Man this story hit close to home. I'm pretty close with my mom and dad but my wife not so much. Her mom was/is an addict and fucked her life up pretty bad when my wife was younger and her dad is a...
Man this story hit close to home. I'm pretty close with my mom and dad but my wife not so much. Her mom was/is an addict and fucked her life up pretty bad when my wife was younger and her dad is a deadbeat. She's basically been a no or low contact since she left for college years ago and it actually been positive for her own well being. The wedding vaccinations story was almost identical to our experience as well. Shit, we didn't even require the vaccinations since they had been available for so long at that point, all we asked for was a COVID test to prove you were contagious. Half of my wife's family just fucking no showed. She hasn't spoken to any of them in any significant capacity since.
My brother has some issues. Mental health among others and he has basically made my life miserable for the entirety of our time growing up together. He left for college and I haven't really spoken with him much since. I never actually realized how miserable I was until he was out of the picture. I'm a bit shamed to say but it's been fucking nice. Mom and Dad are pretty upset that I don't talk with much, but whenever I do, its like talking to a bear. I never know what is going to set him off. It's awful. I firmly keep him at arms length now. I'd always hoped going to college and is not living in the same house or playing on the same teams would have made things better but it hasn't. Mom and dad baby him and give me a hard time because I'm "functioning better" than despite the fact that I still need my mom and dad for things too. It makes for some uncomfortable dynamics that sometimes make me feel like a burden.
To anyone else reading this, I hope you know that you aren't the only one dealing with similar problems.
I fear for this with my two kids. My youngest is similar, you never know what's going to set him off and I worry his situation is going to replicate yours with your brother. My wife and I are...
My brother has some issues. Mental health among others and he has basically made my life miserable for the entirety of our time growing up together. He left for college and I haven't really spoken with him much since. I never actually realized how miserable I was until he was out of the picture. I'm a bit shamed to say but it's been fucking nice. Mom and Dad are pretty upset that I don't talk with much, but whenever I do, its like talking to a bear. I never know what is going to set him off. It's awful. I firmly keep him at arms length now. I'd always hoped going to college and is not living in the same house or playing on the same teams would have made things better but it hasn't. Mom and dad baby him and give me a hard time because I'm "functioning better" than despite the fact that I still need my mom and dad for things too. It makes for some uncomfortable dynamics that sometimes make me feel like a burden.
I fear for this with my two kids. My youngest is similar, you never know what's going to set him off and I worry his situation is going to replicate yours with your brother. My wife and I are trying our hardest to address his issues and get him to control that, but boy it's hard.
One thing I realized reading a book about anxiety yesterday (for myself) is that he may actually have anxiety, which wouldn't be surprising. It kind of lines up with his behavior, but behavioral therapy is hard to get and not cheap either.
Wild shot, but any chance your youngest has ADHD and has red dye (#40 specifically) in his diet? If I have red 40 I become such an asshole and everything sparks rage. Yellow #5 is the other, but...
Wild shot, but any chance your youngest has ADHD and has red dye (#40 specifically) in his diet?
If I have red 40 I become such an asshole and everything sparks rage. Yellow #5 is the other, but that puts me into a dark depression for half an hour, then it’s done.
That happens with my nephew too, absolutely crazy. At Christmas a couple of years ago he ate one of the terrible frosted cookies with bright red frosting and he had an absolute meltdown followed...
That happens with my nephew too, absolutely crazy.
At Christmas a couple of years ago he ate one of the terrible frosted cookies with bright red frosting and he had an absolute meltdown followed by getting violently sick and then he was back to normal. He can't read very well yet but the one thing he definitely can read is "red" and looks for it on any ingredient labels because he has connected the dots that it is terrible for him specifically and will refuse whatever is offered.
Yeah — red or allura are the main for red 40. I first discovered it after a summer of being an absolute asshole to everybody — but going between being nice and a prick. The only new thing in my...
Yeah — red or allura are the main for red 40.
I first discovered it after a summer of being an absolute asshole to everybody — but going between being nice and a prick.
The only new thing in my diet was red Gatorade. I was checking the ingredients and this angel of a woman was like, ‘what are you looking for?’ And I told her and she told me about ADHD and red dye. I started testing it and that was it.
During that… stage… it’s an out of body experience for me.
It’s a terrible thing. I’m older and it’s been a while since I had any, but this one Korean place has it in something. No idea why.
Red dye used to be in more stuff — white marshmallows was the most surprising for me. It makes the white whiter.
Yellow sucks, but isn’t as bad. The rest are totally fine, but I wish they’d just phase them out.
When the nephew gets into that state, you kind of just have to wait, but if you can cool down the room, that also helps. It’s like every sense is at eleven and everything is overwhelming and you’re trapped in a fight AND flight mode :)
The therapy isn't cheap and there are a lot of bad therapists out there as well...... You didn't ask for advice, so I'll just empathize with hard hard it can be, really really tough for everyone...
The therapy isn't cheap and there are a lot of bad therapists out there as well...... You didn't ask for advice, so I'll just empathize with hard hard it can be, really really tough for everyone if a child's way of processing emotions and expressing themselves is wildly different than the parents
Hey man, I mean I know it's not much. But I think I turned out okay. I have ADHD and it does make it kind of hard sometimes. My brother has ADHD, OCD anxiety and a lot of other shit. If it's any...
Hey man, I mean I know it's not much. But I think I turned out okay. I have ADHD and it does make it kind of hard sometimes. My brother has ADHD, OCD anxiety and a lot of other shit. If it's any help, my mom and dad tried and pushed really hard for us to be friends, which wouldn't be a bad thing...if we weren't like 11 months apart in age. I think always being stacked on top of one another didn't help. Best of luck. I'll all work out.
This person should not have written this. It broke my heart when the tone started to change as they started exploring the parent’s side, not because the parents were sympathetic figures to me, but...
This person should not have written this. It broke my heart when the tone started to change as they started exploring the parent’s side, not because the parents were sympathetic figures to me, but because I felt betrayed by the author.
There is a concept that the author had danced about and avoided directly addressing through the whole thing, and that is that estranged parents and family members are usually mentally and/or emotionally abusive, and/or they are psychotic or have other mental disorders. The response Amy gave to the writer is 100% correct; parents and family members who want to fix things need to work on themselves in order to reconcile - something long and arduous, and frankly some 90+% of the time simply will not happen. These people are not worthy of being sympathized with; doing so is like saying a man who beats his wife is justified because she makes him so angry. It’s wrong, it’s sick, and society as a whole suffers whenever it happens.
I understand not wanting to believe the youth and why they might want to sympathize with the adults, because accepting the stories of the youth would mean accepting something that we as a global society are desperately trying to pretend doesn’t exist. That is to say: huge amounts of people are mentally ill, that they are so numerous that they support each other and are building their own sick societies, and they are hurting people to achieve their goals. We are living in an age of fascism, and it grows because we don’t want to acknowledge that these people are sick and need intensive intervention to the point that the kinds of interventions that would be effective are simply not possible because “they aren’t psycho, they’re just conservative” and they have vast resources supporting them.
When I was young and was going through this, I thought that my story was unique. I thought there wasn’t anyone who could understand what I was going through. I was so hurt by my father’s abuse that I was hospitalized and put in a mental institution temporarily as a way to protect me from him. But do you know what the sad thing is? I’m actually a lucky one. A few years after I moved away from him permanently my uncle came to me with teary eyes saying how sorry he was that I had to deal with it. I can’t even imagine how difficult it has to be to realize that your brother is mentally ill and has been for years without you realizing it. But even deeper I was living with my paternal grandmother - his own mother! She must have been going through so much to understand what I was going through and help support me. I can’t even imagine.
Do you have kids? I ask, because the turn in this piece is suggestive of the Author's saying that they're a new parent and they're fearful of this kind of thing happening to them with their child....
Exemplary
Do you have kids?
I ask, because the turn in this piece is suggestive of the Author's saying that they're a new parent and they're fearful of this kind of thing happening to them with their child.
And it's easy to say, "Well don't be shitty." but the Author addresses that in the piece, suggesting that maybe some estrangements are unjustified, not that all of them are, but, just look around you at the current zeitgeist around "Toxicity" and "Cutting people out of your life who are Toxic". We see these studies that suggest Gen-Z is the loneliest generation, but all the media they see says to them that rather than work with "Toxic" people, you just cut them out of your life.
I'm not saying that's a bad thing, but what I am saying--and what the author is trying to get at--is this modern incarnation of "Therapy Speak" can itself be Toxic and perhaps part of the reason a generation might be labeled as "lonely". Rather than work and understand people with different viewpoints or opinions, they're labeled Toxic and cut out of the picture.
The Author is worried that this might be a thing amongst estranged people and that it would happen to them and their own child, that's the turn.
It's not that the Author is saying Estrangement is bad or good, simply that it can be a muddled thing in this day and age. Look at the people the author cites as having questions as to if this is the right choice for them or not.
I'm not saying you're wrong to cut your Father out, but I do think you've misinterpreted what the Author is trying to get at here. I've had my own struggles with my family as well; we're diametrically opposed as far as political beliefs have gone and I have cut my Mom out for short periods of time when I can't take her bullshit. My wife cut her brother out for years and is now very low contact with him due to his abuse of her as kids and teens, so I get it.
But the Author fears--and also as a parent, so do I--that their child may cut them out of their lives for some perceived slight or toxicity that may or may not have happened, owing to what the author describes as generally children feeling their relationships with their parents are overall less important than the other way around.
My own child has anger problems that my wife and I are trying to work through. He can go from 0 to 100 in a matter of seconds for any perceived slight--he's also 6--and I could absolutely see that anger taking over him as he grows older and perceiving us to have slighted him in some way and cutting us out of his life, which would absolutely gut me. He's a great kid, but his anger and irritability sometimes has us walking on eggshells around him and we're struggling to teach him to get it under control.
Akir wrote: From my personal experience, some people will just never, ever take this step. They lack the empathy required to understand that their own worldview isn't absolute and that their...
Akir wrote:
parents and family members who want to fix things need to work on themselves in order to reconcile
From my personal experience, some people will just never, ever take this step. They lack the empathy required to understand that their own worldview isn't absolute and that their children are also people with their own thoughts and perspectives. Since their perspective is the only one that matters, there's no need for them to self-examine - they only ever judge others.
Your child is his own person, and his perspective (after he grows up) isn't something you can control, so I don't think you can ever be absolutely sure he won't end up misunderstanding you. But as long as you're willing to try to see his point of view, including how he perceives you, and make an effort to meet him half-way, I honestly think you'll do great.
The cure for loneliness isn't putting up with toxicity, though. If my child grows up to become estranged, or only put up with me occasionally because they're lonely, my battle was lost many years...
The cure for loneliness isn't putting up with toxicity, though.
If my child grows up to become estranged, or only put up with me occasionally because they're lonely, my battle was lost many years ago and it's okay for me to respect their boundaries if it means they thrive better.
There's a difference between getting an email that says "hi how are you doing, I hope spring is nice in your area" and "this is a photo of you when you were 4. I miss my baby so much and I'm in so much pain." There are adults who are emotionally so fragile or underdeveloped that it is much lonelier being in their presence than being alone. I'm not talking about abrasive, but the kind of parent who cannot see a child as an individual with their own identify: they're "my precious/special/prophesied/baby child", and not, say, John Smith.
It isn't, but I think the point is that "toxicity" can be an overused label. Does shutting out everyone and everything that makes you uncomfortable really lead to happier and healthier...
The cure for loneliness isn't putting up with toxicity, though.
It isn't, but I think the point is that "toxicity" can be an overused label. Does shutting out everyone and everything that makes you uncomfortable really lead to happier and healthier relationships with those that remain?
Sometimes, there is an obviously abusive relationship that can only be fixed by not having a relationship. Other times, it would be better if everyone involved was more empathetic and understanding.
The "everyone" here seems like a good litmus test. If the child has a bunch of friends and decent social circles and a fulfilling life with everyone aside from being estranged from the parents,...
The "everyone" here seems like a good litmus test. If the child has a bunch of friends and decent social circles and a fulfilling life with everyone aside from being estranged from the parents, that seems indicative. If the child is withdrawn from everyone and they meet bad people in the morning and toxic people in the afternoon and bad parents in the evening, then I would believe the parents.
That's a great litmus test. I made friends with someone that was excommunicated by their old friends yet seemed decent enough. Lo and behold, we don't talk anymore. They were extremely emotionally...
That's a great litmus test.
I made friends with someone that was excommunicated by their old friends yet seemed decent enough. Lo and behold, we don't talk anymore.
They were extremely emotionally manipulative and caused a lot of collateral damage with every "emotional moment" over nothing. While it didn't affect me personally, I couldn't tolerate their awful patterns. I explicitly told them why we don't talk anymore because I hate ghosting, and that turned into another "woe is me" moment, just reinforcing my decision to cut them out!
I think one big unspoken element here is that while there is a lot of acknowledgement of parents whose mental health or backgrounds or what have you can cause this, there isn’t as much mention of...
I think one big unspoken element here is that while there is a lot of acknowledgement of parents whose mental health or backgrounds or what have you can cause this, there isn’t as much mention of the fact that adult children can themselves also be ones whose mental health and need for intervention is driving the “toxicity”. In situations of estrangement unfortunately there can be a complete spectrum between nightmare abusive parent/innocent abused child all the way to nightmare adult child/innocent family. That, and as the article hints to, the echo chambers that can exist, is actually terrifying to think about from the perspective of a well meaning parent. Because today it is possible to do everything right and with empathy and still be rejected. Family relationships are not a given, they require the consent of both parties. It’s a good and bad thing depending on the unique circumstances of each situation.
Have you ever been a kid? Do you know what a huge step it is to take your parents out of your life? I abandoned everything when I cut my father out. Every single friend, even a lover. It was a...
Have you ever been a kid? Do you know what a huge step it is to take your parents out of your life? I abandoned everything when I cut my father out. Every single friend, even a lover. It was a huge sactifice, and it's not something that one does half-heartedly.
Having a relationship is a two-way street. If a kid has cut out their family, it's only after they have exhausted every option. It's always the parents who are failing to do the work of understanding their children and building the relationship. I have never seen an instance of a person of any age not trying their best to make the relationship work. They have taken the nuclear option because they had no other choice.
I understand the fear you have about your relationship with your child very well. I worry about the same things with the people I love. But you have to understand that by acknowledging these parents' fears, you are enabling them to continue their abusive behavior.
And that's why I feel so betrayed. The author has seen so many people who were obviously hurting and decided "maybe the people who harmed them are not that bad". When you have parents like that, you will never stop hurting. The only closure I have on my relationship with my father is that he was forced to take a psychological evaluation which finally confirmed his mental illness. He died without ever apologizing to me for anything he did to me. I can assure you that my story is not unique.
Frankly I'm extremely upset about that Exemplary tag on your comment. You're probably a good parent, and you deserve to be assuaged of your fears, but that award reads to me like a glowing endorsement on child abuse.
I know I can't talk about this in a calm way, so I would like to say that @Protected's comment is a good reflection of what I would be saying if I didn't have skin in the game.
I understand that this is a super personal topic for you, but this is not a reasonable or fair reaction.
Frankly I'm extremely upset about that Exemplary tag on your comment. You're probably a good parent, and you deserve to be assuaged of your fears, but that award reads to me like a glowing endorsement on child abuse.
I understand that this is a super personal topic for you, but this is not a reasonable or fair reaction.
What exactly is unreasonable about someone sharing their emotions? How is it not fair? Perhaps you should take a step back and re-read the words he put forward; I think your own emotions are...
this is not a reasonable or fair reaction.
What exactly is unreasonable about someone sharing their emotions? How is it not fair? Perhaps you should take a step back and re-read the words he put forward; I think your own emotions are clouding your ability to interpret them.
Oh, please. I categorically reject your argument. Sharing feelings is not inherently noble; it is not inherently reasonable; it is not inherently fair. It can be all of those things, but "that's...
I think your own emotions are clouding your ability to interpret them.
Oh, please.
I categorically reject your argument. Sharing feelings is not inherently noble; it is not inherently reasonable; it is not inherently fair. It can be all of those things, but "that's just how I feel" is not an unimpeachable defense. If someone gives you an exemplary label for this post, it wouldn't be reasonable or fair for me to say "I'm sure you're a nice person but that label makes me feel like it's a glowing endorsement of racism." That is true even if that is genuinely how I feel, because nothing you said even hinted at racism - it'd be my own history and baggage making me feel that way, not you.
Obviously I'm not saying that no feelings are ever valid. Clearly. But I think it's a "reasonable standard" type of thing. If I'm being an asshole and you say "you're making me feel bad," that's clearly valid. But this was clearly not that.
I don't think you're being fair to @Gaywallet or to me. Everything you've written has been a non-sequitur. The statement you quoted wasn't an arguement, it was an interpretation. You're shooting...
I don't think you're being fair to @Gaywallet or to me. Everything you've written has been a non-sequitur. The statement you quoted wasn't an arguement, it was an interpretation. You're shooting off on them rather than the person you appear to be actually upset at - me.
Beyond that I think that a world in which someone is unable to express when they are being made to feel bad is not a world I would like to live in. The person I was upset at is completely anonymous. They are losing nothing by my statements. If they were hurt by my statement, I'm sorry about that but my statement was very clearly not meant as an attack on them. In the meanwhile here you are saying that my world view is completely invalid - It's just "my own history and baggage" - which is something that I find offensive. You might as well tell me I'm living in a fantasy land.
I'm not upset at you, to be clear. I thought (and still think) that parts of your comment were unfair and said so. That's all. I can see how I came across that way. To try to clarify, I didn't...
the person you appear to be actually upset at - me.
I'm not upset at you, to be clear. I thought (and still think) that parts of your comment were unfair and said so. That's all.
In the meanwhile here you are saying that my world view is completely invalid - It's just "my own history and baggage" - which is something that I find offensive. You might as well tell me I'm living in a fantasy land.
I can see how I came across that way. To try to clarify, I didn't mean history and baggage as an inherently negative thing - and certainly not that it doesn't exist. It's more that all of us have certain trigger or iceberg topics, usually rooted in our past, that cause us to react unreasonably strongly. It's not invalid to feel that way. It is unfair to put it onto other people. To wit, I find you to generally be a thoughtful and empathetic commenter. I think that you would probably usually agree, if it weren't such a personally sensitive topic, that neither BeardyHat nor anybody reading his post did anything even remotely in the realm of endorsing child abuse.
I appreciate that. I really wasn't trying to be inflammatory in my comment and made my best attempt to avoid language that would sound like I was accusing anyone of misdeeds.
Exemplary
I appreciate that. I really wasn't trying to be inflammatory in my comment and made my best attempt to avoid language that would sound like I was accusing anyone of misdeeds.
I literally never said any of those things Really not an apples to apples here. Do you think his statement was an attack on the commenter? Did you read the context that he gave? Maybe it'll help...
Sharing feelings is not inherently noble; it is not inherently reasonable; it is not inherently fair.
I literally never said any of those things
"I'm sure you're a nice person but that label makes me feel like it's a glowing endorsement of racism."
Really not an apples to apples here. Do you think his statement was an attack on the commenter? Did you read the context that he gave? Maybe it'll help for me to explain how I interpreted what he said, since you were unwilling to share with me your thoughts or interpretation of his words:
The general context comes from a previous comment where he talked about how upsetting and difficult it was to remove himself from a genuinely toxic situation with his parents
He lamented how this context isn't addressed and how it pains him to see it swept under the rug
He shared how difficult it was, again and even used formatting to try and convey the emotional severity of it all
He stated that the exemplary label made him upset (I suspect because it just makes the sweeping under the rug feel that much more forceful)
He recognized that stating such would imply that he was saying this person was being a bad parent, and spent time and effort to directly address that. He put himself in this parent's shoes and recognized that he would be fearful of a child doing the same, and recognized that this deserved recognition.
He then once again drew attention back to the label, and why the label and not the person nor the argument they were making was what was upsetting to him. He was careful to use the word "reads to me" to center that it was his own emotional experience of the situation
To me it sounded more like he was recognizing his emotional position, offering up vulnerability to help explain exactly why it hurt him so much as a means to try and recenter the conversation on what he felt was missing or not addressed appropriately by the author (the premise of his original reply). While it is not directly stated, my interpretation of the words is that he was sharing how the exemplary comment made him feel, with an explicit recognition that at least some part of the judgement isn't fair or at least the recognition and attempt to split the direct subject in this context (the parent who addressed him) from the broader concept or the indirect subject (a parent). He did all this to try and make sure others understood it wasn't an attack on parents or parenting, but an attack at the explicit cutting out of a narrative which is both important to the conversation and deeply personal.
Sharing how one feels, without blaming or hurting anyone, is perfectly reasonable and fair. It's something people should do more often. In fact, your own reaction here is quite strong and it might...
Sharing how one feels, without blaming or hurting anyone, is perfectly reasonable and fair. It's something people should do more often.
In fact, your own reaction here is quite strong and it might be more constructive if you too shared how you feel about the topic (and perhaps some of the related background that might be triggering those feelings, if possible) rather than try to police other people's feelings.
I don't have a ton of time right now to make a super well thought out comment and I didn't even get a chance to read the article (paywall)... I feel like I didn't exhaust all options with my...
It's always the parents who are failing to do the work of understanding their children and building the relationship. I have never seen an instance of a person of any age not trying their best to make the relationship work.
I don't have a ton of time right now to make a super well thought out comment and I didn't even get a chance to read the article (paywall)...
I feel like I didn't exhaust all options with my parents. They weren't abusuve. It actually cost me next to nothing in my personal life when I estranged them. When my brother found out he was kind of upset about it and while he didn't really support it he understood. My sister I already haven't talked to in years I just still have never talked to. For close to a year it's something I thought about every day thinking, did I do the right thing. It took over a year for my wife to come to terms with it and cut all ties as well.
I bring this up because I feel like an outlier as far as estangements go. I will always feel like I could have done better. I could have kept the relationship going but I felt like every interaction with them involved a giant let down; I just couldn't do it anymore. Also they had effectivley become strangers to me at some point so when I did make the decision to cut them out... it wasn't that hard.
First, I want to say I'm sorry for any offense, it wasn't my intention. I also want to say that if you've chosen to cut family out of your life, that is a valid decision; again, my wife has done...
First, I want to say I'm sorry for any offense, it wasn't my intention. I also want to say that if you've chosen to cut family out of your life, that is a valid decision; again, my wife has done it with one of her brothers and I have given the thought serious consideration with my own parents. In my own case, I have a lot of anger over their political opinions and it is directly affecting my own life and I see that as a valid reason to stop talking to them.
What I was trying to do was clarify. Your original comment read to me like a misread of the original text, so I was attempting to clarify how I read it and that I thought the Author was giving thought and empathy to both sides. Not necessarily validating bad parenting, but more considering the idea that the in the current zeitgeist we see this push to cut toxic people from our lives, but those judgements, while valid, aren't always correct--for a variety of reasons. There are plenty of valid reasons and the subject of the piece, Amy, sounds like a fantastic piece of evidence for the practice.
I'm not saying cutting people out is bad, just that as a parent who's trying to raise two reasonable, adjusted adults, I'm fearful of the traps we can fall into as people with the advent of the social media and its shifting zeitgeist. I make deliberate choices in my parenting because of the way my own parents raised me, choosing the opposite of many of the poor things they did and trying to reinforce the pieces I thought were beneficial. But as humans, as parents, we can't help but make wrong decisions sometimes; sometimes I'm tired, stressed, frustrated and I yell at my kids undeservedly and when I'm more cool headed, I will apologize for my own behavior. But we don't always remember those things as we grow older, that Dad used to apologize when he yelled at us and that's my fear; that the takeaway will be, "Dad used to yell at us for nothing." and then rather than thinking any deeper about it or having empathy towards their parents as humans, they simply decide to cut us out. That is the point I believe the author was trying to get at.
All parents have faults. All of us fail, all of us are weak and stupid and all the other things that come with being human. But we hope that as our kids grow older, they can understand us as humans and forgive us our sins and mistakes. This is the anxiety of being a parent. That is what I think the Author is trying to get at. That constant anxiety of this choice we've made and the choices we continue to make every day that we do it.
It's different when your parent might be sexually abusive, severely emotionally abusive, manipulative, narcissistic, drug addled, alcoholic, whatever. I can understand cutting that type of person from your life.
Thank you very much. I do understand where you are coming from and I’m sorry for not responding to your fears more reasonably. I understand your fears and I empathize with it. The bond between a...
Thank you very much. I do understand where you are coming from and I’m sorry for not responding to your fears more reasonably. I understand your fears and I empathize with it. The bond between a parent and child is so important. I also want to state for the record I have always known you were coming from a good place when you wrote that.
But at the same time I want you to understand that operating out of a place of fear can blind you to what is happening. The people cutting ties with their parents aren’t doing so because their parents are angry sometimes. They are doing it because they are at an impasse and cannot continue forward. You making the wrong decision with your kid is not going to break apart your relationship, but sticking to those wrong decisions regardless of being told countless times that you are hurting your kid because of it will, and that is the thing that is happening in these cases. The simple fact that you fear this happening and are willing to make changes to avoid it happening is a great sign that it won’t happen to you. You’re a good person!
On the other hand I did grow up and I began to understand my father more, and that only cemented the justifications for cutting him out of my life. As I made more adult relationships with parents, more and more of his actions became more concretely obvious that they were inexcusable. His mental illness explained them, but there’s no excuse for the damage done. We begged him to get help but he refused. At the end of the day he was the one responsible for his actions, regardless of the handicap of his disease.
You can absolutely make mistakes as a parent. They are inevitable. The problem arises when you refuse to admit those mistakes.
Oh hey, this is me. All the way up through maybe 20? I was a real asshole to my parents. They are, by all reasonable measures, very lovely people and it was wholely underserved. As I started to...
My own child has anger problems that my wife and I are trying to work through. He can go from 0 to 100 in a matter of seconds for any perceived slight
Oh hey, this is me. All the way up through maybe 20? I was a real asshole to my parents. They are, by all reasonable measures, very lovely people and it was wholely underserved. As I started to take on more responsibilities and mature I chilled way tf out. I actually credit my father with most my levelheadedness and teaching me to process things in healthier ways. Shame it took me so long to hear his lessons. Now I would say I am naturally a very laid back person. And not in like a "I can control my white hot rage now" but in that it's pretty hard to upset me in the first place these days.
Point being, personalities are not fixed in stone! Especially so young. Just be there to provide mental processing support if (and only if) it's sought out. Good luck!
Here's the rub: My mother is one of these unquestionably toxic people. She eats articles like this for breakfast because they validate her worldview that I am the toxic evil child keeping her from...
But the Author fears--and also as a parent, so do I--that their child may cut them out of their lives for some perceived slight or toxicity that may or may not have happened, owing to what the author describes as generally children feeling their relationships with their parents are overall less important than the other way around.
Here's the rub: My mother is one of these unquestionably toxic people. She eats articles like this for breakfast because they validate her worldview that I am the toxic evil child keeping her from her grandkid and not a dad keeping a monster from shaking his baby.
My only regret about cutting my parents off 8 years ago is that I didn't do it 20.
I can personally vouch for that. I was friendly with this guy for a while who I used to play RPGs with, and he was this very stereotypical neckbeard type. His whole life revolved around games, he...
maybe some estrangements are unjustified
I can personally vouch for that.
I was friendly with this guy for a while who I used to play RPGs with, and he was this very stereotypical neckbeard type. His whole life revolved around games, he worked a dead end job, and he always had this attitude that the entire world was out to get him. Later on, it became very apparent that he was extremely self centered, and thought nothing of assuming that everyone around him were simply resources he could call on for favors whenever he felt like without ever returning the favor. (The main reason I no longer talk to him.)
For a long time, I had known that he had cut off his parents. He never talked to them, and he always gave the impression that they were terrible people. I always assumed they were abusive, or religious zealots, or extremely negative or something.
One day we started talking about it and he delved a little further into it. The core of his issue was that he thought his father was an asshole because he didn't make enough effort to get into his hobbies. His dad would sometimes played games with him growing up, but over time he stopped, and never expressed interest in his chrono trigger speed runs or whatever. He said that every time he talked to his dad about it, his dad would be interested for a little bit, but then after a while he said it was clear he wasn't actually interested.
I honestly had to stifle laughter, because this was obviously very important to him. He talked about it a few more times after that, and from what I gathered, that really was his main issue with his father, and the reason he went no contact with his family. His dad didn't hang out in their basement playing JPRGs with him enough. Obviously I don't have the full picture, but I did ask more probing questions to truly understand if that was actually the real reason and as far as I could tell, it was.
It was the most insane thing I've ever heard. I grew up fairly nerdy as well. My dad never expressed interest in quake 2 LAN parties, or modding PC cases, or hanging out in IRC either. He was nerdy in a different way, he was obsessed with baseball stats, fish tanks and photography, stuff I never really cared about, but that was fine. I'd show him some of that stuff, and he'd go "that's great!", and every so often do the classic dad "are ya winning son?". Hed show me a camera lens or a new fish tank thing, and I'd go "cool!". I still did, and do still love him and have a great relationship with him. We have other things we have in common and bond over that.
It was really shocking to me to cut your family off over something so trivial, and before I met this guy, I always assumed that people that cut their families off had very valid reasons to do it, usually involving horrific abuse or neglect.
Sometimes that's just not the case though. I felt really bad for this guy's dad after he told me that, and it unlocked a strange new fear of fatherhood for me that I didn't have before.
I’m not going to try to invalidate the way you see things. I don’t know this person and there are all kinds of people out in the world. Maybe there are some kids who are just unreasonably...
I’m not going to try to invalidate the way you see things. I don’t know this person and there are all kinds of people out in the world. Maybe there are some kids who are just unreasonably difficult to deal with.
But what I will say is that it’s almost impossible to explain emotional abuse to other people. I could tell people about when my father would suffocate me when I was panicking or upset and people will understand, but the stuff that hurt me the most is his inability and unwillingness to understand my feelings and recognize me as an autonomous person. The only people who seem to understand me when I talk about it are people who have also gone through similar experiences. My uncle didn’t really fully understand what I was going through until he read an autobiography from someone who had the time to express their whole life up to that point. That isn’t really something that can be expressed in casual conversation. I couldn’t even begin to guess if that was what was happening with this acquaintance of yours but I think it is worth acknowledging that it is a possibility.
There is a lot I could say about what could have or should have happened but I wouldn’t want to make that be the reason you don’t allow yourself to become a father. I can’t say firsthand, but as a teacher I can see how being a father is an amazingly fulfilling experience. It’s also a massive responsibility and your heart will certainly be broken by your kids. But some things are worth breaking over.
Well, I did consider a lot of that. I considered whether "not playing games with me" was shorthand for "neglect" or "not respecting me as a person" or so on. I asked a lot for questions because I...
Well, I did consider a lot of that. I considered whether "not playing games with me" was shorthand for "neglect" or "not respecting me as a person" or so on. I asked a lot for questions because I was trying to understand. By everything I can figure, that wasn't the case. His dad just wasn't into video games, he was into sports. He tried connecting with his son in other ways, but this guy really only had video games as his one and only interest.
I kind of saw this first hand with him another time, the one time he had a romantic relationship blooming. He ended up breaking up with her, and the one and only reason he cited was that she didn't want to play Mario kart with him. It was sort of a trend.
He just had this strange conception of parenthood, where parents just sort of exist to only support their kids interests and ambitions, and because of that, in his view, his father should have cultivated his own interest in video games in order to connect with his son.
I don't agree with that view at all, and view parents as their own people with their own priorities. Their kids should be very high on that list, but they shouldn't be the only thing on them.
Like you said, I always left the option that he just wasn't expressing how he felt about his dad to me very effectively on the table, but I was aware of that possibility at the time too, and spent a lot of time really trying to understand. That's still the impression I came away with though.
I have a child who has difficulties regulating emotions. He has the same challenges my sister had. During her teenage years, my sister would get so angry with our father. I was convinced it was to...
I have a child who has difficulties regulating emotions. He has the same challenges my sister had. During her teenage years, my sister would get so angry with our father. I was convinced it was to the point where the relationship was irreparably damaged. Usually, my sister was right to get upset, but would get overly upset. But the thing with emotional regulation is, it's harder to calm down, but once you are calm, you are back to your regulated self. And as you get older, you usually learn to regulate better. I hope that during the calm periods, you can see the love your child has for you. Because in my limited experience, it takes far more than emotional regulation issues to destroy that love.
It suggests that emotional abuse, toxic behavior or differences in world view are not acceptable reasons for estrangement, which I fundamentally disagree with. If the children are lonely and they...
And it's easy to say, "Well don't be shitty." but the Author addresses that in the piece, suggesting that maybe some estrangements are unjustified, not that all of them are, but, just look around you at the current zeitgeist around "Toxicity" and "Cutting people out of your life who are Toxic".
It suggests that emotional abuse, toxic behavior or differences in world view are not acceptable reasons for estrangement, which I fundamentally disagree with.
We see these studies that suggest Gen-Z is the loneliest generation, but all the media they see says to them that rather than work with "Toxic" people, you just cut them out of your life.
If the children are lonely and they are still willing to cut out their parent that even more suggest that the parents are awful, also they do try to work with them, the parents are unwilling to apologize and change.
I'm not saying that's a bad thing, but what I am saying--and what the author is trying to get at--is this modern incarnation of "Therapy Speak" can itself be Toxic and perhaps part of the reason a generation might be labeled as "lonely".
Being lonely is better than being mistreated.
Rather than work and understand people with different viewpoints or opinions, they're labeled Toxic and cut out of the picture.
The children do not just cut off their parents, they try to get their parents to understand and change their behaviour, but the parents are unwilling to do that and only after that they are cut off
It's not that the Author is saying Estrangement is bad or good, simply that it can be a muddled thing in this day and age. Look at the people the author cites as having questions as to if this is the right choice for them or not.
But it isnt a muddled thing, cutting off your parents is an incredibly hard thing to do, if someone cuts of their parents, it almost always was because the parents behaved badly.
I'm not saying you're wrong to cut your Father out, but I do think you've misinterpreted what the Author is trying to get at here. I've had my own struggles with my family as well; we're diametrically opposed as far as political beliefs have gone and I have cut my Mom out for short periods of time when I can't take her bullshit. My wife cut her brother out for years and is now very low contact with him due to his abuse of her as kids and teens, so I get it.
Actually what you and the author are implying is just because the abuser feels bad that the victim is obligated to give the victim a second chance, which is just incredibly wrong.
But the Author fears--and also as a parent, so do I--that their child may cut them out of their lives for some perceived slight or toxicity that may or may not have happened, owing to what the author describes as generally children feeling their relationships with their parents are overall less important than the other way around.
My own child has anger problems that my wife and I are trying to work through. He can go from 0 to 100 in a matter of seconds for any perceived slight--he's also 6--and I could absolutely see that anger taking over him as he grows older and perceiving us to have slighted him in some way and cutting us out of his life, which would absolutely gut me. He's a great kid, but his anger and irritability sometimes has us walking on eggshells around him and we're struggling to teach him to get it under control.
Fears dont excuse unreasonable demands, especially if the fear is of something fictional.
Good parents dont become suddenly estranged to their children because of something the children read on the internet.
What is happening is that children are recognizing abusive behaviour of their parents and are asking them to apologize and change their behaviour, then if after multiple attempts the parents are unwilling to change, they go low or no contact. Those parents then are unable or unwilling to accept any responsibility for the estrangement and complain that the children suddenly cut contact with them.
It is very hard for a child to cut of their parent, because:
the parents are often a large part of their support network
often they then also have to cut off other parts of their family
they love their parent
so I dont think parents have to worry too much about being cut off.
There are realistic reasons why a child might become estranged to a good parent:
an toxic partner often tries to isolate their victim to make it harder for them to escape
a cult for the same reason
if the child and parents rarely meet or call each other, people need regular contact to maintain relationships
So if you want to be worried about estrangement, worry about that.
And often this isn't a second chance it's a tenth chance, a fifty-ninth chance, etc. We have stats on how hard it is to leave an abusive romantic relationship, it shouldn't be a shock to see the...
Actually what you and the author are implying is just because the abuser feels bad that the victim is obligated to give the victim a second chance, which is just incredibly wrong.
And often this isn't a second chance it's a tenth chance, a fifty-ninth chance, etc. We have stats on how hard it is to leave an abusive romantic relationship, it shouldn't be a shock to see the same if not more difficulty in leaving a familial one.
Also that's why all this rhetoric is getting to me. It's very "well was it really abuse?" And "what did you do to make him abuse you?" Combined with denying the agency of an adult child with their family compared to the same person in a romantic relationship.
This is such a loaded standard, and while I hope you're being hyperbolic I suspect you're not. The swath of people one includes with stances like this almost always overlapping with some group...
These people are not worthy of being sympathized with;
This is such a loaded standard, and while I hope you're being hyperbolic I suspect you're not. The swath of people one includes with stances like this almost always overlapping with some group they'd go to the barricades for in another topic.
In your specific example "these people" appears to be
that is that estranged parents and family members are usually mentally and/or emotionally abusive, and/or they are psychotic or have other mental disorders
So by your logic, what, poor people are less likely to be deserving of sympathy? There's reams of research and just common sense that families in struggling situations are vastly more likely to be abusive, be it emotionally, mentally, or physically.
And the fact you're just willing to throw people with mental disorders in there is a whole other problem.
Yes, they need to get help. No that does not excuse their actions. Yes they (mostly) need to to it themselves, but saying they "are not worthy of being sympathized with", from their child no less, is such a giant mess. You can very much need to cut ties with someone and still feel sympathetic to the situation that destroyed the person they were.
Your response honestly terrifies me. Let me ask you a question. If a man beats his wife regularly, but he does it because he is under extreme stress, does that excuse his actions? Is he worthy of...
Your response honestly terrifies me.
Let me ask you a question. If a man beats his wife regularly, but he does it because he is under extreme stress, does that excuse his actions? Is he worthy of sympathy or has he done something that he should be forgiven for?
I ask you this because beating an adult, while absolutely terrible, is arguably a less damaging thing than the emotional abuse of a child. Children are fragile and there is a whole swath of research how adverse childhood experiences - or ACEs - affect a person for their entire lifespans.
You can feel bad about people having mental disorders or being in bad and stressful situations. But those are very different things from accepting child abuse. Doing the former might help those people out, but doing the latter helps doom the child to a lifetime of misery. I really cannot do enough to express how evil this is.
I've worked with abusers and I would argue that in general abusers are worth empathy because all people are. That doesn't excuse their actions nor ignore the harm done. Nor does it mean that their...
I've worked with abusers and I would argue that in general abusers are worth empathy because all people are. That doesn't excuse their actions nor ignore the harm done. Nor does it mean that their victims are obligated to care about the "backstory" so to speak. But that also doesn't make the response above the right one either.
Fwiw people with mental illness are more likely to be victims than to be perpetrators of violence, but any illness or disorder also doesn't excuse their actions, with the very, very rare exceptions of when someone is fully disconnected from reality and unable to be aware of the impact of their actions (like when someone is found "not guilty by reason of insanity" level); but even that doesn't negate the harm done.
Please be sure you're taking care of yourself here as I know this topic is hitting close to home. ( ◜‿◝ )♡
Thank you! I appreciate your understanding. The past few years have been about me building self-love and trust me when I say that me being here is an exercise in that.
Thank you! I appreciate your understanding. The past few years have been about me building self-love and trust me when I say that me being here is an exercise in that.
This is not their logic at all and is an absolute non-sequitor. You could have criticized or responded to their statement without this weird "so you hate the poor" rhetoric. This is really...
So by your logic, what, poor people are less likely to be deserving of sympathy? There's reams of research and just common sense that families in struggling situations are vastly more likely to be abusive, be it emotionally, mentally, or physically.
This is not their logic at all and is an absolute non-sequitor. You could have criticized or responded to their statement without this weird "so you hate the poor" rhetoric. This is really accusatory and not in the nature of encouraging either empathy or sympathy that you yourself mention below
Yes, they need to get help. No that does not excuse their actions. Yes they (mostly) need to to it themselves, but saying they "are not worthy of being sympathized with", from their child no less, is such a giant mess. You can very much need to cut ties with someone and still feel sympathetic to the situation that destroyed the person they were.
You can, you also may not sympathize with your abuser. Cutting someone off often involves needing to cut those emotional ties - or happens as a result of the cumulative harm being so great that you no longer do feel any sympathy. You may feel safer feeling nothing at all about them. That's a therapeutic journey and it's going to be incredibly relevant to what type and intensity of abuse happened.
OP's journey there won't change from being chastised on the internet. And since their post was really written from the perspective of someone obviously dealing with and sharing their own experiences, I really wish everyone had chosen to reply with that lens in mind.
I‘ve forgotten my father exists for about 20 years, unless someone asks me about him or he finds my new address and sends me packages. I hope he got help and I hope he’s happy, but there’s no way...
You may feel safer feeling nothing at all about them. That's a therapeutic journey and it's going to be incredibly relevant to what type and intensity of abuse happened.
I‘ve forgotten my father exists for about 20 years, unless someone asks me about him or he finds my new address and sends me packages.
I hope he got help and I hope he’s happy, but there’s no way I’ll ever take the risk to find out. I also can’t remember him without a strong physical stress responses, so it’s not that I feel safer, it’s that I don’t physically feel panic.
That's very fair and another good way to put it. I was definitely intending to be inclusive of more than physical safety - not having a panic attack is definitely a more safety/stable/healthy...
That's very fair and another good way to put it. I was definitely intending to be inclusive of more than physical safety - not having a panic attack is definitely a more safety/stable/healthy space to be in.
I just finished the article and I came away with that same betrayed feeling. I didn't expect to end up angry at the author based on how the first 2/3 of the article was written.
I just finished the article and I came away with that same betrayed feeling. I didn't expect to end up angry at the author based on how the first 2/3 of the article was written.
Paywall removed (I had to use option 4): https://www.removepaywall.com/search?url=https://www.newyorker.com/culture/annals-of-inquiry/why-so-many-people-are-going-no-contact-with-their-parents
I've seen first hand, my friends falling out with family members, and going no contact. It requires both sides to be convinced they are right, and refuse to bend, and refuse to empathize, and...
I've seen first hand, my friends falling out with family members, and going no contact.
It requires both sides to be convinced they are right, and refuse to bend, and refuse to empathize, and refuse to make amends.
In my limited experience, neither side is right. But generally I blame the parents. As a parent, you have a choice. You bend where you need to, or you lose access to your children, and your grandchildren. The children have usually suffered from an unbending parent all their life, with an incredible power imbalance, and the only power the child has is to set boundaries and then enforce them. Often times, children who become adults will over-react.
My great grandmother refused to see her daughter. Because she was in a religious cult. Who excommunicated my grandparents. She saw me once, to hand me pamphlets, because the cult was dying, and the leadership wanted to reach out to grandchildren of those excommunicated.
The situation with politics in America is cult like. But there is a difference between labeling cult like behavior as toxic, and labelling everything as toxic. I know one young lady, who always seemed nice enough, but was cut off first by her family, then by her extended family, then by her friends. She described them all as toxic. The word choice doesn't matter. What matters is if you over-use a label, if you apply a label to everyone and everything, it probably says more about you than about everyone else.
This is important to me. Because this is what cults do. They label everyone else and everything else. But it's the cultish behavior itself which is toxic.
Nope. A functional relationship requires that both sides are willing to respect each other's boundries. If one side (my parents in this case) refuses to respect those boundries, then they only...
It requires both sides to be convinced they are right, and refuse to bend, and refuse to empathize, and refuse to make amends.
Nope. A functional relationship requires that both sides are willing to respect each other's boundries. If one side (my parents in this case) refuses to respect those boundries, then they only have themselves to blame.
Both sides might be convinced they are right, but more often than not, one side is objectively correct and the other is in denial.
In a way that label is correct though, eh? An oxygen rich, lush green environment full of vibrancy is toxic to an anaerobic orgasm. Sunlight is death sentence for beautiful but exposed mycelium....
In a way that label is correct though, eh? An oxygen rich, lush green environment full of vibrancy is toxic to an anaerobic orgasm. Sunlight is death sentence for beautiful but exposed mycelium.
Maybe for a truly unwell person, every single person I toxic to them because they need some very different conditions to heal and thrive
I understand why the author feels empathy for the parents and feels swayed towards the push to reconcile - they are imagining experiencing this as themself, a person who assumes they're not an...
I understand why the author feels empathy for the parents and feels swayed towards the push to reconcile - they are imagining experiencing this as themself, a person who assumes they're not an abusive person who ignores boundaries. Unfortunately abusive people also often assume they're not abusive while also believing that they are in fact the victims of other people setting boundaries. And they can be very persuasive, to the extent that specialized counseling can be required lest the abuser co-opt the counselor into the abuse.
Key in the article is that counseling works towards reconciliation if a) the adult child is willing to attend and b) the parent is willing to abide by boundaries and let their child really talk. As many have shared, to get to the point of "no contact" involves a lot of attempts to make things work on the adult child's part. And many toxic/abusive parents will not actually respect boundaries when they're challenged in front of a therapist.
Empathy is good but it can also lead you to defend people who are willing to take advantage of you. Or whose own perspective is so skewed that they believe their own lies. I'm empathetic to the author, but I think they fell for the bullshit.
For folks who haven't experienced this sort of dynamic there's a video creator called Shawna the Mom who makes skits about an extend family: Shawna, John, their two kids and her toxic mother-in-law Barb featuring most heavily. For a one woman show with props and wigs, it's really evocative in its exploration of these family dynamics. A few examples of Barb's behavior are refusing to respect her granddaughters' names, stalking her son who has gone no contact, and destroying her son in law's mother's Thanksgiving casserole as a "joke" and laughing at her for it. There's a lot of videos and a long history in the narrative.
In the most recent video, John's sister is trying to navigate keeping a relationship with her mom and her brother but Barb uses a perceived slight (which was actually her violating boundaries) to emotionally abuse her daughter.
Some folks may find this series triggering, some cathartic. Barb is currently trying to go to a therapist but is not currently doing "better". John and Shawna struggled with going NC and it took a lot for them to decide to act. There are a bunch of side characters and such. But I think it's helpful for people to see how someone can present so sad and sweet and missing her family while absolutely being the reason they were driven away.
I kinda want to add my 2 cents on this article because I feel like my story is worth sharing. I'm 33. I went no contact with my father when I was 21. I have a brother and a sister. Everyone,...
I kinda want to add my 2 cents on this article because I feel like my story is worth sharing.
I'm 33. I went no contact with my father when I was 21. I have a brother and a sister. Everyone, including my mother, doesn't speak to him anymore. My sister stopped two years after me when my father slapped her in front of her own children. My brother stopped the following year when he stole my brother's paycheck because he "owed him money".
I realized my father was abusive/mentally ill when I was nine. It didn't get better and I fully understood him, following years of reading psychology, when I was 15. It took 6 more years before I pulled the plug and my whole family followed after me.
It still pains me that my father is absolutely incapable of self-reflection and my decision to stop talking to him forever is the right one. However, I understand now, after years of being angry, that my father is hurt too. He tried to come back a few times in what I may call absolutely pathetic attempts, but I know he's hurt.
He's deeply religious and probably prays everyday that God may heal my heart or something, but I'll happily live my life knowing there is no hope he will ever make a change and self-reflect.
Still, I understand where he's coming from. I know he has himself lived through abuse from his parents, he is not well. He has never learned how to behave properly. That doesn't change the fact that I'll never speak to him again, but I get where the Author is coming from. Some parents are just unequipped to deal with their children going no contact. Those parents are the abusers, but it's still painful to them. They just don't know what to do.
It's okay for the child to cut them off, it's also okay for the parent to be hurt. It's also normal to feel empathy towards the parent. All situations can be true, because I live in that situation.
We should acknowledge that all sides have some part of wrong, but it is totally on the parent to apologize and right those wrongs. The power imbalance from childhood should evolve into a respectful relationship between adults. Some parents never want to acknowledge that and so they shall live in the hurt forever.
It is good that you realized the problem with your father when you were young. My parents were divorced when I was younger than that and living with my mentally ill father left me emotionally...
It is good that you realized the problem with your father when you were young. My parents were divorced when I was younger than that and living with my mentally ill father left me emotionally underdeveloped, so it took me until I was in my mid teens to figure it out. The reason why I lost faith in God was because of my unanswered prayers to help him.
I wanted to say publicly that I agreed with you but also to explain that empathizing with their pain is a very different thing from sympathizing with their situation and the reason why they are in it. The stories they will tell about it are going to be very different than the stories you will hear about them from their children.
The retrospection I have done from reading this story has been very good for me because it made me realize how great the rest of my family has been. My uncle outright apologized to me for not realizing what I had been going through. While my paternal grandmother had never put it in words, she overwhelmingly showed it with her actions. She welcomed me into her home with open arms and helped me with the growth I couldn’t do in that environment I had been in.
I do still believe that some of these relationships can be mended in a healthy manner. I have to have hope in humanity. But I also have to be realistic. The chances of the relationship being re-established is already slim, and the chances that the relationship they build will be healthy are even less likely.
Could someone tell me if I'm understanding this comment section right: There are child going no-contact with their familly, claiming the familly is abusive or toxic. (Situtaion A) some of those...
Could someone tell me if I'm understanding this comment section right:
There are child going no-contact with their familly, claiming the familly is abusive or toxic.
(Situtaion A) some of those families are trully abusive or toxic.
(Situation B) Some of the families are actually fine and the child is going no-contact for no fault on the families' part.
(Situation C) most of us, something in between.
People hating on the article's message think that situation A is bad enough that we shouldn't take into account consideration for situation B and C. "we should pretend parents are always in the wrong, because they have most of the power"
Toxic people can abuse a reluctance to call someone toxic!
People defending the article's message think that situation B should be considered even if it could make situation A worse. "society needs to stop pushing the idea that no-contact is the be all end all solution when the relationship gets tough"
Toxic people can abuse calling other people toxic too easely!
(Really, both are talking about situation C, but at the limit of where it melts into A and B)
I would welcome any constructive feedback about my interpretation.
I understand the conversation more or less like you described. I'd like to add the following though. Situation A and B aren't symmetrical or equally likely. A is a lot more likely than B. This is...
I understand the conversation more or less like you described.
I'd like to add the following though. Situation A and B aren't symmetrical or equally likely. A is a lot more likely than B. This is because parenting is a major influence in child development.
We all suffer some degree of mistreatment/neglect from our parents and while it isn't our own fault that this happens, it's our responsibility to take the necessary steps to heal and become responsible adults. In a toxic family dynamic there are people who did not appropriately take those steps (usually one or both parents, unless the child is born with an inherently, biologically difficult personality) and as a result they end up hurting their kid more than necessary, and on top of that they then expect the kid to be able to take the responsibility they themselves fail to take lest they become an estranged family.
This would be unfair even if it was a dynamic between people who are all the same age, but when it happens between a defenceless child and the adults who the child depends on, it's categorically unfair and extremely hard for the child. For the child it already takes a lot of extra emotional labour and growth to get to the point where they can accurately see the parents' toxic patterning, are able to come to terms with it and learn how to practically deal with it. This is already more than any child should have to go through and to expect them to do even more, once they've managed to do what it takes to protect themself, is not acceptable.
This is why an article that first seems compassionate towards the kids in situation A, and then suddenly turns around and pulls the rug from under their feet, is actively harmful. It replicates the unfair dynamic and most likely empowers toxic parents to continue on the path of not doing the work.
(I haven't read the article so my impression on it is based on the descriptions here.)
To anyone here who reads this and is a parent: you are not a perfect parent and that's okay! Where things can get iffy is if you can't accept and live with this fact. Making mistakes is okay as long as you admit to them, apologise and try to make amends.
Is it? My intuition says the opposite... Not trying to be glib, it really seems to me like out of 6 estranged familly situation around me, 5 of them were mostly B. Anyone could easely find enough...
A is a lot more likely than B.
Is it? My intuition says the opposite...
Not trying to be glib, it really seems to me like out of 6 estranged familly situation around me, 5 of them were mostly B.
Anyone could easely find enough ammo against their parents to paint them as abuser.
You said yourself:
We all suffer some degree of mistreatment/neglect from our parents
For the child it already takes a lot of extra emotional labour and growth to get to the point where they can accurately see the parents' toxic patterning
Let's not forget the child we are talking about is usually a full grown adult by the time they go no-contact. As you mature, it seems reasonable not to expect your parents to do all the emotional labour.
But whichever A or B is likeliest, can we agree C dwarfs them both. Shouldn't we optimize for C?
To anyone here who reads this and is a parent: you are not a perfect parent and that's okay! Where things can get iffy is if you can't accept and live with this fact. Making mistakes is okay as long as you admit to them, apologise and try to make amends.
May I, without ill intent I promise, modify this:
To anyone here who reads this and has a parent or kids: your relatives are not perfect and that's okay! Neither are you! Where things can get iffy is if you can't accept and live with this fact. Making mistakes is okay as long as everyone admits to them, apologises and tries to make amends.
Your last edit, clearly, painfully demonstrates you still don't understand parental abuse at all. It's like telling someone with ED, sometimes we want to eat, sometimes we don't, and sometimes we...
Your last edit, clearly, painfully demonstrates you still don't understand parental abuse at all.
It's like telling someone with ED, sometimes we want to eat, sometimes we don't, and sometimes we spit out food that's already in our mouths and that's okay, we all do this!
You are a migrant worker whose employer secretly garnished your wages for years, is withholding your passport illegally, threatens you with deportation daily, and you pay him rent to live in a rat infested hovel, but you sit in the shade an extra minute every day at lunch too!
You're not considering the magnitude of the sum of vectors.
Let's not forget the child we are talking about is usually a full grown adult
Think about this from the perspective of "number of years this adult has lived, free from abuse". It's a double digit number compared to 0.
I don't think it's about understanding parental abuse or not, but about where you want to place the tradeoff for society regarding each situation. My edit isn't adressed to abused kids. It's...
I don't think it's about understanding parental abuse or not, but about where you want to place the tradeoff for society regarding each situation. My edit isn't adressed to abused kids. It's adressed at everyone including regular not abused kids to who it seems half of the internet is shouting at them they every frustration is abuse and yhey should go no contact.
Blanquet supporting thoses who identify as people with abusive parent will inevitably end up helping those that really do have abusive parents, but will also vindicate kids not abused but looking for an excuse. I'm not claiming abused kids don't exist. I'm claiming going no-contact when things don't always go your way is also a form of abuse toward the parents.
You aren't siding with the abused kids against the abuser parents here... You really are siding with the abused kids AND the abuser kids against the abuser parent AND abused parent.
I not saying no-contact is never justified, but it should be very carefully considered as a last resort. It sometime seems like society is culturally pushing for it to be the first thing to try, which is what i object to.
Please explain how it is abusive to end a relationship? This is not what they're doing. Half the internet is not shouting "no contact" btw these are fairly niche spaces.
I'm claiming going no-contact when things don't always go your way is also a form of abuse toward the parents.
Please explain how it is abusive to end a relationship?
You aren't siding with the abused kids against the abuser parents here... You really are siding with the abused kids AND the abuser kids against the abuser parent AND abused parent.
This is not what they're doing.
Half the internet is not shouting "no contact" btw these are fairly niche spaces.
Going no-contact can be a form of emotional blackmail, it really hurts when someone you love (and for whom you invested into the relationship) pushes you away. You trully didn't realise that? You...
I'm claiming going no-contact when things don't always go your way is also a form of abuse toward the parents.
Please explain how it is abusive to end a relationship?
Going no-contact can be a form of emotional blackmail, it really hurts when someone you love (and for whom you invested into the relationship) pushes you away.
You trully didn't realise that?
You don't think it could damage you if someone close to you unilateraly decided to cut your relationship off? (Don't imagine it with you having done sonething awefull, imagine it's because of something trivial)
You aren't siding with the abused kids against the abuser parents here... You really are siding with the abused kids AND the abuser kids against the abuser parent AND abused parent.
This is not what they're doing.
How not? You cann't choose who reads your post. If your refuse to recognise that kids aren't necessarily always the victims, you unwittingly serve the abusive kids.
Half the internet is not shouting "no contact" btw these are fairly niche spaces.
Fairly niche space which are disproportionately read by people in a crisis with their familly, and could benefit from hearing a more nuance take than "parents are obviously always the abuser".
Blackmail inherently requires some contact and it would indeed be an abusive tactic. I asked you to explain what you meant. However the solution to someone engaging in that would not "try to...
Going no-contact can be a form of emotional blackmail
Blackmail inherently requires some contact and it would indeed be an abusive tactic. I asked you to explain what you meant. However the solution to someone engaging in that would not "try to reestablish the relationship at all costs." But inherently going no contact is not abuse. No one is owed a relationship with anyone else. If I cut someone off, even for an abusive reason or maybe it's a dumb reason, they're not entitled to that relationship.
How not? You cann't choose who reads your post. If your refuse to recognise that kids aren't necessarily always the victims, you unwittingly serve the abusive kids.
Someone misreading your intent does not mean that you're supporting that misread. They're not "siding" with others.
Fairly niche space which are disproportionately read by people in a crisis with their familly, and could benefit from hearing a more nuance take than "parents are obviously always the abuser".
And there are many more professionals and locations with positive advice.
I think the world would be better if there was stronger social stigma against that. Entitled is a bit strong, but yes, you deserve some kind of relationship with your kid when you've raised him...
If I cut someone off, even for an abusive reason or maybe it's a dumb reason, they're not entitled to that relationship.
I think the world would be better if there was stronger social stigma against that.
Entitled is a bit strong, but yes, you deserve some kind of relationship with your kid when you've raised him for 18 years.
Someone misreading your intent does not mean that you're supporting that misread. They're not "siding" with others.
If people mistakenly think what you writte applies to them, and make poor life choice because of it, then you are kinda responsible for not thinking harder about who might read you. (Exemple, I know some valid reasons to avoid some vacine in certain circumstance, but I'd never mention them online)
If only intent matters, life would be much easier.
There's an incredibly strong stigma against it now. I'm happy the world is more supportive of adults setting their own boundaries and not suffering for the sake of filial/parental piety. Ideally...
I think the world would be better if there was stronger social stigma against that.
There's an incredibly strong stigma against it now. I'm happy the world is more supportive of adults setting their own boundaries and not suffering for the sake of filial/parental piety. Ideally things that can be worked out always would be, but the article talks about what that requires and it's often not something either party is willing to do.
Entitled is a bit strong, but yes, you deserve some kind of relationship with your kid when you've raised him for 18 years.
That's describing "entitled". We don't "deserve" relationships. And from the outside you certainly don't know if the relationship was abusive or not.
If people mistakenly think what you writte applies to them, and make poor life choice because of it, then you are kinda responsible for not thinking harder about who might read you. (Exemple, I know some valid reasons to avoid some vaccin in certain circumstance, but I'd never mention them online)
If only intent matters, life would be much easier.
This is a different argument than telling someone who they're siding with. But as you said "mistaken". People should communicate responsibly, and can always clarify, but what you suggest would make it impossible to post anything.
For example I'm absolutely fine talking about valid medical reasons not to vaccinate, but also the harms of not vaccinating more broadly and also directing folks to legitimate medical professionals. None of that means I'm responsible if someone reads half a line and decides I said vaxxing kills or something.
That assumes parents "raise" kids for 18 years. My mother left me, as in moved to different cities or states, with my abusive father multiple times between 3ish and 15ish. He was abusive to her...
That assumes parents "raise" kids for 18 years. My mother left me, as in moved to different cities or states, with my abusive father multiple times between 3ish and 15ish. He was abusive to her too, but she definitely left me with him all those times for me. Should I forget that and pretend she “raised” me for 18 years even if she was never around? Is she entitled to a relationship?
Parents don’t deserve shit, they earn it.
PS: Yes, I’m a parent. No, I’m not worried. I’m not a selfish prick or abusive.
C is the base societal assumption. These are more extreme situations. People don't tend to cut off contact for minor things and most societal messaging doesn't encourage that. Whether the...
But whichever A or B is likeliest, can we agree C dwarfs them both. Shouldn't we optimize for C?
C is the base societal assumption. These are more extreme situations. People don't tend to cut off contact for minor things and most societal messaging doesn't encourage that.
Whether the situation is A or B - whether one partner or another is abusive in a romantic relationship - it's acceptable to set boundaries and end relationships right? You can try to fix them and there are resources and therapy to that but you can also get a divorce, go no contact, or never talk to your former friend again.
So when I have one person who says "I cannot have contact with this person so I have cut boundaries." And the other who says "I don't know why they did that, I just want to love them", divorced of the societal assumptions about parent/child relationships we can recognize the dynamic as boundary setting and someone pushing, even if maybe through otherwise innocent grief, through someone's boundaries. I don't normally see victims of abuse pushing the abuser's boundaries to get them back (you do see them trying to get the abuser back) because abusers generally welcome the opportunity to resume the abuse.
But regardless the solution to all this in individual therapy is helping the person grieving to come to terms with that loss and helping the person with boundaries understand if those boundaries are helping or hurting them and whether they're content with them. (Family/reunification therapy can only really be effective if that individual work has occurred and it's beneficial for both parties.) But you'll note that this would be the same angle if the boundary violator/pusher is abusive vs the victim of an unreasonable toxic child. And family therapy is less effective when there are active abusers.
So, the outcome isn't really going to be that different. Obviously all of this ignores the power imbalance between parent and child, and how hard it is to go no-contact for most people. But even outside of that dynamic in most other situations society has stopped expecting people to have a relationship with anyone in particular should they choose not to. It's only because society expects adult children to maintain that relationship and assumes that parents are all capable of loving their children without being abusive that this is any different. In fact working through that betrayal is usually what it takes for an adult child to be able to cut off contact.
This isn't a runaway kid, these are often adults with families taking this step to protect their families from the abuse, because while they would tolerate being the victim up to a point seeing their new family, who they have perhaps stronger ties obligations to, experience the abuse is the last straw.
Of course anyone should be able to unilaterally end a relationship, but it is completelly healthy to have very strong cultural incentive against it. Most relationship are very hard, and in our...
Of course anyone should be able to unilaterally end a relationship, but it is completelly healthy to have very strong cultural incentive against it.
Most relationship are very hard, and in our quest to support victims, we forget to teach people to bear through some hardship.
My wife once threw one of my potery during a stressfull phase of our life (and many other things, won't go into details). I still maintained contact enough to allow for the opportunity to build back trust, and I'm glad I did, even if I did it mostly out of obligation at the time.
Maybe I'm the problem, but I would have NO lasting relationship if I had bought into the myth that "relationship are supposed to be easy". No! Relationship are super hard, not as hard as abuse victim have to go through, sure, but still hard, and it doesn't help us to pretend it's always easy. It gives unrealistic expectation.
I never said relationships "should be easy", and I refute the narrative that people in these situations aren't working through their problems. That is in fact often very common, repetitive and...
I never said relationships "should be easy", and I refute the narrative that people in these situations aren't working through their problems. That is in fact often very common, repetitive and harmful advice to someone who has made a very tough decision to end a relationship and is still grieving that. It's right up there with "but have you tried not being depressed" and "have you tried exercising more" for well-intentioned advice that's such a meme it's actively harmful to people. That's because it minimizes the other person's experiences down to something trivial - and when we're talking about abuse it's harmful IMO to redirect focus onto non-abusive situations. It's invalidating as hell.
You seem to be thinking that NC typically happens after a singular incident. That's not the common narrative at all. Most folks have made long term attempts to appease their abusers, to try to make it work, even if only because they were kids at the time and had little choice.
You made a choice that worked for you. And if someone repeatedly destroyed your belongings, threw them near or at you, and then told you it was your fault, you might have made a different choice.
Honestly I read the article and I didn't read it as flipping sides so the intensity of the comments have been surprising. The second half felt like it was more about the support groups and therapy...
Honestly I read the article and I didn't read it as flipping sides so the intensity of the comments have been surprising. The second half felt like it was more about the support groups and therapy which has sprung out of these situations than it was about trying to take the parent's side, especially considering that there were no examples where both sides spoke to the writer. It came across as a thought piece, not as something with an agenda. My biggest take aways were: 1) This is becoming more common or more spoken about, 2) There is less tolerance for people negatively impacting someone's life, and there is not an expectation to just tolerate family like there was in the past, 3) There are a variety of reasons and ways contact can be cut off, including multiple breaks and restarts, 4) The nature of parent child relationships add complexity to how no contact is felt by both sides, 5) There are now many likely positive and likely negative spaces people can seek support (online, in person, and full therapy driven), including groups attempting to aid with institutional barriers for people who are not in contact with parents.
Genuinely a difficult situation for everyone involved. I just want to share a resource that was tremendously valuable to me when grappling with my experiences growing up with a disturbed parent:...
Genuinely a difficult situation for everyone involved. I just want to share a resource that was tremendously valuable to me when grappling with my experiences growing up with a disturbed parent:
"Understanding the Borderline Mother: Helping Her Children Transcend the Intense, Unpredictable, and Volatile Relationship" by Christine Ann Lawson
Not every situation calls for going no contact, which the shared article states, but sometimes it is the only reasonable option.
Man this story hit close to home. I'm pretty close with my mom and dad but my wife not so much. Her mom was/is an addict and fucked her life up pretty bad when my wife was younger and her dad is a deadbeat. She's basically been a no or low contact since she left for college years ago and it actually been positive for her own well being. The wedding vaccinations story was almost identical to our experience as well. Shit, we didn't even require the vaccinations since they had been available for so long at that point, all we asked for was a COVID test to prove you were contagious. Half of my wife's family just fucking no showed. She hasn't spoken to any of them in any significant capacity since.
My brother has some issues. Mental health among others and he has basically made my life miserable for the entirety of our time growing up together. He left for college and I haven't really spoken with him much since. I never actually realized how miserable I was until he was out of the picture. I'm a bit shamed to say but it's been fucking nice. Mom and Dad are pretty upset that I don't talk with much, but whenever I do, its like talking to a bear. I never know what is going to set him off. It's awful. I firmly keep him at arms length now. I'd always hoped going to college and is not living in the same house or playing on the same teams would have made things better but it hasn't. Mom and dad baby him and give me a hard time because I'm "functioning better" than despite the fact that I still need my mom and dad for things too. It makes for some uncomfortable dynamics that sometimes make me feel like a burden.
To anyone else reading this, I hope you know that you aren't the only one dealing with similar problems.
I fear for this with my two kids. My youngest is similar, you never know what's going to set him off and I worry his situation is going to replicate yours with your brother. My wife and I are trying our hardest to address his issues and get him to control that, but boy it's hard.
One thing I realized reading a book about anxiety yesterday (for myself) is that he may actually have anxiety, which wouldn't be surprising. It kind of lines up with his behavior, but behavioral therapy is hard to get and not cheap either.
Wild shot, but any chance your youngest has ADHD and has red dye (#40 specifically) in his diet?
If I have red 40 I become such an asshole and everything sparks rage. Yellow #5 is the other, but that puts me into a dark depression for half an hour, then it’s done.
That happens with my nephew too, absolutely crazy.
At Christmas a couple of years ago he ate one of the terrible frosted cookies with bright red frosting and he had an absolute meltdown followed by getting violently sick and then he was back to normal. He can't read very well yet but the one thing he definitely can read is "red" and looks for it on any ingredient labels because he has connected the dots that it is terrible for him specifically and will refuse whatever is offered.
Yeah — red or allura are the main for red 40.
I first discovered it after a summer of being an absolute asshole to everybody — but going between being nice and a prick.
The only new thing in my diet was red Gatorade. I was checking the ingredients and this angel of a woman was like, ‘what are you looking for?’ And I told her and she told me about ADHD and red dye. I started testing it and that was it.
During that… stage… it’s an out of body experience for me.
It’s a terrible thing. I’m older and it’s been a while since I had any, but this one Korean place has it in something. No idea why.
Red dye used to be in more stuff — white marshmallows was the most surprising for me. It makes the white whiter.
Yellow sucks, but isn’t as bad. The rest are totally fine, but I wish they’d just phase them out.
When the nephew gets into that state, you kind of just have to wait, but if you can cool down the room, that also helps. It’s like every sense is at eleven and everything is overwhelming and you’re trapped in a fight AND flight mode :)
The therapy isn't cheap and there are a lot of bad therapists out there as well...... You didn't ask for advice, so I'll just empathize with hard hard it can be, really really tough for everyone if a child's way of processing emotions and expressing themselves is wildly different than the parents
Hey man, I mean I know it's not much. But I think I turned out okay. I have ADHD and it does make it kind of hard sometimes. My brother has ADHD, OCD anxiety and a lot of other shit. If it's any help, my mom and dad tried and pushed really hard for us to be friends, which wouldn't be a bad thing...if we weren't like 11 months apart in age. I think always being stacked on top of one another didn't help. Best of luck. I'll all work out.
This person should not have written this. It broke my heart when the tone started to change as they started exploring the parent’s side, not because the parents were sympathetic figures to me, but because I felt betrayed by the author.
There is a concept that the author had danced about and avoided directly addressing through the whole thing, and that is that estranged parents and family members are usually mentally and/or emotionally abusive, and/or they are psychotic or have other mental disorders. The response Amy gave to the writer is 100% correct; parents and family members who want to fix things need to work on themselves in order to reconcile - something long and arduous, and frankly some 90+% of the time simply will not happen. These people are not worthy of being sympathized with; doing so is like saying a man who beats his wife is justified because she makes him so angry. It’s wrong, it’s sick, and society as a whole suffers whenever it happens.
I understand not wanting to believe the youth and why they might want to sympathize with the adults, because accepting the stories of the youth would mean accepting something that we as a global society are desperately trying to pretend doesn’t exist. That is to say: huge amounts of people are mentally ill, that they are so numerous that they support each other and are building their own sick societies, and they are hurting people to achieve their goals. We are living in an age of fascism, and it grows because we don’t want to acknowledge that these people are sick and need intensive intervention to the point that the kinds of interventions that would be effective are simply not possible because “they aren’t psycho, they’re just conservative” and they have vast resources supporting them.
When I was young and was going through this, I thought that my story was unique. I thought there wasn’t anyone who could understand what I was going through. I was so hurt by my father’s abuse that I was hospitalized and put in a mental institution temporarily as a way to protect me from him. But do you know what the sad thing is? I’m actually a lucky one. A few years after I moved away from him permanently my uncle came to me with teary eyes saying how sorry he was that I had to deal with it. I can’t even imagine how difficult it has to be to realize that your brother is mentally ill and has been for years without you realizing it. But even deeper I was living with my paternal grandmother - his own mother! She must have been going through so much to understand what I was going through and help support me. I can’t even imagine.
Do you have kids?
I ask, because the turn in this piece is suggestive of the Author's saying that they're a new parent and they're fearful of this kind of thing happening to them with their child.
And it's easy to say, "Well don't be shitty." but the Author addresses that in the piece, suggesting that maybe some estrangements are unjustified, not that all of them are, but, just look around you at the current zeitgeist around "Toxicity" and "Cutting people out of your life who are Toxic". We see these studies that suggest Gen-Z is the loneliest generation, but all the media they see says to them that rather than work with "Toxic" people, you just cut them out of your life.
I'm not saying that's a bad thing, but what I am saying--and what the author is trying to get at--is this modern incarnation of "Therapy Speak" can itself be Toxic and perhaps part of the reason a generation might be labeled as "lonely". Rather than work and understand people with different viewpoints or opinions, they're labeled Toxic and cut out of the picture.
The Author is worried that this might be a thing amongst estranged people and that it would happen to them and their own child, that's the turn.
It's not that the Author is saying Estrangement is bad or good, simply that it can be a muddled thing in this day and age. Look at the people the author cites as having questions as to if this is the right choice for them or not.
I'm not saying you're wrong to cut your Father out, but I do think you've misinterpreted what the Author is trying to get at here. I've had my own struggles with my family as well; we're diametrically opposed as far as political beliefs have gone and I have cut my Mom out for short periods of time when I can't take her bullshit. My wife cut her brother out for years and is now very low contact with him due to his abuse of her as kids and teens, so I get it.
But the Author fears--and also as a parent, so do I--that their child may cut them out of their lives for some perceived slight or toxicity that may or may not have happened, owing to what the author describes as generally children feeling their relationships with their parents are overall less important than the other way around.
My own child has anger problems that my wife and I are trying to work through. He can go from 0 to 100 in a matter of seconds for any perceived slight--he's also 6--and I could absolutely see that anger taking over him as he grows older and perceiving us to have slighted him in some way and cutting us out of his life, which would absolutely gut me. He's a great kid, but his anger and irritability sometimes has us walking on eggshells around him and we're struggling to teach him to get it under control.
Akir wrote:
From my personal experience, some people will just never, ever take this step. They lack the empathy required to understand that their own worldview isn't absolute and that their children are also people with their own thoughts and perspectives. Since their perspective is the only one that matters, there's no need for them to self-examine - they only ever judge others.
Your child is his own person, and his perspective (after he grows up) isn't something you can control, so I don't think you can ever be absolutely sure he won't end up misunderstanding you. But as long as you're willing to try to see his point of view, including how he perceives you, and make an effort to meet him half-way, I honestly think you'll do great.
The cure for loneliness isn't putting up with toxicity, though.
If my child grows up to become estranged, or only put up with me occasionally because they're lonely, my battle was lost many years ago and it's okay for me to respect their boundaries if it means they thrive better.
There's a difference between getting an email that says "hi how are you doing, I hope spring is nice in your area" and "this is a photo of you when you were 4. I miss my baby so much and I'm in so much pain." There are adults who are emotionally so fragile or underdeveloped that it is much lonelier being in their presence than being alone. I'm not talking about abrasive, but the kind of parent who cannot see a child as an individual with their own identify: they're "my precious/special/prophesied/baby child", and not, say, John Smith.
It isn't, but I think the point is that "toxicity" can be an overused label. Does shutting out everyone and everything that makes you uncomfortable really lead to happier and healthier relationships with those that remain?
Sometimes, there is an obviously abusive relationship that can only be fixed by not having a relationship. Other times, it would be better if everyone involved was more empathetic and understanding.
Edit: spelling is hard.
The "everyone" here seems like a good litmus test. If the child has a bunch of friends and decent social circles and a fulfilling life with everyone aside from being estranged from the parents, that seems indicative. If the child is withdrawn from everyone and they meet bad people in the morning and toxic people in the afternoon and bad parents in the evening, then I would believe the parents.
That's a great litmus test.
I made friends with someone that was excommunicated by their old friends yet seemed decent enough. Lo and behold, we don't talk anymore.
They were extremely emotionally manipulative and caused a lot of collateral damage with every "emotional moment" over nothing. While it didn't affect me personally, I couldn't tolerate their awful patterns. I explicitly told them why we don't talk anymore because I hate ghosting, and that turned into another "woe is me" moment, just reinforcing my decision to cut them out!
I think one big unspoken element here is that while there is a lot of acknowledgement of parents whose mental health or backgrounds or what have you can cause this, there isn’t as much mention of the fact that adult children can themselves also be ones whose mental health and need for intervention is driving the “toxicity”. In situations of estrangement unfortunately there can be a complete spectrum between nightmare abusive parent/innocent abused child all the way to nightmare adult child/innocent family. That, and as the article hints to, the echo chambers that can exist, is actually terrifying to think about from the perspective of a well meaning parent. Because today it is possible to do everything right and with empathy and still be rejected. Family relationships are not a given, they require the consent of both parties. It’s a good and bad thing depending on the unique circumstances of each situation.
Have you ever been a kid? Do you know what a huge step it is to take your parents out of your life? I abandoned everything when I cut my father out. Every single friend, even a lover. It was a huge sactifice, and it's not something that one does half-heartedly.
Having a relationship is a two-way street. If a kid has cut out their family, it's only after they have exhausted every option. It's always the parents who are failing to do the work of understanding their children and building the relationship. I have never seen an instance of a person of any age not trying their best to make the relationship work. They have taken the nuclear option because they had no other choice.
I understand the fear you have about your relationship with your child very well. I worry about the same things with the people I love. But you have to understand that by acknowledging these parents' fears, you are enabling them to continue their abusive behavior.
And that's why I feel so betrayed. The author has seen so many people who were obviously hurting and decided "maybe the people who harmed them are not that bad". When you have parents like that, you will never stop hurting. The only closure I have on my relationship with my father is that he was forced to take a psychological evaluation which finally confirmed his mental illness. He died without ever apologizing to me for anything he did to me. I can assure you that my story is not unique.
Frankly I'm extremely upset about that Exemplary tag on your comment. You're probably a good parent, and you deserve to be assuaged of your fears, but that award reads to me like a glowing endorsement on child abuse.
I know I can't talk about this in a calm way, so I would like to say that @Protected's comment is a good reflection of what I would be saying if I didn't have skin in the game.
I understand that this is a super personal topic for you, but this is not a reasonable or fair reaction.
What exactly is unreasonable about someone sharing their emotions? How is it not fair? Perhaps you should take a step back and re-read the words he put forward; I think your own emotions are clouding your ability to interpret them.
Oh, please.
I categorically reject your argument. Sharing feelings is not inherently noble; it is not inherently reasonable; it is not inherently fair. It can be all of those things, but "that's just how I feel" is not an unimpeachable defense. If someone gives you an exemplary label for this post, it wouldn't be reasonable or fair for me to say "I'm sure you're a nice person but that label makes me feel like it's a glowing endorsement of racism." That is true even if that is genuinely how I feel, because nothing you said even hinted at racism - it'd be my own history and baggage making me feel that way, not you.
Obviously I'm not saying that no feelings are ever valid. Clearly. But I think it's a "reasonable standard" type of thing. If I'm being an asshole and you say "you're making me feel bad," that's clearly valid. But this was clearly not that.
I don't think you're being fair to @Gaywallet or to me. Everything you've written has been a non-sequitur. The statement you quoted wasn't an arguement, it was an interpretation. You're shooting off on them rather than the person you appear to be actually upset at - me.
Beyond that I think that a world in which someone is unable to express when they are being made to feel bad is not a world I would like to live in. The person I was upset at is completely anonymous. They are losing nothing by my statements. If they were hurt by my statement, I'm sorry about that but my statement was very clearly not meant as an attack on them. In the meanwhile here you are saying that my world view is completely invalid - It's just "my own history and baggage" - which is something that I find offensive. You might as well tell me I'm living in a fantasy land.
I'm not upset at you, to be clear. I thought (and still think) that parts of your comment were unfair and said so. That's all.
I can see how I came across that way. To try to clarify, I didn't mean history and baggage as an inherently negative thing - and certainly not that it doesn't exist. It's more that all of us have certain trigger or iceberg topics, usually rooted in our past, that cause us to react unreasonably strongly. It's not invalid to feel that way. It is unfair to put it onto other people. To wit, I find you to generally be a thoughtful and empathetic commenter. I think that you would probably usually agree, if it weren't such a personally sensitive topic, that neither BeardyHat nor anybody reading his post did anything even remotely in the realm of endorsing child abuse.
I appreciate that. I really wasn't trying to be inflammatory in my comment and made my best attempt to avoid language that would sound like I was accusing anyone of misdeeds.
I literally never said any of those things
Really not an apples to apples here. Do you think his statement was an attack on the commenter? Did you read the context that he gave? Maybe it'll help for me to explain how I interpreted what he said, since you were unwilling to share with me your thoughts or interpretation of his words:
To me it sounded more like he was recognizing his emotional position, offering up vulnerability to help explain exactly why it hurt him so much as a means to try and recenter the conversation on what he felt was missing or not addressed appropriately by the author (the premise of his original reply). While it is not directly stated, my interpretation of the words is that he was sharing how the exemplary comment made him feel, with an explicit recognition that at least some part of the judgement isn't fair or at least the recognition and attempt to split the direct subject in this context (the parent who addressed him) from the broader concept or the indirect subject (a parent). He did all this to try and make sure others understood it wasn't an attack on parents or parenting, but an attack at the explicit cutting out of a narrative which is both important to the conversation and deeply personal.
How did you interpret his words?
Sharing how one feels, without blaming or hurting anyone, is perfectly reasonable and fair. It's something people should do more often.
In fact, your own reaction here is quite strong and it might be more constructive if you too shared how you feel about the topic (and perhaps some of the related background that might be triggering those feelings, if possible) rather than try to police other people's feelings.
It’s not appropriate to tell them that they are probably good people? They aren’t the ones who put that label there.
I don't have a ton of time right now to make a super well thought out comment and I didn't even get a chance to read the article (paywall)...
I feel like I didn't exhaust all options with my parents. They weren't abusuve. It actually cost me next to nothing in my personal life when I estranged them. When my brother found out he was kind of upset about it and while he didn't really support it he understood. My sister I already haven't talked to in years I just still have never talked to. For close to a year it's something I thought about every day thinking, did I do the right thing. It took over a year for my wife to come to terms with it and cut all ties as well.
I bring this up because I feel like an outlier as far as estangements go. I will always feel like I could have done better. I could have kept the relationship going but I felt like every interaction with them involved a giant let down; I just couldn't do it anymore. Also they had effectivley become strangers to me at some point so when I did make the decision to cut them out... it wasn't that hard.
First, I want to say I'm sorry for any offense, it wasn't my intention. I also want to say that if you've chosen to cut family out of your life, that is a valid decision; again, my wife has done it with one of her brothers and I have given the thought serious consideration with my own parents. In my own case, I have a lot of anger over their political opinions and it is directly affecting my own life and I see that as a valid reason to stop talking to them.
What I was trying to do was clarify. Your original comment read to me like a misread of the original text, so I was attempting to clarify how I read it and that I thought the Author was giving thought and empathy to both sides. Not necessarily validating bad parenting, but more considering the idea that the in the current zeitgeist we see this push to cut toxic people from our lives, but those judgements, while valid, aren't always correct--for a variety of reasons. There are plenty of valid reasons and the subject of the piece, Amy, sounds like a fantastic piece of evidence for the practice.
I'm not saying cutting people out is bad, just that as a parent who's trying to raise two reasonable, adjusted adults, I'm fearful of the traps we can fall into as people with the advent of the social media and its shifting zeitgeist. I make deliberate choices in my parenting because of the way my own parents raised me, choosing the opposite of many of the poor things they did and trying to reinforce the pieces I thought were beneficial. But as humans, as parents, we can't help but make wrong decisions sometimes; sometimes I'm tired, stressed, frustrated and I yell at my kids undeservedly and when I'm more cool headed, I will apologize for my own behavior. But we don't always remember those things as we grow older, that Dad used to apologize when he yelled at us and that's my fear; that the takeaway will be, "Dad used to yell at us for nothing." and then rather than thinking any deeper about it or having empathy towards their parents as humans, they simply decide to cut us out. That is the point I believe the author was trying to get at.
All parents have faults. All of us fail, all of us are weak and stupid and all the other things that come with being human. But we hope that as our kids grow older, they can understand us as humans and forgive us our sins and mistakes. This is the anxiety of being a parent. That is what I think the Author is trying to get at. That constant anxiety of this choice we've made and the choices we continue to make every day that we do it.
It's different when your parent might be sexually abusive, severely emotionally abusive, manipulative, narcissistic, drug addled, alcoholic, whatever. I can understand cutting that type of person from your life.
Thank you very much. I do understand where you are coming from and I’m sorry for not responding to your fears more reasonably. I understand your fears and I empathize with it. The bond between a parent and child is so important. I also want to state for the record I have always known you were coming from a good place when you wrote that.
But at the same time I want you to understand that operating out of a place of fear can blind you to what is happening. The people cutting ties with their parents aren’t doing so because their parents are angry sometimes. They are doing it because they are at an impasse and cannot continue forward. You making the wrong decision with your kid is not going to break apart your relationship, but sticking to those wrong decisions regardless of being told countless times that you are hurting your kid because of it will, and that is the thing that is happening in these cases. The simple fact that you fear this happening and are willing to make changes to avoid it happening is a great sign that it won’t happen to you. You’re a good person!
On the other hand I did grow up and I began to understand my father more, and that only cemented the justifications for cutting him out of my life. As I made more adult relationships with parents, more and more of his actions became more concretely obvious that they were inexcusable. His mental illness explained them, but there’s no excuse for the damage done. We begged him to get help but he refused. At the end of the day he was the one responsible for his actions, regardless of the handicap of his disease.
You can absolutely make mistakes as a parent. They are inevitable. The problem arises when you refuse to admit those mistakes.
Oh hey, this is me. All the way up through maybe 20? I was a real asshole to my parents. They are, by all reasonable measures, very lovely people and it was wholely underserved. As I started to take on more responsibilities and mature I chilled way tf out. I actually credit my father with most my levelheadedness and teaching me to process things in healthier ways. Shame it took me so long to hear his lessons. Now I would say I am naturally a very laid back person. And not in like a "I can control my white hot rage now" but in that it's pretty hard to upset me in the first place these days.
Point being, personalities are not fixed in stone! Especially so young. Just be there to provide mental processing support if (and only if) it's sought out. Good luck!
Here's the rub: My mother is one of these unquestionably toxic people. She eats articles like this for breakfast because they validate her worldview that I am the toxic evil child keeping her from her grandkid and not a dad keeping a monster from shaking his baby.
My only regret about cutting my parents off 8 years ago is that I didn't do it 20.
I can personally vouch for that.
I was friendly with this guy for a while who I used to play RPGs with, and he was this very stereotypical neckbeard type. His whole life revolved around games, he worked a dead end job, and he always had this attitude that the entire world was out to get him. Later on, it became very apparent that he was extremely self centered, and thought nothing of assuming that everyone around him were simply resources he could call on for favors whenever he felt like without ever returning the favor. (The main reason I no longer talk to him.)
For a long time, I had known that he had cut off his parents. He never talked to them, and he always gave the impression that they were terrible people. I always assumed they were abusive, or religious zealots, or extremely negative or something.
One day we started talking about it and he delved a little further into it. The core of his issue was that he thought his father was an asshole because he didn't make enough effort to get into his hobbies. His dad would sometimes played games with him growing up, but over time he stopped, and never expressed interest in his chrono trigger speed runs or whatever. He said that every time he talked to his dad about it, his dad would be interested for a little bit, but then after a while he said it was clear he wasn't actually interested.
I honestly had to stifle laughter, because this was obviously very important to him. He talked about it a few more times after that, and from what I gathered, that really was his main issue with his father, and the reason he went no contact with his family. His dad didn't hang out in their basement playing JPRGs with him enough. Obviously I don't have the full picture, but I did ask more probing questions to truly understand if that was actually the real reason and as far as I could tell, it was.
It was the most insane thing I've ever heard. I grew up fairly nerdy as well. My dad never expressed interest in quake 2 LAN parties, or modding PC cases, or hanging out in IRC either. He was nerdy in a different way, he was obsessed with baseball stats, fish tanks and photography, stuff I never really cared about, but that was fine. I'd show him some of that stuff, and he'd go "that's great!", and every so often do the classic dad "are ya winning son?". Hed show me a camera lens or a new fish tank thing, and I'd go "cool!". I still did, and do still love him and have a great relationship with him. We have other things we have in common and bond over that.
It was really shocking to me to cut your family off over something so trivial, and before I met this guy, I always assumed that people that cut their families off had very valid reasons to do it, usually involving horrific abuse or neglect.
Sometimes that's just not the case though. I felt really bad for this guy's dad after he told me that, and it unlocked a strange new fear of fatherhood for me that I didn't have before.
I’m not going to try to invalidate the way you see things. I don’t know this person and there are all kinds of people out in the world. Maybe there are some kids who are just unreasonably difficult to deal with.
But what I will say is that it’s almost impossible to explain emotional abuse to other people. I could tell people about when my father would suffocate me when I was panicking or upset and people will understand, but the stuff that hurt me the most is his inability and unwillingness to understand my feelings and recognize me as an autonomous person. The only people who seem to understand me when I talk about it are people who have also gone through similar experiences. My uncle didn’t really fully understand what I was going through until he read an autobiography from someone who had the time to express their whole life up to that point. That isn’t really something that can be expressed in casual conversation. I couldn’t even begin to guess if that was what was happening with this acquaintance of yours but I think it is worth acknowledging that it is a possibility.
There is a lot I could say about what could have or should have happened but I wouldn’t want to make that be the reason you don’t allow yourself to become a father. I can’t say firsthand, but as a teacher I can see how being a father is an amazingly fulfilling experience. It’s also a massive responsibility and your heart will certainly be broken by your kids. But some things are worth breaking over.
Well, I did consider a lot of that. I considered whether "not playing games with me" was shorthand for "neglect" or "not respecting me as a person" or so on. I asked a lot for questions because I was trying to understand. By everything I can figure, that wasn't the case. His dad just wasn't into video games, he was into sports. He tried connecting with his son in other ways, but this guy really only had video games as his one and only interest.
I kind of saw this first hand with him another time, the one time he had a romantic relationship blooming. He ended up breaking up with her, and the one and only reason he cited was that she didn't want to play Mario kart with him. It was sort of a trend.
He just had this strange conception of parenthood, where parents just sort of exist to only support their kids interests and ambitions, and because of that, in his view, his father should have cultivated his own interest in video games in order to connect with his son.
I don't agree with that view at all, and view parents as their own people with their own priorities. Their kids should be very high on that list, but they shouldn't be the only thing on them.
Like you said, I always left the option that he just wasn't expressing how he felt about his dad to me very effectively on the table, but I was aware of that possibility at the time too, and spent a lot of time really trying to understand. That's still the impression I came away with though.
I have a child who has difficulties regulating emotions. He has the same challenges my sister had. During her teenage years, my sister would get so angry with our father. I was convinced it was to the point where the relationship was irreparably damaged. Usually, my sister was right to get upset, but would get overly upset. But the thing with emotional regulation is, it's harder to calm down, but once you are calm, you are back to your regulated self. And as you get older, you usually learn to regulate better. I hope that during the calm periods, you can see the love your child has for you. Because in my limited experience, it takes far more than emotional regulation issues to destroy that love.
It suggests that emotional abuse, toxic behavior or differences in world view are not acceptable reasons for estrangement, which I fundamentally disagree with.
If the children are lonely and they are still willing to cut out their parent that even more suggest that the parents are awful, also they do try to work with them, the parents are unwilling to apologize and change.
Being lonely is better than being mistreated.
The children do not just cut off their parents, they try to get their parents to understand and change their behaviour, but the parents are unwilling to do that and only after that they are cut off
But it isnt a muddled thing, cutting off your parents is an incredibly hard thing to do, if someone cuts of their parents, it almost always was because the parents behaved badly.
Actually what you and the author are implying is just because the abuser feels bad that the victim is obligated to give the victim a second chance, which is just incredibly wrong.
Fears dont excuse unreasonable demands, especially if the fear is of something fictional.
Good parents dont become suddenly estranged to their children because of something the children read on the internet.
What is happening is that children are recognizing abusive behaviour of their parents and are asking them to apologize and change their behaviour, then if after multiple attempts the parents are unwilling to change, they go low or no contact. Those parents then are unable or unwilling to accept any responsibility for the estrangement and complain that the children suddenly cut contact with them.
It is very hard for a child to cut of their parent, because:
so I dont think parents have to worry too much about being cut off.
There are realistic reasons why a child might become estranged to a good parent:
So if you want to be worried about estrangement, worry about that.
And often this isn't a second chance it's a tenth chance, a fifty-ninth chance, etc. We have stats on how hard it is to leave an abusive romantic relationship, it shouldn't be a shock to see the same if not more difficulty in leaving a familial one.
Also that's why all this rhetoric is getting to me. It's very "well was it really abuse?" And "what did you do to make him abuse you?" Combined with denying the agency of an adult child with their family compared to the same person in a romantic relationship.
This is such a loaded standard, and while I hope you're being hyperbolic I suspect you're not. The swath of people one includes with stances like this almost always overlapping with some group they'd go to the barricades for in another topic.
In your specific example "these people" appears to be
So by your logic, what, poor people are less likely to be deserving of sympathy? There's reams of research and just common sense that families in struggling situations are vastly more likely to be abusive, be it emotionally, mentally, or physically.
And the fact you're just willing to throw people with mental disorders in there is a whole other problem.
Yes, they need to get help. No that does not excuse their actions. Yes they (mostly) need to to it themselves, but saying they "are not worthy of being sympathized with", from their child no less, is such a giant mess. You can very much need to cut ties with someone and still feel sympathetic to the situation that destroyed the person they were.
Your response honestly terrifies me.
Let me ask you a question. If a man beats his wife regularly, but he does it because he is under extreme stress, does that excuse his actions? Is he worthy of sympathy or has he done something that he should be forgiven for?
I ask you this because beating an adult, while absolutely terrible, is arguably a less damaging thing than the emotional abuse of a child. Children are fragile and there is a whole swath of research how adverse childhood experiences - or ACEs - affect a person for their entire lifespans.
You can feel bad about people having mental disorders or being in bad and stressful situations. But those are very different things from accepting child abuse. Doing the former might help those people out, but doing the latter helps doom the child to a lifetime of misery. I really cannot do enough to express how evil this is.
I've worked with abusers and I would argue that in general abusers are worth empathy because all people are. That doesn't excuse their actions nor ignore the harm done. Nor does it mean that their victims are obligated to care about the "backstory" so to speak. But that also doesn't make the response above the right one either.
Fwiw people with mental illness are more likely to be victims than to be perpetrators of violence, but any illness or disorder also doesn't excuse their actions, with the very, very rare exceptions of when someone is fully disconnected from reality and unable to be aware of the impact of their actions (like when someone is found "not guilty by reason of insanity" level); but even that doesn't negate the harm done.
Please be sure you're taking care of yourself here as I know this topic is hitting close to home. ( ◜‿◝ )♡
Thank you! I appreciate your understanding. The past few years have been about me building self-love and trust me when I say that me being here is an exercise in that.
You're very welcome
This is not their logic at all and is an absolute non-sequitor. You could have criticized or responded to their statement without this weird "so you hate the poor" rhetoric. This is really accusatory and not in the nature of encouraging either empathy or sympathy that you yourself mention below
You can, you also may not sympathize with your abuser. Cutting someone off often involves needing to cut those emotional ties - or happens as a result of the cumulative harm being so great that you no longer do feel any sympathy. You may feel safer feeling nothing at all about them. That's a therapeutic journey and it's going to be incredibly relevant to what type and intensity of abuse happened.
OP's journey there won't change from being chastised on the internet. And since their post was really written from the perspective of someone obviously dealing with and sharing their own experiences, I really wish everyone had chosen to reply with that lens in mind.
I‘ve forgotten my father exists for about 20 years, unless someone asks me about him or he finds my new address and sends me packages.
I hope he got help and I hope he’s happy, but there’s no way I’ll ever take the risk to find out. I also can’t remember him without a strong physical stress responses, so it’s not that I feel safer, it’s that I don’t physically feel panic.
That's very fair and another good way to put it. I was definitely intending to be inclusive of more than physical safety - not having a panic attack is definitely a more safety/stable/healthy space to be in.
I'm very glad you've found more of that peace!
I just finished the article and I came away with that same betrayed feeling. I didn't expect to end up angry at the author based on how the first 2/3 of the article was written.
Paywall removed (I had to use option 4): https://www.removepaywall.com/search?url=https://www.newyorker.com/culture/annals-of-inquiry/why-so-many-people-are-going-no-contact-with-their-parents
I've seen first hand, my friends falling out with family members, and going no contact.
It requires both sides to be convinced they are right, and refuse to bend, and refuse to empathize, and refuse to make amends.
In my limited experience, neither side is right. But generally I blame the parents. As a parent, you have a choice. You bend where you need to, or you lose access to your children, and your grandchildren. The children have usually suffered from an unbending parent all their life, with an incredible power imbalance, and the only power the child has is to set boundaries and then enforce them. Often times, children who become adults will over-react.
My great grandmother refused to see her daughter. Because she was in a religious cult. Who excommunicated my grandparents. She saw me once, to hand me pamphlets, because the cult was dying, and the leadership wanted to reach out to grandchildren of those excommunicated.
The situation with politics in America is cult like. But there is a difference between labeling cult like behavior as toxic, and labelling everything as toxic. I know one young lady, who always seemed nice enough, but was cut off first by her family, then by her extended family, then by her friends. She described them all as toxic. The word choice doesn't matter. What matters is if you over-use a label, if you apply a label to everyone and everything, it probably says more about you than about everyone else.
This is important to me. Because this is what cults do. They label everyone else and everything else. But it's the cultish behavior itself which is toxic.
Nope. A functional relationship requires that both sides are willing to respect each other's boundries. If one side (my parents in this case) refuses to respect those boundries, then they only have themselves to blame.
Both sides might be convinced they are right, but more often than not, one side is objectively correct and the other is in denial.
In a way that label is correct though, eh? An oxygen rich, lush green environment full of vibrancy is toxic to an anaerobic orgasm. Sunlight is death sentence for beautiful but exposed mycelium.
Maybe for a truly unwell person, every single person I toxic to them because they need some very different conditions to heal and thrive
I understand why the author feels empathy for the parents and feels swayed towards the push to reconcile - they are imagining experiencing this as themself, a person who assumes they're not an abusive person who ignores boundaries. Unfortunately abusive people also often assume they're not abusive while also believing that they are in fact the victims of other people setting boundaries. And they can be very persuasive, to the extent that specialized counseling can be required lest the abuser co-opt the counselor into the abuse.
Key in the article is that counseling works towards reconciliation if a) the adult child is willing to attend and b) the parent is willing to abide by boundaries and let their child really talk. As many have shared, to get to the point of "no contact" involves a lot of attempts to make things work on the adult child's part. And many toxic/abusive parents will not actually respect boundaries when they're challenged in front of a therapist.
Empathy is good but it can also lead you to defend people who are willing to take advantage of you. Or whose own perspective is so skewed that they believe their own lies. I'm empathetic to the author, but I think they fell for the bullshit.
For folks who haven't experienced this sort of dynamic there's a video creator called Shawna the Mom who makes skits about an extend family: Shawna, John, their two kids and her toxic mother-in-law Barb featuring most heavily. For a one woman show with props and wigs, it's really evocative in its exploration of these family dynamics. A few examples of Barb's behavior are refusing to respect her granddaughters' names, stalking her son who has gone no contact, and destroying her son in law's mother's Thanksgiving casserole as a "joke" and laughing at her for it. There's a lot of videos and a long history in the narrative.
In the most recent video, John's sister is trying to navigate keeping a relationship with her mom and her brother but Barb uses a perceived slight (which was actually her violating boundaries) to emotionally abuse her daughter.
Some folks may find this series triggering, some cathartic. Barb is currently trying to go to a therapist but is not currently doing "better". John and Shawna struggled with going NC and it took a lot for them to decide to act. There are a bunch of side characters and such. But I think it's helpful for people to see how someone can present so sad and sweet and missing her family while absolutely being the reason they were driven away.
I kinda want to add my 2 cents on this article because I feel like my story is worth sharing.
I'm 33. I went no contact with my father when I was 21. I have a brother and a sister. Everyone, including my mother, doesn't speak to him anymore. My sister stopped two years after me when my father slapped her in front of her own children. My brother stopped the following year when he stole my brother's paycheck because he "owed him money".
I realized my father was abusive/mentally ill when I was nine. It didn't get better and I fully understood him, following years of reading psychology, when I was 15. It took 6 more years before I pulled the plug and my whole family followed after me.
It still pains me that my father is absolutely incapable of self-reflection and my decision to stop talking to him forever is the right one. However, I understand now, after years of being angry, that my father is hurt too. He tried to come back a few times in what I may call absolutely pathetic attempts, but I know he's hurt.
He's deeply religious and probably prays everyday that God may heal my heart or something, but I'll happily live my life knowing there is no hope he will ever make a change and self-reflect.
Still, I understand where he's coming from. I know he has himself lived through abuse from his parents, he is not well. He has never learned how to behave properly. That doesn't change the fact that I'll never speak to him again, but I get where the Author is coming from. Some parents are just unequipped to deal with their children going no contact. Those parents are the abusers, but it's still painful to them. They just don't know what to do.
It's okay for the child to cut them off, it's also okay for the parent to be hurt. It's also normal to feel empathy towards the parent. All situations can be true, because I live in that situation.
We should acknowledge that all sides have some part of wrong, but it is totally on the parent to apologize and right those wrongs. The power imbalance from childhood should evolve into a respectful relationship between adults. Some parents never want to acknowledge that and so they shall live in the hurt forever.
It is good that you realized the problem with your father when you were young. My parents were divorced when I was younger than that and living with my mentally ill father left me emotionally underdeveloped, so it took me until I was in my mid teens to figure it out. The reason why I lost faith in God was because of my unanswered prayers to help him.
I wanted to say publicly that I agreed with you but also to explain that empathizing with their pain is a very different thing from sympathizing with their situation and the reason why they are in it. The stories they will tell about it are going to be very different than the stories you will hear about them from their children.
The retrospection I have done from reading this story has been very good for me because it made me realize how great the rest of my family has been. My uncle outright apologized to me for not realizing what I had been going through. While my paternal grandmother had never put it in words, she overwhelmingly showed it with her actions. She welcomed me into her home with open arms and helped me with the growth I couldn’t do in that environment I had been in.
I do still believe that some of these relationships can be mended in a healthy manner. I have to have hope in humanity. But I also have to be realistic. The chances of the relationship being re-established is already slim, and the chances that the relationship they build will be healthy are even less likely.
Could someone tell me if I'm understanding this comment section right:
There are child going no-contact with their familly, claiming the familly is abusive or toxic.
(Situtaion A) some of those families are trully abusive or toxic.
(Situation B) Some of the families are actually fine and the child is going no-contact for no fault on the families' part.
(Situation C) most of us, something in between.
People hating on the article's message think that situation A is bad enough that we shouldn't take into account consideration for situation B and C.
"we should pretend parents are always in the wrong, because they have most of the power"
Toxic people can abuse a reluctance to call someone toxic!
People defending the article's message think that situation B should be considered even if it could make situation A worse.
"society needs to stop pushing the idea that no-contact is the be all end all solution when the relationship gets tough"
Toxic people can abuse calling other people toxic too easely!
(Really, both are talking about situation C, but at the limit of where it melts into A and B)
I would welcome any constructive feedback about my interpretation.
I understand the conversation more or less like you described.
I'd like to add the following though. Situation A and B aren't symmetrical or equally likely. A is a lot more likely than B. This is because parenting is a major influence in child development.
We all suffer some degree of mistreatment/neglect from our parents and while it isn't our own fault that this happens, it's our responsibility to take the necessary steps to heal and become responsible adults. In a toxic family dynamic there are people who did not appropriately take those steps (usually one or both parents, unless the child is born with an inherently, biologically difficult personality) and as a result they end up hurting their kid more than necessary, and on top of that they then expect the kid to be able to take the responsibility they themselves fail to take lest they become an estranged family.
This would be unfair even if it was a dynamic between people who are all the same age, but when it happens between a defenceless child and the adults who the child depends on, it's categorically unfair and extremely hard for the child. For the child it already takes a lot of extra emotional labour and growth to get to the point where they can accurately see the parents' toxic patterning, are able to come to terms with it and learn how to practically deal with it. This is already more than any child should have to go through and to expect them to do even more, once they've managed to do what it takes to protect themself, is not acceptable.
This is why an article that first seems compassionate towards the kids in situation A, and then suddenly turns around and pulls the rug from under their feet, is actively harmful. It replicates the unfair dynamic and most likely empowers toxic parents to continue on the path of not doing the work.
(I haven't read the article so my impression on it is based on the descriptions here.)
To anyone here who reads this and is a parent: you are not a perfect parent and that's okay! Where things can get iffy is if you can't accept and live with this fact. Making mistakes is okay as long as you admit to them, apologise and try to make amends.
Is it? My intuition says the opposite...
Not trying to be glib, it really seems to me like out of 6 estranged familly situation around me, 5 of them were mostly B.
Anyone could easely find enough ammo against their parents to paint them as abuser.
You said yourself:
Let's not forget the child we are talking about is usually a full grown adult by the time they go no-contact. As you mature, it seems reasonable not to expect your parents to do all the emotional labour.
But whichever A or B is likeliest, can we agree C dwarfs them both. Shouldn't we optimize for C?
May I, without ill intent I promise, modify this:
Your last edit, clearly, painfully demonstrates you still don't understand parental abuse at all.
It's like telling someone with ED, sometimes we want to eat, sometimes we don't, and sometimes we spit out food that's already in our mouths and that's okay, we all do this!
You are a migrant worker whose employer secretly garnished your wages for years, is withholding your passport illegally, threatens you with deportation daily, and you pay him rent to live in a rat infested hovel, but you sit in the shade an extra minute every day at lunch too!
You're not considering the magnitude of the sum of vectors.
Think about this from the perspective of "number of years this adult has lived, free from abuse". It's a double digit number compared to 0.
I don't think it's about understanding parental abuse or not, but about where you want to place the tradeoff for society regarding each situation. My edit isn't adressed to abused kids. It's adressed at everyone including regular not abused kids to who it seems half of the internet is shouting at them they every frustration is abuse and yhey should go no contact.
Blanquet supporting thoses who identify as people with abusive parent will inevitably end up helping those that really do have abusive parents, but will also vindicate kids not abused but looking for an excuse. I'm not claiming abused kids don't exist. I'm claiming going no-contact when things don't always go your way is also a form of abuse toward the parents.
You aren't siding with the abused kids against the abuser parents here... You really are siding with the abused kids AND the abuser kids against the abuser parent AND abused parent.
I not saying no-contact is never justified, but it should be very carefully considered as a last resort. It sometime seems like society is culturally pushing for it to be the first thing to try, which is what i object to.
Please explain how it is abusive to end a relationship?
This is not what they're doing.
Half the internet is not shouting "no contact" btw these are fairly niche spaces.
Going no-contact can be a form of emotional blackmail, it really hurts when someone you love (and for whom you invested into the relationship) pushes you away.
You trully didn't realise that?
You don't think it could damage you if someone close to you unilateraly decided to cut your relationship off? (Don't imagine it with you having done sonething awefull, imagine it's because of something trivial)
How not? You cann't choose who reads your post. If your refuse to recognise that kids aren't necessarily always the victims, you unwittingly serve the abusive kids.
Fairly niche space which are disproportionately read by people in a crisis with their familly, and could benefit from hearing a more nuance take than "parents are obviously always the abuser".
Blackmail inherently requires some contact and it would indeed be an abusive tactic. I asked you to explain what you meant. However the solution to someone engaging in that would not "try to reestablish the relationship at all costs." But inherently going no contact is not abuse. No one is owed a relationship with anyone else. If I cut someone off, even for an abusive reason or maybe it's a dumb reason, they're not entitled to that relationship.
Someone misreading your intent does not mean that you're supporting that misread. They're not "siding" with others.
And there are many more professionals and locations with positive advice.
I think the world would be better if there was stronger social stigma against that.
Entitled is a bit strong, but yes, you deserve some kind of relationship with your kid when you've raised him for 18 years.
If people mistakenly think what you writte applies to them, and make poor life choice because of it, then you are kinda responsible for not thinking harder about who might read you. (Exemple, I know some valid reasons to avoid some vacine in certain circumstance, but I'd never mention them online)
If only intent matters, life would be much easier.
There's an incredibly strong stigma against it now. I'm happy the world is more supportive of adults setting their own boundaries and not suffering for the sake of filial/parental piety. Ideally things that can be worked out always would be, but the article talks about what that requires and it's often not something either party is willing to do.
That's describing "entitled". We don't "deserve" relationships. And from the outside you certainly don't know if the relationship was abusive or not.
This is a different argument than telling someone who they're siding with. But as you said "mistaken". People should communicate responsibly, and can always clarify, but what you suggest would make it impossible to post anything.
For example I'm absolutely fine talking about valid medical reasons not to vaccinate, but also the harms of not vaccinating more broadly and also directing folks to legitimate medical professionals. None of that means I'm responsible if someone reads half a line and decides I said vaxxing kills or something.
That assumes parents "raise" kids for 18 years. My mother left me, as in moved to different cities or states, with my abusive father multiple times between 3ish and 15ish. He was abusive to her too, but she definitely left me with him all those times for me. Should I forget that and pretend she “raised” me for 18 years even if she was never around? Is she entitled to a relationship?
Parents don’t deserve shit, they earn it.
PS: Yes, I’m a parent. No, I’m not worried. I’m not a selfish prick or abusive.
You are right, I agree.
C is the base societal assumption. These are more extreme situations. People don't tend to cut off contact for minor things and most societal messaging doesn't encourage that.
Whether the situation is A or B - whether one partner or another is abusive in a romantic relationship - it's acceptable to set boundaries and end relationships right? You can try to fix them and there are resources and therapy to that but you can also get a divorce, go no contact, or never talk to your former friend again.
So when I have one person who says "I cannot have contact with this person so I have cut boundaries." And the other who says "I don't know why they did that, I just want to love them", divorced of the societal assumptions about parent/child relationships we can recognize the dynamic as boundary setting and someone pushing, even if maybe through otherwise innocent grief, through someone's boundaries. I don't normally see victims of abuse pushing the abuser's boundaries to get them back (you do see them trying to get the abuser back) because abusers generally welcome the opportunity to resume the abuse.
But regardless the solution to all this in individual therapy is helping the person grieving to come to terms with that loss and helping the person with boundaries understand if those boundaries are helping or hurting them and whether they're content with them. (Family/reunification therapy can only really be effective if that individual work has occurred and it's beneficial for both parties.) But you'll note that this would be the same angle if the boundary violator/pusher is abusive vs the victim of an unreasonable toxic child. And family therapy is less effective when there are active abusers.
So, the outcome isn't really going to be that different. Obviously all of this ignores the power imbalance between parent and child, and how hard it is to go no-contact for most people. But even outside of that dynamic in most other situations society has stopped expecting people to have a relationship with anyone in particular should they choose not to. It's only because society expects adult children to maintain that relationship and assumes that parents are all capable of loving their children without being abusive that this is any different. In fact working through that betrayal is usually what it takes for an adult child to be able to cut off contact.
This isn't a runaway kid, these are often adults with families taking this step to protect their families from the abuse, because while they would tolerate being the victim up to a point seeing their new family, who they have perhaps stronger ties obligations to, experience the abuse is the last straw.
Of course anyone should be able to unilaterally end a relationship, but it is completelly healthy to have very strong cultural incentive against it.
Most relationship are very hard, and in our quest to support victims, we forget to teach people to bear through some hardship.
My wife once threw one of my potery during a stressfull phase of our life (and many other things, won't go into details). I still maintained contact enough to allow for the opportunity to build back trust, and I'm glad I did, even if I did it mostly out of obligation at the time.
Maybe I'm the problem, but I would have NO lasting relationship if I had bought into the myth that "relationship are supposed to be easy". No! Relationship are super hard, not as hard as abuse victim have to go through, sure, but still hard, and it doesn't help us to pretend it's always easy. It gives unrealistic expectation.
I never said relationships "should be easy", and I refute the narrative that people in these situations aren't working through their problems. That is in fact often very common, repetitive and harmful advice to someone who has made a very tough decision to end a relationship and is still grieving that. It's right up there with "but have you tried not being depressed" and "have you tried exercising more" for well-intentioned advice that's such a meme it's actively harmful to people. That's because it minimizes the other person's experiences down to something trivial - and when we're talking about abuse it's harmful IMO to redirect focus onto non-abusive situations. It's invalidating as hell.
You seem to be thinking that NC typically happens after a singular incident. That's not the common narrative at all. Most folks have made long term attempts to appease their abusers, to try to make it work, even if only because they were kids at the time and had little choice.
You made a choice that worked for you. And if someone repeatedly destroyed your belongings, threw them near or at you, and then told you it was your fault, you might have made a different choice.
Honestly I read the article and I didn't read it as flipping sides so the intensity of the comments have been surprising. The second half felt like it was more about the support groups and therapy which has sprung out of these situations than it was about trying to take the parent's side, especially considering that there were no examples where both sides spoke to the writer. It came across as a thought piece, not as something with an agenda. My biggest take aways were: 1) This is becoming more common or more spoken about, 2) There is less tolerance for people negatively impacting someone's life, and there is not an expectation to just tolerate family like there was in the past, 3) There are a variety of reasons and ways contact can be cut off, including multiple breaks and restarts, 4) The nature of parent child relationships add complexity to how no contact is felt by both sides, 5) There are now many likely positive and likely negative spaces people can seek support (online, in person, and full therapy driven), including groups attempting to aid with institutional barriers for people who are not in contact with parents.
Genuinely a difficult situation for everyone involved. I just want to share a resource that was tremendously valuable to me when grappling with my experiences growing up with a disturbed parent:
"Understanding the Borderline Mother: Helping Her Children Transcend the Intense, Unpredictable, and Volatile Relationship" by Christine Ann Lawson
Not every situation calls for going no contact, which the shared article states, but sometimes it is the only reasonable option.