re: Estranged From Parents

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‘is Dad not as much of an arse hole anymore since he doesn’t talk to his parents?

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Spot. fricking. On.

My middle child suffered from a severe eating disorder in high school and during her first two years in college, it became tremendously worse to the point of requiring inpatient therapy for 6-7 months.

When she was able to transition from that level of care to partial hospitalization and then down to the intensive outpatient therapy level she was not the same child. She was very detached and just different.

When she was discharged from those levels of therapy, she came home for about 2 weeks and was just a shell of who she had been - literally and figuratively. She stopped going to follow up therapy and ended up moving 5 hours away.

Her communication became less and less and eventually withered down to nothing at all with our entire family. She basically cut herself out of all of our lives. This lasted for around 14 months where we did not hear a word from her.

That was so so hard to endure but I didn't pressure her. I just kept praying that one day she would reach back out.

She finally did and I welcomed her home unconditionally and with open arms. It didn't matter to me why she dropped out of our lives for that time if she didn't want to talk about it- the only thing that mattered to me was that she knew we all still loved her, we never stopped loving her and home will always be a safe place for her.

She told me that one day she would like to talk about it but not 'just yet'. I told her that whatever she wanted to talk about was perfectly ok and if she never wanted to talk about it that was ok too, I was just glad that she reached back out and that she knew that I - and all of us- would always love her and be here for her.

My hope was that she wouldn't feel any pressure, anxiety, shame or whatever- and that she would just know that she has and will always be loved by me and our family.

So far that approach is proving beneficial.

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I’m not personally, but a good friend of mine from college is estranged from his Mom. He has called her a toxic person who has not taken accountability for the shite she put him through and he cut her out of his life completely. Doesn’t even let her see his children, although she tried to take him to court over it, claiming she had a legal right to see them. Didn’t work.

Are you estranged from a parent or both? Do you know anyone who completely cut ties with their parents? I know for a lot of us, it can be hard to imagine cutting our Mom and Dad out of our life, but it seems to be happening more and more in society.

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kind of......my real mom was a pill head and put my dad through absolute hell personally and financially before she finally just upped and left one day in the summer between 6th and 7th grade and didnt even call for over 6 months

on and off again we have had a relationship of some kind but she pulled some shite when my first kid was born were now we see her once a year at christmas. She text she loves me and the kids etc but I dont want my kids around that kind of shite and to grow up seeing that like i had to

Now my step mom....absolute saint. i consider her my mom.


so to answer your question yea...estranged from my real mom for very legit reasons.

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Both my live-in girlfriend and I are estranged from our parents, so we usually do our own thing over the holidays unless something crazy happens like it did last year.

We were headed to Fiji (we tell our families our trips are for charity work), but our flight was cancelled due to weather and out of nowhere, a local news crew interviewed us at the airport...live, on air, about the cancelled flight.

Once our families found out our trip was cancelled, we were forced to do four Christmases in one day. It was wild, but we did grow as a couple and decided to have a baby. She's due around New Years, but we're keeping it a secret from our families for now.

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"Bitch I'm talking to you!"

People often forget that becoming a parent doesn’t make you a good person. Lots of bad people have children. Lots of these children suffer various abuses throughout childhood. Some cut ties and some don’t.

I partially cut ties from my alcoholic abusive mother who should have never had children. I firmly believe some people are too selfish to be a parents and she is one of them.

My wife and I were married 10 years ago when we were both 54.

Her father and his wife (her step-mom) and her brother and his wife are neighbors. Each one owns a couple of acres, so they are not right next to each other, but their properties are adjacent. My wife and I live 45 minutes away.

My wife was estranged from her father for a while because of conflicts with her step-mom, but that all ended prior to us being married. I have butted heads with the step-mom a couple of times. Nothing serious. Just her trying to assert her dominance over me, and me not having any of it. We're cool now.

However, my BIL's wife hates my FIL for some reason that has never clearly been explained to me. Even though they live on adjacent properties, they have not spoken to each other in over 15 years other than one time when my FIL had a heart issue and laid up in the hospital for several days. My BIL will have nothing to do with his step-mom and only speaks to his dad by phone a few times a year.

My BIL has 3 sons who are all adults. My FIL told me it has been so long since he saw the youngest one that he would not recognize him if he was standing directly in front of him.

The oldest of the three does come visit his grandpa every Christmas.

To top it all off, they are all hyper religious (Pentecostal Holiness).

I'm the newcomer, so I don't take sides.

This thread is awesome, makes my life feel totally normal…

My life isn’t perfect, but there’s a certain reality check here that some of us are lucky to have decent families..

This is terrible, I've lost both of mine and think of them daily.

Thanks Dr Rouge.