second child it all started again with letters and messages sent through my dad & SM. I sent a final letter to my mother telling her that there would be no further contact ever and if I received anything from her or her family ever again then I would see a solicitor about their harassment. I got a short letter telling me that I would have to explain it to my children when they asked where grandma was and that she hoped that I would tell them the true story (from her point of view obviously) and that they'd hate me for keeping them apart - it was bordering on unhinged to be honest. She was doing was she always did which was to use fear to get her way. I never replied and never heard anything else from her or her family since. They did, though, have the glory of banning me from my grandmother's funeral a few years back and made a thing of making sure that I knew.

Anyway, the point of this is this - I have not needed or missed my mother or her family in my life. It took a lot of nerve and determination but my goal was to have a life without fear or obligation and I achieved this because these people do not change. My children have not missed them either because children know and love what/who is around them. I told them the truth when they were teenagers and have always told them that they are welcome to make contact if they wished and I would arrange it but they never have. Some people have found it shocking or incomprehensible that I done what I have done but it been over thirty years and my mother is now old, disabled and apparently very bitter. Amazingly I have a brother who has maintained contact but it's always been something that we very rarely even discuss but he has always believed me and always shut down any suggestion of contact from mother very quickly when it's been raised. My dad was a different matter entirely and never lost the opportunity to tell me that I was unreasonable and I could never trust him and SM as they were definitely in the 'we must maintain family harmony at all costs' camp. I found out that they had taken the eldest DC to see mother without my permission (DC asked me at bedtime the same day why he had to go and see 'that lady' so it all came out) and I left them in no doubt that I would not hesitate to stop any future unsupervised contact.

@MothralovesGojira that sounds like a nightmare and it does scare me that might be possibility if I had children. You did the right thing and you must have had to be so strong to fight against everyone. Thank you for sharing, I agree though, unfortunately these people will never change.

@Coffeeaddict1992
Thank you for your kind words.
I would like to tell you about my experience of how I decided to have children. Like you I didn't want children because I had very few examples of 'good' parenting around me but a close friend had a baby and taught me the basics and through her I learned that I could deal with children without becoming abusive. She recommended that I look at families around me in real life and take from them examples of the 'good' parenting that I wanted for myself. I also read parenting books and had a year of psychotherapy. I took a leap of faith and had my first child in my thirties. It wasn't easy and I made mistakes but my parenting style was a deliberate effort to be the opposite of what I'd had but fair & firm. I have never raised my hand to any of my children and I (hopefully) have done a good job. It is possible to have a really bad start and go on to be a good parent and one of the reasons is that YOU can see the pitfalls and avoid them. I think that a lot of abusive families are stuck in the never ending cycle of being unable or unwilling to change due to family pressure and an inability to see how things are very wrong within the family structure.

Your husband is right - you will see how not to do it. Once you make that leap and shut the negative out of your life you may feel lighter and more open to becoming a parent. It is hard but it does get easier with very firm boundaries but I have to admit that society does see people like me (who have set up and maintain these no contact boundaries) as odd I think. One person who gave me a really hard time about it backed off when I asked them whether they would forgive someone who'd left you partially deaf and broke your spine and if they'd let them anywhere near their children? People and family are not walking in your shoes so why should they judge your decisions. If you've not considered therapy then perhaps that may be a good idea. Yes, I believe you should cut contact with your mother if she is unwilling or unable to change and her enabling family as well. Family and friends should enrich your life and you theirs but if this isn't happening then what is the point of them?

@MothralovesGojira reading your post made me emotional. You have really done so well to be the best mum. That’s the thing, we all make mistakes and I can forgive my parents for some of them. All I need is for them to own up to them and stop feeling sorry for themselves. Unfortunately selfish people can’t do that can they x

@Coffeeaddict1992
I think this is the problem isn't it
I waited decades for my mother to apologise or get help or even admit she had a problem and it never came
Then she died and I knew there was no chance it would ever happen