Thank you for thinking about and discussing this topic, which so profoundly affects more than one quarter of all U.S. families nowadays (27% in 2019). Our much-loved adult child cut off contact with us one year ago. From our point of view it was sudden and incomprehensible, and it remains so despite a long parting letter left in the guest bedroom after a friendly visit. I cannot even picture how the thing we hope for--a reconciliation--can occur, given that we are not supposed to reach out. I'm grateful that our other children are still in touch with this child--it means so much to me to know that they are there for support if needed.
I mean this is happens just as much in relationships / marriages / friend groups.
My wife did it to me, she was watching us your partner naecissric (which I'm not, I even walked around asking everyone to make sure :P). Demanded councilling, which ceased the second I presented what I felt to be fairly my flaws and my position and was rejected immediately. Everything was a projection of her cluster b / venerable narc / bi polar personality when I challenged her about her behaviour in manipulating me to get out of a treatment facility.
It was absurd and destroyed me completely, I probably won't ever recover from the guilt and shame (as someone who never had very much). But I have a lovely daughter now, and she takes good care of her I just wished I got to see her all the time.
Hi Luke. I’m really sorry to hear about your experience. Yes I believe you that this is happening in relationship groups too. May I ask: when you said the counseling stopped as soon as you tried to present your perspective, do you mean your ex stopped the therapy or the therapist stopped you?
As an adult child of abusive parents I had to make the really difficult decision to go no contact a little under two years ago. I miss my parents every day. I love them so much. I’m also filled with incredible rage and sadness thinking about the things that happened. Are continuing to happen to my little sisters and will continue to happen to me if I maintain contact. I let them know that I hope this won’t be forever and I hope one day it will be safe for me to have a relationship with them. But for now I have to be completely no contact to keep myself safe. While I think that there is lots of truth in this article.It worries me to think that parents like mine who truly pose a physical and or emotional danger feel vindicated and validated by this article and in turn reinforces the notion that they are completely right and can do no wrong and a hundred percent of their child’s struggles are the child’s fault and absolves them of any responsibility for their actions and hurtful choices that greatly affected me and will continue to do so for the rest of my life and never be able to acknowledge that every relationship has ruptures and repairs and the only way to maintain one is to own up to what they’ve done as well as l do the same thing in return I do understand and acknowledge that I my writing is completely subjective and written only through the lens of my experience and is not the case for everyone but I’m sure I’m not alone and I speak for myself and many others thank you for your article I really enjoyed reading it and think it is very insightful I just wanted to give a little insight into those of us who don’t speak to our parents out of safety issue and not for any other reasons thanks again
Hi Malka. I’m so sorry to hear about your experience (and that of your sisters). I know dear people in my life who had to go no-contact also. You raise an important point here, and towards the end of the article, I described worrying about precisely this: genuinely abusive parents will use my article to double down on the fact that they are correct and their child is the one with the problem. They’ll point fingers everywhere else to continue their own self-indulgent victim status. I was aware of this conundrum while writing it. And I certainly did not mean for this article to invalidate people who really had to remove themselves from a relationship with their parents.
But that’s also why I emphasize throughout the article that the no-contact culture I’m referring to, when it goes too far, reframes every day normal disagreements as abuse. I spoke about regular, loving, good-enough parents here, not those who manipulate, abuse or hurt their children.
The sad thing is that genuinely manipulative and abusive parents rarely reflect (if ever) about how they contributed to the rift. It’s usually the good-enough parents that rack their brains, combing over their entire history with their child, wondering what they did to cause this-and offering to do whatever it takes to get their child back. This is where cut-off culture can be destructive.
Oh, she had asked me to go to counselling for years, even when she came back into my life after 10 years. I finally capitulated when she started weaponizing therapeutic language and our communications broke down completely and I couldn't get her to progress a conversation by just agreeing that water is wet, for instance.
So I finally accepted I would have to do it, as I absolutely refused to admit anything I hadn't done, she organised it through regain I think its called and an American (im Aussie) woman facilitated the session.
My wife is brilliant, and been a patient for 10+ years so can easily present as necessary, but I laid out what I believed was happening/or otherwise, my honest position, and desire to do work from where I was at to try and resolve.
Well, that was the end of the session, the facilitator knew about the psych history, as I explained it, she simply asked my wife if she understood, she thoroughly rejected my subjective experience, the facilitator then asked if she had anything to say saw any way back. She replied no and left and I simply asked for a refund destroyed with my life in pieces.
We still haven't spoken about what happened, she just ran away and barely speaks to me other than formalities - she was here with my daughter this weekend, I absolutely adore her.
I think now it was probably a borderline/narc/c-b response to idealised projection of the perfect partner she had imagined me as, driven by her concern I would reject her/break up with her.. Which I never would have, but that's life, I can't force someone to forgive me, or stay with me. I hope she's happier now and my daughter doesn't resent her for keeping us apart by virtue of the distance.
- I have a lot of ideas swirling around in my head re this and the further societal extrapolation of these ideas, some of the interesting ideas I have already look at are social-emotional learning (hyper fixation of how one feels and the validity of it), safetyism (as society becomes richer, less dangerous people find monsters everywhere), victim culture, cultural marxism (oppressor/oppresee), universality (interconnectedness), stability of western democracies since rules based order established after ww2, poor or negative incentives for strong cultural bonds (starting at family, religion, local, state and federal government), activistism which is so poorly incentivised (if indigenous/womens/gay rights are implimented they are never acknowledged, its always couched in the most dire terms to justify ones activism), inappropriate/lay use of psychological jargon, influencers/scammers/grifters using sensationalist topical headings (sell books get views etc), destigmatisation policies (they began 25-30 years ago when I was at school, but like with activism it went too far now its cool), trauma being charactured as immutable (it can just as easily make you stronger), everybody is a winner mentality (no winners in sports, no placings, ie no losers means people are protected from developing resilience strategies as a child), anonymous/abstracted bullying/reputation destruction online (inability to be able to glean intent from the perpetrator, or for anyone to see the victim suffering to intervene), human rights (without establishing the responsibility of the individual), refusal to try and resolve disputes, so on and so forth
I am really not sure given the current situation and the way things are trending that there is a corrective path back, but I think that you need to get the half witted idealogs, activists, utopian thinking out of politics, education, HR, governing bodies and the public space that act in a way to promote ideas that have long been established to reduce autonomy, responsibility, self-actualisation, self-esteem, resilience, ethics, morals, individuality, independent thought, rationality and reason.
Thank you for thinking about and discussing this topic, which so profoundly affects more than one quarter of all U.S. families nowadays (27% in 2019). Our much-loved adult child cut off contact with us one year ago. From our point of view it was sudden and incomprehensible, and it remains so despite a long parting letter left in the guest bedroom after a friendly visit. I cannot even picture how the thing we hope for--a reconciliation--can occur, given that we are not supposed to reach out. I'm grateful that our other children are still in touch with this child--it means so much to me to know that they are there for support if needed.
I mean this is happens just as much in relationships / marriages / friend groups.
My wife did it to me, she was watching us your partner naecissric (which I'm not, I even walked around asking everyone to make sure :P). Demanded councilling, which ceased the second I presented what I felt to be fairly my flaws and my position and was rejected immediately. Everything was a projection of her cluster b / venerable narc / bi polar personality when I challenged her about her behaviour in manipulating me to get out of a treatment facility.
It was absurd and destroyed me completely, I probably won't ever recover from the guilt and shame (as someone who never had very much). But I have a lovely daughter now, and she takes good care of her I just wished I got to see her all the time.
Hi Luke. I’m really sorry to hear about your experience. Yes I believe you that this is happening in relationship groups too. May I ask: when you said the counseling stopped as soon as you tried to present your perspective, do you mean your ex stopped the therapy or the therapist stopped you?
As an adult child of abusive parents I had to make the really difficult decision to go no contact a little under two years ago. I miss my parents every day. I love them so much. I’m also filled with incredible rage and sadness thinking about the things that happened. Are continuing to happen to my little sisters and will continue to happen to me if I maintain contact. I let them know that I hope this won’t be forever and I hope one day it will be safe for me to have a relationship with them. But for now I have to be completely no contact to keep myself safe. While I think that there is lots of truth in this article.It worries me to think that parents like mine who truly pose a physical and or emotional danger feel vindicated and validated by this article and in turn reinforces the notion that they are completely right and can do no wrong and a hundred percent of their child’s struggles are the child’s fault and absolves them of any responsibility for their actions and hurtful choices that greatly affected me and will continue to do so for the rest of my life and never be able to acknowledge that every relationship has ruptures and repairs and the only way to maintain one is to own up to what they’ve done as well as l do the same thing in return I do understand and acknowledge that I my writing is completely subjective and written only through the lens of my experience and is not the case for everyone but I’m sure I’m not alone and I speak for myself and many others thank you for your article I really enjoyed reading it and think it is very insightful I just wanted to give a little insight into those of us who don’t speak to our parents out of safety issue and not for any other reasons thanks again
Hi Malka. I’m so sorry to hear about your experience (and that of your sisters). I know dear people in my life who had to go no-contact also. You raise an important point here, and towards the end of the article, I described worrying about precisely this: genuinely abusive parents will use my article to double down on the fact that they are correct and their child is the one with the problem. They’ll point fingers everywhere else to continue their own self-indulgent victim status. I was aware of this conundrum while writing it. And I certainly did not mean for this article to invalidate people who really had to remove themselves from a relationship with their parents.
But that’s also why I emphasize throughout the article that the no-contact culture I’m referring to, when it goes too far, reframes every day normal disagreements as abuse. I spoke about regular, loving, good-enough parents here, not those who manipulate, abuse or hurt their children.
The sad thing is that genuinely manipulative and abusive parents rarely reflect (if ever) about how they contributed to the rift. It’s usually the good-enough parents that rack their brains, combing over their entire history with their child, wondering what they did to cause this-and offering to do whatever it takes to get their child back. This is where cut-off culture can be destructive.
Oh, she had asked me to go to counselling for years, even when she came back into my life after 10 years. I finally capitulated when she started weaponizing therapeutic language and our communications broke down completely and I couldn't get her to progress a conversation by just agreeing that water is wet, for instance.
So I finally accepted I would have to do it, as I absolutely refused to admit anything I hadn't done, she organised it through regain I think its called and an American (im Aussie) woman facilitated the session.
My wife is brilliant, and been a patient for 10+ years so can easily present as necessary, but I laid out what I believed was happening/or otherwise, my honest position, and desire to do work from where I was at to try and resolve.
Well, that was the end of the session, the facilitator knew about the psych history, as I explained it, she simply asked my wife if she understood, she thoroughly rejected my subjective experience, the facilitator then asked if she had anything to say saw any way back. She replied no and left and I simply asked for a refund destroyed with my life in pieces.
We still haven't spoken about what happened, she just ran away and barely speaks to me other than formalities - she was here with my daughter this weekend, I absolutely adore her.
I think now it was probably a borderline/narc/c-b response to idealised projection of the perfect partner she had imagined me as, driven by her concern I would reject her/break up with her.. Which I never would have, but that's life, I can't force someone to forgive me, or stay with me. I hope she's happier now and my daughter doesn't resent her for keeping us apart by virtue of the distance.
- I have a lot of ideas swirling around in my head re this and the further societal extrapolation of these ideas, some of the interesting ideas I have already look at are social-emotional learning (hyper fixation of how one feels and the validity of it), safetyism (as society becomes richer, less dangerous people find monsters everywhere), victim culture, cultural marxism (oppressor/oppresee), universality (interconnectedness), stability of western democracies since rules based order established after ww2, poor or negative incentives for strong cultural bonds (starting at family, religion, local, state and federal government), activistism which is so poorly incentivised (if indigenous/womens/gay rights are implimented they are never acknowledged, its always couched in the most dire terms to justify ones activism), inappropriate/lay use of psychological jargon, influencers/scammers/grifters using sensationalist topical headings (sell books get views etc), destigmatisation policies (they began 25-30 years ago when I was at school, but like with activism it went too far now its cool), trauma being charactured as immutable (it can just as easily make you stronger), everybody is a winner mentality (no winners in sports, no placings, ie no losers means people are protected from developing resilience strategies as a child), anonymous/abstracted bullying/reputation destruction online (inability to be able to glean intent from the perpetrator, or for anyone to see the victim suffering to intervene), human rights (without establishing the responsibility of the individual), refusal to try and resolve disputes, so on and so forth
I am really not sure given the current situation and the way things are trending that there is a corrective path back, but I think that you need to get the half witted idealogs, activists, utopian thinking out of politics, education, HR, governing bodies and the public space that act in a way to promote ideas that have long been established to reduce autonomy, responsibility, self-actualisation, self-esteem, resilience, ethics, morals, individuality, independent thought, rationality and reason.
Sorry for going on!