How do you cope when someone goes NC with you?

[Honeynutcheerios]

I was very very very close to my brother growing up. We had a fall-out a few years ago that I think was mutually hurtful/we were both to blame. I have reached out to him so, so many times and he has not responded once. I have never met his child, he has never met 2 of mine and is my eldest godfather and hasn’t seen him in years. I even apologised despite thinking it was both of us, I took the blame and still nothing back. I reached out to him once when my child was gravely ill, hoping for support and still nothing, which I find very hard to forhive. I am usually angry about it, rather than front up to how much it hurts, but today I saw him in the street (and he saw me, I was in the car) and it hurts. It’s like being dumped, but worse in many ways.

how do people cope with this? How can I square this away in my mind so it’s not that painful? I find it very hard to compartmentalise things and I can be quite emotionally obsessive, which doesn’t help

how did you move on?

www.aconsciousrethink.com/5547/silent-treatment-abuse/

You have to try and move on with your own life and not focus on it .

This has happened to me recently with my brother. He sent unprovoked, abusive messages to dp while drunk, which was really shocking and horrible, calling him a c**t and that he was going to make sure he didn't have anything to do with me or our unborn child. Really nasty stuff. I replied to my brother saying how shocked I was by the message in a very measured and non abusive way, dp did too. We asked if everything was ok, he replied by saying he didn't want anything more to do with us, including our mother, it was horrible and devastating for us all to hear this especially as we thought we were all such a close knit bunch. I've left the door open for him to come back to me, don't know if he will. I told him I've accepted his decision to step back. Turns out he's been diagnosed with borderline personality disorder, but didn't tell us til it was too late. The upset has definitely ruined Christmas this year. It's horrible when they go NC.

I sometimes feel very upset about the way people going NC is treated as sacrosanct on here. Of course, people can do it - it isn't illegal. But it is deeply hurtful and often traumatising for those of the receiving end, and it's wrong to say there's always a good reason.

My dad stopped speaking to me ten years ago. He met someone new, moved abroad with her and her family and then just stopped replying to emails. I messaged and messaged asking him if he was ok, still alive, saying how unhappy I was about it ... no reply. I really don't think I did anything wrong - he got a new family and didn't want the old one. I happen to know that he was alive two years ago, but since then, who knows?

I cope by acting as if he is dead. I also have lines I use like "I don't know my dad" or "I don't have a dad" which are easier to say than admitting your own parent feels nothing for you at all. I still live in fear of one day googling his name and finding that he has died, and being hit by it all over again.

So of course it is his right, but I don't think I deserved it, and it has affected my life on many ways.

Im
so sorry. What a terrible
thing to have happened ❤️

I've gone NC with my mum because of some very serious and, frankly, deranged behaviour from her. She sent me that link above, to an article about how I was the abusive one for refusing to engage with her. She then proceeded to lie to social workers about my parenting ability, so that drew a permanent line under things for me.

But I'm also on the receiving end of NC, with my eldest child refusing to speak with me for her own reasons, some of which are true, and some I disagree with. I made mistakes, and I accept that, painful as it is. I didn't have the best role model, and tried anyway, and screwed up. I have to accept the boundaries my dc has put in place and be humble enough to listen to where I've caused pain and made bad choices. She knows I will be there when she's ready to talk again, so that's all I can do.

I think it’s that old cliché, that if you love your brother you have to set him free.
You need to accept he obviously finds it more painful having you in his life than not having you in his life. Whether you agree with how he feels or not. You can’t know what is in someone else’s mind, so you don’t really know whether little things have mounted up over the years into a big thing for him and that’s why he can’t have you in his life. It might not have been just about your final disagreement.
I am NC with some family. In my situation the final disagreement was actually the straw that broke the camels back, but in the family’s eyes that was the only event that happened. I’m not saying that’s the same for you, but possibly something to consider.

Agree it is the awful realisation your family member feels nothing for you.

I think it’s very hard as I’ve never had any sort of explanation. He just never spoke to me again after the argument. There was never a “this was the final straw”
or anything remotely similar. It’s also hard as my mother sees him
all the time and he lives near me so it’s not a clean cut.

i thought I was more over it than I am - seeing him today has just made me see how fresh the wound is

I described it to my mother as a wound that never heals. I had a complete meltdown when I was told there was another baby which I would never see. You really do feel like that there must be something awful about you to deserve this.

In my family it's my mother who is the ego maniac.

I dont know who is nc with who now. Initially I begged her to listen to me talk to me and communicate and she shut me down angrily. She talk about me but not to me.
After about two years ( of mourning, it felt like) I began to realise that if she cannot and will not acknowledge that she did hurt me, even two years on, then I'm not really a real person to her. So I don't contact her because I'm not going to play the part she wrote for me and she won't contact me because .... the same.
We are both angry and sad about it though. But im less angry and sad over time. I dont think her thinking has budged one inch in nearly 3 years. I just cannot comprehend how much damage her defensiveness has caused. And my dad backs her up in her martyred victim position so I feel thrown under the bus for an easy life by my dad.
but yet but yet.... feeling stronger and I have more equilibrium now.
A family would be nice but peace is a must have.

@Janedoe82 That's exactly it. There must be something fundamentally wrong with me for my own parent to not want anything to do with me. I was thirty when he stopped contact too - it's not as if I was a needed anything from him other than occasional contact. There was no argument in my case - I was just not worthy of contact. And that will stay with my forever.

"your situation is honestly uncanny my brother is the same - golden child and unable to be criticised and totally enabled by our mother"

@Honeynutcheerios I'm another one in almost identical situation.

Same as you, I felt we were both to blame. Have tried reaching out at various points and got nowhere.

At one point he made me jump through a load of hoops (via text), admitting it was all my fault, admitting how awful I am etc etc. i gritted my teeth and agreed to it all, paid lip service.....when he then started demanding that I flagellate myself to his wife (who was a pretty big part of all the issues) I just couldn't do it and communications broke down.

Since then I have tried again to extend an olive branch but have been blocked on all platforms.

He has moved house so I no longer know where he lives (and would be unlikely to just turn up anyway) so that's that. Door firmly closed.

It's been about 7 years now.

When it happened, my dad was pretty furious with his behaviour. My mum just kept excusing it / brushing it under the carpet while telling me to just bend and do as I was told because "you're usually so good, you usually do as you're told"

We both have kids now. Parents actively involved with my kids and his kids. Which I am relieved about because it would be a lot worse if the fight between me and him had come between him and my parents (which it almost did), but our family has been ripped apart. It is like a bereavement.

They only mention him and his family to ge occasionally, if it's relevant, and I just respond politely, like it's an acquaintance.

Fairly sure they never mention me to him because people always kind of walk on eggshells around him because he is easily offended.

If he (or his kids) phone my mum when I am at their house or they are at my house, my mum will take the phone into another room and close the door and have big long, secret chats.

If I phone my mum when she is with them, she doesn't answer

Things like that I find unnecessary and frustrating.

But largely I just feel heartbroken and like a part of my childhood is gone. I'd give anything to make up and find it hard to accept that is never going to happen.

This is how it felt in our situation. It truly hurts so deeply . Especially when children are involved.

It just feels like such a huge, huge waste. A waste of time, a waste of love and chances to spend time together etc. i obviously just don’t know him at all and it is like PP said I have to mourn for the brother I loved and knew because he’s dead now. I don’t recognise this one or understand him. Everyone else who knows him knows how difficult he is but it’s hard when your own mother favours them so takes their “side”.

I was 40 and we had lived in separate countries for nearly 20 years. I think his nose was put out of joint I was back on the scene.
If I listed even some of the shitty things he has done over the years people would be shocked.

Yes- I have huge rages with my mother for not telling him his behaviour has been out of order. But she just says ‘I don’t want him to stop me seeing my grandchildren’. I think that says it all about him and his wife.

My mother says she isn’t taking his side, but I feel that by standing back and saying nothing she is telling him it is ok.

@Janedoe82

its crazy how similar our situations are. I’m sad you’re going through the same but I feel better that someone (and a few others on this thread) understand

I really don't think I would be shocked ! I've been there .

yeh, i felt like that three years ago and it drove me to therapy. I was heartbroken. The pain was so real. And they were angry with me for feeling it.

They all acted like i was crazy for having a visible reaction to the discovery that they refused point blank to acknowledge that they had hurt me never mind care.

This was an historic thing, name calling spanning decades but the trigger was in the present when I asked them to stop and then it all kicked off. I hurt THEM when I told them that it hurt to be called paranoid and sensitive. So then they martyred up, united, and called me angry, detached from reality, entitled, insane, looking like death warmed up....

It has been a journey to the point where I feel so much less pain than I did. But now I feel disappointment. They just disappoint me so much. Their defensiveness, the dynamic between the two of them, the manipulation and the triangulation and the rosy view of my mum that must be protected at all costs, literally, all costs. Even if they lose their daughter. And we're a small family, there's only my brother and me. He is a strange one, if forced, he will reluctantly acknowledge that he gets where I'm coming from but he is still just irritated with me for not buckling under, basically, he just wants me to accept the regime with a smile so as not to ''upset mum''.

Op families can be shocking. Sometimes you cant reason with them. My friend and the sister fell out. Was always bossing her about/elder mams care. It got v toxic. I cant see them sorting it. Jane its not easy agree.

It sounds like in many of these situations the person who has gone NC has been quite abusive in the past and has responded to poorly to, essentially, being told to stop one time!

The worst bit has been my mother suggest I take anti depressants rather than her actual call him out on his behaviour. She knows the effect it has, but yet still does nothing. And it isn’t just to me, it is to my dad too.