Latest / Thinking Out Loud | Kimberly / Why Might Someone Choose Estrangement? | Thinking Out Loud
Transcript
- Kimberly: Why might someone choose estrangement? When we hear that someone has cut contact with their parent, sibling, or another family member, I think we often jump immediately to the question: why would they do that? Sometimes the answer we reach are simple. They were manipulated. They're holding a grudge. They're punishing their family. They think they're better than everyone. Someone turned them against us. They don't want to forgive. Maybe sometimes those explanations are part of the story. What if we're asking the wrong question? Maybe instead of immediately asking, is the person who left the bad guy? Or is the person who was left the villain? We asked instead, what happened in the relationship that made one or both people feel like their only option was to leave? Estrangement often doesn't happen overnight. It's not an impulse choice in most cases. It can be the result of years of conflict. Repeated autonomy of violations, unresolved hurt, different values, abuse, neglect, control, substance use, mental health struggles, family dysfunction, and I'm not talking about simply a quirky family. People are allowed to be whimsy and quirky, yes. Rather, what I'm talking about is when there is a history of people abusing their power. Sometimes it can simply be the realization that a relationship has become unhealthy and the people involved aren't able or willing to repair it. I think this point gets lost. Choosing estrangement doesn't necessarily mean someone stopped loving their family. Doesn't mean they don't care. Sometimes it means they reached a point where staying connected requires. required them to keep abandoning themselves. maybe a better question is, when someone chooses estrangement, what are we missing when we assume distance is the problem instead of asking what made distance necessary? Welcome back to Thinking Out Loud. Hi, it's me Kimberly. Before we begin, a quick note, this podcast is for reflection and conversation, not professional advice. Take what resonates and leave the rest. Here we slow down and we explore life's gray areas. especially in relationships and behavior patterns we can observe and reflect on. I am not here to tell you what to think. I'm here to offer framework that help you understand your relationships, strengthen your thinking, and hold space for complexity. Let's get to thinking out loud. I think one of the biggest misconceptions about estrangement is that someone simply wakes up one morning and decides, I'm done with my family. They slam a door, blocked a number disappeared like a ghost. Boo. Gone, yet ever present. Maybe for some people, that's what happened or what it felt like happened. For many people, estrangement is much slower than that. It can look like years of trying to make a relationship work. Where people who care repeatedly miss the mark. People who became the one in power and assume that when their child doesn't want to talk to them, that they're just like their mother or father giving them the silent treatment, like this revenge Make it make sense. Not realizing that maybe the silence was the only escape from being punished. or maybe they simply were tired of screaming into the void. Trying to explain what hurt. Trying to have boundaries Trying to communicate differently, trying to forgive, trying to understand, trying to become easier to love. trying not to bring things up because they don't want another argument. Trying to keep the peace, Trying to convince themselves that maybe things will change if they approach the relationship differently. Eventually someone has to reach the point where they realize, I have tried everything. They're not trying, Nothing is changing. Or it's not changing fast enough. at some point distance can start looking less like punishment and more like healing from the dysfunction. They don't have the power to fix by themselves. What does estrangement actually mean? One definition is the fact of no longer being on friendly terms or part of a social group. If we take that definition seriously, estrangement doesn't necessarily have to begin when an adult child packs a bag, moves out, and stops answering the phone. Sometimes estrangement happens inside the home first. It can look like siblings who constantly fight, resent each other, and assuming the worst of one another. It can look like a parent who dismisses their child's feelings with I'm your parent. I'm not your friend. And sure, a parent doesn't have to be their child's friend. maybe we need to ask the question does being a parent mean we stop caring about our child's feelings? Do we only care about the feelings of people we consider our friends? I have sometimes seen where adults who are incredibly patient and show tenderness towards their pets while simultaneously treating their own children's emotions like burdens that isn't theirs to carry, despite the child in question, is in fact their child legally or biologically or both. Why is empathy sometimes easier to give to an animal than to a child who depends on us? Enstrangement can also begin when a parent and child stop seeing each other as people with separate experiences, when a child's feelings are constantly dismissed, when disagreements is treated as disrespect, when independence is treated as betrayal, when a parent believes because I'm your parent, I know what's best for you. Even though that child becomes an adult, sometimes that dynamic extends into the next generation. A grandparent may begin to believe that their relationship with their grandchildren gives them an authority they don't legally have. They may see boundaries and expectations or standards that the other parent has around the grandchild as a personal attack. They may argue, I'm the grandparent, I have a right to see them. An important distinction I want to make here is this. Being a grandparent does not automatically mean you have unlimited access to see someone else's child. The parents are still the people responsible for making decisions about their child's care. For some reason, social media seems to be exploding, and grandparents think that this is somehow a custody agreement. That's not a thing. what seems to be happening is a family member believing I am entitled to the access to this child, even if the parent says no. That can become another source of conflict, especially when the person asking for access isn't willing to acknowledge why the boundaries exist in the first place. Getting drunk and having your underage grandchild drive you home. Not using an appropriate car seat or seat belt when transporting the child. Keeping unsecured firearm, medication, drugs, or other dangerous items accessible to the child. Repeatedly ignoring a parent's explicit safety or parenting instructions, giving the child something the parent specifically said they cannot have, saying, I'm the grandparent, I do what I want. Telling the child that their parent is bad, stupid, selfish, or incapable. Any kind of name meant to harm the parent's image. Asking the child to keep secrets from their parents, Making the child responsible for the grandparents' emotions. You don't love Nana anymore. Making major decisions about the child without the parents' permission. taking the child somewhere or keeping them longer than agreed upon without the parent's consent. Refusing to acknowledge the parent as the decision maker for their child. Physically harming or threatening the child. Exposing the child to domestic violence. Repeatedly neglecting a child's basic needs or supervision. repeatedly harassing or contacting the parent after being asked to stop. Showing up at the parent's home, workplace, school, or child activities after being told not to. Using other family members to pressure the parents into allowing contact. If someone has repeatedly refused to change harmful behaviors, refuse to seek help, or refuse to respect a parent's boundaries, demanding access doesn't repair the relationship. It exposes the reason the boundaries exist. That brings me to something I've realized needs to be examined. When did parents become siblings to their own children? why is that being treated that way? When did a grandparent become the people who believe that they were the actual parents while their adult children are just treated like the babysitter? Because that's the direction it feels like it's going sometimes when we talk about grandparents' rights and I'm not talking about grandparent rights in the sense of I literally am taking care of your child, you're not doing well and I have all these responsibility and I have no support and no legal things that protect me and your child because you trusted me with your child. I'm not talking about that. That is a whole different scenario. I'm literally talking about you're not being a safe adult and I am starting to see how you treated me as a child growing up and it's spilling over on my child. I don't feel safe with you. I am stopping. That's different. Sometimes the problem isn't simply that adult children want distance. Sometimes the problem is that the family never fully accepted that the child grew up. They still expect obedience. They expect access. they expect authority. Expect to be consulted. Expected their opinions to carry more weight. Eventually the adult child may have to ask, Am I being treated like an adult in this relationship? becoming an adult doesn't mean you stop loving your parents. It doesn't mean you stop caring about your siblings. it doesn't mean grandparents stop mattering. It means the relationship has to change. A parent child relationship has to make room for two adults. The sibling relationship has to make room for separate lives. grandparent and parent relationships have to recognize that grandparents aren't the parents of the grandchildren. The roles have changed. Sometimes estrangement begins when one person accepts the change while the other refuse to. This is where I think estrangement can become especially difficult to understand. In most families, parents have more power than children. Parents establish the rules, they shape the emotional environments, they decide what gets accepted, normalize, they have authority. Children grow up. Those children become adults who make decisions their parents may not agree with. They choose where they live, who they spend time with, what relationships they maintain, what beliefs they hold, how they raise their children, what they're willing to tolerate. Sometimes independence can feel like rejection to someone. Who is accustomed to having unlimited access. Who never took their child's autonomy and personhood seriously. A boundary can feel like a punishment when you're used to unrestricted access. a person saying, I'm not comfortable discussing that with you can hear. You don't matter to me. A person saying, I need some distance can hear. I'm abandoning you. Those aren't necessarily the same things. They can feel the same way. Especially when you're carrying your own trauma from how you were treated growing up. However, sometimes we think I'll do the exact opposite of what was done to me, that somehow that's breaking a cycle, instead of realizing we might be repeating the same cycle in a different costume. Maybe your parent was controlling, so you become permissive because you never want your child to feel controlled. Maybe your parent was emotionally unavailable, so you become intensely involved in your child's life because you never want them to feel neglected. Maybe your parent was unpredictable, so you tell yourself, I'm just passionate. maybe your parent used guilt. So you tell yourself, I just care so much. Your child might experience that care as suffocating. You might be more manipulative than you want to admit. Not because you're evil, not because you don't love your child. Because sometimes we learn unhealthy ways of getting our needs met, and love doesn't automatically make those behaviors healthy. You might be more volatile than you want to see. You might think, I simply lost my temper. While your child remembers, I was afraid of what would happen when they got angry. Sometimes we're doing both. We're loving our child deeply. And we're hurting them in ways we don't recognize or see. We see our child bite us and we focus entirely on the bite. Maybe we forgot what happened immediately before it. Maybe they were overwhelmed, and instead of taking the time to treat them like a person, we grab their phone out of their hand when they wouldn't turn off the television. Maybe we demand that they respect our boundaries while repeatedly ignoring theirs. Maybe we tell them, don't raise your voice at me while raising our own voice to make them listen. Maybe we insist that they're being disrespectful when what they're actually communicating is I don't like how you're treating me. And sometimes we're the ones who need to stop and ask, am I actually breaking a cycle or am I just recreating it in a way that feels different to me? You can love your child. You can have good intentions. You can have your own trauma. You can genuinely be trying your best. And your child can still need to have boundaries with you. Sometimes a boundary isn't punishment. Sometimes it's information. The relationship doesn't feel safe for me in the way it currently exists and the boundary might be trying to save the relationship. Sometimes the relationship has simply changed and it has nothing to do with you. it might not even be a boundary. It might be different priorities. accepting that change can sometimes be painful. Not being prioritized when you were their number one. Ugh, that sounds awful. it happens. especially when you remember the relationship as it was. sometimes the healthiest thing you can do isn't demanding that the relationship goes back to what it was. what would this relationship need to look like now? There isn't always one reason. It seems so much easier to blame one mistake. To live in this belief, if I had only been perfect, maybe they wouldn't have cut me out of their lives. I think it's important to sit with that feeling. To acknowledge that what we believed happened and what the other person says happens aren't always the same thing. We can hear I am not wanted when someone says I can't keep living like this. We can hear I'm evil when someone says, I've experienced you as neglectful. We can hear I'm not good enough when someone was trying to say I've tried to explain this many times and I don't feel heard. the interpretation we give it isn't always the message that was being communicated. Ultimately, whether someone chooses estrangement is a personal choice. One person may choose estrangement because of abuse. Another may do it because of the chronic criticism and humiliation. Someone else may be dealing with a family member who is repeatedly refusing to respect boundaries where even a no somehow becomes the beginning of a negotiation. Like that's great for business, not relationships. someone may have grown up feeling responsible for everyone's emotions while simultaneously being taught that their own feelings came last or didn't matter at all. Someone may have repeatedly tried to repair a relationship and experienced no meaningful change. Someone may be protecting their spouse or child from harmful family dynamics. Someone may have reached a point where contact constantly damages their mental health or sense of safety. Someone else may simply realize we don't know how to have a healthy relationship with each other. Sometimes estrangement isn't even about one dramatic event. It can be the accumulation of hundreds of small moments, people mocking you when you try something new, your choice is constantly criticized, being called lazy when you're struggling, being labeled difficult when you asked for an accommodation, being told you're too sensitive when something hurts, being expected to tolerate jokes you never consented to. Having your boundaries interpreted as selfishness, being told you're holding a grudge when the behavior you're upset about hasn't changed because the pattern remains the same. When life gets hard for them, they lash out at me. Being expected to manage another person's emotional reaction, having your character debated instead of concerns addressed, none of these things by themselves necessarily tell the entire story. sometimes after enough moments have accumulated, someone reaches a point where they realize I don't want to keep living this way. That doesn't necessarily mean I hate you. That doesn't necessarily mean you were a terrible parent, sibling, grandparent, aunt, or uncle. It doesn't necessarily mean nothing good ever happened between us. Sometimes it simply means whatever we have been doing isn't working anymore. That can be a painful truth for everyone involved. For both people, for the person who hoped and the person who benefited from things remaining the same. Estrangement can also bring up an enormous shame, especially for parents. Questions like, what kind of parent does that make me? Did I fail? What will they think? Those are painful questions. Shame can make curiosity incredibly difficult. When we're ashamed, we often want to defend ourselves, explain ourselves, prove we're good, find someone else to blame. And sometimes that means focusing more on why would they do this to me? Then what might they have been experiencing with me that led them here? Those are different questions and they can lead to different outcomes. Asking the second question doesn't require assuming that an estranged person is automatically right, and it simply requires Being willing to consider that there may be information we don't have. Someone telling their story isn't automatically an attack on you. Someone saying this is what I experienced is not necessarily saying this is everything that happened. Someone else's pain doesn't automatically erase yours. Both realities can exist. It's important to remember who had the power to change the environment. As said in Spider-Man, with great power comes great responsibility. I think another misconception is that if someone chooses an estrangement, they must hate the people They're distancing themselves from. That's not necessarily true. You can hate them, I guess, if that's where you're at in your healing journey. Personally, I found that endlessly forgiving people who continue to hurt me, even casually, wasn't helping my mental health either and hating them wasn't getting me anywhere. indifference did, and apparently it's scary to some people. Boo I'm going to live my life, whether you get your act together or not. I'm going to heal, even if I never get an apology. I'm going to rebuild my life that doesn't depend on you finally understanding what you did to me. I'm going to start over because I want to find out who is Kimberly when no one is telling her who to be. Boo Scene. Someone can love a parent and still recognize that being around that parent is harmful. Someone can love their sibling and decide they cannot continue the relationship as it currently exists to be. Someone can miss their family and still believe distance is necessary. Someone can grieve a relationship while still maintaining the boundary. Love doesn't automatically make a relationship healthy. Distance doesn't automatically mean love disappeared. Sometimes the hardest estrangements are the ones where love is still there. Truthfully, one of the things that made me question was watching those same people tell me you need us while casually hating the very people they allowed into their lives. I don't personally want to live like that. I don't want to be married to someone I hate. loathing family get togethers, hanging out with friends and having nothing nice to say about them the second they leave. I mean, sure, it makes great content. Books, blogs, podcasts. I'm basically writing myself a whole wallflower monologue over here, but being involved, no thank you. And also too, I want to find different ways how to navigate life. I don't want to be part of the drama. no thank you. I don't want to be part of drama I don't consent to. Now do I consent to my TV shows? Yes. Anyways. I don't want life where I'm surrounded by people I resent. I'd rather miss people. I'd rather accept what I can't change. I'd rather let go of people who think it's okay to tell people they claim to love. I don't care about your feelings because resentment It's exhausting. It's a lot of work to carry. I don't want to be like that guy from Count of Monte Cristo who his whole life became about nothing but revenge. I want to be able to say I'd rather learn the uncomfortable skill of standing up for myself without needing to become cruel in return. To be able to say, I can be done without becoming you. I can walk away without matching your energy. I can protect myself without needing to punish you. Maybe that's part of what healing looks like. Not pretending I wasn't hurt. Not pretending I don't care. Not endlessly forgiving behavior that continues to harm me. Not spending the rest of my life trying to make someone understand why I left. Simply accepting this is what happened. This is what I can change. This is what I can't. This is where I go from here. you're not simply grieving someone you don't care about. You're grieving a relationship you wanted to have. The family you hoped you could have. The version of the relationship that might have existed if things had been different. You're grieving the apologies you. May never receive the accountability you may never see the version of them you kept hoping would eventually show up, and that's grief. Grief doesn't make the decision wrong. You can grieve something and still know you needed it to let it go. This might be one of the most important things I want to say. One person cannot repair a relationship by themselves. You can apologize, communicate, change your behavior, go to all the therapies, set boundaries, learn new ways of relating, becoming more accountable and do all the healthy and right things. And eventually the other person has to participate too. Repair requires willingness, good faith, requires listening, accountability. Being able to say, I may not have intended to hurt you. I understand that I did though. Sometimes people aren't ready to do that. Sometimes they can't believe they did anything wrong, and sometimes they believe the other person is entirely responsible. Sometimes they want the relationship back without changing the conditions that cause the distance. That's where someone may eventually decide, I cannot repair this relationship alone. sometimes estrangement happens because someone changes. They learn new ways of communicating. They develop boundaries. They become more aware of their needs. they stop tolerating things I once considered normal. They begin questioning family roles they previously accepted and they realize I don't have to keep being this version of myself that I don't even like. Sometimes the people around them don't know how to relate to the new version or the person they're trying to become. That doesn't automatically mean those people are evil and it doesn't mean they're incapable of change. It doesn't mean the people who left are perfect. It means the relationship may no longer function the way it used to. sometimes growth requires distance. Not because someone becomes better than everyone else, because the old way of relating no longer works. I want to be careful with this topic because this conversation can very easily become: if your family hurts your feelings, cut them off. that's not what I'm saying. enstrangment Whether it means ending a relationship, significantly limiting contact, or removing someone access to your life is a major decision. It carries grief, loneliness, financial consequences, culture consequences, complicated family dynamics. Sometimes limited contact Can work. Sometimes meditation can help. Sometimes therapy can help. Sometimes people need temporary distance. Sometimes people need reconnection and sometimes they don't need any of it. There isn't one correct answer for every family. there isn't this five-step program, seriously. It's wild how often people will say, unless this specific thing happens, you're not valid for leaving. As though there is one universal checklist for when you're allowed to decide you've had enough. Shocker. There isn't. You know what you can tolerate. You know your limits. You know your capacity. You are the person who has to live with whatever decision you make. Part of making choices is having the ability to admit maybe we were wrong. Sometimes it might be, wow, I had no idea the crushing pain I was carrying. sometimes I don't think we should romanticize estrangement any more than we should shame it. Leaving isn't automatically healthy. Staying isn't automatically healthy. Reconciliation isn't automatically healthy. Estrangement isn't automatically healthy. The answer depends on the relationship. The question isn't is estrangement good or bad? The question is, what is happening in this relationship and what does this person need in order to live safely and authentically? maybe the answer is a boundary. Maybe it's therapy, reconciliation, no contact, or it's something nobody else would choose for themselves. Maybe that's the point. You don't have to choose someone else's boundaries for them. You can ask questions and you can encourage people to consider their options without erasing their autonomy. people can talk honestly about the cost of leaving and the cost of staying. Ultimately, another person's relationship is not ours to manage. Sometimes the most respectful thing we can say isn't you should leave or you should forgive them. Rather it's simply whatever you decide, I hope you make the decisions with your eyes open and that it's allowing you to build a life you can live in. If it can't, I hope you figure out what needs to change so you can. Back to the question. why might someone choose entrangement? There isn't one answer. I know it's wild. Some people don't even know the definitions of abuse. Some people don't know the definitions of ameshments or parentification. They think these big scary words. I think most people know what they want and they're just trying to figure out how to articulate it. there is no five-step program. Someone might choose estrangement because they have experienced abuse. Some might choose it because their boundaries are continually ignored, and that is exhausting. I want to brush my teeth and you keep throwing glitter on my head. I know, it's just random, it happens. Someone might choose it because every attempt to repair has failed. Or it's just one-sided again. someone might be choosing it because staying connected requires them to continually abandon themselves. someone might choose it because they need to protect their children. someone might choose it because the relationship has become unhealthy that distance is the only boundary that works. Someone might choose it simply because they realize I cannot keep living this way. that doesn't mean they're perfect. It doesn't mean the other person is entirely wrong. It doesn't mean there isn't more to the story. It doesn't necessarily mean that an estrangement will last forever. It means that at this point of time, the person who decided that the relationship as it existed was no longer something they can continue participating in. maybe that's the part we need to start sitting with. Enstrangement isn't choosing to abandon their family. Sometimes it's someone realizing they can no longer abandon themselves in order to remain part of it. You don't have to have all that figured out immediately. You can start by noticing, by asking yourself, what is this relationship asking me to sacrifice in order to maintain it? have I communicated what I need? has there been a genuine willingness to repair? most importantly, am I choosing distance because I want to punish someone or because I need to protect the life I'm trying to build? Whether you leave a comment, send me a message, or simply sit with this question, I hope this conversation stays with you. Thank you for slowing down and thinking out loud with me. until next time, take care of yourself. And remember, sometimes choosing yourself isn't abandoning the people you love. Sometimes it's the first step towards no longer abandoning yourself. I'll see you in the next episode.