More and more parents say their grown children have gone 'no contact' over things that previous generations would have just argued about at Sunday dinner. Is this a healthy generation finally setting boundaries — or are we throwing away the people who raised us over nothing?
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Add your commentPicked up the phone halfway through reading these comments and called my dad. He cried. I cried. Two years of nonsense gone in four minutes. Whatever you're waiting for, it isn't worth it.
My son hasn't spoken to me in three years. I still don't know what I did. I get a Christmas card with no return address. That's it. That's my whole relationship with my only child now.
Reading this with a knot in my stomach. I haven't called my mum in two years and I keep telling myself I'll do it 'when I'm ready.' She's 77. I might be ready at her funeral. God help me.
Everyone in here is going to assume the estranged parents are innocent victims. Some of you weren't 'imperfect.' Some of you were cruel, and 'we argued at Sunday dinner' was your grandchildren watching you belittle their mother for 20 years. Not every silence is unfair.
63 here. Two kids, both close, we talk every week. I'm not saying this to brag. I'm saying it because when I was young and tired and short with them, I apologised the same day. Pride is what ends families, not phones.
Both my parents are gone. I'd give anything for one more 'annoying' Sunday lunch where dad criticised my driving. Whatever you're holding onto, ask if it's worth this — because this is forever.
What nobody says out loud: a lot of this is the spouse. The day my daughter married him, I lost her. Slowly, then all at once. He didn't like sharing.
My rule, for what it's worth at 70: I never make my children choose between their peace and me. If being around me costs them peace, that's on me to fix, not on them to endure.
'Boundaries' is the most overused word of the last ten years. Half the time it means 'I want all the inheritance but none of the phone calls.'
My mother is 81. She is difficult, opinionated, and forgets I have a job. She is also the only person on this earth who remembers me as a baby. When she's gone, that memory goes with her. I'll take the difficult phone calls.
I went no contact with my father at 52. Best decision I ever made and I'd do it again tomorrow. You have no idea what some of us survived behind a polite front door. Stop assuming.
The grandchildren are the real victims here. They don't get a vote and they lose their grandparents over an argument they weren't even in.
I'm 68 and I cut my mother off for the last decade of her life. People judged me hard. They didn't see the bruises when I was 9. I made peace with it. Strangers don't get a vote.
What scares me most reading this thread is how many people on BOTH sides are completely certain they're the wronged one. Maybe that's the whole tragedy in one sentence.
We didn't get the option to cut off our parents. We honoured them, faults and all, because that's what family meant. I'm not sure the new way is bravery. Sometimes it just looks like running away.
And some therapists are the first adult who ever told that 30 year old the way they were treated wasn't normal. You're only hearing one side of your own story.
the people saying 'just honour your parents no matter what' are exactly the parents the kids needed to get away from, and they cannot hear it
Therapists are partly to blame, I'll say it. Some of them collect a fee to convince a confused 30 year old that every ordinary disappointment of childhood was 'trauma.' Convenient business model.
Or the grandchildren are protected from the exact person who made their parent flinch for 18 years. Funny how 'think of the grandchildren' only ever points one direction.
easy for some of you to say 'just forgive.' my father never once said sorry in 60 years. you want me to apologise to HIM for his silence? not happening.
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