A parent responds to “Unwanted Contact Is Not Stalking”
On Mother’s Day 2016, a person who signed themselves “A Hurting Parent” emailed me about my article titled “Unwanted Contact Is Not Stalking“:
I just read your article on “Estranged Parent Forums” and I cannot believe a human being with any sense of connection to humanity would write something like that. Let me start out by asking you this, in your article you refer to every attempt at communication, or an attempt to tell your child that you love them as a being “terrorized”, would you be as supportive of that estranged child if they said, “every time I receive a message, I believe aliens from Alpha Centauri are helping my parents communicate with me”? Somehow I doubt you would be as supportive. What if someone says, “when I walk down the street I feel threatened by black people”? Would you blame the black person for for this person’s irrational fear? I doubt that too, so why would you refer, and support a parent expressing love your their child as “terrorizing”? My wife, and I are over two years into our estrangement from our son, and I, and anyone in our family will tell you that we did absolutely nothing to deserve this. I don’t know if you have ever mourned the death of a loved one, especially your own child, but I can tell you mourning the loss of a living child is even worse, and you should be ashamed of yourself for promoting, and giving support to these actions.
This is something I’ve encountered again and again since this site went live: No matter how succinct the explanation, how detailed the description, how clear the chain of logic, estranged parents don’t absorb anything that’s counter to their beliefs.
I’m not going to analyze the entire letter because when I tried, it ended up being a string of quotes from the article. “A Hurting Parent” does exactly as described: They frame their own actions as loving, deny the validity of the child’s reactions, and reject any grounds the child has for objecting to contact.
They add a twist, which I do want to analyze:
would you be as supportive of that estranged child if they said, “every time I receive a message, I believe aliens from Alpha Centauri are helping my parents communicate with me”? Somehow I doubt you would be as supportive. What if someone says, “when I walk down the street I feel threatened by black people”? Would you blame the black person for for this person’s irrational fear?
“A Hurting Parent” compares an adult child’s fear of his own parents, the ultimate known quantity, to a fear of all black people. It’s an elaboration upon the idea that there’s an epidemic of adult children estranging from their parents for no good reason. Why do they do it? In this version, adult children have been convinced that all parents are the enemy. Their fear of parents is fear of an entire class of people, no more founded than a fear of black people.
“A Hurting Parent” also likens an adult child’s complaints to the complaints of someone who thinks their parents are in collusion with aliens. That is, an adult child who feels terrorized by his parents’ unwanted attempts at contact is talking crazy, and deserves as much heed as if he was raving about aliens. After all, the parent knows they’re good and loving and did nothing wrong, so anyone who thinks otherwise is clearly mad.
As failures of empathy go, it’s spectacular.
On the primacy of pain
The end of the letter is the estranged parent’s traditional coup de grace: They’re in pain, and you should be ashamed. Pain is a holy state that washes all one’s sins away and allows the sufferer to decide how their actions affect others. Shame is the natural state of those who defy the holy sufferer.
Or, to put it less snarkily: When someone is in pain, the first order of business should be to relieve their suffering. It’s cruel to suggest they’re the cause of their own suffering, or to add to their suffering by interpreting their actions differently than they intended, or to insist that they take responsibility for actions they’re not ready to deal with. Telling them that their suffering is their own business isn’t an option. Nor is one allowed to tell them that although you’re sorry that they’re in pain, that doesn’t make the other party wrong.
This approach to suffering rests on several unspoken premises:
- Only wrongdoing causes pain.
- Pain is proof of wrongdoing.
- Only one side of an argument at a time can be wrong.
- Being in pain excuses behavior that would in other circumstances be considered wrong.
- Corollary: One cannot be hurt by the actions of a person in pain because their actions aren’t wrong, and only wrongdoing causes pain.
- Suffering outranks all other considerations.
This belief system isn’t unique to estranged parents. It’s our primal state, fully formed long before we first whacked someone in the head with our fire truck because they stole the plastic dinosaur we were playing with. We spend our childhood developing enough higher brain functions to understand that it’s wrong, and the whole of our adult lives trying not to slide back into it. Depression is like a greased chute. So is severe stress. Anything that triggers our psychological defenses can land us right back in the sandbox, psychologically speaking. Certain things can make people more prone to primitive thinking, particularly Cluster B personality disorders, but we all go there from time to time.
But that doesn’t make it right. Or healthy. Just common.
Update
My reply to A Hurting Parent:
From what I understand, you believe that I shouldn’t say that estranged
adult children experience unwanted contact as terrorizing, because you
feel that the adult children have no legitimate cause for fear.I… I don’t have a response for that. There are so many gulfs of
misunderstanding we’d have to cross, starting with “Continuing to demand
contact when someone has told you to leave them alone is a danger sign”
and “It’s natural for people to be fearful of people who insist upon
forcing themselves into their lives,” moving on through “You do not get
to vote on how other people feel” and “Whether you like it or not,
estranged adult children feel terrorized by unwanted contact,” and
passing into “Estranged adult children have real reasons for not wanting
contact; you don’t get a say in those, either.” There’s a lot more past
that, but that’s where we’d get bogged down.So you’re welcome to join the conversation here
(http://issendai.com/wp/estrangement/a-parent-responds-to-unwanted-contact-is-not-stalking/),
but further debate between us is unlikely to be fruitful.
A Hurting Parent’s response:
Well, I think the problem is that you really don’t get it, so I’ll try it another way.
If I was getting on an airplane and saw a Muslim person getting on then asked the flight attendant to remove them from my presence because I felt terrorized, am I being racist, with irrational fear, or should the airline remove to person to validate my irrational fear?
On a personal note your entire explanation of going “no contact” for no reason from people that have loved, and cared for you from before you were even born can only be written by someone devoid of empathy for the people you are hurting, and a complete lack of the ability to love another human being.
And, I’ll give you another scenario. Your child, YOURS (though I’m afraid the answer might be disturbing) tells you, mom & dad I’m moving out of the house, and moving in with this guy I met on the Internet. His name is Jim Jones, and I don’t want you contacting me after I leave. Do you let him go, or do you do everything you can to get your child home, because let’s face it we all thought we had all the answers at 18?
This email showcases an expectation that A Hurting Parent had from the start, and is going to repeat in each subsequent email. He expects that he can insult me, and I’ll still listen to him. I’m feeding his belief by ignoring the insults and continuing the conversation, it’s true; but tellingly, even after several rounds in which I don’t respond in kind, he continues to insult me.
My response:
Well gee, considering that Jim Jones the cult leader has been dead for decades and there are 28,080 people in the U.S. alone who are named James or Jim Jones, I’d be mighty silly to assume my kid was leaving for an appointment with a vat of Kool-Aid. I’d certainly try to get in touch with him. But “do everything I can”? No. First, the best way to cement someone’s resolve to stay in a bad situation is to turn it into a power struggle where leaving means the other person loses. And second, people have the right to decide where they go, what they do, and who they see–even cocky 18-year-olds.
I understand what you mean: It’s as irrational to fear your parents as it is to fear all Muslims. But that itself is a wonderment of irrationality. It’s irrational to fear everyone in a huge group of people, 99.98% of whom you don’t know; it’s perfectly rational to fear the guy across the hallway who punches holes in the walls when he’s drunk.
Of course, if you ask the guy across the hallway whether it’s rational to fear him, he’s not going to agree. He’s a great guy! He brings beer to all the neighborhood barbecues. Sure, he drinks, but only a little on Saturday nights. Those holes in the wall were an accident, and besides, why does anyone else care what he does in his own apartment? Are they afraid he’s going to come and punch holes in their walls? No? Then what are they afraid of?
When you talk with the other tenants who have been around for his drunk escapades, they’re going to roll their eyes at his excuses. (Except for his drinking buddy, who doesn’t see what the big deal is.) If you don’t want him to come to your barbecue, well, it may not be the choice your neighbors would make, but they’ll understand. And if he tries to push his way in anyway, to prove to you that he’s not a drunk and that you’re wrong not to want him around, your neighbors are going to understand what a huge and waving red flag that is.
Once he’s evicted from your barbecue, he’s not going to have a Moment of Realization, throw his half-finished beer away, and resolve to stop drinking. He’s going to stumble around complaining that you’re a jerk who’s jealous of his good looks and his new Maserati, that he invited you to HIS barbeque, that you’re a coward who can’t face him and that your barbeque is stupid anyway. When he sobers up, he may decide that you hate him because he’s Muslim. He may even pen letters to the editor describing the rabid anti-Muslim sentiment in your neighborhood, claiming that you’ve been stirring up the neighbors against him with stories of violent behavior (because everyone knows Muslims are violent, amirite?), and demanding that you go to mediation with him. For healing. Because it’s right.
When a local news team drops by the building with cameras, they come away with hours of footage of you and your neighbors saying, “We don’t care that he’s Muslim. If anything, we’d like it if he was more devout, because then he’d STOP DRINKING.” And one clip of his drinking buddy talking about what a great guy he is and how everyone else is a hater. The clip isn’t as helpful to his cause as it might have been because the drinking buddy is visibly soused.
When the news article comes out, he goes to all his work buddies and tells them what a hatchet job it is. He’s never been drunk at work; everyone agrees that the article is inexplicable and it’s frightening how deep anti-Muslim prejudice goes, even among journalists.
Eventually he moves to another building. But he still makes a point of trying to get into your barbeques. Because he wants to prove to you that you’ve got nothing to fear from Muslims.
His reply:
Whoa Buddy!!!!
First as to the Jim Jones analogy all you know is your child met a charismatic person on the Internet, knowing nothing else about them besides the person on the screen, then runs off to live with that person, without warning, and you would just let them go? And as you said, cocky 18 year olds bear no responsibility for the damage they do to a family when the do this? Human beings are social creatures, they build bonds with other human beings, and when they love one from before they were born, the chemical activity in the brain that is love doesn’t turn off. I seriously hope you do not have children.
As for the second part, if that is your story my heart truly does hurt for you, but you cannot apply that situation if it yours to all estranged children, or their parents. I see what you did there mixing in an individual’s personal, subjective experience, with an “all of them” story, and that’s just not fair, because an irrational fear is an irrational fear whether it’s focused on an individual or a group. I, and our family can assure you that our son experienced none of that. And the same goes for many other parents in the groups you targeted in that drivel you posted. What he did do was meet that charismatic person on the Internet, and taught him something his mother and I never taught him to do…..HATE.
My reply:
> Whoa Buddy!!!!
>
> First as to the Jim Jones analogy all you know is your child met a
> charismatic person on the Internet, knowing nothing else about them
> besides the person on the screen, then runs off to live with that
> person, without warning, and you would just let them go?I answered that part. There are responses in between “just let them go” and “hound them until they return.”
> And as you
> said, cocky 18 year olds bear no responsibility for the damage they do
> to a family when the do this?18-year-olds move out. Parents want them to stay longer and are sad when they go. That’s the way it goes. If the family is damaged when a young adult moves out, that’s on the parents, not the child–it’s not a child’s job to put off their own development until their parents are ready.
> Human beings are social creatures, they
> build bonds with other human beings, and when they love one from
> before they were born, the chemical activity in the brain that is love
> doesn’t turn off. I seriously hope you do not have children.Nobody’s telling you not to love your son. We’re just telling you not to stalk him.
Can you love your son without trying over and over to contact him when he’s told you not to?
> As for the second part, if that is your story my heart truly does hurt
> for you,No, it’s a device called an “analogy.”
> but you cannot apply that situation if it yours to all
> estranged children, or their parents. I see what you did there mixing
> in an individual’s personal, subjective experience, with an “all of
> them” story, and that’s just not fair, because an irrational fear is
> an irrational fear whether it’s focused on an individual or a group.Let’s try this:
If Person X is afraid of Person Y, is Person X going to consider their own fear rational, or irrational?
If Person Y thinks Person X’s fear is irrational, does that change Person X’s experience of their own fear?
Is Person X going to be receptive to arguments from Person Y, the person they fear, that Person X’s fears are irrational?
If Person Y ignores Person X’s fears, is Person X going to be less fearful, or more fearful?
> I, and our family can assure you that our son experienced none of
> that. And the same goes for many other parents in the groups you
> targeted in that drivel you posted. What he did do was meet that
> charismatic person on the Internet, and taught him something his
> mother and I never taught him to do…..HATE.If you’re trying to get your son away from a charismatic person, then you’re going about it in all the wrong ways. Hounding doesn’t work! It pushes the victim farther into the arms of the abuser.
If you sincerely want to help your son, you’re going to have to do some things that feel counterintuitive. You’ll need to navigate according to his perception of the world, not your perception. You’ll need to focus on what he needs and wants from the world, not on your own needs for contact. Getting people away from people who are bad for them isn’t easy, and it can’t be done with the set of actions people usually take in these circumstances. If it were that simple, it wouldn’t be a social issue.
But if you want to try something that works, take a look at how to handle cult members. Not the old methods of kidnapping and rebrainwashing, but learning how to use their natural inclination toward freedom to encourage them to take baby steps away. It takes patience, lots of patience, because you want them to come to conclusions on their own, and that can mean going back to the cult for a little while to remember how bad things are. You’re not convincing them so much as steering them into position to convince themselves. It takes a steady, light hand. But it works.
He replies:
OK, well here we go.
18-year-olds move out. Parents want them to stay longer and are sad when
they go. That’s the way it goes. If the family is damaged when a young
adult moves out, that’s on the parents, not the child–it’s not a
child’s job to put off their own development until their parents are
ready.Once again you are deflecting the responsibility away from the person that caused the situation in the first place. We looked forward to the day when our son would start his college career, then his own life outside of our home. Every parent wants to be there standing on the branch when their child takes off and flies off on their own, and we wanted to see him soar. What we didn’t expect was to have our throats slashed, and the branch we were standing on to be pulled out from under us when he launched. You must have an incredible hard time supporting the actions of every hate group on the planet, because in all of your writing, one message is perfectly clear, if you are over 18 you are free to do what ever you want, as long as it makes you happy no matter who it hurts. Pure selfishness.
As for your analogy, you wouldn’t be the first person the slide your own personal story and pain into an analogy.
And finally, an irrational fear, is an irrational fear no matter the amount of mental gymnastics you do to validate it. Or, the person is just lying and there is no fear, it’s just a made up story for someone needs to play the victim in order to justify their very wrong actions to either themselves, or the people they are trying to convince that their story is true.
Note the black-and-white thinking: I support one group he considers hateful, therefore I support every hate group on the planet. I believe a grown child isn’t obliged to put off leaving home until their parents are ready, therefore I believe anyone over 18 can do anything they want without regard for others.
My reply:
Does your son think his fear is rational, or irrational?
His reply:
If he believed he was a velociraptor, or the New World Order was reading his thoughts should that be validated too? Sorry, this is the problem with this millennial generation, no matter how ridiculous their position is it must be validated, and if you question it their egos can’t take it.And the answer is, I haven’t any idea because we as a family know there is no reason for it, so we don’t know if it’s just a story he is telling to strangers, or if he actually believes it.The funny thing is, the more our conversation carries on, and the mental gymnastics continue, I actually am beginning to think I am talking to my son.
My reply:
What I’m getting at is: Your son believes his fears are rational. Approaching him as though his fears are irrational and therefore can be disregarded is a guaranteed losing strategy.
As for why I validate the fears of estranged adult children, they don’t say aliens are influencing their parents, or they hate their parents because they didn’t get a pony when they were 9. They say their parents abused them. In detail. They give clear, rational reasons for wanting to get away from their parents. Why wouldn’t I validate them?
Now you’re going to say, “But my son has no such reasons, so it doesn’t apply in his case.”
And I’m going to say, “99% of all estranged parents say the exact same thing. Then, if you read long enough, they either tell stories like this (http://www.issendai.com/psychology/estrangement/stories-from-estranged-parents.html) about themselves, or someone else tells a story like that and they applaud. After a few years of reading situations like that over and over again, I write a page that lays out how they can do things like that and still claim not to know why they’re estranged (http://www.issendai.com/psychology/estrangement/missing-missing-reasons.html). And yet, every estranged parent who has responded to my page claims to be the exception. Including people I’ve used as examples of clear-cut abuse.”
If you are indeed the exception, then, well… why did your son tell you he was leaving so abruptly, at such a young age? Perhaps his explanations contain a clue that I can interpret for you.
His reply:
So your automatic assumption is that the child is telling the truth, and the parents are lying, thus perpetuating the cycle I just mentioned that everything for this generation has to be validated, and you cannot question their actions. Got it, congratulations, you are part of the problem.
What’s bewildering is that parent after parent reads my site, absorbs nothing but “Issendai thinks estranged parents are poopyheads,” and emails me to say, “You’re wrong, and the proof is that my child left for no reason and I’m in pain,” while acting exactly like all the poopyhead estranged parents on the site they’re protesting.
My reply:
Well, I kinda have, y’know, AN ENTIRE SITE detailing how the parents leak dysfunction even when they completely control what others see and hear.
You do realize I’m old enough to be the parent of a millennial, yes? I’m Gen X, like you probably are, and like the younger members of estranged parents’ forums are. In fact, the oldest members of abuse survivors’ forums are old enough to be the parents of the younger members of estranged parents’ forums. On at least one abuse survivors’ forum, the average age is in the 40’s, and there’s another forum where about half the membership is over 50.
Whining about kids these days doesn’t hold much water when some of the “kids” are a decade older than you.
His reply:
“Old enough to be the parent of a millennial”, but don’t have any children then? If that’s the case then you really should not even be in this topic of conversation because A) you have NO idea what it means to love someone more than you can EVER love yourself, B) you have NO idea what it means to watch that child grow from an infant to an adult, and put that child BEFORE every thought you have about yourself, to be responsible for another human life, and C) you will have NO idea the personal devastation it causes when that very child you loved more than you can ever love anything, without warning, or reason runs off to live with people they met on the internet. Like I said in my first statement, and it sounds like I was right, you don’t have the capacity to empathize with the parents struggle we as parents go through, not mourning the dead, but mourning the loss of the living, and not knowing why. It also explains why you can nonchalantly say “They’re 18, they can do whatever they want”, you don’t even know what the parent/child connection feels like.
Avoiding not one, but two topics where he was proved wrong; ad hominem attack; insults as persuasion; and a return to the primacy of pain. Plus a huge whack from the “emotional boundaries” section of Dysfunctional Beliefs, particularly:
- If I’m attached to you, then you’re attached to me. You can’t consider yourself detached from me until I’ve detached from you.
- You’re still responsible for my emotions after you end the relationship. You’re abusive when you refuse to care for my emotional wounds.
- If I have an emotional reaction to something someone does, the other person is responsible for my emotions.
- If I have an emotional reaction to something, then that something is my business. This is true even if it concerns another person’s private life.
- Emotions cause actions. When I feel something, I can’t not act on it. (Or, at least, it’s wrong not to act on it.)
- My pain is the complete justification for why someone should resume a relationship with me.
- Refusing to have a relationship with me is abusive.
My reply:
There are two concepts here:
1. Estranged parents hurt terribly.
2. Estranged parents do things that hurt their children terribly.
These concepts aren’t opposites. A person can do things that drive other people away, and then be terribly hurt that other people are driven away.
You seem to think that if I felt estranged parents’ pain, I’d stop thinking they did something to drive their children away. But that wouldn’t change the reality of how estranged parents act; it wouldn’t make the stories on my site untrue. It might make me blind to how serious the stories are, but that wouldn’t make the stories untrue, either. Estranged parents might feel better because I stopped pointing out their bad behavior, but that wouldn’t do a thing to reconcile them with their children, because their bad behavior wouldn’t have changed.
By the way, you haven’t commented on any of the stories on the site. There are rather a lot of people out there doing rather a lot of horrible things to their children, and because they set the tone for estranged parents’ forums, the estranged parents who didn’t abuse their children are tarred with the same brush. Do you have any thoughts on that? Any idea how to resolve the problem so innocent parents can get a fair hearing?
His reply (Friday, 5:13 p.m.):
No, I think, well a couple of things.
1) You are an estranged child, you automatically believe the child’s story, while automatically convicting the parents because of what happened to you.
2) Your page specifically targets members of estranged children forums, and convicted all of us, while having no clue what it means to raise a child, to spend the sleepless nights when they get sick, the begging to switch places with them when they are sick, you have zero idea about what it means to be a parent, and then you are going to dismiss parents outright, and condemn them for their pain. What you are doing is equal to me writing a book about women, what it’s like to be a woman, get pregnant, and give birth while not having a clue as to what it feels like then telling them to get over it.
3) What’s this “tarred with the same brush nonsense? Does that mean because one black person commits a crime all black people are criminals? I’m sorry “tarred with the same brush”. The answer is of course not. You don’t condemn all parents, because of the actual bad ones, that makes you no better than your average racist.
His second reply (Saturday, 7:25 p.m.):
What happened? Did I strike a nerve, and hit a little too close to home?
Analysis
This is going to be partial and fragmented for a while as I collect my thoughts.
The point of this analysis isn’t to convince A Hurting Parent (or any other estranged parent) that I’m right. It ain’t gonna happen. The purpose is to dissect the attitudes and cognitive distortions that act as red flags for abuse.
Insults
- Insults routinely, right from the start; doesn’t mirror the other person’s approach, even after several rounds of polite replies. Dials back the insults briefly only when he becomes aware that his comments are being made public.
- Indulges in insults with no apparent awareness of their effect on others’ opinion of him, even in the middle of a discussion where others’ opinion of him is the lynchpin of the argument.
- For the first week or so, favored insults aren’t standard estranged parent insults (ungrateful brat) or culture-standard insults (asshole, bitch). They’re highly individual, with a focus on undermining the opponent’s claim to humanity:
- “I cannot believe a human being with any sense of connection to humanity would write something like that”
- “your entire explanation […] can only be written by someone devoid of empathy for the people you are hurting, and a complete lack of the ability to love another human being”
- “If you can’t figure that out, or the answer escapes you I’m not even sure you can call yourself a human being.”
Later he adds nonspecific sexual insults in between continued attacks on his opponents’ humanity and fitness to be parents.
- Gives the impression of using insults like shocks from a cattle prod: If you go in the direction he wants you to go, the insults will stop.
- Asserts that he doesn’t normally insult people, and that the current situation is different because of the level of provocation.
His lack of insight suggests that this pattern isn’t deliberate. This is how he is.
He displays the typical dysfunctional tendency to split off his unacceptable behavior. There’s the real him, which is empathetic, caring, intelligent, and polite, and there’s not-him, which is insulting and foulmouthed, and which is a completely understandable reaction to exceptional provocation. We all do me/not-me splitting, but normal people split under unusual circumstances and reconsider their self-evaluations when the frequency of a not-me behavior rises too high. Dysfunctional people split in ordinary circumstances (like reading a stranger’s web page) and resist self-evaluation, even–especially!–when the not-me behavior takes up a good proportion of their time.
Cognitive Distortions
- Black-and-white thinking
- Notable examples: Doubting of his version of events = “you are lying”; asking for details about what his son said to his wife in the fateful phone call = “demanding to know what was said verbatim”
- Profound failures of reading comprehension
- Highly selective reading
- Analysis by keyword – If a word or phrase in the opponent’s comment is the same as a word or phrase in Hurting’s mind, then the two instances mean the same thing. Joanna Ashmun called this “analysis by eggbeater.”
- Self-contradiction
- Inability to construct sound analogies in a way that implies that he has trouble determining which details are relevant.
- Inability to follow a chain of logic for more than one exchange. In Hurting’s case, he seems unable to focus on any argument other than the one foremost in his mind.
- Returns repeatedly to arguments that his opponents have rejected.
- Lapses of theory of mind
- Unable to understand that his son has a different point of view, and that he must take that PoV into account in dealing with his son. He seems to believe that there’s an objectively correct PoV, and all actions should proceed from it.
- Unable to judge which details his audience needs to understand him, even when given feedback.
Rigidity of Thought
- Verbal formulas: “taught him something his mother and I never taught him to do…..HATE.” “taught our son something we never did…hate.”
- Intrusion of irrelevant details and tangents into line of thought, indicating that sections of the story have welded into inseparable “chunks”
Both of these traits suggest that the story has lost its fluidity in his mind, hardening into a series of well-rehearsed formulas. It’s an indication that he’s no longer bringing fresh thinking to the problem, and may be unable to break up the “chunks” and think differently.
Rhetorical Devices
- Poisoning the well (thank you, Laura)
- Selective responding
- Strawmanning
- Appeals to emotion
- Goal-shifting
- Shifting the frame of argument from the personal to the general as it benefits him, without regard for the context of his opponents’ comments
- Evasive maneuvers to avoid acknowledging when the other side has made a point
- Appeal to authority, specifically his own
- Ad hominem attacks
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“…every attempt at communication” after being told by the AC they do not want any further contact with you IS STALKING. Full stop. It continues to validate the AC’s belief you are pathological and additionally are further along the spectrum of pathology than the AC initially believed. Yes, it is terrorizing: This is not “love,” it’s obsession, a very specific indicator of a Personality/Character Disturbed individual. Any adult who refuses to take “No” is attempting to control another adult through a tactic long recognized as abusive and threatening: This is exactly why laws regarding Stalking do not include a DNA exemption.
EAC’s who have been on the receiving end of this kind of criminal behavior transparently disguised as “love” absolutely do report feeling terrorized-as well as disgusted. This behavior also underscores the theme of Power and Control as conceptualized and operationalized by EPs. With each successive clearly unwanted “demonstration” of the EPs “love,” the likelihood of any kind of reconciliation becomes yet further remote simply because this behavior is an unvarnished manifestation of retribution a la, “How DARE YOU tell ME what to do! I’ll show you!”
And your persistence in continuing this behavior regardless of your stated “intentions” will likely result in an opportunity to reassess your strategy while cuffed and siting in the back of a police vehicle, spending time in an open Holding Cell with multiple other criminal offenders until an Arraignment can be arranged-up to 48 hrs. post arrest.
Just like any other criminal.
If the characterization of this behavior as “terrorizing” is incomprehensible to you, substitute the word “criminal:” This is exactly how it is regarded and treated legally.
Tundra Woman
This. Just… so much this.
The idea that violating someone’s consent is ok because you aren’t responsible for their fear is really quite something.
“Here, let me violate your consent to prove that you’ve got nothing to fear from me.”
Exactly. And to continue this bastardized attempt at “reasoning” suggested by the EP above consider the following: The EP’s spouse/SO is being assaulted by a Perp while screaming, “NO! STOP!” The victim is clearly not consenting and obviously terrified. But hey, that’s on the victim, not the Perp according to the EP’s paradigm.
But let’s take it a step further: This particular Perp isn’t a stranger-it’s one of the EP’s family members, someone they’ve known, loved and associated with since birth. Because the Perp is a “loved” family member, does this lessen the victim’s terror? Does the terror become “irrational?” Is the victim’s experience “a lie…just a made up story to play victim” etc. because you were otherwise “occupied” with your own agenda? Despite *the multiple attempts your spouse/SO had made to impress upon you how uncomfortable they were with your family member?* Those same concerns you consistently minimized, rationalized, denied and just plain refused to recognize?
The use of DARVO does not mitigate the perp’s responsibility-even if the perp is your family member as is the terrorized victim whose consent was violated. Repeated assaults do not lessen that terror: They confirm repeatedly the spouse/SO’s fear and your lack of genuine concern for them.
The other thing about the “aliens from Alpha Centauri” bit is that if the adult child were in fact possessed of a delusional belief, openly disrespecting and stomping all over their boundaries is not in any way the right way to handle that situation.
And apparently simultaneously holding the beliefs that a person is completely divorced from reality as it is commonly perceived AND then looping back to the how dare you be so intentionally cruel bit is… well, it’s the usual thing. There’s no need to resolve or even acknowledge the conflict between two completely incompatible pieces of data provided that they both feed the emotion machine.
I’m glad you addressed this — the contempt for people experiencing honest to goodness delusions is quite disturbing. He seems to think it’s honourable to cause such people totally unnecessary distress, that displaying any respect for their feelings or wishes, no matter how benign the consequences, amounts to conceding that their delusions are true. It’s a chilling attitude.
I wish I could upvote both of these. Something else I want to note as someone who suffers from clinical anxiety that has negatively affected my relationships with my parents and people in general (I find this comic entirely too relatable) is that having your cortisol levels jacked through the roof all the time fucking SUCKS, so even if someone’s anxiety around you is in fact groundless, making their mental health issues all about you, and specifically about how their feelings of anxiety are a slight on your honor that cannot be allowed to stand, the way Hurting Parent and his ilk do is just… *shakes head in disgust* Imagine looking at someone who’s coughing up blood and saying “Oh, you just have pneumonia; it’s not because of anything I did to you!”
Thanks for posting this exchange. It just goes to show how much some EPs can’t be helped or reached. The narcissism is very deep and a focus purely on parental pain occludes the ability to see from another perspective. I can imagine someone having this conversation with my own parents.
In general, I wanna say thanks for writing about this issue. It gives me a bit of insight and a bit of comfort. I’m voluntarily estranged from my parents. Grew up in a fundamentalist Christian family, and it turned out that I was gay. I finally decided (late college) to just be gay and live the fullest, happiest life I could, and that life would include all the normal stuff of happiness but also include me being gay. The parents never got over this, and after I told them, they joined (and became leaders) in an ex-gay group. I gradually distanced myself until it came to a head over a phone call (and then an interminable set of written letters they sent me), and I told them it was too uncomfortable to come home, to spend holidays with them, while they were involved in such a group, and I didn’t see how this would work with my own plans and hopes for my future (kids – here’s your grandparents who think daddy’s family is illegitimate!). I was accused of persecuting them for their religion, deliberately hurting them, ignoring their pain, etc. It’s amazing how much their words echo what you’ve documented on these forums. It’s now been over two years since I’ve seen them, and honestly, the past two Christmases I spent without them were the best I have had in many years.
Not much to say – just a “Thanks” for documenting all this. It’s been good for me to read.
I’m sorry you went through that. I don’t even have words. You must have felt so rejected. I often gauge EP conduct by what I would do as a parent and serving up this kind of hurt to my child is unthinkable. Good on you for getting free of that. I wish you a life full of joy.
I found this today on an estranged parents FB page:
“The last time I wrote my daughter…a few years ago, I stated the following: “When a person is charged with a crime, the accused is presented with a list of grievances. As your mother, I feel I am entitled to no less a list of grievances in support of your claims of hatred towards me.” I’ve never received a reply, because she has none. We as parents shouldn’t accept responsibility for our adult children’s short-sightedness and bad behavior.”
I find this quite chilling tbh. But am struck by how similar it is to letters I’ve had from my EP, and also (so much easier to see in someone else’s situation than your own!) how insane the demand is that the child should present a bullet-point list of justified grievances before the parents will consider allowing the adult (adult!) child to feel her own feelings.
And these people wonder why they are estranged. *facepalm*
This resonates with something Captain Cassidy said in a post about being “allowed” to leave an evangelical church (http://www.patheos.com/blogs/rolltodisbelieve/2016/04/27/church-churn-and-evangelical-idolatry/):
“You must come up with a valid and compelling reason that we can understand and accept if you want to leave the tribe. (Pro-tip: No reason you come up with will be considered valid or compelling because NO reason is EVER considered so. Whatever reason you give, we’re going to argue with you about it and declare it invalid. Oh, and regardless of how pointless it is and how doomed you are to fail at it, you are still required to jump through this hoop.)”
If someone who was once close to you has taken against you, it’s natural to ask them why. It’s not natural to treat it like a test they have to pass before you’ll allow them to act on their feelings. But it’s tempting to try, especially if you think you’re allowed to prevent them from moving on and to punish them if they move on without your approval. If someone else tells you you’re being a dick, you fall back on the old standard: “If they have a good reason, why should they be afraid of explaining it to me?”
The answer is, “Because you’re being a dick, and we all know no answer will satisfy you.” But then they demand that you prove THAT to them. So you walk away. And they proclaim victory, because you couldn’t explain to them how they were being unreasonable and a dick.
Ugh, there’s that blind spot about the parent’s conduct again. The fear is “irrational” because they “did the best they could,” despite the holes in the wall.
What holes? There are no holes. The holes are irrelevant, therefore nonexistent.
So… what about the son’s side of story?
This person wrote four letters about themselves and their feelings, all caused by/blamed on their prodigial son, and – well, maybe I’m just dense, but I have no idea whatsoever what the son had done aside from going NC! Not a word about his motivation, for one. *cough*missing missing reasons*cough*
Although – well, I’m not surprised. The letter writer, with all due respect, doesn’t seem easy to reason with. Each argument of theirs is worthy of examination.
Issendai, can I ask you something? Two things, rather?
First, will you continue this debate? I’m curious as to how it will unfold, although it’ll probably get circular.
Second, about the themes in estrangement. “It was perfect until this person came into my child’s life and took them away from me”. (Actually, I think I can see this theme in this case, as well.) Can I suggest this as a theme to write about?
Weeeeeell, he met a charismatic stranger and left home at 18, slashing his parents’ throats on the way out, and he denied them the pleasure of seeing him go to college. Which is apparently a duty he owes them. He also denied them the pleasure of seeing him launch into a life of his own, because he launched into a life of his own. The ungrateful little bastard.
It smells a lot like those guys who can’t get over a breakup because their girlfriend broke up with them wrong. He would have been fine with the breakup if she’d picked another day, or called him instead of texting him, or given him an itemized list of his failings on her way out the door, or HADN’T given him an itemized list of his failings on her way out the door, but the way she did it fouled it all up, and now he can’t heal because of her. But if she’ll just give him a little more of her time and attention, and do the breakup just right, then he’ll be okay.
I do plan to talk with him longer, though I’d prefer that he come here, since his web provider throttles his account and half my emails to him bounce. Like you, I’m curious about how the conversation will unfold.
The “It was perfect until this person came into my child’s life and took them away from me” theme is a big one. It’s the conjoined twin of “My son-/daughter-in-law is controlling my child.” But I don’t have much to say about it. *scratches head* Maybe because the mechanism behind it is impenetrable to me? Or simply because it doesn’t resonate with my own experiences, so I haven’t given it as much thought as it deserves?
As it’s of interest to you, what do you think of it?
In estranged parents’ grievances, there often seems to be a perception that _someone_ is influencing the child negatively, _indocrinating_ them against the parents. Most often, it’s a partner/spouse. Second place – the therapist or psychologist.
It seems to be linked to some personality disorder traits – or to certain manipulation tactics. Namely, the perception of “them against us”, or “me/us against the entire world”, if you see what I’m trying to say. And also, to the perception that a child is an asset, not a human being, and can be taken away from you. (A perception common in abusive relationships – substitute “spouse” for “child”).
That’s a theory so far, though. I haven’t been to EP forums for fear that my laptop wouldn’t survive the resulting trip from the window. So, I’ll have a look, and comment again if I have relevant findings.
Actually – on the very first thread of the first search result forum, in the fourth message, there is this sentiment already. A child had in the past year sent the mother some letters about their “resentments”. Mother says it was done “at the prompting of his psychiatrist”. Apparently, she was hurt by the letters, though had since moved on from that, and doesn’t allow herself to think about his words.
(Not linking the comment in public just in case.)
I’ll see what else I can find.
(P.S. Oh my god, Issendai noticed me!)
I’ve seen this with my mother and an abusive ex. Both of them, I think, don’t understand that I can be a person without being directed by somebody. They were both very aware that they were controlling me and probably thought themselves so clever and powerful that it didn’t occur to them I could see it as well AND not be as controlled internally as they thought. So, when I started doing things that went against their wishes, the only logical reason was that somebody else had replaced them at the remote controls.
Of course, because how dare my (child/partner/etc.) not be an extension of myself?
From my venture to EP forums:
“My ex husband took my daughter on vacation to see a few members on his side of the family. She came home like another kid. Mean and nasty.”
“My daughter has been reeling me in and dropping me off a cliff numerous times over the past few years. I have come to realize that she is a victim of the whims of other people around her. It started with her now ex-husband. […] Now it is her best friend whom she works side by side with 5 days a week.”
“I had a son – he changed his name to Andy. He has decided for the last 20 years to mould himself in the image of his alcoholic dad. […] …he has even decided to wear similar clothes to his dad and to have his hair the same.”
“I know that my son’s father an I co-parented beautifully and with much respect until she came into the picture in 2009. […] His father and step-mother don’t feel that my son should be visiting me or my mother as we don’t contribute to his university education or fly him home for visits (that’s another story) so he doesn’t.”
“he is a vengeful person and has alienated my children against me. he has money and bought them off. I never thought my one daughter would ever turn against me.”
From comments on seven articles on just one blog.
Bonus entitlement:
“Finally, last year, as daughter and her adult daughter complained about the Hawaii vacation I was treating them too, I stood up for myself and told them if they did not like the four star hotel we were staying at, there were two doors to leave by – take your pick.
Well…they did! And I haven’t heard anything since.”
Careful what you wish for, huh?
This. So much this. From a very young age I’ve noticed how much my parents refuse to believe I could have any ideas or impulses of my own. If I ever disagreed with them or did anything they considered wrong, the question was always, “Who influenced you/made you do this?”. It’s been incredibly damaging to my self esteem because it’s implied to me that none of my own feelings, desires, or actions are worth anything, I’m always somehow being controlled by others and am a patsy, if that makes any sense. As I’ve got older I’ve had to work really hard on owning my own ideas and actions and needs rather than simply assuming they’re invalid or inauthentic. Of course it’s because they can’t imagine me having a life they don’t control, so they assume if they’re not controlling me then someone else must be.
They think alike, don’t they?
Thank you for the evidence towards the theory above… just kidding. On a serious note, thank you for sharing, and I hope talking about it helps.
If I may add something, I think there may be something even deeper. When a child grows up in an environment of abuse, they don’t know anything different. They may believe something is wrong but not know what, or they may just assume that the way their parents act is the same way all parents act. Meeting and forming a relationship with someone who isn’t a narcissist teaches the child what a healthy relationship looks like and makes it clear to the child that yes, their parents are in fact acting badly. It gives the child something to compare their parents against.
Absolutely correct. Thank you for the child’s perspective here. The interesting (sad) part is that even if the child acts on their own volition, the parents still find an external force to blame.
It seems more likely to me that the Nrent, having manipulated and controlled their ACoN for his or her entire life, knows for a fact that they can be controlled by other people 🙁
From that angle, it stands to reason that when your control isn’t working it’s because someone else has taken control. This explanation is also consistent with them considering their children objects rather than people.
Sorry to be late with comments to the rest of you–been busy. I will reply soon!
I got the feeling from the pronouns used that the person who “stole” their son was an older man.
Did they talk about their son being gay at all?
I’d love to see a follow-up.
Oh, good point about the “kids.” I’ve seen that millennial argument a million times and somehow did not connect to the fact that I’m not a millennial. I’m Gen X too, on the older end. Most of the folks I’ve run into in the online communities are Gen X as well. It’s important to the narrative for these people to view us as actual kids though. I know my mother still regards and treats me as a child, although I’m middle-aged. I can see that it’s something I still need to work on though, because in my mind I was in a younger generation than this person, but I’m most likely not (not that it matters — I’m an adult either way).
Oh, and I do have a child. Does that make me qualified to say that when she turns 18 she does what she wants? I mean, she’s a teenager so she kind of does now, within reason. If what she wants is to not see me anymore, I would be hurt, but I wouldn’t be posting on EP forums or telling everyone about how horrible she is. That’s not an appropriate reaction from a parent that loves their child.
I’m sorry you got your “throat slashed” but you did rather forcefully impose your own titanium template on him since his birth when you decided he was gonna grow up to be a surgeon. (Maybe he was just practicing.) And if you want to see someone “soar” then stop cutting their flight feathers. Comprende? Sigh. I didn’t think so.
“Circular reasoning” for sure. It seems there’s a load of post docs in “Teleological Studies” among the EP cohort. Don’t forget the “I gave you food! clothing! shelter!” on their list of “parenting sacrifices.” Please be advised these are also provided by orphanages, jails and prisons simply because they are the bare bones necessities for human survival. This “munificence” does not “entitle” anyone to a “Good Parent” Award. EPs appear to view their offspring as an extension of themselves or maybe chattel? Perhaps an accoutrement or accessory? It seems they liked the “picture” of themselves as “Madonna and Child” but not the reality of it: The new, shiny thing wore off pretty quickly-like after the first couple 2 AM feedings and the first diaper blow outs. Or the second, third or fourth etc. failed marriage/relationship.
But thank you for not tossing your child in the closest dumpster when you left the hospital. So far you’re still in “post partum” territory: Ya got a ways to go to be a Good Enough parent. Just sayin’.
EPs consistently claim they know their children “better than anyone!” But they suddenly become blind, deaf and illiterate rendering them unable to comprehend “why” the AC walked away, despite the reality one after another of their ACs explained to them succinctly and *repeatedly* orally and in writing exactly their reasons for NC-and finally did it. So when EPs always told their ACs “I know you better than you know yourself!” why are they so surprised when the AC terminates the relationship?
I’m not denying EPs their pain. At all. These are all some tamer (and legal) common examples I’ve gleaned from reading public EP forums for about 14 mo. Over and over again, the same themes arise: There’s always a facile “reason” and it’s never, ever anything to do with them.
Statistically, that’s just not possible. And realistically it isn’t either. I firmly believe they do know “why:” As George Simon, Ph.D (“In Sheep’s Clothing,” “Character Disturbance” etc.) observed, “It’s not that they don’t see, they just don’t agree.”
Yep. Right back there-again.
I started a related thread on a UK parenting forum based on the quote I posted here earlier: http://www.mumsnet.com/Talk/relationships/2635217-This-is-really-chilling-I-think?
It led to an interesting discussion about the experience of estrangement, with some cross-referencing to this blog. However, on a parallel Grandparents board some estranged grandparents seized on my thread, immediately assumed it was about them (it wasn’t) and proceeded to demonstrate exactly many of the dynamics that had been talked about, particularly the tendency to hear reasoned discussion as attacks (my thread was described as ‘nasty’ and ‘unkind’ – it really wasn’t) and the inability to take on board new information (I posted several times to say that my thread was not based on their board, but they continued to discuss it as if it was).
it’s depressing, but also weirdly compelling.
I found the parallel thread and had a look. The inability to hear people who were tagged as “estranged adult child” was infuriating, and utterly typical. Right down to the moaning about “Why didn’t you explaaaaain?” “Why can’t you help her understand?” “It’s so sad that you won’t give her a chance.” The denouement had some originality, I’ll grant: “It’s so sad that you’re rigid in your beliefs and won’t give her a chance to make the decision on her own.”
One member’s daughter sounds like she’s in a terrible marriage, the sort that needs a squad of trained counselors and an angry public prosecutor to unravel. But the member’s response is weirdly… diagonal. She claims her SIL is a drug addict who keeps her daughter drugged on antidepressants to make her malleable, but she also tried to “mediate” and save their marriage when her daughter left him. First, why would she think mediating in her daughter’s marriage was a good idea? Second, why did she want her daughter to stay with a man whom she knew was a habitual drug user? (The antidepressants were in the future.) And then she “mediated” by telling him his wife would get the house and kids if they split, and was astonished that he considered it a threat. Now she’s mostly praying and waiting for her daughter to reduce her meds and start thinking clearly again. Her awareness that her SIL is an addict and an abuser is as shallow as a puddle in July–she hasn’t absorbed any of the implications, she’s only concerned about getting the relationships she wants, and her SIL’s addiction and abuse is about as important as a bad square in Candyland.
Hoooooly shit, I just found something else the member wrote:
To recap:
Son compares his mother’s and brother-in-law’s stories, and chooses to believe his brother-in-law’s. He calls his mother a liar.
His mother tells him “You’re no son of mine” and hangs up on him.
His mother is astonished that he holds this against her and will not reconcile with her, even to get his things.
There’s major drama going on, especially with the son trespassing to get his things. But the mother treats disowning her son as a perfectly normal ploy that anyone would use. Later she “doesn’t want any more trouble,” but she does lie to her son about calling the police. Because that will deescalate any situation. Especially one that started when your son called you a liar.
It’s hard to know if the son was in the wrong for trespassing to get his crap. In many jurisdictions self-help to recover property is legal as long as it’s “peaceable”. Plus the mother’s claim about not wanting SIL in the house is not credible given that she’s comfortable with calling him to use him as a flying monkey to contact her ES.
Wow, let me start with, I am the “Hurting Parent”, and at no time did I think our private conversation was going to be used by you on your page just to have your “like minded” people stroke your ego. I never agreed to this. Anyway, to the person that feels because of the pronouns used that it was a man our son ran away with, and did I talk about our son being gay. The answer is no, it was a married 34 year old woman, and even if my son was gay it wouldn’t matter. Our children don’t come with a tag that says “love for my child may be void if he/she turns out to be gay”. We love our children unconditionally, apparently from what I read here it’s ok for the child to place conditions on their love for a parent. This is nothing more than passive-aggressive bullying.
Don’t get me wrong, I know there are a lot of horrible parents out there, and I completely understand why some children would want to get as far away from their parents as they possibly can, someone very close to me is one of those children. However our son is not, and was not an abused child. I could bring everyone that knows his life story up until the moment he ran away, including his sister to tell you what his life was like, but somehow I have a feeling that I will be, as the owner of this site says “tarred with the same brush” of abusive parents, because 99% of us are lying. Which is the same thing as saying because one black person commits a crime, all black people must be criminals…making this author no better than the average racist.
Also, no one “cut his flight wings” we wanted him to soar as high as he could, and the choice of what he wanted to be while soaring was always his to make. Unfortunately someone got in his head, and taught our son something we never did…hate. I wonder if you would be supportive if someone was telling a story about their child running off and joining a Nazi hate group, or ISIS because after all they are 18, and can do whatever they want, right?
As for this….”The “It was perfect until this person came into my child’s life and took them away from me” theme is a big one. It’s the conjoined twin of “My son-/daughter-in-law is controlling my child.” But I don’t have much to say about it. *scratches head* Maybe because the mechanism behind it is impenetrable to me? Or simply because it doesn’t resonate with my own experiences, so I haven’t given it as much thought as it deserves?” I will use my own son’s word’s to refute this. Not even six months before he ran away we were sitting at the island in our kitchen eating dinner when HE SAID, “Mom, dad I can’t figure out why some of my friends can’t wait to turn 18 and move away from their parents. I’m in no hurry to leave, we have such a good time together as a family”. Those were his EXACT words, no one lead him into that conversation, he said it on his own. But, of course you will accuse me of lying, an making the story up.
One last thing, then the feeding frenzy can begin. Please, if you are going to use the word “Stalking”, and “Criminal”, you should at least know the LEGAL DEFINITION OF STALKING, which I will gladly supply to you.
“Criminal activity consisting of the repeated following and harassing of another person.Stalking is a distinctive form of criminal activity composed of a series of actions that taken individually might constitute legal behavior. For example, sending flowers, writing love notes, and waiting for someone outside her place of work are actions that, on their own, are not criminal. When these actions are coupled with an intent to instill fear or injury, however, they may constitute a pattern of behavior that is illegal. Though anti-stalking laws are gender neutral, most stalkers are men and most victims are women.”
So please, get it right.
You are most welcome to join the discussion here. I hope Issedai replies soon, since she will be the one to verify that you are indeed the letter writer. I do apologise for that disbelief, but, well, this is internet, and anyone can claim to be someone else. I wouldn’t want to have someone misrepresenting you.
I am also writing because the comment you have quoted was a reply to mine. You’re free to examine and debate my comments, of course.
However, please allow me to express my opinion as well. Although the initial discussion is with Issendai, I feel that your appearance here involves us commenters as well, and your words such as “the feeding frenzy can begin” imply that you do not think highly of us.
I am glad that you say that it wouldn’t matter if your son had been gay. Excuse the assumption, but, as you can see from Sadi’s comment, it’s not an uncommon situation for a child to be rejected (directly or indirectly) because of that. The question was likely a hypothetical, but thank you for clearing that up.
“However our son is not, and was not an abused child.”
I believe your perception, but it is _your_ perception. What about your son? He had cut contact with you, he had his reasons. Why did he?
“…but somehow I have a feeling that I will be, as the owner of this site says “tarred with the same brush” of abusive parents, because 99% of us are lying. Which is the same thing as saying because one black person commits a crime, all black people must be criminals…making this author no better than the average racist.”
I am sorry, this analogy is invalid. Let me adress it word-by-word.
To begin with, you say that you are not an abuser. I believe your perception. However, many estranged parents – namely, EP’s that frequent the estranged parents’ forums – are. Not necessarily physical abusers – psychological abuse exists too. And since they are, innocent parents aren’t believed. Issendai had adressed that problem – look at the article “Not all estranged parents are abusive”, where she states just that. Let me quote her for you, please:
“There are dozens of reasons adult children cut off their parents that have nothing to do with the parents: drugs, mental illness, personality disorders, abusive husbands or wives, and parental alienation, for starters. Adult sons and daughters are capable of being just as abusive to parents as parents are to children. So when you hear that a parent is estranged, don’t immediately assume they’re at fault. And don’t use this website to prove that they must be at fault.”
Issendai has asked you to look at her writings, because she wants to hear your opinion on those parents that are abusers. And so you can suggest a way for yourself not to be “tarred”. Let me quote: “Do you have any thoughts on that? Any idea how to resolve the problem so innocent parents can get a fair hearing?”
“because 99% of us are lying”
Nowhere was this percentage used. _Abusive parents_ do lie, or rather, reveal the truth selectively. Sir, are you calling yourself an abuser?
“Which is the same thing as saying because one black person commits a crime, all black people must be criminals…making this author no better than the average racist.”
First. “One person” is not the same as “99%” – a percentage that you, sir, used.
Second. If most EP’s lie, then they cannot be trusted. This is not prejudice, this is a fact. To use your style of making comparisons – of course not all Muslims are terrorists, but all members of ISIS are terrorists.
Third. By misappropriating Issendai’s words, you are equating mistreating your children to being black.
I don’t know if there are limits on comment length here, so please let me continue my reply in another comment.
“I wonder if you would be supportive if someone was telling a story about their child running off and joining a Nazi hate group, or ISIS because after all they are 18, and can do whatever they want, right?”
I am sorry, but this analogy doesn’t look valid, too. The facts, as you’ve presented them, are: your son cut contact with you. At some time, he also met a 34-year old married woman, whom you blame for being the instigator.
Cutting contact with your parents is _not_ the same thing as joining a hate group or a cult. Do you have any reason to suspect that your son is in danger or engaged in criminal activity? If not, please do not dismiss the suffering of parents whose children are. And please do not demonize your opponent.
“Unfortunately someone got in his head, and taught our son something we never did…hate.”
Sir, how could good parents like you and your wife have raised such a weak-willed child that he can be turned from The Force of Good by a single person? Is she the devil herself?
Likely not. In which case, there’s more to the story than your side, even if you do not know that.
“Mom, dad I can’t figure out why some of my friends can’t wait to turn 18 and move away from their parents. I’m in no hurry to leave, we have such a good time together as a family.”
These are your son’s words. Seeing as he still cut contact, I am sorry, but I am not placing much stock in them. Not to mention that neither I nor you know what your son had been thinking at the time. Could he have been lying? This is not an accusation, just a hypothetical.
Also, I have to note that your son’s words are not refutation, since there’s nothing to refute. Issendai did not say that she doesn’t believe that “the third wheel” is a theme – she said that she was as of yet unable to write about it.
Now, the definition of stalking. The one you have provided, I’m sorry to say, comes from The Free Dictionary – a place which everyone can edit like a wiki – and is _not_ the legal definition. The legal definition varies depending on the state. I am not asking which state, or country, you are in, of course – you have the right to privacy. However.
The provided definition is inaccurate in that the _intent_ of the perpetrator is irrelevant. A conviction for a crime of stalking (or “criminal harassment”) does not requre physical harm (source: ‘The Glannon Guide to Criminal Law.’) What matters is whether the person affected is made to be upset or afraid (sources: California Penal Code, U.S. Code).
Furthermore, the word “stalking” has several meanings, and “stalking as a criminal offence” is just one of them. “Given that stalking may often constitute no more than the targeted repetition of ostensibly ordinary or routine behavior, stalking is inherently difficult to define.” (source: Sheridan, L. P.; Blaauw, E. (2004). “Characteristics of False Stalking Reports”)
The _psychological_ definition of stalking, however, is “a constellation of behaviours in which an individual inflicts upon another repeated unwanted intrusions and communications.” (Pathe, M.; Mullen, P. E. (1997). “The impact of stalkers on their victims”)
In conclusion, a person may be engaged in stalking behavior, but not actually be breaking any laws.
Nobody is accusing you of commiting a crime. However. If you persistently contact your son when he’s expressly refusing contact, you are, from the psychological point of view, engaged in stalking behavour.
I’m sorry to end on a somber note. I look forward to hearing from you. Feel free to address my points and to ask any questions, even personal ones, you may have for me.
Yours,
L
“This is nothing more than passive-aggressive bullying. ”
“Which is the same thing as saying because one black person commits a crime, all black people must be criminals…making this author no better than the average racist.”
“I wonder if you would be supportive if someone was telling a story about their child running off and joining a Nazi hate group, or ISIS because after all they are 18, and can do whatever they want, right?”
May I ask if this sort of rhetorical language is normal for you? Does it show up in everyday conversations, perhaps in arguments you have with people? If so, this might go some way to explaining why your son is reticent to have contact with you.
This sort of language is a common theme, in both your email exchanges with Issendai and in your comments here, and I won’t mince words here: it’s overtly aggressive and intellectually dishonest. Instead of simply making your point, you’ve opted to do so in a way that poisons the well, so that not only have you made your point, you’ve also connected those who might disagree with you to racists, people who are okay with Nazis, and bullies. It’s like you’ve set out to win an argument, rather than participate in a discussion, and to someone on the receiving end of these huge, freewheeling leaps to the contrapositive you keep making, it just feels manipulative and aggressive.
For example, you continue to equate the statement “18 year olds are adults and should make their own choices,” with “18 year olds should be able to do whatever they want, right?” even though those sentiments are not remotely the same. Perhaps the latter is what you interpreted, but it wasn’t what was being said, and is in fact a manipulative parody of the former statement designed to make it look irresponsible. The fact that you went to the trouble of connecting your misrepresentation to joining up with Nazis or ISIS suggests that on some level, you were aware of this, and were attempting to leverage highly emotive subjects to make your interlocutor look foolish. Acknowledging that 18 year olds are adults and should make their own choices does not entail that all choices are equally good, or that no choices have bad consequences, but it DOES entail understanding that those choices are theirs (the 18 year olds’) to make, and that they don’t suddenly become your choices because you perceive them to be bad. Your disapproval is not justification to force the issue, and I suspect that’s the part of this you struggle with.
If you speak to your son this way- normally or just when you’re angry, it doesn’t matter- then it’s no wonder he’d feel reticent in talking to you. The moment you disagree with someone, even a stranger on the internet with the audacity to write something you don’t like, you begin playing this complicated rhetorical game to corner them with highly emotive language and guilt-by-association-fallacies that, whether you consciously mean them or not, only serve to make whoever you’re speaking to look bad. Do you think Issendai appreciates, for example, being compared to a racist? Why go that extra step when it’s irrelevant to the conversation you’re having?
As a final point, for what it’s worth, I fully believe you when you say you believe you didn’t abuse your son. I’ve no doubt in my mind you never intended him harm in the slightest, but what’s important to remember is that your intent is not the sole determiner of whether or not you’ve actually caused harm. The road to hell is paved with good intentions, as they say, and even a loving parent can let their emotions get the better of them, or have their own relationship blindspots that prevent them from seeing the damage they may be doing. Don’t just say you didn’t abuse your son, as flat denials aren’t helpful to anyone. They’re conversation stoppers, not starters.
Oh, and hey: is it possible your son enjoys the gender studies and psych classes more than he did the math and science stuff? Why make a value judgment about what course set is better without taking into account his own personal interests in those subjects?
It’s not what he was studying, he can study whatever he likes, it that everything about his life did a sudden 180 degree turn.
Maybe he’s finally free to follow his true self, sir?
Given your extreme negative response to this, could it be that it only appears sudden to you because your son felt he needed to hide his burgeoning interests in these subjects out of fear of how you’d react? Nothing in the way you’ve spoken about this issue here suggests that it would have been a very pleasant thing for him to bring up to you.
Do you have anything to add about the rest of the post I wrote you?
You’re GOOD. I kind of want to turn the blog over to you and watch you run with it, because damn, woman.
Oh gosh, thank you. That’s so nice of you. *blushes, vibrates excitedly*
Just to let you know: You come off as a mean, controlling, manipulative asshole. So, why should I have any sympathy for you?
See, and here’s the problem. One I can assure you I am the original author. Two, you said I don’t think very highly of you because I said, “let the feeding frenzy begin”. I don’t know you personally so have have no reason to think anything about you, but you did prove my point when you said you don’t put any stock in the words my son said since he still has no contact. You were not there, I was, his mother was, and so was his sister, and this was all before this person dug their claws into him. There are certain details I am not willing to share, especially about the person he ran off with because she has traumas of her own that made her who she is, and that’s all I’ll say on that. No matter what I say I am going to be called a liar, so I’m not even sure why I am doing this. What I can say is that, in reading Issendai’s other writings on this site he/she is a case study in narcissistic behavior with a site built so others can feed his/her ego. When you headline your story with “The Abusers Side of the Story” you have already prejudged, and convicted the parents so any defense will be met with “you’re lying”. The only thing you need to know, and I’ll say it again, our son most certainly was not an abused child, and I would give almost anything to have him standing in front of me so I can hug him again, and figure out the future together.
Sir, the only points of my reply you have addressed are the point that you, understandably, do not think highly of the commenters, and the point about your son’s words. Oh, and you have assured you are the original writer. I believe you, but this is internet.
“I don’t know you personally so have have no reason to think anything about you…”
I am glad to hear that. However, we still make our impressions on others through our words and actions, and you undoubtedly have your opinion. Case in point:
“Sorry, this is the problem with this millennial generation, no matter how ridiculous their position is it must be validated, and if you question it their egos can’t take it.”
Sir, you say that Issendai cannot say anything unless she’s a parent. However, you paint all millenials with the same brush. Unless you are an expert in sociology, how can you do that? This is hypocrisy.
By the way, I am a millenial. Who has a wonderful relationship with her parents, and the grandmother who was involved in bringing me up. However, my grandfather was an abuser whom our family had largely estranged. So I do know both sides to the story. Feel free to ask. Feel free to call me a liar, too.
“…but you did prove my point when you said you don’t put any stock in the words my son said since he still has no contact.”
I believe you, your wife, and your daughter. And what about your son? It’s his words. His. Not yours, not your wife’s, not your daughter’s. As they say, “the other man’s soul is enshrouded.” He said these meaningful, loving words… and not a year had passed before he left. Why? Didn’t he give any excuse?
Nota bene – you said you aren’t willing to share details about that person. That’s fine, of course, since it’s not about her. It’s about your son. He has a mind, a free will, and a heart of his own, all brought up by you, sir. He made his decision. Why?
“No matter what I say I am going to be called a liar, so I’m not even sure why I am doing this.”
I have not called you a liar.
“When you headline your story with “The Abusers Side of the Story” you have already prejudged, and convicted the parents so any defense will be met with “you’re lying”.”
Have you drawn a conclusion based on just the headline? Then again, you do only reply to some points of your opponents.
Sir, I understand that your eyes are clouded by pain. However, let me disprove your words.
First of all, the article is not about all parents. It’s about parents who are estranged, and frequent the estranged parents’ forums, and exhibit certain patterns of thinking. That’s quite a narrow definition. Do you fall under it?
In the very second paragraph, the article says in prominent bold:
“Not all of the members of estranged parent communities are abusers.”
Sir, if you had read the article, you would have known that. Not reading the articles yet assigning the author a formal diagnosis does not lend you credibility.
You haven’t read my comments, either. Because – and I’ll admit it – I made a mistake. Namely, I said that the percentage “99%” was yours. It was Issendai’s. I am sorry for that. Note, please, that I am not withdrawing anything, since the question of who brought the percentage up changes nothing.
“The only thing you need to know, and I’ll say it again, our son most certainly was not an abused child.”
No, sir, that is not the only thing I need to know. Most people who were not abused children have great relationships with their parents. Such as your daughter, for example. So I need to know one other thing. Why did your son leave?
Yours,
L
“Wow, let me start with, I am the “Hurting Parent”, and at no time did I think our private conversation was going to be used by you on your page…”
You email the owner of a blog to complain about what they are writing, but you don’t expect it to show up on their blog?
“Don’t get me wrong, I know there are a lot of horrible parents out there, and I completely understand why some children would want to get as far away from their parents as they possibly can, someone very close to me is one of those children. However our son is not, and was not an abused child. I could bring everyone that knows his life story up until the moment he ran away, including his sister to tell you what his life was like, but somehow I have a feeling that I will be, as the owner of this site says “tarred with the same brush” of abusive parents, because 99% of us are lying.”
For me, the fact that you refuse to admit any wrong doing …. and are so adament about needing to be right on here and in the emails you sent says a lot about your character and personality. I don’t need to know your son’s story when your behavior here shows exactly why he probably needed to get away from you. Maybe if you weren’t constantly trying to make him feel bad, feel wrong, he wouldn’t need to get so far away and you’d have a chance at a relationship. STOP beating him down. STOP defending your actions. STOP making him wrong. If you treated him like a friend, treated him with respect, and treated him with truly unconditional love, he would probably want to be part of your life.
Unconditional means that you love him, and treat him with love, whether or not you like how he treats you back.
“You were not there, I was, his mother was, and so was his sister, and this was all before this person dug their claws into him.”
I hope you realize now that if you hadn’t tried to control his relationships with other people, and hadn’t felt it was your duty to stop this relationship, he’d probably still be in your life. Parents have got to learn to let their adult children make their own choices, which sometimes are mistakes, but they are still their choices and mistakes to make. A good parent would simply be there to help or advise if and when asked. If you had done that do you think he would have cut you off? It’s clear that your behavior toward him and his choice of mate led to this estrangement.
“L” Ok, it goes like this. I use the conversation that we had while having dinner as an example of just how close we were as a family. Along comes this married 34 year old woman on the internet, in Facebook chat rooms about science, history, religion, and I know her, and I never had a reason not to trust my son. When my son was around 17 my wife overheard our son say, “I Love You” to this married 34 year old woman. Did we cut off communication? No, we had a discussion about what it means to love someone, the power of the word, and the dangers of getting that close with someone you only know on the internet. Now remember my son is 17, and she is 34, and married, so if you flipped the rolls, and made it a married 34 year old man, and a 17 year old girl the public would be grabbing their torches, and pitchforks. A short time later, he said he penned a science article for her website (which was taken down when the police got involved) that had a scientific sounding name. Well, I went to the website, and it was a feminist manifesto with these women talking about sexual conquests, and things they do, along with pictures of dildos on the main page. At that point my wife, and I said that was enough, and we didn’t want him communicating with her anymore. I even brought her up on our webcam, and told her we did not want her communicating with our underage son anymore. I told if I had to I would get an order of protection to keep her away from our son, and she agreed…..or we thought. Apparently when a parent tells you to stay away from their child, it’s ok to ignore the parents. For months I would come home from work, give my son a hug, and a kiss, and periodically ask him if she was trying to contact him. He lied to my face and told me “no dad”. I didn’t have a reason to distrust him so I let it go. I should have know she was still in contact with him because his personality was beginning to change. I thought he was just being a teenager, and angry because we told her to stay away. His conversations, and views of things also began to change, but I told him, “we can disagree until the stars burn out, that will not change how much I love you”. The days around his 18th birthday were great, we went to dinner, we went to the Rocky Horror Picture Show, it was a good time together. Then it happened, three days after his 18th birthday he stood up from the computer, and said, “mom, dad I’m moving out”. We were completely floored by this, and I actually asked, “what’s the punch line to the joke”? Nope, he walked out the door saying he was going to live with a friend from school. My wife, and I said, ok, figuring he needed some time , an we really couldn’t stop him, but we would all talk later. The next day we went to the high school to sit down with him and his counselor to talk about what was going on. When the school went to get him from class they discovered he wasn’t in school. My wife immediately started crying, and said “She has him”. It was one of those moments where you feel like you are in a movie, except it’s actually happening. She was still in contact with our son the whole time, and filling his head with these ideas. These people drove many hours in the middle of the night to pick up our son, and drive him back to their house. Now the police were involved, and his friends mother thought it was so strange that she, thankfully wrote down the license plate number, and gave it to the police. He said that I bullied his friends, so he couldn’t stay near home to finish school so he had to go leave with them. I never spoke to a single one of his friends, or told anyone he couldn’t stay with them. He then enrolled in school there, and changed his entire life. Any family member he would call that told him what he did was wrong, and he needed to come home, he cut them off too. He was a math, physics, history, and astronomy genius. He wanted to be the next Richard Feynman, or Neil Degrasee Tyson, but that went by the wayside and was substituted with women’s & gender studies, psychology, and other liberal arts classes.
So there you have it. our story.
“D” I don’t always have to be right, I just happen to disagree with everything Issendai has to say. As for our son, he was and is loved unconditionally. As for being a “friend” sorry, we parents not friends. That lead’s to a whole list of other problems.
I see. Well then.
First of all, thank you for your response – it couldn’t have been easy to write. You have my utmost sympathy. However…
“Now remember my son is 17, and she is 34, and married, so if you flipped the rolls, and made it a married 34 year old man, and a 17 year old girl the public would be grabbing their torches, and pitchforks.”
Not really, no. While the age difference is indeed significant, there are several things to consider.
First of all, it was _your son_ who said “I love you” to the woman. Not vice versa. 17 is the age when people get crushes on others. Furthermore – can I specify _how_ your son meant it? There’s platonic love, after all.
Second, may I ask if it was a sexual relationship they were having? You, sir, insist otherwise. In which case, the law is not broken. Permit me to return to this point further on.
“Apparently when a parent tells you to stay away from their child, it’s ok to ignore the parents.”
The use of word “child” is debatable here. Your son has a mind of his own. It was his choice to resume contact with the woman. His choice to defy you. Why are you only blaming her?
Furthermore, do you have any evidence that your son and this woman had been communicating during that period? He moved out _after_ his 18th birthday when he was free to do as he pleased. He made the decision to move out by himself.
“These people drove many hours in the middle of the night to pick up our son, and drive him back to their house. Now the police were involved, and his friends mother thought it was so strange that she, thankfully wrote down the license plate number, and gave it to the police.”
Sorry to tell you that, but your son and his friends went out of the way to avoid breaking the law. They cooperated with the police, made sure that they knew that he had left out of his own free will. Your son made no effort to hide – only to move out. And the woman took him in like his own, gave him a new place to live.
“He said that I bullied his friends, so he couldn’t stay near home to finish school so he had to go leave with them. I never spoke to a single one of his friends, or told anyone he couldn’t stay with them.”
This woman is his friend, too.
“He was a math, physics, history, and astronomy genius. He wanted to be the next Richard Feynman, or Neil Degrasee Tyson, but that went by the wayside and was substituted with women’s & gender studies, psychology, and other liberal arts classes.”
Psychology is a hard science – that is, no less valid than biology or physics.
Can you tell me how you learned what classes your son is taking now?
Now, let me come back to my point about the age and the laws broken/not broken. That is something I will address further in a separate comment.
Because, sir, it appears you aren’t telling everything.
Actually, upon re-reading your comment, I see I may have been wrong in something. So it’s not the woman who gave the police the license plate. My apologies. Still, your son and the woman have cooperated with the police.
Now, here are certain inconsistencies in your story.
” A short time later, he said he penned a science article for her website (which was taken down when the police got involved) that had a scientific sounding name.”
You mean, when _you_ involved the police. And the wording you, sir, use, is misleading. You make it sound as if the website was illegal in nature. More likely is that the woman wanted to protect your son from the police and from you, so she took the site down to let sleeping dogs lie. Sir, may I ask which one was it?
Furthermore, if the police had found something illegal in your son’s or his friends’ actions, they would have acted upon their findings. But, I guess, no laws were broken by them.
Now, let me please quote another comment of yours: “When my son got to their house, the woman did not work, the husbands only income was student loans so my son had to get a job, and they got him on food stamps. Guess what, they kept his food stamps while he worked for his food.”
I do believe that would have been fraud. If that’s true, have you relayed it to the police?
Furthermore – and how did you, sir, learn this if your son cut contact? How did you learn what classes he takes now?
Because – and this is the impression I get…
You did not leave him alone. You kept intruding into his life. You called the police on them. You got his extended family – whom he was initially willing to talk to – to bother him, too.
I sincerely hope that wasn’t the case, was it? Please, sir, prove me wrong now.
Yours,
L
“Now remember my son is 17, and she is 34, and married, so if you flipped the rolls, and made it a married 34 year old man, and a 17 year old girl the public would be grabbing their torches, and pitchforks.”
Or, because this event was two years in the past, we’d just go “Ew, skeevy.” Which I will do: Ew, a 34-year-old having an online affair with a teenager is skeevy. It’s understandable that you’d be dismayed.
“A short time later, he said he penned a science article for her website (which was taken down when the police got involved) that had a scientific sounding name. Well, I went to the website, and it was a feminist manifesto with these women talking about sexual conquests, and things they do, along with pictures of dildos on the main page.”
What’s the website? I’d love to see it.
“At that point my wife, and I said that was enough, and we didn’t want him communicating with her anymore.”
So the breaking point wasn’t that she was having an online affair with your son, it was that she participated in a website that had sexual content. Got it.
“For months I would come home from work, give my son a hug, and a kiss, and periodically ask him if she was trying to contact him. He lied to my face and told me “no dad”. I didn’t have a reason to distrust him so I let it go. I should have know she was still in contact with him because his personality was beginning to change. I thought he was just being a teenager, and angry because we told her to stay away.”
Ordering him to stay away from her chased him deeper into a relationship with her–a regrettable but predictable result. I don’t know what you should have done differently, but I do question your assumption that your son is brainwashed. If anything, he sounds like he took on her beliefs because he saw her as an avenue of escape.
“Then it happened, three days after his 18th birthday he stood up from the computer, and said, “mom, dad I’m moving out”. We were completely floored by this, and I actually asked, “what’s the punch line to the joke”? Nope, he walked out the door saying he was going to live with a friend from school. My wife, and I said, ok, figuring he needed some time , an we really couldn’t stop him, but we would all talk later. The next day we went to the high school to sit down with him and his counselor to talk about what was going on.”
He needed some time, but you decided to have a sit-down with him and the school counselor the very next day? Did he agree to the sit-down? And why did it have to take place immediately, when you acknowledge that a cooling-off period was necessary?
“These people drove many hours in the middle of the night to pick up our son, and drive him back to their house. Now the police were involved, and his friends mother thought it was so strange that she, thankfully wrote down the license plate number, and gave it to the police.”
Why did you call the police? Legal adult changes residence of his own free will–what laws have been broken? Said legal adult may be a bit of a dumbass, and the change of residence may not be in his own best interest, but it’s still his decision to make. Involving the police was an overreaction, and the fact that you don’t see it as an overreaction–and a massively controlling overreaction at that–is quite the red flag indeed.
Your late revelation that you’re in law enforcement adds another dimension to your son’s response. Of course he’d want to leave your jurisdiction. Why would he want to stay where you could sic your coworkers on him?
Two things to note. First, it’s actually unclear whether it was an online affair – aside from the son having said “I love you” in an unclear context, the father gives no indication of this. Further supported by the fact that it’s the woman and her husband who took the son in. Unless they’re in an open relationship…
Second. HP later accuses the woman of not working and, by extension, using his son for money (how does he know about her income, by the way? I guess stalking). Now – full credit to a friend of mine, V, for suggestion – this website of hers that “got shut down when the police were involved” could have been her source of income! So – nice job, father. Nice job.
Right, and HP also knew the woman from “Facebook chatrooms” (groups?) and didn’t have a problem with the relationship when it began. So it appears to have just been a close online friendship. I still question whether there is another connection between HP and this woman. The idea that HP, son, and the woman were all participants in some kind of discussion group and that led HP to be OK with son and woman communicating privately just seems a little strange. I have a teen and I don’t think I would have been OK with her having private conversations with someone I only knew from the internet.
HP also knows that she has had “traumas” and knows a lot about her living/financial situation.
Ha ha! You failed to protect your child from a sexual predator and we’re supposed to feel sorry for you? Jesus H. Christ, you people have no bottom.
“D” I suggest you read our story. It wasn’t a “mate”. If the rolls were reversed and it was a married 34 year old man, talking to a 17 year old girl I don’t think your response would be that ignorant. We never tried to “control” anything about him. We encouraged him to be himself, and do what he loves, but you do understand as a parent you do have responsibility to look out for the safety of your child?
Do you realize that most 17 1/2 year olds would be tried as an adult if they committed a violent crime? How about the fact that 17 years olds are accepted into the military? Many places accept 18 year olds into the police academy and as such 18 year olds could be walking around your streets carrying a gun and expected to protect you and your neighborhood. The fact is that he is an adult and his life is his to choose. Your behavior toward him is what drove him away. You could have chosen a different route for your behavior and still had him in your life. It would have meant relinquishing all control over him though.
You are now only allowed to parent him as much as he permits, so you may biologically still be considered his father, but you can no longer parent him if he doesn’t want you to. It seems to me that when your talking didn’t work, instead of stopping there to preserve your relationship you then became even more controlling and drove him to the point he didn’t feel safe trusting you any longer. You may not like his chosen mate …. (if they are in a relationship and having sex it is his “mate”), but you have no control over his life any longer. It’s his life and his choice now, whether or not you, or anyone else, think it’s appropriate.
It all comes down to how he feels about himself when he’s around you. If you criticize, argue, control or put him or his girlfriend down, you are hurting him and he won’t want to be around you. If you chose instead to treat him as an equal adult, like you’d treat a friend, offering your opinion only when asked and gracefully accepting when he didn’t take your advice you’d still be in your son’s life. You aren’t responsible for him any longer, period. All you can possibly do now is try to mend some fences, keep your nose out of his business and love him and trust and support him no matter whether you agree with his life choices or not. This is his life and his mistakes to make. If you want a relationship you have to change your behavior, not him.
I wonder how your life and your son’s life would change if you wrote him something like this? …….
Dear Son,
Your mother and I have come to understand some things we didn’t before so I hope you can forgive us. We really do understand now that you are an adult and this is your life to lead. We don’t agree with some things but we understand now that it’s not our job to try to control you any longer.
We want to be part of your life and to that end we’ve decided to accept whatever choices you make, including your girlfriend. We promise we won’t criticize you or in other ways hurt you any longer and if we do say or do something that you find hurtful we promise to listen and then make amends and changes as needed.
I do need you to know that we only did what we thought we should do in order to protect you and that was because we were scared for you. I admit that we are still scared, but we know now that we’ll have to deal with those feelings ourselves and not expect you to change for our sake.
Can we please start over? We love you and miss you dearly.
Dad and Mom
I was in the position of the Poster’s son (except I was a daughter and the person wasn’t 27 years older and wasn’t married – but basically I was estranged from my parents over a relationship). And honestly? That letter would have made things better. Hindsight ( and a divorce) being what it is I now know that the relationship was bad news and I wish I had broken things off sooner. Part of what drove me into his arms WAS my parents over the top reaction. If they hadn’t reacted the way they did I would like to think i would have realized it was a bad relationship and never gotten as far as we did. But they created an “us against them” situation and of course I had to fight for “us”. FYI I don’t even remember how it happened but my parents and i have patched things up – I do believe it was sentiments similar to that that started it.
If parents could write that letter and mean it, it would end a lot of estrangements. Very insightful.
This is the worst possible time for this, but I have conjunctivitis and can barely see out of one eye. I’m following the conversation and will reply when I’m bifocal again.
You’re keeping an eye on us?
…Couldn’t resist. Get well soon.
LIKE NICK FURY.
Thanks. Hopefully it’ll be quick and I’ll be able to get back to this most interesting discussion.
Are you actually Nick Fury? Because I was wondering.
I’m more of a Phil Coulson type, but my hands are OK, so…
Tahiti is a magical place. Or so I hear.
Tahiti sucks.
I ended up there myself this week. I had emergency gallbladder surgery. I concur.
Gah, Magpie, that’s awful! How did it go? How long before you’re on your feet again? Did they give you a cool bionic gallbladder that shoots laser beams out your navel?
Hospitals need more masseuses and frilly fruity drinks with umbrellas in them. Even if the drinks are virgin. If you’re gonna get the downside of Tahiti, you should get the upside, too.
I’m hoping to get back to work next week. I’m ambulatory but very slow, and I look several months pregnant. I’m not in a ton of pain, but I’m very tired and can’t lay down normally so I’m sleeping in a recliner. 😛
No bionic gallbladder. That would be awesome — especially if it could process things like chimichangas and I’d never get fat. No massages, but the drugs weren’t bad.
Getting old sucks.
Um “D” in what bizarre world do you live in? 17 year olds are not allowed into the military, they are not allowed to sign contracts, and many other things. 18 year olds are MOST CERTAINLY NOT allowed in police academies. Now, you keep using this word “controlling” and have no idea what you are talking about. If I was controlling, I would have taken away his cell phone, his car keys, and all internet access to keep from a woman that for some reason you call a “mate” or “girlfriend”. when she was neither of those. She is a married woman with some twisted agenda, and by her husbands own admission they had done the same thing before with a 19 year old girl. When my son got to their house, the woman did not work, the husbands only income was student loans so my son had to get a job, and they got him on food stamps. Guess what, they kept his food stamps while he worked for his food.
One more side note on this “controlling” trope that I tire of. While I am not a religious person, I did hold a belief in a creator god. When my told me he was an atheist, did I lose my mind, or say “not in my house”? Nope, I said, ok your an atheist “tell me why”. And he did, he explained his position very well, I read the books he read, and guess what, I could no longer hold a belief in a god, BECAUSE OF MY SON. So if I’m so controlling how could my son get me to give up a belief in god, and how many households would you expect that to happen in. So, please stop with this controlling garbage, because it simply is not true.
Use Google.
I’m beginning to realize what the “D” stands for. You CANNOT at 17 just walk in and join the military, it requires PARENTAL APPROVAL, see there’s that parental supervision again, it can be pesky that way. As for police departments there are zero police departments that hire 18 year olds. You can be an explorer, and that about it. As for departments they may hire you are 20, but require that you are 21 by the time you attend the academy.
So what you’re saying is that you CAN join the military at 17? Which was, you know, exactly what D was saying? There may be additional restrictions, sure, but the point remains the same: a 17 year old is, within the context of American society, deemed fit for military service.
I mean, do you think this quibbling over details reflects well on you? We’re supposed to be talking about you and your son, but being contradicted on this one tertiary point was enough to make you abandon everything else to focus in, yet we’re supposed to accept your claim that you don’t need to be right about everything?
I think the poster’s point is in the _parental supervision_ restriction – ergo, at 17 a child cannot decide for themself. Hm.
However at 18 a person is legally an adult. They are free to join the military. Or to think for themself. Or to move out of their parents’ house, which the son did.
Sir, the poster’s tone was indeed impolite, but are you resorting to personal insults? Be a better man.
There are no police departments that hire 21-year olds, either – not without police academy. And police academies do take 18-year olds in:
California, Georgia, Iowa, Michigan, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, Tennessee, Vermont, Virginia, Wisconsin and Wyoming, as well as New Jersey for some positions, Delaware (for seasonal police work), and Texas which can accept an 18-year old “if the applicant holds an associate degree or specific number of credited semester hours”. And in Alabama, one can become a cadet at 17.
Source: how-to-become-a-police-officer dot com
Not to mention that in UK, the general rule you can begin police training at 18. Are American youth somehow less mature than British?
I have posted another comment on the topic, but it’s awaiting moderation.
Sir, please admit your error.
Yes, you can join the military at 17. That fact that you assert so strongly that it is not true without actually taking the time to check says a lot about you. This is readily available information. Also, telling someone to “stop” comes across as very authoritarian. If you’re trying to convey that it’s not your style, you’re not doing a very good job of that.
It’s possible that his choices were poor. However, he gets to make poor choices. That’s his right. Your choice as a parent is to accept that or not. You’ve chosen not to. He gets to decide if your level of acceptance is a deal-breaker or not. However, the whole thing the way you describe it sounds weird. What is her “twisted agenda”? Keeping his food stamps seems like something unacceptable, if he were not getting something he wanted out of the situation. Could it simply be that he wanted to get away from you, and he received help from this couple and is doing his part to contribute to their household? It sounds like the husband is a student himself. What does the wife do? Is she also a student? Did he simply become roommates with fellow students? Is there an actual romantic relationship between your son and this woman, because that is the insinuation that permeates your assertions, but now it seems like that is not the case. This 19 year old woman, did she also have a similar arrangement? Because it just kind of sounds like these people are providing a home to young people that need to leave home or that are in school. I was sympathizing with you somewhat until I got to this post, which makes no sense at all.
My mother believes that I could tell her anything and that she was an open and accepting parent. That was not even close to the reality. I don’t believe she is lying. I just think she has a skewed view of history (she also asserts I was promiscuous and wild, which was most definitely not the case — I was a devoutly religious straight-A student). Her response to my walking away was also to tell me to “stop it.” No attempt at understanding her own behavior or the dynamics that led to the estrangement. You’ve gotten good advice at bridging the separation. It’s a shame you can’t see that.
No you cannot join the military at 17, you have to have your parents approval. You did get one thing right, it certainly was, and is weird. I will ask this question again, in what world would it be ok for a married 34 year old man to do the exact same thing with a 17/18 year old girl. I’m not so sure about some people here, but most would call him a predator.
Sir, please read my comments in which I address this very issue. I do understand the thread is confusing, but these questions have been answered.
For everyone’s convenience, I will say it again: no, most people would not call this person a predator, because at 18, this girl is an adult. Not a minor. At 17, she’s and adult in most states.
The age difference is significant and not to my liking, but this is not illegal. Furthermore, you deny that your son and her had/have a relationship.
Sir, I know you need someone to blame and you choose to blame this woman, but your son, as they say, has his own head on his shoulders. He chose to leave. He did.
Do what, exactly? I’m still not clear on what this person did, aside from befriend your son.
Also, did you already know this woman or not?
“No you cannot join the military at 17, you have to have your parents approval.”
No matter what anyone here said, even himself, he had to make everyone wrong, except himself, even when he contradicts himself. This is why he, and so many other parents, will just never get it.
Wait. I just caught the sentence that you know her. How do you know this woman?
http://www.military.com/join-armed-forces/join-the-military-basic-eligibility.html
17 is the minimum age to join the army.
http://discoverpolicing.org/what_does_take/?fa=requirements
Most police academies do requre the cadet to be 21, but some take students as young as 18.
http://law.freeadvice.com/general_practice/contract_law/contract_valid.htm
As for signing a contract – which D. had not mentioned, but you, sir, did – the law is interesting. While you need to be 18 for it to be legally binding, it is possible to sign one before, and then ratify it after you turn 18. So your example is imperfect.
Either way, even if you refuse to consider your son an adult before age of 18 – after 18, he had become one. And he used his newly acquired rights to leave your house.
One more thing. Your son did not “get you” to give up your faith. It was your choice.
It is true you have not reacted irrationaly to his admission that he was an atheist. However, the fact that you hold your lack of irrational reaction as something commendable is rather telling.
Furthermore, the fact that you changed your mind on something doesn’t prove that you’re not… I will not use the word “controlling, it’s a loaded word.
It doesn’t excuse your other actions.
Finally. I do not speak for all households. But I can say how it went on in mine:
During a random conversation:
“…Well, Mom, I think of myself as an atheist, and…”
“You do? Oh, okay.”
My mother didn’t ask me to explain myself or anything. And I did not feel the need to “come out” about my religion.
Sure he did, we discussed back and forth the pros and cons for a belief in God until my argument no longer carried any weight, and if it wasn’t for him I wouldn’t even had fought about it.
I understand that your son was the influence. But the decision was yours to make. But this isn’t something I’ll insist on.
However.
Sir, aren’t you going to address the other points I made?
Did you cause any arguments about his choice of partner, or did you accept it as it was not your choice to make and he just walked out of home and announced he hated you. If you pressured him to not be with the person he chose regardless of whether that be a fifty year old man or thirty four year old women and caused arguments and hurt then of course he will choose the ability to live his life his way over you. And if you keep contacting a grown adult who has told you that they don’t want you to then you are only demonstrating love of yourself.
Estranged parents tell people that unless they are estranged from their children then they know nothing about it, but perhaps people who are not estranged from their children might be the best ones to take advice from. You are estranged from your son and following your own advice has failed so perhaps start listening to others.
You, and your wife with your controlling pushy behaviour caused your son to leave and stay away from you. Maybe this woman is a predator maybe she was just a friend who wNted to help a teenager who felt suffocated by his family, but either way if you had behaved in a less controlling manner your son would still be in contact. Calling the police because a legal adult is leaving home is absolutely beyond the pale and suggests you would have been happy for physical force to be used. Your son has his life to lead, his choices to make and most importantly his mistakes to make. But you are trying to steal these from him because you would rather you live his life for him. Maybe he is making a mistake but it’s his mistake to make. We can accept making our own mistakes but living a life full of others mistakes and choices will cause bitterness and regret.
You either have faith or you don’t. It’s not someone elses decision whether or not you have faith.
May I ask why, when addressing insinuations that you might be controlling, you leap to only discussing highly specific, extreme examples of controlling behavior? Are you aware that there are other manifestations of control that are lower down than taking keys, phones etc, but are still controlling?
I’m sorry, I know this is going to sound bad and I don’t mean to automatically imply that you’re in this group, but the “real abusers do X, Y, and Z things. Since I never did X, Y, and Z, I can’t be a real abuser!” is exactly the kind of logic that abusers have used for decades: “Pfft, real child abusers beat their kids. I just taunt mine,” for example. It’s a classic excuse for bad behavior, and in fact, it’s been addressed in Issendai’s writing before, this idea that because an estranged parent hasn’t engaged in the extremes of bad behavior that others might, they are exempted from wrongdoing entirely. It’s simply fallacious.
Now, again, I’m not suggesting that because you’re using language that abusers use, you are yourself abusive. What I am saying is that, if you are using a logical chain in order to reach the conclusion that you are not controlling, and that this logical chain is historically a common theme for abusers- including controllers- to use as well, then clearly that logical chain cannot be used to reach the conclusion that you are not controlling, for the reasons stated above. If both controllers and non-controllers can use the same argument to reach the same conclusion, then that argument is not helpful in identifying one group from the other.
“When my son got to their house, the woman did not work, the husbands only income was student loans so my son had to get a job, and they got him on food stamps. Guess what, they kept his food stamps while he worked for his food.”
I sure wish he had explained how he knew about this stuff. Did I miss that somewhere?
I asked about that. No answer that I remember. In my opinion, he’d learned that through stalking.
(Issendai! Sorry to spam, could you please approve a comment of mine? It has links in it and was blocked.)
I’ll give you two more parts to this story and we’ll see how you can make this my fault. One, after he left he called us and (I can’t wait for the responses) actually asked us to send our tax returns to him, and these people so he could fill out FAFSA forms for student loans? Does that sound like the well thought out plans of an adult?
And two, after he left he was still talking to his sister. While I was on the way to the movies with his sister and her friend he was talking to her and knew where we were going. As we got our seats in the theater, and sat down with our popcorn my wife calls me, and is crying hysterically. You see, our son, and the husband in twosome of miscreants took turns calling my wife, screaming at her, and berating her, knowing how much pain she was in from him leaving. I had to leave the theater, go home and pick my broken, sobbing wife off the floor, and make sure she wasn’t suicidal. So there you have them, I have nothing to hide, so let the spinning begin.
Sir. First, please allow me not to counter the first point, since I am not an expert in student financial aid laws of the U.S. I am well aware, though, that parents’ financial information may be required to apply for loans.
Second point… well. I am sorry, but I am not ready to believe that completely, because I have seen abusers spin the stories like this one. Hence – I am sorry, it must be painful to recollect, but since you’ve mentioned it… So what was he screaming about? What was he berating her for? Or did he – sarcasm – just go “BLAHBITY BLOO BLAH HIPPITY HOOBLAH!” into the phone, and that upset your wife so? And what did your wife reply?
There is no spin, that’s exactly what happened, but once again, I am the liar. I’m not even sure why I’m still doing this.
As for FAFSA, and student loans, remember the only income these people had was the wife’s disability and the husband’s student loans. So, if I send our son, who said he didn’t want anything to do with us our tax returns, and he takes out the biggest loans he possible can, then decides he really wants to screw us, he doesn’t pay them, guess who’s on the hook for them?
You’re not on the hook for any loans you don’t agree to. The information is used only to determine what he is eligible for.
Sir, I am not accusing you of lies. I am asking a question because it is profoundly unclear what happened.
As for the student loans, first of all, how are you so sure of these people’s income? And second, student loans do not work that way. You giving information does not mean you have to pay them.
But I’d also like to hear what your son and the husband said to your wife.
“There is no spin, that’s exactly what happened, but once again, I am the liar. I’m not even sure why I’m still doing this. ”
I honestly have no idea how you could have gotten that from what was written. You weren’t called a liar, you were asked for more information about what happened, specifically, you were asked for pertinent details that you’d left out of your initial account. How can you possibly see a person asking you to tell more of your story, and come away thinking that person is calling you a liar?
Why would anyone want more of something they’ve determined to be untrue?
“As for FAFSA, and student loans, remember the only income these people had was the wife’s disability and the husband’s student loans. So, if I send our son, who said he didn’t want anything to do with us our tax returns, and he takes out the biggest loans he possible can, then decides he really wants to screw us, he doesn’t pay them, guess who’s on the hook for them?”
So don’t give them to him. What in this is supposed to make us think that you suddenly have a right to override your son’s life choices and disregard his boundaries? Are you even still attempting to make that case about pursuing contact with your son despite his wishes, or have you simply moved on to attempting to make us think poorly of him (and thus, somehow, better of you)?
“I’ll give you two more parts to this story and we’ll see how you can make this my fault.”
Is that what you think is happening here? If we disagree with you, it’s only because we’ve presupposed you to be wrong, and not any of the stated reasons we’ve all given?
“One, after he left he called us and (I can’t wait for the responses) actually asked us to send our tax returns to him, and these people so he could fill out FAFSA forms for student loans? Does that sound like the well thought out plans of an adult?”
But, again, your approval or disapproval of his actions are irrelevant to whether or not he should be allowed to make them. Whether or not the choices he makes are good or not, are irrelevant to whether or not he should be allowed to make them. You do not get to override another adult’s life choices merely because you disapprove of them, no matter how emotionally invested you are. Your son is an adult, and he has established a boundary where he doesn’t seem to want to have contact with you: the fact that you personally feel that his life choices aren’t good enough is not justification for you to disregard that boundary and attempt to “fix” them.
He is a person, not an ongoing project of yours that you get to dip your hand into whenever you wish. I understand that you disagree with what your son is doing: do you understand that he is not obligated to bend to that disagreement?
“As we got our seats in the theater, and sat down with our popcorn my wife calls me, and is crying hysterically. You see, our son, and the husband in twosome of miscreants took turns calling my wife, screaming at her, and berating her, knowing how much pain she was in from him leaving. ”
It’s extremely hard to form any kind of conclusion at all, when you won’t tell us what was actually said. This, too, is explored in Issendai’s writing, this habit estranged parents have of describing altercations between themselves and their estranged children, without ever letting slip what the children said, so there’s no danger of the adult child ever getting to speak for themselves in anecdotes where they’re being positioned as the bad guys.
I’m not going to call you a liar here or anything, but I will say the informational content of your second story is near zero. You might as well have just said “my son did the things that would make you think badly of him,” and leave it at that.
I’m not going to call you a liar, but you’re a liar because you didn’t repeat what was said verbatim. Seriously?????
Sir, your story has a lot of inconsistencies. It is your choice not to give us information, but please understand that these gaps in your words are not doing you any favors.
Nobody is calling you a liar, but you are withholding information.
Exactly what am I withholding?
Sir, you have been told explicitly what you are witholding.
L: ” I am sorry, it must be painful to recollect, but since you’ve mentioned it… So what was he screaming about? What was he berating her for? Or did he – sarcasm – just go “BLAHBITY BLOO BLAH HIPPITY HOOBLAH!” into the phone, and that upset your wife so? And what did your wife reply?”
Magpie: “But I’d also like to hear what your son and the husband said to your wife.”
Laura: “It’s extremely hard to form any kind of conclusion at all, when you won’t tell us what was actually said.”
Sir, three people have asked you that.
Also, for this thread, please reply in a new comment, since there’s a limit on the number of replies. Thank you for your understanding.
I didn’t call you a liar. I didn’t even intimate that your story was untrue. All I did was point out that you’re lacking details that would be crucial to allowing an outsider to have an informed opinion about the situation you’re describing.
Are you always like this? This defensive? This willing to take even the slightest whiff of not being taken one hundred percent seriously all the time, and turn that into some grand personal attack? All I said was that it was hard to form an opinion about a conversation without knowing the content of the conversation: how is your response even close to reasonable?
You need your parents’ financial information if you are considered dependent and it’s pretty difficult to get out of that designation (there’s specific criteria, like military service, tax filing status, etc.). If you are dependent and do not provide your parents’ financial information, your application will be rejected and you will only be eligible for subsidized student loans. If he is hoping for any kind of grant, he would need your information.
So your son was talking to his sister whilst simultaneously calling his mother to take turns in berating her and her reaction was to listen and fall to the floor and call your hysterically making you feel she was suicidal. That must have been a long journey.
Secondly if he wants student loans then getting tax returns to ensure he gets the right amount sounds like z very well thought out plan.
Do you honestly think for one minute that my wife remembers word for word what they were screaming at her while she was on the floor crying her eyes out? What the hell is wrong with you people?
Sir, nobody is asking you for a word-for-word transcript.
However. It is clear that _something_ was said. And these words upset your wife. Why did it? If it was all nonsense, lies, then she wouldn’t have been reduced to tears.
So from before she started crying. What did your son and his friend say?
You did catch the part where I said, whatever it was that they said crushed my wife into a broken woman? I seriously think I’m done with this, you people are seriously fucked up, disgusting, vile human beings. I’m done.
Sir. And what was it they said?
I understand you not asking your wife, who must be in severe pain as well. But – honestly! What could be so bad as to break a mentally stable, healthy person? Over the phone, no less?
Hypnosis, I figure. Or a magic spell.
Yep that settles it, not another word.
Bye Felicia!!!!!
Oh, I thought you had left. I suppose not. It’s been pleasant talking to you; and, sir, if you ever come by, I will gladly resume discussion, if you desire.
Yours sincerely,
L, a seriously fucked up, vile, disgusting human being, who has a wonderful relationship with her family.
Do you want us to have an understanding of the situation and to come to informed conclusions about it that are true, or do you just want us to agree with you?
Because your increasing petulance and agitation at us, merely for the sin of not taking you completely at face value, suggests the latter. You’re not going to find your echo chamber here, I’m afraid, but if you want a reasonable, considered discussion with people willing to do the legwork to get all the facts required for that, that’s what we’re here for.
And if you think we’re horrible people for asking questions instead of instantly rushing to commiserate with your wife and her vague, ill-defined trauma, I would remind you that you were the one willing to deploy that same trauma as a game piece in getting us to think ill of your son.
“Vague and ill defined trauma”, you minimize my wife’s pain to that? You can really go fuck yourself.
“Only I and my wife are allowed to feel pain.”
Ah, sir, you are still there!
Your wife’s trauma is real and painful. Which begs the question: why are you using her pain to try and achieve credibility without adequately representing her? You refuse to provide context. What was so traumatic?
Well it does matter what was said as its not your wife’s reaction that makes it reasonable or unreasonable. You seem to think that if your wife throws herself to the floor crying and then calls you and let’s you know what happened and then is still on the floor incapable of recalling what was said and still howling that the person she blames must be in the wrong. It could just be that is is utterly unreasonable and manipulative. You came scurring back didn’t you?
I still also want to know how you knew the woman. I’m guessing she is a relative.
Magpie, somehow I doubt there’ll be an answer. We’re just too vile to debate like normal people.
I didn’t even know this was a debate. I was just asking questions. I was actually almost with him at the beginning. It reminds me of something Stephen Colbert used to say — facts are biased against him.
Seduced by an older married woman and kept as her household slave and forced to turn over his food stamps => moved in with his aunt and her husband while he is going to college and forced to go on food stamps because his parent refuse to give him the information he needs to apply for financial aid.
A debate it was, from the very first letter. A very chess-with-pigeony debate.
It’s not an aunt, though – the claim is that son met her online. I can’t blame you for the misunderstanding, the opponent is avoidant. But, yeah, the facts are against him. Or, rather, the lack of facts and his discussion style.
I am not going to explain all that just yet;; but I hope that when Issendai comes back and gets an eyeful of this, she’ll make a public dissection. This is a brilliant case study.
I agree with you. If it is even part true then it sounds like the son didn’t go into a very good situation. That doesn’t change his right to decide to do it though. Just like the example from above. No I would not be happy with someone joining a neo nazi group, but if they were over 18 I also couldn’t do anything to stop them and just had to hope they would come to their senses.
I’m having trouble with leaving comments. HP says he knew the woman and he knows an awful lot about her financial situation and her “traumas.” There is a connection outside of the son’s relationship with her. I have relatives that my daughter does not know because my father estranged from my immediate family when I was a toddler. I communicate with some of them but my daughter never has. I also met a cousin from this same family online, that my mother previously knew. There’s more to this story.
D 2, I’ve discussed that situation with a friend of mine. The consensus was that while not necessarily untrue, there was a lot of reading between the lines to be done. I have a “headcanon” of sorts about what had happened. However, I am sorry, I’m not going to post it right now. Tired, for one. And second – only if Issendai decides it is okay. I want to make sure I’m not just talking shit, but making hypotheses.
My hypothesis is that this woman was someone from an online support forum. I’ve seen quite a few folks offer the use of their couch until young adults can get back on their feet.
HP addressed this later, actually, and the woman is someone he knows from debate groups.
Thanks! Sorry, that’ll teach me to comment when I’m still reading.
I’ve been “down the rabbit hole” on this story for hours and this is the thing I’m stuck on, as well. Even with how HP claims the story turned out, I am absolutely certain this is a very important component to the story and that’s why it is so carefully omitted. I also suspect it has some connection to whatever the son said to his mother on the phone, considering how abusive HP got toward anyone who asked for more information about that.
I have some serious concerns about this woman and her husband. That doesn’t preclude HP from being abusive toward his son, however. And his comments here give me a pretty good indication of what happens when he doesn’t get his way.
Asking for context: the most vile, disgusting, fucked up thing a person can do, apparently.
Laura, please, it’s *seriously* fucked up. I take my sobriquets most seriously.
Argh, what was I even thinking? How dreadfully vile and disgusting of me.
*Seriously* fucked up. Of course.
Don’t! You! For! Get!
(reference: youtube; watch?v=UGZCoBIg3dc)
The impasse here is that it appears to me that you look at the situation of estranged parents solely from the perspective of the estranged child, complete with negative and often unsubstantiated claims about the actions of the parent. Those claims are merely the perspective of the EC and may have no basis in fact. Clearly the parent who posted disagrees with that perspective. No parent raises their child with the expectation that they will fly from the nest, never to return. If that were the case there would be worldwide stagnant population growth. Why would someone open themselves up to such heartbreak? Parents have a reasonable expectation of a relationship beyond the age of majority. I’m sure that even estranged children have that expectation of their own children. They will make mistakes in their parenting and over the years societal norms will change. When their children become adults and choose to abandon them will they just roll over and accept the choice of their child as their right? Or will they do everything in their power to bring them back to the fold? Time will tell but I have read the accounts of many estranged children who are now estranged parents doing the same thing they fault their own parents for doing years earlier. They just refuse to see the similarities in their approach. Blaming the parent for estrangement while at the same time telling them that the child has a right to make their own decisions is contradictory. If the child is making a decision of their own free will then it isn’t someone else’s fault. They can choose to stay and help their parent understand their thinking and needs or they can leave without explanation for their own selfish reasons. If my child wants to blame me for his shortcomings and choices then clearly I should receive the credit for his successes in life. After all I did raise him to be a responsible adult and as a result of my efforts he has a good career and a beautiful family. We paid for his college education and my husband got him his job with the company for whom he worked. You appear to view this situation solely on the legality of the situation and not on the issue of morality. That being the case then there can never be agreement and families will continue to be fractured as everyone exercises their legal rights without regard to the emotional impact they have on others. I am the administrator of one of those estranged parent forums and at no time have I encouraged a parent to continue contacting a child who had made it clear that they want no contact. However trained and licensed therapists do encourage parents to continue to contact estranged children, especially those under the age of 30. So who should we listen to, an unidentified blogger or a trained therapist with a legitimate mental health practice? Clearly you are not familiar with Dr. Joshua Coleman or the many professional advisors at Alienated Grandparents Anonymous. IMHO, If children view a holiday greeting or a birthday card from the people who invested years in raising them as stalking then they are paranoid and in need of serious mental help.
” No parent raises their child with the expectation that they will fly from the nest, never to return.”
I think many parents raise their children with the expectation and hope that they will leave their parents’ home and become independent adults. At least, this parent certainly did, and I cannot believe that I am unique.
“If that were the case there would be worldwide stagnant population growth.”
I really don’t follow how children leaving their original home in adulthood would cause population growth to stagnate.
“I really don’t follow how children leaving their original home in adulthood would cause population growth to stagnate.”
Because, apparently, nobody would have kids if the resulting adults weren’t permanently obligated to do their half of a relationship regardless of how the other half was conducted.
“No parent raises their child with the expectation that they will fly from the nest, never to return.”
Please allow me to respectfully disagree. Cultures all over the world have this expectation of their children, and have had it for centuries. How do you explain, for example, the initiation rites, which often involve seclusion and isolation of the young person?
“They will make mistakes in their parenting and over the years societal norms will change.”
Well, as they say – no matter how we bring our children up, they’ll have plenty of things to tell their therapist.
However, several things are important here.
First, do “mistakes” outweigh the correct decisions?
Let me give you an example. My grandmother, who took part in raising me, made… plenty of mistakes. Some I had brought up later, some it would be pointless to. Still, we are in a good relationship. Because, overall, she isn’t a bad person. Routine interactions with her do not leave me mentally drained. And she admitted to not being perfect…
Which brings me to point two. How does the parent react to being told they made a mistake? And it had to have been a serious one, for the grown child to bring it up. Do they deny? Get angry? Or do they admit that something could have been different? Do they apologise sincerely, or is the apology token and dismissive?
Of course, some parents think that no apology is needed, ever. That it’s their divine right as parents to decide for their child. Won’t argue. But the child grows up, and the relationship changes. It has to change.
“Blaming the parent for estrangement while at the same time telling them that the child has a right to make their own decisions is contradictory. If the child is making a decision of their own free will then it isn’t someone else’s fault.”
Wait. Excuse me, sir/madam, may I transfer the situation to another kind of relationship?
“Blaming the abusive partner for a divorce while at the same time telling them that the victim has a right to make their own decisions is contradictory. If the victim is making a decision of their own free will then it isn’t someone else’s fault.”
You can accuse me of exaggeration, here – surely, you say, not every estranged parent cannot be abusive? This question has been addressed on this website, which I encourage you to give a read if you have not. But it’s okay if you don’t. Let me put it in my own words – many things that a spouse would be called abusive for, the society forgives to parents.
“They can choose to stay and help their parent understand their thinking and needs or they can leave without explanation for their own selfish reasons.”
Many – most – estranged children _have_ tried that! To explain, to justify, to defend themselves. But, as you surely know, people often do not listen to reason. And sometimes the only solution is to leave.
Furthermore, when leaving, if the child gives reasons, would the parent listen to these if they have not heard the explainations before? I doubt it.
Here, a relevant link:
community.grandparents (dot) com/index.php?/topic/9268-new-to-this-site-and-seeking-help-understanding-guidance-pls/#comment-114071
The poster is a licensed therapist with years of experience.
” I am the administrator of one of those estranged parent forums and at no time have I encouraged a parent to continue contacting a child who had made it clear that they want no contact.”
If that is indeed the case, I appreciate that. However, what follows in your writing makes it clear that you are still dismissive of the children, and are not sure what constitutes contact:
“IMHO, If children view a holiday greeting or a birthday card from the people who invested years in raising them as stalking then they are paranoid and in need of serious mental help.”
If that’s the case, then there has to be more than that to the situation. I am not excluding mental ilness, but what percentage of people have it? More likely, it’s something else.
How are these “cards” worded? Are they aimed at guilt-tripping the child? Reminding them of undoubtedly painful events?
What happened before? Stalking, harassment? Is that birthday card going to be a “foot-in-the-door” for the parent to come back into the child’s life?
Before you say something, E., let me provide another counterpoint. I have recently taken a look at a certain estranged parent forum – more of a blog. I am not providing a link yet, but I will if you ask me to prove myself. Now, several discussions there dealt with the holidays.
E., I assure you, many estranged parents view cards from their children the same way. As harassment. As insults. As painful reminders. Are you going to dismiss parents’ pain, too?
Before you ask, the messages were quoted, and… were prettly innocent. Even this: “I love you. Maybe one day we’ll reconnect.” The parent saw it as a “backhanded slap.”
“However trained and licensed therapists do encourage parents to continue to contact estranged children, especially those under the age of 30.”
Excuse me, could you provide some examples? Dr. Coleman,… who else? Furthermore, I assure you, just as many therapists advise _against_ that. Especially since, well, persistent unwanted contact is stalking. That’s the psychological definition, legal one is more narrow.
Finally, yes, the site author is familiar with Dr. Coleman.
It is a pleasure talking to you. Please, feel free to debate and to ask questions.
Yours,
L
“The impasse here is that it appears to me that you look at the situation of estranged parents solely from the perspective of the estranged child, complete with negative and often unsubstantiated claims about the actions of the parent. Those claims are merely the perspective of the EC and may have no basis in fact. Clearly the parent who posted disagrees with that perspective.”
Respectfully, we don’t live in a solipsistic universe, and perspectives are irrelevant to this. There is a true version of the scenario in every instance of estrangement, and though Hurting Parent may disagree, he was extremely reluctant to actually substantiate his own side of things. When asked to, even in the mildest of terms, he flew off the handle, called us vile and disgusting, just for asking for more information.
So I find it rather hypocritical that you’ll blanket dismiss the accounts of ECs as unsubstantiated, but you’re willing to give credence to a parent who, before your very eyes, outright refused to substantiate his own claims.
” When their children become adults and choose to abandon them will they just roll over and accept the choice of their child as their right? Or will they do everything in their power to bring them back to the fold? ”
You have just described the justifications of every abusive ex choosing to stalk past girlfriends and wives.
Yes, parents have an expectation of an ongoing relationship with their children. Are you seriously asserting that this expectation overrides the expectations that the adult child has for their own life? If so, why is that?
” Blaming the parent for estrangement while at the same time telling them that the child has a right to make their own decisions is contradictory. If the child is making a decision of their own free will then it isn’t someone else’s fault. ”
If you truly don’t understand that the choices we make are informed by outside pressures and our own personal context, then I have no idea what to say to you. Yes, the child made a choice of their own: the question is, why did they make that choice? Perhaps surprisingly, I think you’ll find that the choice was made because of things the parent did that caused the child to not want to have a relationship with them anymore. Hence, the parents were the reason the choice was made.
” If my child wants to blame me for his shortcomings and choices then clearly I should receive the credit for his successes in life. ”
Only insofar as your actions were responsible for instilling those successes. You seem to have this habit of divorcing all of the estranged child’s actions from their root causes, as though they all happen in a vacuum, leading to simplistic logic like this. For example, I blame my parents for my social anxiety because they isolated me as a child and taught me that other people were inherently untrustworthy and selfish. I do not, conversely, attribute my skill with the written word to them, because that was something I discovered on my own, without their intervention. This is not an either/or scenario, where parents are either responsible for the totality of their child’s character traits, or for none of them at all. There are other influences.
“You appear to view this situation solely on the legality of the situation and not on the issue of morality.”
I happen to find the overriding of an estranged child’s personal choices without regard to their mental health to be highly immoral indeed.
” That being the case then there can never be agreement and families will continue to be fractured as everyone exercises their legal rights without regard to the emotional impact they have on others. ”
… As opposed to estranged parents persisting in contacting their children, without regard to the emotional impact THEY have on others?
“If children view a holiday greeting or a birthday card from the people who invested years in raising them as stalking then they are paranoid and in need of serious mental help.”
That very much depends on the context surrounding the card, something you have routinely ignored with your one-size-fits-all ideas here. If the child finds contact with their parents stressful, then an attempt at contact, regardless of how nice it may seem on the surface, will be stressful. See, when my own parents send me cards like that, my anxiety levels immediately rise, because the context surrounding that contact is that a pleasant interaction in the moment has, historically, easily turned unpleasant or even violent if I say something they disapprove of, and I don’t have a very good grasp of what such a statement could be. When I told my folks I was getting married, for example, they berated me ruthlessly for not including them in that process for hours; I really have no indication that positive things or good news will remain a good interaction where they are involved. So, my anxiety levels go up, because here’s a new attempt at communication and I have no idea what will set them off next. If I respond in kind, will I get shit for that? If I don’t, will they escalate and show up in person to have an argument over that?
And now you know why a holiday card might be considered stalking: as it turns out, there’s a whole history with the person sending the card to be taken into consideration, not just the card itself.
I am, actually, not certain that E. came here to defend HP – there’s no indication in their comment. But there’s indeed double-think regarding EC vs. EP.
Well, E mentioned “the parent who posted” early on in his post, and sort of insinuated, at least to me, that he was defending HP’s side of things. Of course, E is welcome to correct me on this, I don’t intend to put words in their mouth, but that was what I got from that post.
You’re right, they did. I’m looking forward to hearing from E., then.
I’ve got to get back to work, so a quick takedown of this portion of your comment:
“The impasse here is that it appears to me that you look at the situation of estranged parents solely from the perspective of the estranged child, complete with negative and often unsubstantiated claims about the actions of the parent. Those claims are merely the perspective of the EC and may have no basis in fact. ”
From my FAQ (http://www.issendai.com/psychology/estrangement/FAQ-estranged-parents.html):
There’s a disconnect between the accounts of adult children of abusers and the accounts of members of estranged parents’ forums. Outsiders read both and think, “The survivors had it rough, but these estranged parents are nothing like the parents the survivors describe.” When adult children of abusers confront members of estranged parents’ forums, the parents themselves say, “Don’t lump me in with your parents! I was nothing like that.” Using the words of adult children of abusers to show that the members are abusive just opens up the argument for another round of “We’re not like that.”
What this site does is show, in the unfiltered words of the members, that by the members’ own accounts their behavior is abusive.
“IMHO, If children view a holiday greeting or a birthday card from the people who invested years in raising them as stalking then they are paranoid and in need of serious mental help.”
Parents who use authoritarian and punitive methods to raise their children hard wire into their kids heads a fear of the parents that usually lasts a lifetime. It’s incredibly difficult for most people to get past that fear. And for the most part those types of parents know what they are doing but for some reason don’t realize that when their children become adults they can make the decision to eliminate the source of that fear.
When a parent has programmed their child to fear them throughout their childhood, then the child as an adult cuts off contact, and tells the parent to leave them alone, but the parent refuses and send that card it most certainly feels like being stalked, as bad sometimes or even worse than being stalked by a stranger. The adult child has rights to remove whatever source of stress and pain they have in their lives …. ie…. a right to the pursuit of happiness.
As long as the parent causes the adult child stress and pain the child should refuse to tolerate it. If parents on those forums wanted a relationship with their children, in most cases they could have one. But they’d have to change their behavior. If someone doesn’t want you in their lives, it’s on you to change if you do want to be in their lives. Not try to convince the person they are wrong, that NEVER works, but rather change your behavior so that being in your presence leaves the child feeling happy and loved and accepted no matter what.
My own mother was emotionally abusive toward me. I never cut her off, but thankfully she died. Yes, thankfully. Having her out of my life has been the best thing for my well being. I do wish I’d understood much sooner just how horrible she was though and I wish I’d cut her off as soon as I had the opportunity.
Not to mention that the term “investment” implies an expectation of return on said investment. That’s a contract into which a child never enters at birth (which is just another way of saying children don’t ask to be born).
A parental contribution to a child that is made with an expectation of return is not a gift, it’s an expected purchase with terms that are rarely made clear.
Adults can give or not give, as is their right. But they aren’t bound to contracts to which they never gave consent.
I agree. I’ve seen some of those estranged parents forums and more than once I’ve seen parents say that estrangement is worse than if the child died or even they wished they’d never had children. This says so loud and so clear that they had children ONLY because they wanted to be paid back, some how, some way. That further says that they most certainly voiced this to their kids, probably loudly and aggressively. And they wonder, really, why the kids cut them off?
“Adults can give or not give, as is their right. But they aren’t bound to contracts to which they never gave consent.”
I would add that prior to 18 parents ARE, on the other hand, required by law to give to their child. It IS a legally binding contract they enter into when they make the choice to have a child….. unless they give up their child. I would say it’s also an obligation they accept to raise the child morally and ethically well,
Quite true, D. I was thinking more in terms of the adult child’s and the parent’s choice to give, or not to give, to one another. The relationship changes when the child gains autonomy. Really I see in a lot of these debates an underlying (not even always conscious) attempt to deny that a child can ever gain autonomy from a parent. Which gives me the willies.
Once the child is an independent adult, the parent has no further legal obligation to the child (in the case of a disabled child, parents’ legal obligations can continue forever, but that’s a different situation).
“Parents who use authoritarian and punitive methods to raise their children hard wire into their kids heads a fear of the parents that usually lasts a lifetime.”
Yes, this is what struck me most about HP’s comments.
I spent quite a lot of years engaging in double-think. When I was with my parents, everything was fine and I smiled and acted cheerful, When I was alone, I was free to realize how terrible and abnormal my mother’s behavior was. When I was in her presence, I could not allow myself to think such thoughts, because I was terrified.
I don’t think that my mother has ever realized that I’m afraid of her. I’m afraid of being held down or trapped in a moving car, while she screams at me that I’m a selfish bitch, that I’m crazy, that I hate her and wish she was dead. It’s hard to take any action that will spark conflict with her, because of that fear.
So I believe that HP’s son did behave normally, discuss future plans, and seem cheerful. I also believe that that behavior may not have been indicative of HP’s son’s internal state, at least not when he was alone.
Hurting Parent: ““Vague and ill defined trauma”, you minimize my wife’s pain to that? You can really go fuck yourself.”
I’m not minimizing anything. At no point have I even questioned the intensity of what your wife felt. What I am questioning is what, precisely, caused it. When describing what happened to cause it, you ARE being vague, and you ARE leaving it ill defined. When asked for more details, you move instantly to a defensive stance and attempt to construe words that were never said into a personal attack.
Are you truly so incapable of understanding that we are asking the questions we’ve asked to figure out what happened? Do you always take follow-up questions as insinuations of dishonesty?
There is a common misconception that if a child estranges then the parent must be at fault. I strongly disagree with that opinion and you are not going to convince me otherwise. I believe that estrangement begins to occur weeks or months before the break with the parent. The child may read blogs such as this one and after a period of building anger they feel emboldened to go off on the parent. Perhaps they may be under pressure to estrange from a parent, spouse or other third party individual. In many cases the abandoned parent is blindsided because they were not aware of a problem. If they had been then perhaps they would have taken steps to deal with the issues. In many cases the parent thought all was fine. Of course when they are verbally attacked by the child they react in hurt, disbelief and anger. Your world crumbles and you panic as you realize that you are living your own worst nightmare. You can’t possibly understand the enormity of the grief unless you have lived through it yourself. It is a pain that I would not wish on anyone. By the time a parent begins to figure out what is happening they have already reacted negatively and the child has slammed the door. No amount of apologizing will make any difference. Countless parents have traveled that path only to be rejected time and again. I have found that frequently estrangement occurs when the parents are divorced. Not always but frequently. The child becomes angry with one of the parents for their part in the break up of the family and the child estranges because they disagree with the parent who initiated the split. Now to use your reasoning, the parent is an adult and has a right to make their own decisions regardless of whether or not the AC agrees with that decision. “If someone doesn’t want you in their lives, it’s on you to change if you do want to be in their lives.” (D) So the parent has hurt the AC via divorce, so now the parent must change in order for the child to accept them? That is a serious breach of the parent’s boundaries. The parent is not obligated to stay in an unhappy marriage to appease the adult child. If the child is indeed an adult they should realize that not all marriages are going to last and respect their parents’ decision. What if the jilted ex goes to the child and talks poorly about the other parent and after a period of time the AC begins to believe the fabricated stories? You seem willing to shelter the estranged child from responsibility in the break up of the family but unwilling to accept that the parent might not be to at fault. Third party influence can be very powerful and very destructive. I am not divorced so that doesn’t apply to me so what is it that I’m supposed to change? The only person in my family who has a problem with me is my EC and his spouse. I’m supposed to change who I am because one couple in my family refuses to accept me as I am? That doesn’t sound like my problem. My other child is not a grudge holder and has never once given me a list of my sins and expected some form of retribution. They were raised in the same home with the same rules and consequences. My non estranged child has repeatedly told me that I am not the problem. In closing I will address this one last point “If you truly don’t understand that the choices we make are informed by outside pressures and our own personal context, then I have no idea what to say to you. Yes, the child made a choice of their own: the question is, why did they make that choice? Perhaps surprisingly, I think you’ll find that the choice was made because of things the parent did that caused the child to not want to have a relationship with them anymore. Hence, the parents were the reason the choice was made.” Our child essentially told us that the spouse had issues with us. He was 38 years old when he estranged and had lived independently of us for 20 years. We had not interfered in his life but were accused of interfering at the same time we were accused of not loving our gc because we didn’t initiate visits frequently enough. I’m not sure how we are supposed to take his grievances seriously. He often seemed confused himself as to what his issues with us were. Each time we addressed one more would crop up to the point that resolution seemed impossible. There may be abuse in his family but it’s not coming from his father and I. We never had problems in our relationship until he married and had children. She herself is an estranger. Over the years while I have been administrator of the support group we have had EC’s visit our page. Some start out nice then turn nasty when we disagree with them. Some start out nasty. There are parents who say that they’ve had enough and want nothing to do with their rude obnoxious child, others hope that their child will return and would do just about anything to restore the relationship. Many parents have changed. They are more understanding of their child and realize that they could have reacted differently. But the EC will never know that since they continue to reject every attempt made to heal the rift. Those of you who have found peace then I’m happy for you but sad for those that have been rejected along your journey. For those of you who have healthy happy relationships with your children or parents then I will leave you with a word of caution. Estrangement can happen to anyone at any time for any reason. Just because things are good today doesn’t mean that they will be good tomorrow. God Bless
” So the parent has hurt the AC via divorce, so now the parent must change in order for the child to accept them? That is a serious breach of the parent’s boundaries. The parent is not obligated to stay in an unhappy marriage to appease the adult child. If the child is indeed an adult they should realize that not all marriages are going to last and respect their parents’ decision.”
That’s a neat redefinition of “boundaries” — an adult child who refuses to have an unwanted relationship with a parent is violating *the parent’s* boundaries. The parent who tries to force contact on a child who has made it clear s/he doesn’t want it, on the other hand, is *not* violating any boundaries.
Likewise, respecting an adult’s decision = maintaining a relationship with him or her no matter what.
Rephrase the “I’m cutting you off ENTIRELY because of the BARE FACT that you got divorced, with NO reference to how it happened, why it happened, or what happened afterwards” example (which I think is implausible, but certainly it could happen):
“If you respected MY right to end a relationship with my ex-spouse, you would understand YOU have no right to end your relationship with me.”
Creative window dressing on the same old double standard.
“There is a common misconception that if a child estranges then the parent must be at fault. I strongly disagree with that opinion and you are not going to convince me otherwise.”
The proprietor of this blog would agree with you, and that sentiment is present in her writing before this, but I suspect I’m asking too much to have expected you to be familiar with this place before you begin surmising things about its occupants.
” The child may read blogs such as this one and after a period of building anger they feel emboldened to go off on the parent.”
Perhaps you need to ask yourself why a person reading this blog, which is simply an even-keeled examination of tropes the writer happened to find prevalent in the communities of already estranged parents, might become motivated to do that? The only reason I can see is that they began seeing their own parents in the writing, in which case, I don’t think some addressing of that issue is unwarranted.
” In many cases the abandoned parent is blindsided because they were not aware of a problem. If they had been then perhaps they would have taken steps to deal with the issues. In many cases the parent thought all was fine.”
And you don’t think that huge gulf of understanding, where the child sees problems fit to make them cut off contact, yet the parent sees things as totally fine, is indicative of a problem in and of itself?
” Now to use your reasoning, the parent is an adult and has a right to make their own decisions regardless of whether or not the AC agrees with that decision. “If someone doesn’t want you in their lives, it’s on you to change if you do want to be in their lives.” (D) So the parent has hurt the AC via divorce, so now the parent must change in order for the child to accept them? That is a serious breach of the parent’s boundaries. The parent is not obligated to stay in an unhappy marriage to appease the adult child.”
So, to be clear: parents are not obligated to stay in unhappy relationships to appease their children, but those same children ARE obligated to stay in unhappy relationships with their parents, should the parent disagree with the child’s reason for leaving?
The parent’s opinion of why a relationship is ending matters, but the child’s does not, if it doesn’t meet the pre-approval of the parent? Nice double standard you’ve got there.
” You seem willing to shelter the estranged child from responsibility in the break up of the family but unwilling to accept that the parent might not be to at fault.”
Not so at all, but then, that would require actually reading some of the content here instead of making assumptions, which is apparently a wildly intensive ask for the estranged parents that come here wanting to tell us where we all went wrong. You’d think actually knowing the positions you’re disagreeing with would be important, but hey.
” I’m supposed to change who I am because one couple in my family refuses to accept me as I am? That doesn’t sound like my problem. ”
It is your problem, if you wish to continue your relationship with your estranged child. Now, you aren’t obligated to change, but by the same token, your child isn’t obligated to continue a relationship with you. It’s just a question of what matters more to you: your pride and this notion you have that you’re utterly faultless, or your relationship with your child. But if you’re unwilling to go into this even entertaining the possibility of some give and take on your end, if you’re truly ready to label it all someone else’s problem, then I see no reason why your estranged child should re-evaluate at all. You’re certainly not.
Your child sees a problem between you and them. Whether you agree that there’s a problem does not invalidate that perception, and if you wish to continue your relationship with them, then you need to be able to at least entertain their perceptions as concerns that they have, instead of dismissing them outright. The way you’re expecting this to go right now, where it’s all give and you don’t have to even think about the notion of them taking, shows a complete disregard for your EC’s thoughts and emotions on this issue.
I get that you’re hurting, but ask yourself: if you were asked to enter into a discussion about continuing a relationship where the totality of the other party’s opinion is “all the problems you have with me are your problem, and I will not change anything because I disagree that these are problems,” would you do it? Would you consider that conversation to be respectful of your needs as a person in any way?
“Our child essentially told us that the spouse had issues with us. He was 38 years old when he estranged and had lived independently of us for 20 years. We had not interfered in his life but were accused of interfering at the same time we were accused of not loving our gc because we didn’t initiate visits frequently enough. I’m not sure how we are supposed to take his grievances seriously. He often seemed confused himself as to what his issues with us were. Each time we addressed one more would crop up to the point that resolution seemed impossible.”
As I told Hurting Parent, I’m not able to form a conclusion about your case based on vague descriptions, shorn of context or any level of detail. I’m not really sure why you’d expect me to (that’s me you’re quoting for this response), but the fact that you took “has more than one problem with me,” as a reason not to take your EC’s problems seriously is sort of a trouble spot right there.
“In many cases the abandoned parent is blindsided because they were not aware of a problem. If they had been then perhaps they would have taken steps to deal with the issues.”
Perhaps.
From around my early teens to my late twenties, there were no problems that I had with my parents that they needed to act upon. If there were any problems, they certainly would hear me out and take steps to deal with it, but there were no problems.
I did, however, have an unfortunate case of PMS. At somewhat irregular intervals in my clockwork-like 30-day cycle, my hormones would get all out of whack. I would get hysterical and say nonsensical things like “It’s hurtful when you criticize my clothing” or “I’d rather you not micromanage my schoolwork” or “I don’t like it when you give me dirty looks about my hair” or “Your catastrophizing about my career is very stressful to me and I would rather you not” or “Please don’t run down my friends” or “When you meet me in the airport, could you say that you’re glad to see me before you say that my face is broken out and looks terrible” or similar like things. My parents, of course, were compassionate about this. They would wait until I was done talking, express sympathy that I was having problems with my PMS, and then once I calmed down they would kindly forget the conversation ever took place and that I had ever said such irrational and hurtful things.
I was cured of PMS in my late twenties, when I finally had enough and declared that the above mentioned behavior was dismissive and insulting, that my issues were legitimate and deserved at least minimal respect, and that I did not want issues that I brought up attributed to PMS anymore. Of course, once they were aware of the problem my parents took steps to solve it, and they never attributed my emotional reactions to PMS again.
The next time such an issue came up, they attributed it to a hormonal condition other than PMS.
Now I mostly don’t talk about these things with my parents anymore — unless it’s something that I can set a firm and specific boundary about and unless I have the energy to deal with the ensuing argument, I tend to avoid raising issues with them, and I also try to avoid bringing up those aspects of my life that commonly trigger their disapproval. Which is rather a lot of aspects of my life. When I’m incautious though, the objectionable thoughts that I reveal are mostly attributed to the bad influence of my friends and/or vague handwaving about my emotionally unbalanced state — because they understand that I, poor dear, get upset when they name a specific biological cause for it.
Truly, estrangement is an inexplicable and mysterious thing that strikes out of the blue.
You should win some sort of award for this comment.
I had zero plans on returning to this conversation, but I noticed something wrong. I see a lot of you saying that on one page Issendai says not all estranged parents are abusers, the problem with that is that she is being a little dishonest with that, and slightly editing our e-mail exchange what takes my, “do you think all black people are criminals because the actions of one” out of context. I wrote that in response to this comment that I received from Issendai, and is nowhere in her version of the exchange she posted, “There are rather a lot of people out there doing rather a lot of horrible things to their children, and because they set the tone for estranged parents’ forums, the estranged parents who didn’t abuse their
children are tarred with the same brush.” So if there is going to be a demand for honesty, maybe Issendai should be honest about our exchange.
As for our son, I’ve seen this question asked a few times, and I will answer it. I know her because we, including my son were all part of Facebook chat groups which debated science, religion, and history. Being the internet there were a few things I did not know about her, one she has a very strong anti-police, and anti-government ideology, even posting on her Facebook page, on Veteran’s Day, “I hate this country, and if I could afford it, we would move to Canada”. She also would regularly post that teaching religion to children is tantamount to child abuse. Though I am an atheist, I believe in our constitution, and will defend a person’s right to believe what they want as long as they don’t try to force it on anyone else…not good enough. She is also anti-gun, and anti-death penalty….again, nope. Don’t get me wrong, I am a Bernie Sander’s supporter, I am pro-gay marriage, pro-socialized healthcare, pro-choice, and all for state funded higher education, but I am also pro-gun, pro-death penalty, pro-police, and believe in the genius of the constitution given to us, and I wear 20 lbs of SWAT gear to work every day. This turned me into the bad guy. And when I refer to her sinking her claws into our son, I mean, that day our son left the words, “This house is too oppressive, and you are not liberal enough for me” are what came out of his mouth. Should parents beliefs, and ideologies be forced to be changed under threat of estrangement? How does that make it any different than religious extremists that like to use threat of punishment for non-compliance? Not once did I tell my son he had to bend his beliefs to match mine, and I never would, I also not never stop loving my son, or kick him out of my house for his beliefs, they are his to have. The story of being an abused child came after he was already gone. Also if this women, as someone said, “helped him get away”, how come she never called the police? Never called DCFS? Never contacted his school? She knew all of that information, and never did anything, and do you know why? Because there was nothing to do. Even more, after he left, if life the abuse was that bad, why did he leave his sister behind in a household like that. When he got to where he was going he never called the police, DCFS, or her school the them his sister was living in an abusive home. Again, do you know why? There was nothing to tell them.
As for the phone calls BERATING my wife, she doesn’t remember what was said because it was a bunch of SCREAMING, which they did knowing that she was home alone, and she was still freshly broken from him leaving. But pick apart the part where she doesn’t remember the words, and ignore there actions if you think it helps your argument.
I have to correct something, Issendai did put those words in the exchange of e-mails between her and I, sorry, but that doesn’t take away the hypocrisy of saying, in big bold letters “Not all estranged parents are abusive”, then saying, “There are rather a lot of people out there doing rather a lot of horrible things to their children, and because they set the tone for estranged parents’ forums, the estranged parents who didn’t abuse their children are tarred with the same brush.”
So, you don’t think it’s a tad dishonest of you to quote that “tarred with the same brush” quote of Issendai’s out of context to make it look like she was saying you SHOULD all be tarred with the same brush, when not two sentences later she was asking you for input on how to AVOID that happening, so that, and I quote, “innocent parents can get a fair hearing?”
She specifically called it a problem, how on Earth did you construe that as her advocating for tarring with one brush?
Because I don’t care how you try to spin it, it’s wrong for everyone in a group to be “tarred with the same brush” because of the actions of the few. You would never say that about any group of people.
Okay, I need you to pay very close attention, because it’s really obvious you’re not getting this. Issendai, even within the email that you’re referencing here, AGREES THAT IT IS WRONG. She very specifically called it a PROBLEM, in that email. She asked you, literally two sentences after the one you’re quoting, if you had any ideas on how to AVOID DOING THAT. In fact, the whole context of that statement was literally the opposite of what you’re making it out to be here, I swear, go back and read the email carefully.
Do you understand, now? Nobody was asserting it’s a good thing to generalize like that. No spin, you’ve just read the email wrong. You’ve read a lot of the things on this particular page wrong, actually.
That’s basically what he said.
Let me add to that. Would you ask, “What do innocent black people do to get a fair hearing”? Not a damn chance.
If I thought that black people being falsely generalized and stereotyped- which I do- then asking how one could obviate that problem would be a perfectly reasonable thing to do, yes.
Fair hearings are good things, Hurting Parent.
Are you serious? You really need to read this again?
By the way, you haven’t commented on any of the stories on the site. There are rather a lot of people out there doing rather a lot of horrible things to their children, and because they set the tone for estranged parents’ forums, the estranged parents who didn’t abuse their children are tarred with the same brush. Do you have any thoughts on that? Any idea how to resolve the problem so innocent parents can get a fair hearing?
Please point out the part where she says it’s wrong? And asking them what to do so they aren’t included with the guilty is NOT her saying it’s wrong, because saying we are “all tarred with the same brush contradicts that.
“Please point out the part where she says it’s wrong? ”
… The part where she called it “the problem,” two sentences later? Now, I’m no word scientist, but people generally think of problems as BAD things, right?
“By the way, you haven’t commented on any of the stories on the site. There are rather a lot of people out there doing rather a lot of horrible things to their children, and because they set the tone for estranged parents’ forums, the estranged parents who didn’t abuse their children are tarred with the same brush. Do you have any thoughts on that? Any idea how to resolve the problem so innocent parents can get a fair hearing?”
I confess to being disingenuous when I asked this question. Forum members’ universal response to my web page has been, “But we’re not abusive! How can you say that?” And then they primly refuse to read anything I wrote explaining, at length, with direct quotes, FROM THEIR OWN FORUMS, why I’ve come to that conclusion. They gloss over all the nasty things their fellow members admit to doing, and all the support the rest of the forum gives them for doing them, and jump to the pearl-clutching portion of the argument. The same thing happened even when a member recognized herself in a description and objected. (And dug herself in deeper while ‘splaining how she wasn’t in a hole at all.) You can see the same thing happening in a debate I had recently with a prominent forum member whom I caught flat-footed in a lie; someone else asked me why I was picking on a grieving grandmother, while the member lied harder to get out of her lie. And you can see it happening here, where (E) defends Hurting while ignoring Hurting’s rampant abuse of logic and general assholishness. The rule is that forum members will wriggle like worms on a hook to avoid admitting that any of their fellow members did anything wrong.
So I was hoping that Hurting would at least look at the examples on the site and have a reaction–even one as simple as, “Those people are crazy and I’m not one of them.” But no, he panicked and diverted the conversation to his favorite bugbear, racism.
A note about that particular comparison: Estranged parents’ forums are small. They can claim thousands of members, but most of those members are inactive, and most of the inactive members never posted more than a few comments if they even posted at all. The number of active members is tiny, maybe a few dozen on average, up to less than a hundred for the biggest forum of all. (Actually, I’d be astonished if the number reached 50, but I’m trying to be generous.) Facebook groups don’t appear to be doing much better.
And, as I’ve written elsewhere, there’s a powerful selection bias involved in recruitment. Forum members aren’t representative of all parents who have no relationship with a child.
So comparing all members of estranged parents’ forums to all black people is a false equivalency. It’s more like comparing forum members to members of the Black Panthers. Small group, strong selection bias, a bad rap that’s not accurate for the entire group. If a group member wanted to change outsider’s minds, he’d have to address the other members’ behavior.
At this point members are going to complain that they’re in “the club no one wanted to join,” so how can I fault them? Well. There are plenty of support groups that don’t have the same toxic culture as estranged parents’ groups. If your child is estranged because they’re married to an abuser, find a support group for that. If your child is an addict, go to a group for parents of addicts. If your child has a personality disorder, try a group for parents of personality-disordered children. If your ex turned your child against you, go to a group for parental alienation. All these groups can address the same issues you deal with in estranged parents’ groups, and will have a much smaller percentage of people who stalk their grown kids in the name of love.
I think also something that doesn’t seem to have become completely explicit in this discussion is — there’s a difference, on a logical level, between drawing conclusions about a person’s potential past or future behavior from their present behavior and doing that based on something like race that isn’t a product of their decisions and apparent mindset.
People don’t directly choose to be cut off by their children, but they do choose to join estranged parent forums, to remain on those forums, and to adopt the identity promoted by those forums.
I guess the connecting element between these things is that they feel the same, subjectively, to the person affected — that racism is an outrage beyond outrage, just as contradiction is an outrage beyond outrage, and therefore racism and contradiction are the same thing.
One more thing, I dare you to walk up to a random black person on the street, and ask them, “As a black person, what are you doing to insure that you are not included with the criminals of the black community”. I really dare you to, just make sure you have a pair of running shoes on.
In return, I dare you to to research the difference between personal and general voices in sentence construction. Because I’ll give you a hint: Issendai’s words don’t carry nearly as many assumptions as yours do, because of that difference.
I know you’re on the defensive, and you’re reading everything as a personal attack on you, but try putting your ego aside and read the actual words, for a change?
Sir, are you saying black people are violent, all of them?
Because you _could_ get an answer to this question, if you phrase it politely.
People who face discrimination take measures to avoid or counter it.
Ask a trans* person what they do to avoid being assaulted.
Ask a woman what she does to break the glass ceiling.
Ask an immigrant how they act to avoid being stereotyped.
And they will have answers.
@L That’s a really good point.
I also find it especially interesting that HP’s comment “make sure you have a pair of running shoes on” strongly implies that said random black person would react with physical violence as a matter of course.
Sorry, that is not saying she is against it, “the problem” belongs to the estranged parents, and what are they going to do about it. Especially since her page that I responded to specifically convicts “members of estranged parents forum”.
This page doesn’t apply to all estranged parents, only to estranged parents who are members of estranged parents’ forums. Read why.
Themes of Estranged Parents’ Forums
“Unwanted Contact Is Not Stalking”
And I happen to be a member of those forums.
If you can read the question “Any idea how to resolve the problem so innocent parents can get a fair hearing?” and come away thinking that the person who wrote it doesn’t see an objectionable issue there, then you are clearly too far deep into your desperate need to never be wrong no matter the discussion to be reasoned with.
Sir, this might come out of the left field. Is your wife getting professional help for the effects of the estrangement? If screaming was enough to make you suspect she was suicidal (and why did you suspect it, by the way? Were there any precedents?), she needs at least a therapist, and, possibly, a visit to a psychiatrist. This could help her tremendously.
Yes, that’s an ongoing thing., thank you for your concern. I just wonder why there has not been a single comment on how our son was brainwashed, and what came before the estrangement. I think I answered most of the questions you asked for clarification on with that response.
” I just wonder why there has not been a single comment on how our son was brainwashed * * * . ”
My comment would be that late adolescence is a time for individuals to spend a lot of time trying out different ideas and viewpoints and differentiating themselves from their parents, whether this is done in a university setting or less formally by independent reading.
I scrolled back and noted your observation that “we, including my son were all part of Facebook chat groups which debated science, religion, and history.” You showed us earlier that you were open to some new ideas: “While I am not a religious person, I did hold a belief in a creator god. When my [son] told me he was an atheist, did I lose my mind, or say “not in my house”? Nope, I said, ok your an atheist “tell me why”. And he did, he explained his position very well, I read the books he read, and guess what, I could no longer hold a belief in a god, BECAUSE OF MY SON.”
It may be that your son’s ideas about atheism came from these Facebook groups (since you said religion was debated there). At least in the case of atheism, it would appear that you did not perceive him as “brainwashed,” because you say that you came around to his position.
I’m gathering that your son was open to new ideas from these Facebook groups in addition to atheism. You don’t agree with these additional new ideas. And because he is open to more of the new ideas, you conclude that he has been brainwashed (if I’m understanding what occurred). Were there other debates that ended unhappily?
As I’ve said, adolescence is a time when people strike out on their own in many different regards. The fact that your son, who is a legal adult, now disagrees with you and states that he does not share your values, is not an attack on you and your values, nor is it, necessarily, forever. Robert Frost once famously wrote: “I never dared be radical when young/For fear it would make me conservative when old,” and in fact many who were quite radical in the Sixties eventually joined corporate America.
“I wear 20 lbs of SWAT gear to work every day.”
“…how come she never called the police?”
Do you just make accusations, or insinuations? And, that’s all you took from that? Big conspiracy fan, are you?
I was making a statement about her potential perception, not necessarily a statement about your potential behavior. But it’s kind of interesting to see what you took from it.
Here’s the flaw in that. She knows all of my information, and if she had ANY evidence whatsoever it would have been a golden opportunity for someone that hates law enforcement, and the government to take one down. She didn’t, because there was nothing.
You too, sir. If you had any evidence against the woman, you would have turned it over to the police. Looks like you don’t.
You’re asking why a person who “hates law enforcement” didn’t contact law enforcement for help? Do you hear yourself?
“Also if this women, as someone said, “helped him get away”, how come she never called the police? Never called DCFS? Never contacted his school? She knew all of that information, and never did anything, and do you know why? Because there was nothing to do.”
So your position is that if you didn’t commit any actual crimes against your son, or do anything that would cause child protection to terminate your parental rights when your son was a minor, he has no right to decide, AS AN ADULT, that he would rather live with someone else and not talk to you. I see.
“Even more, after he left, if life the abuse was that bad, why did he leave his sister behind in a household like that.”
Because you didn’t break any laws and she’s too young to vote with her feet? Because the problems he has with you are problems HE has with you, and she’s a separate person who may not have the same problems?
He’s allowed to not like your household. He’s allowed to feel oppressed by it. He’s allowed to not want to live there. He’s allowed that even if his sister doesn’t feel the same way and even if you disagree.
I find the extended diatribe about your political beliefs curious. I mean you could have just said “we have some strong political disagreements” but you just about wrote a manifesto there.
“Should parents beliefs, and ideologies be forced to be changed under threat of estrangement? How does that make it any different than religious extremists that like to use threat of punishment for non-compliance?”
Because. People. Have. A. Right. To. Choose. Their. Own. Relationships.
I get that estrangement hurts, but that does not make it the same as torture.
I asked why, if she had evidence of my son living in an abusive home, didn’t she contact law enforcement, OR ANY OTHER ENTITY AVAILABLE to report this abuse. That’s the question. Stop with the conspiracies.
Now as for the rest of your statement. I have one question. Do you people have any morals whatsoever, or is it do as I please whether it hurts someone else or not? Let’s flip the script shall we? My son turns 18, and I don’t agree with his politics, as a parent would it be right to tell him to get out of my house. He’s 18 and I don’t have to hear that in my house anymore, you can leave. Legally I can do that, but as a parent, and someone that loves him is it the morally correct thing to do? Just because you can do something doesn’t mean you should, you’re actions effect other people, and can do serious damage. If you can’t figure that out, or the answer escapes you I’m not even sure you can call yourself a human being.
1) Your son did not render you homeless when he left your home, so already we are talking about a different situation. I notice you do this a lot — making analogies that don’t hold water, comparing your son’s refusal to give you attention and affection to the loss of a home, religious persecution, etc.
2) If you kicked an adult child out of your house for a terrible, cruel reason, and the adult child you had kicked out of your home “tried everything” to get back into your house after you had repeatedly told him to leave you alone, *it would still be harassment.*
Sorry, I’m over 18, so is he, and if it makes me feel good, and it’s what I want it doesn’t matter if it hurts someone else, right? Because that’s what your statement says.
It’s actually not at all, but I don’t expect you to understand that at this point.
Let’s return to the beginning of this discussion: no one was telling you you weren’t entitled to feel pain over your estrangement. People were telling you you are not entitled to keep trying to force contact on an adult who has told you he doesn’t want contact with you. That is the commentary with which you disagreed. That is what inspired the first flurry of painfully inept analogies. Whether your son’s behaviour was hurtful, whether he’s making bad decisions, whether his anxieties are irrational, whether he’s an all around terrible person — all of that might be worth discussing when trying to get to the bottom of the estrangement but doesn’t change the fact that stalking. is. not. okay.
“Do you people have any morals whatsoever * * * If you can’t figure that out, or the answer escapes you I’m not even sure you can call yourself a human being.”
Do you find that people are more amenable to persuasion when you address them like this? Or less so?
I honestly don’t give a shit.
And your not giving a shit how other people feel about your behaviour is a massive, honking clue as to why you’re estranged.
Sir, make a choice. Either you came to have a discussion, or you came to bitch at us and talk shit. If it’s the later, why should we care about your words?
Your son is not responsible for your emotions. Your emotional reactions to his choices are not the sole determiner of whether his actions are justified, and you do not get to override his decisions simply because you don’t agree with them.
Now, yes: people’s actions affect other people. YOUR actions have evidently affected your son to such a degree that he no longer desires contact with you, but you don’t seem particularly interested in examining this. Instead, you want to argue this point that, because you had a negative reaction to your son’s choice, you are somehow in the right. I’m sorry, but that does not logically follow. In aid of this, you’ve done everything in your power to present information (highly selectively and shorn of context, I might add) that paints your son and the people you feel to have influenced him in a bad light. When this failed to suddenly change our position regarding you, you moved on to attempting to paint US in a bad light.
At every step in this discussion, your focus has been on disqualifying everyone who disagrees with you from having a “valid” opinion on this in your eyes, not on honestly examining the situation at hand, or even honestly reflecting what we are telling you here. Your sole tactic has been to go negative, to make everyone else wrong so that you have to be right by default. When questioned, no matter how politely, you respond with escalating bouts of aggression, or simply ignoring what has been said. You have devolved into insults, condescension, and poisoning of the well repeatedly, at the lightest of impetus.
I asked you if this is normal behavior for you in my very first response to you, and you never answered, but given how consistent you’ve been, I don’t think I’m far off in presuming this is how you respond to being contradicted. Despite your protestations, you are fitting quite neatly into a number of patterns described on this blog that are red flags. That’s the problem here, and you’re not going to convince us that your son’s in the wrong here by essentially reading from the problematic playbook.
“I don’t like it,” is not a reason, sir.
So you’ve read nothing.
“YOUR actions have affected your son to such a way so that he wants no contact with you”? Well nothing like making huge assumptions with nothing to base that on.
“If you read what I wrote or listened to what I said you will agree with it, unless you’re a terrible person with absolutely no sense of morality.” That’s healthy.
I’ve read each and every one of your comments, and the email thread that began this, Hurting Parent. If you disagree with my assessment of your actions, then I invite you to explain where the problem is, but I will also remind you that flatly dismissing me without this is not an effective way of doing anything but blocking your ears to opinions you dislike.
So I’ll ask again: is this normal conduct for you, when contradicted?
No, I absolutely read it, and I not only disagree with nearly everything said, but I find it disgusting, and disturbing that everyone of the arguments coming at me are A) you’ve done something to make your son leave, which means you’ve ingnored my story, or B) he’s 18 (again ignoring what happened before he was 18) and he can do whatever he wants no matter how it may or may not hurt someone as long as it makes him feel good. A repulsive way of thinking.
Sir, _you have_ done something to make your son leave – you cut his contact with the woman. I am not saying that was the wrong thing to do, you’re the parent; but _that_ was the cause.
And it is clear that he wasn’t going to estrange, initially. He kept contact with you, until you called the police on them. Then he kept contact with his sister, but broke it off when you decided he was using her for information. He was still in contact with the relatives – and had to stop talking with them, too, when you put them up against him.
Your actions, sir, kept pushing him away.
You couldn’t be more wrong. We wanted our daughter to remain in contact with him, he’s her brother. She is the one that chose to not talk to him anymore, she is furious over what he’s done, and she does have a right to feel that way, and decide whether she wants to talk to him, right? Or am I supposed to force her to talk to him. And you are also wrong about the family, we didn’t put anyone up to anything. I would rather he was still talking to family, but anyone that called him out on his actions was immediately cut off with no input from us. Try again.
Just to clarify – so am I not wrong about the police?
And I cannot judge as to whether you influenced his sister and his family or not. First, since the sister lives in your house, she’s influenced by you and your wife. Not saying it’s a bad thing, but there’s influence.
Second, the family had to learn from _someone_ about the estrangement. From whom?
By the way. How old is his sister?
So let me get this straight, you post exactly how we “influenced” others not to speak to him, then I tell you exactly how you are wrong, and then you say “I can’t judge whether you influenced his sister and family or not” WTF, either you know what I did or you don’t.
You’re right, I could have worded that better, and I apologize.
Let me rephrase that: while I cannot say this with 100% certainty, I strongly believe that you influenced both his sister and his family.
“No, I absolutely read it, and I not only disagree with nearly everything said,”
What, specifically, is your disagreement? ‘I’ve read it and I disagree,’ contains no more information than ‘I disagree.’
“A) you’ve done something to make your son leave, which means you’ve ingnored my story,”
If you recall, I and almost everyone else in this thread attempted not to ignore your story. We even asked for more information, something that you attacked us for doing. This really is a distorted account of events, here.
” B) he’s 18 (again ignoring what happened before he was 18) and he can do whatever he wants no matter how it may or may not hurt someone as long as it makes him feel good.”
So, first of all: do you think that your son doing something you disagree with before he’s eighteen invalidates decisions he’s made after he’s eighteen?
And secondly, you really do need to stop with this dishonest “he’s 18 and he can do whatever he wants,” stuff. Cartoonish oversimplification seems to be one of the few ways you’re able to understand nuanced points being put to you, but that doesn’t mean we need to sit here and allow you to misrepresent what’s being said over and over as part of some rhetorical grandstanding on your part. Just cut it out and address what was actually said, instead of twisting it so transparently.
You’ve done something to make your son leave
Any relationship should work for both the people in it. If it does not, either party should be free to terminate it. This is how it works in romantic relationships, business partnerships, marriages, friendships. Please explain how a parent-child relationship is exempted from this.
Because a parent-child relationship is completely different than any of those you just said, and it’s sad that you would reduce a relationship that has lasted the entire lifetime of the child up until this point to the level of those relationships.
How is it different? Even if it’s different when the child is small – well, they grow up! How is, then, a relationship between a grown child (which your son is, he’s 18) and parents different?
If interacting with a grown child was unbearable for you, would you cut them off? Would you advise others to?
I don’t agree that it is different. Please help me understand why you think it is.
And do you think that your personal opinion as to the value of a parent/child relationship should be forcibly imposed on others against their will?
Ah. Your *status as a parent* is the reason your son has no right to distance himself from you. You’re really checking off a lot of the dysfunctional beliefs listed on this site:
“Parents have permanent authority over their children. Children are permanently subordinate.
“It’s not only my lifelong right to discipline my children, it’s my duty.
“Children have no right to break off relationships with their parents.
“Your debt to me as your parent is permanent, lifelong, and unrepayable.
“When you make life decisions, you must weigh the impact of those decisions on me.
“The most important yardstick of your life is how well you meet my expectations.”
Your “parents are just different” stance suggests that all the stuff about how you listened to your son, he was never anxious, he was never abused, you’re a Bernie Sanders supporter (how nice for you), he never had anything to complain about…is a pile of red herrings.
If you love your son why would you want him to be in a relationship that makes him unhappy just because the relationship is with you?
Reduce it to the level of a marriage? Is it somehow more sacred than that?
What does the parent get out of a relationship with a child who does not want to spend time with them? Genuinely curious.
What is this sacred thing?
Sir, do you think marriage is sacred? Not going to judge you for any answer.
No, I’m an atheist, and I do nothing in honor of any deity.
I do not mean sacred in a religious sense. More in a sense of deepness and importance.
Is the parent-child relationship more important than a marriage?
Okay, thanks. Although “sacred” doesn’t necessary mean “related to religion”. For example, in Saint-Petersburg, food is sacred, since they still remember the WWII siege. Or – in United States, military, and serving your country, is sacred to many people.
Now then, if marriage is nothing special, why and how is a parent-child relationship different?
(@LML: are you a mind-reader?)
Yes I absolutely believe that that the relationship, and bond between a parent and child far outweighs that of marriage. That’s why if you are a single parent your children come before your potential new spouse.
OK, thank you for that. I feel differently, and I suspect many others do too. Your son may be among them.
Okay. And when the child is no longer a minor?
My guess is that like estrangement, being noticeably unhappy about spending time with a parent constitutes repulsive, hurtful behavior, which when someone is eighteen, they feel entitled to do regardless of the damage it causes. You’re supposed to smile and be friendly; to do otherwise would be to hurt your parents, which is not acceptable.
In fact, one step further: If you don’t want to spend time with your parents, you’re ignoring all of the wonderful things they’ve done for you, all the sacrifices and time they’ve spent bringing you up. You’re being a petulant child, focusing on a few small disagreements or incidents, rather than the value of the relationship as a whole.
It’s not just the existence of the relationship – which, of course, cannot be destroyed unilaterally by an adult child after all the years and investment a parent has put into it. It’s the nature of the relationship, and a child remains essentially estranged and hurtful until they resume the kind of relationship that the parents seek.
@Issendai – Do parents who are “low contact”/”structured contact” with their children tend to identify as estranged, and frequent estranged parents’ forums?
(By that I mean, interaction with the parents is not completely cut off, but is limited, often to particular places, means, or frequency. E.g., ‘you can’t come over whenever you want, but we’ll have dinner at a restaurant once a month’.)
A, I can answer some of that for you, since Issendai isn’t here now, and it’ll be a slog through comments for her.
Children tend not to frequent estranged parents’ forums, because of agressive atmosphere. They tend not to ID as estranged, either – they ID as having gone LC/NC, using appropriate terminology.
*Misread the comment, sorry.
There are low contact parents on the forums that consider themselves estranged despite having some contact. There are also many that do have regular contact with their kids, but find the interactions inadequate in some way and sometimes label even those relationships as “estranged.” The assertion that “the estrangement started well before the EC left” is a common one.
So it’s like that, huh. Glad that only once did I check these forums out.
They’re pretty awful. However, I did find them helpful in desensitizing myself to certain triggers, and in illuminating how illogical some of the statements made by my mother really were. I had internalized a lot of the more twisted stuff and reading it from people without the emotional connection really helped me to examine it. I know it’s not for a lot of people, but I really benefit from poking at an emotionally painful spot until it stops hurting.
I’m sorry. Glad that it’s a way to make progress for you.
Illogic makes my brain hurt, so I didn’t make it far down before noping out.
I understand that completely. I’m normally a pretty logical person but I’d taken on the illogical stuff because of the upbringing. Picking apart the statements that were made helped me to re-calibrate without having to confront them in person. I know (or it seems anyway) that most ECs have a hard time with the forums, which seems reasonable. If I heard the same things from my actual mother, they’d probably still be triggering. But they’re not for me when they come from a stranger. At least not now.
Yes, some parents identify as estranged when they still have some contact with their AC. People tend to go through several cycles of contact/no contact before they end the relationship for good, so some parents joined when they were NC and stayed after they resumed limited contact. Others arrive concerned that their AC are heading toward estrangement, but they’re not fully estranged yet. In both groups, some people make a distinction between full and partial estrangement, and some people don’t.
Not that I have any personal experience with this (smirk), but what if having a conversation with your parent makes you shake & hyperventilate, due to a lifetime of having events turn into “scenes” with yelling & blaming? Do I ever have the right to stop subjecting myself to that?
He’ll deny that his son feels this, because when did events _ever_ turn into yelling and blaming?
Yep, I will deny it because whenever we did have differing views on something political he did it with confidence in his position. There certainly was no shaking, or hyperventilating.
I believe you. Three things, though.
First, what about differing views on something other than politics? So far, you’ve only used religion and politics as examples of things you disagreed on.
Second, so how was your son’s relationship with his mother? What’s her conflict resolution style?
And third – I should have written that out explicitly, I guess…
LML’s comment is not about you, sir. It’s about their situation. It’s a “what if”. I should have said it like that: “HP will deny it, because if their son never felt that way, no child has.”
So, no visible cues of anxiety to you- who may not even have been looking, or know what to look for- therefore no actual anxiety? Because people who feel those stresses never learn to hide them in order to function, especially not from the persons who are the lead causes of them?
It doesn’t work that way. I’ve had to deal with people like you, who devolve into name calling and these exact same kinds of rhetorical maneuvering whenever they’re questioned, and I can tell you two things: one, doing so caused me a great deal of anxiety, and two, the person who caused it never even noticed this.
Now, obviously I can’t speak for your son, but what I can suggest to you is that just because you personally didn’t see any signs of stress or anxiety in his interactions with you, does not mean there wasn’t any. Essentially I’m asking you to question what really is the lynchpin of your position on this issue, that being that because you see no reason for your son to estrange, he couldn’t possibly see an adequate one either.
You know nothing about me, my education, or my personal life other than what I’ve told you, and yet your going to tell me I may not have noticed the anxiety. I can tell you, and I have no intention to justify to you why, but I would have noticed.
I really would like to hear your opinion on whether I need to keep subjecting myself to this.
Hurting Parent: how do you expect to make any headway in any conflict, ever, if you refuse to so much as question the primacy of your own views on an issue?
Essentially, if you won’t even consider the possibility that you might have missed something in your son that is relevant to this, how will you ever resolve the issues between you?
I do, I still just disagree with every vile thing that comes out of your mouth. There is nothing to consider because there is nothing else, I’ve already told you everything, you are just assuming there is something else just to make you right, and it ain’t gonna happen because there is nothing.
Does your son still want nothing to do with you?
For better or worse, that guy didn’t return to debate.
Ah, good memories… Had this really happened in May? Time sure flies.
@Laura: With no offence meant, I find it very interesting, for lack of better word, how your debating style has changed for day 2. To be specific, much more direct and agressive.
No offence taken, and I did wonder whether it would be noticed, and how that would be taken. My expectations for the discussion took rather a large nosedive the more I saw Hurting Parent’s responses, and while I’ll try to give people the benefit of the doubt and start out gentle, the ever increasing levels of directed insults and dishonest debate tactics from HP are… frustrating and disappointing, in equal measure. I’m being more direct and forceful because I’m seeing more dirty tricks and flat out poor reading comprehension, and I’m tailoring my approach to negotiate around these.
I do hope that I’m still contributing something worthwhile, regardless.
You certainly are. HP’s poor debating style cannot be avoided or talked around – chess with pigeon – but I’m cheering for your commentary.
Oh, you flatter me. Thank you. 🙂
After spending Monday being passed from one doctor to another in a game of medical hot potato, and ending up in the office of a world-class uveitis specialist who injected steroids into the muscles under my eye and dilated my eye with a mixture of adrenaline, atropine, and cocaine… my eye is doing much better.
Also, they lied to us all about cocaine. It’s no fun at all. Say no to drugs, kids! Especially if they want to put them in your eye.
(But if your iris is stuck to your lens and the doctor recommends the pharmacological equivalent of a tac nuke to unstick it, say yes anyway. It feels sort of like having your eyeball gently sandpapered while being washed with seltzer water, but afterward you’ll have a functional eye, which is a 100% improvement upon the alternative.)
Which is my way of saying: I’m doing better, replies to come tomorrow. Apologies to those of you whose comments are caught in limbo. I tried approving them from my tablet, but WordPress was having none of it. Your comments will appear tomorrow when I get on my laptop once more.
The conversation has been amazing and illuminating. Thank you all for carrying on in my absence, and for being understanding when I deserted at the worst possible time.
That was a lovely vivid description. My eyeballs want to hide.
Issendai, I hope we’re getting a dissection of this?
Then my work here is done.
Yes, there will be a dissection. But damn, is it going to be a big job. And you guys are doing great at dissecting it all on your own.
I think I spammed the comments not realizing they were in moderation. You can feel free to not approve mine. I thought it was my spotty internet connection.
I’m glad you are feeling, and sorry about the cocaine and sandpaper.
I hear Tahiti is a magical place though.
There was only one in the queue, so you’re certified spam-free.
Thank you! For all my whining, I’m grateful to have the chance to get the cocaine-and-sandpaper treatment. It’s not the kind of thing a regular optometrist could do, and letting the iris stay stuck would have been Very Not Good. Plus, it makes for a great story.
Tahiti sucks.
(The tourism board of Tahiti must looooove Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.)
It turns out that a bunch of your comments were shunted to spam even if they didn’t contain a link. I just went through and approved the non-duplicates–hopefully that doesn’t create duplicates of comments that were already approved. If you want a duplicate pulled, comment on it and I’ll delete it.
I’m glad I went back, and read more of these comments coming back at me because one of them jumped out, and it goes right back to my original e-mail to Issendai.
Me “Yes I absolutely believe that that the relationship, and bond between a parent and child far outweighs that of marriage. That’s why if you are a single parent your children come before your potential new spouse.”
LML “OK, thank you for that. I feel differently, and I suspect many others do too. Your son may be among them.”
If you don’t feel a deeper connection to a child that you brought into this world, loved more than you can ever love yourself, raised, cared for when they were sick, and everything else that goes along with being a parent, than with a stranger that comes into your life, you do build feelings for but could end at any given time, I truly pity you, and hope you never have children. This is exactly why I disagree with nearly every single word posted on this page. Issendai, feel free to “dissect” all you like, your opinion means absolutely nothing to me, and because just the same way you, and your ego stroking followers find it perfectly acceptable to render a relationship with your child irrelevant, I can render all of you irrelevant. Bye Felicia!!!
For your third flounce, do choose a new catchphrase.
Because you’ll be back: Just because you think your feelings give you a right to force people to give you affection, does not make it true.
I still have two questions pending to you.
1) What does a parent get out of a relationship with a child who does not want to spend time with them?
2) Am I required to continue to subject myself to interactions that make me shake and hyperventilate?
“If you don’t feel a deeper connection to a child * * * ”
But…but…the nature of a child’s connection to a parent is fundamentally different from the parent’s connection to the child. You could describe it as “asymmetrical.” The relationship begins with absolute dependency from the child. The child is not an equal. As the child matures, he or she becomes ever less dependent, and the end result is a relationship where the parties might be approximate equals.
I believe that part of the nature of the bond that runs from parent to child is that it is made, for the good of the child, to be relinquished in time. The adult after all volunteers to step into the role of parent; he or she doesn’t enter into a “contract for parenthood” expecting compensation in the form of ongoing service by the child as an adult for parenting tasks performed in childhood.
I view the last stage of parenting to be allowing the adult child to be free.
Note also the extension of “feelings cause actions”: if you felt like me (in this case, if you deeply loved your child) you would act like me (stalking). If you don’t stalk or endorse stalking, you don’t love your children. Indeed, you’re not even capable of loving your children.
“Issendai, feel free to “dissect” all you like, your opinion means absolutely nothing to me, and because just the same way you, and your ego stroking followers find it perfectly acceptable to render a relationship with your child irrelevant, I can render all of you irrelevant.”
This right here is an amazing statement. It’s like he believes that he’s won something by removing his presence from us, or possibly by way of removing us from the universe by way of his lack of attention (for however long it persists).
Again, there’s that complete failure of theory-of-mind. Normally, it’d be fairly obvious that insulting a bunch of people for two days does not build a relationship that anyone would be sorry to lose, much less a relationship that defines one’s relevance as a being — but in this case, the fact that one is being removed from the only perspective that exists is THE ULTIMATE BLOW.
“Profound solipsism” yet again.
I’ve posted Hurting’s two last emails in the original post, and started analysis at the end. Feel free to comment, give me things to add, etc.
There’s two problems with this.
The first is the assumption that if an adult child has gone NC with their parent, the parent must have done something to cause it. If the parent then denies having done something wrong, that’s just further proof the parent is a liar, a dissembler, or has mentally blocked it – further proof there must be a cause out there really. Catch 22.
The second is the assumption that if you maintain this disinterested, off-hand, ‘moderate’ tone, then you must be in the right. The more you, in this ‘neutral’ tone, call a parent a liar or a dissembler, and the more you then provoke the parent into anger at the accusations you throw at them, the further proof you are in the right and the angry person is in the wrong.
….that’s not what issendai did, at all, and that’s in fact an astoundingly disingenuous summary of the points they were making.
…Lack of empathy, in the sense of being profoundly unable to put himself in someone else’s place – and being unable to imagine that others can do it. E.g. a non-parent cannot feel what a parent feels. However, expects others to feel what _he_ feels.
Putting words into others’ mouths. Refusal to give details. Also, does “repetitive flouncing” count as a pattern?
Comparisons, comparisons, comparisons. Wildly exaggerated and nonsensical. Godwin’s law, btw.
“Profound failures of reading comprehension, Highly selective reading, Analysis by keyword” – all that applies not just to comments, but to this website. Exaggerrated: outright _refuses_ to read what Issendai writes. Attemps to draw conclusions from titles, fails.
Strawmanning, of course.
Themes:
Missing missing reasons
EP and boundaries
“Our children want to hurt us”
“Unwanted contact isn’t stalking”
“Truly abusive parents don’t care” – sorta. More like “I’m not an abuser, so why would he leave?”
“Our children don’t really believe they were abused”
“We used to be so close.”
“You can’t know what it’s like until you’ve walked in our shoes.”
“I hope it happens to you.”
And also, “Our child was turned against us”. The hatred for “the woman” is centerfold. Denies the child free will, says they’ve been brainwashed.
Cannot accept that his perception may be wrong. See also Festinger’s “disconfirmed expectancy.”
So, I think I do have a bit more appreciation for Coleman after seeing this exchange — to a degree I’d kind of passed over as obvious the notion that “your child may have a different perspective than you” and found it grating that he leans toward framing the child’s perspective as less well-considered and mature than the parents. But having seen the amazing gulf in theory-of-mind that’s present here and the practical effects that it has on interaction, I now see that just getting to the point of “other people have different things in their head than you do, and their actions are influenced by what they know and think rather than what you know and think” is a nontrivial and also essential task.
You can’t even have a conversation with a person like this — when the notion even of “based on the information that has been presented to me, what might I be convinced of or not convinced of” is met with incomprehension, hostility, aggression, and dehumanization, it’s very difficult even to think of anything that is worth the electrons to say. And that’s not even getting to the notion of what the other players in this story may have thought — the notion that they may have thought at all seems to be beyond HP.
In two words, I think I might say “profoundly solipsistic”.
You make excellent points about Coleman. He has to go gently-softly because his patients can’t take anything else. Even his softest approach is too much for many forum members–they periodically start yet another thread full of wild misreadings of his work so they can tear him a new one for blaming them, clearing their children of all responsibility, and telling them to grovel for crumbs from their kids’ table.
A complicating factor in theory of mind: A child’s development of theory of mind is tied to his experience of attachment. If a child has attachment issues–which are guaranteed to develop if the child is abused–then the child can develop a fully mature theory of mind, which will work perfectly as long as the person’s attachment issues aren’t tweaked. Activate the person’s attachment issues, and their theory of mind temporarily regresses. What’s a fantastic activator? Raising their own children. That’s how you get people who are sensitive and capable of delicate nuance in their dealings with other people, and at the level of “fire bad, tree pretty” with their own kids.
Yeah, the forum members seem mostly to be at the level where his approach is not reaching them — even his current approach, which strikes me as downplaying the prospect of legitimate fault from the parents even more than he used to.
It’s kind of hard to parse out — thinking of his video at the AGA, here — how much of that might be “they’re paying my speaking fees” and how much is “if you want to have any hope of reaching this population, this is what you have to do”. Could well be 100% the latter even — that for instance that extended reflection of “kids these days so selfish” was needed to establish himself as a safe ally with some people and was even not sufficient with some others.
Hurting parent,
You are estranged from your son, your actions have failed to change this. Therefore there is nothing to suggest your actions are the best way to end the estrangement.
Your son may or may not be making a big mistake. But you have to accept that human beings have the right to make mistakes. No one, not a spouse or parent has the right to take this away from someone. By your own words you sound very heavy handed and controlling. Demanding a meeting at his school because he wanted to move out after his eighteenth, calling the police when he was trying to leave. These actions were controlling and pushed him further away. Your family should not have been broken about his moving out but you sound as if you acted like it was the end of the world thus further pushing him away. Refusing to give him the information to get loans for college was just downright spiteful and again ensured the estrangement stayed in place. Your words to any criticism or even questions on here show you to be unpleasant and having to be in control again, you are right and you will be nasty to anyone sho dare challenges you. If you behave like this with your son it’s not hard to see why he is estranged.
BOOM.
Mic drop.
Grow up.
Why are you posting insults and blatant, demonstrable lies about what issendai has said? You’ve accused them of supporting an argument they are on the record as opposing. What is your goal here?
OK seriously, last time. “M” 1) we did not demand a meeting at the school, the school called us. 2) If you think for one minute that when two strangers from another state drive hours to pick up our son in the middle of the night that he only knows from the internet, and I am going to hand over my all of my tax information, you are completely out of your mind. Besides, doesn’t that contradict all the “logic” flowing up and down this page? If we wanted to leave, and be on his own, why would he want help from me? As for being nasty, well I’m only nasty to nasty people, and the people on this page…..BOOM MIC DROP!!!!
Laura, “parenting is some profound and amazing bond that his son was totally happy to be a part of and was completely satisfied… but he also estranged for weak reasons, at the lightest of impetus, based on political differences (despite what he just said about being amenable to political debate in his house).”
Boom, You Got It!!!! It’s about time someone gets it, just add in someone fed those differences into his head, which is why he wasn’t running away from something (there was nothing to run away from), he was running to something.
Your flounce cycle is amazingly short.
Sir, please. We’re not the ones calling our opponents names when they dare to disagree with us, or, god forbid, ask for clarifications.
Well. I just called him a massive, hemorrhoidal asshole. But the rest of you have been admirably restrained.
Was that your “short fuse”, or were you imagining you were a Dragonball Z character?
What in heck are you talking about?
He’s read the articles. The ones under “silliness.”
Why did the school call you?
And a meta-question: Why did you omit that detail?
A second meta-question: Do you believe that your comment is likely to convince anyone that you’re not a massive, hemorrhoidal asshole?
Your response is likely to be, “I don’t care what you think of me, you’ve already made up your mind, rar grar you’re too vile to be human,” so why don’t we skip it and go right to: Then why waste your time having a big ol’ tantrum that will only earn you a heavier dose of contempt? Surely you know that the less people dislike you, the more impact your insults have. Why undermine yourself?
Why not act in good faith? You’ve sat here, accused him of estranging his son, then act all so terribly offended when he gets angry at you and insults you? Just because you have this detached moderate tone doesn’t mean you’re automatically right.
…he *did* estrange his son. His is estranged with him. He admits his son told him it was his fault.
And do you seriously not understand why it’s relevant to point out repeated instances of hate and bile, calling people “cunts” and “cocksuckers”, from the guy who claims his son couldn’t have possibly learned hate from him?
Again, I’ve got to ask: why did you come here to lie?
“Boom, You Got It!!!! It’s about time someone gets it, just add in someone fed those differences into his head, which is why he wasn’t running away from something (there was nothing to run away from), he was running to something.”
Well, I’ll give you this: it’s not every day I explain a clear logical contradiction in a statement, only to have that person come back and totally agree that the contradiction I described was exactly what was happening. That’s… quite a display of self confidence, you have there. Or more poor reading comprehension.
Again, people do not break off the sort of powerful, lasting bonds you describe, over what you acknowledged was weak impetus. Not in the majority of cases, and in those cases where it does, there’s almost assuredly some additional factor going unaccounted for. Now, it could be you, it could be your wife, it could be your son, and it could be the woman. I am, frankly, skeptical of the idea that it was all the woman, since Facebook chats aren’t really where huge, life changing epiphanies happen. It could be your son, but if that’s the case, wouldn’t you also have to acknowledge that there was something going on with him that you missed, and hence, that there might be *other* things that you missed?
Essentially, if you’re willing to accept the notion that something about your son caused him to estrange from you irrationally, while simultaneously telling us that your most recent conduct around him prior to that happening was very positive and problem-free, then clearly you have, for whatever reason, missed that thing about your son. Since now we’ve established that it is possible for you to miss things about this relationship that can cause big, negative changes within it, would you perhaps be more amenable to examining what parts you and his mother played in this, instead of insisting on your own faultlessness?
Because, you see, I don’t believe that what you reported is the full story, or rather, I don’t believe the stated reasons you say your son gave (“this family isn’t liberal enough,” if I’m recalling correctly) are the entirety of why he cut off contact with you. It is extremely possible, given the way you react to bad news (and specifically, given the way you reacted to his past conversations with this woman he’s living with) that he’s leaving some things unstated that also informed his decision to not just move out, but to cut off contact with you. Now, you’re not obligated to *agree* with what those are, and that’s not what I’m asking you to do, but if you want to continue your relationship with your son then you need to at least be willing to consider what those might be and acknowledge that, whether you agree with them or not, they fit into his model of reality as problems between you and him.
I guess what I’m saying is, it’s possible that your son feels unsafe in communicating other reasons for his estrangement, or perhaps feels that doing so wouldn’t accomplish anything, particularly if your conduct on this forum maps to how you argue in real life when you’re upset. If he feels that you’ll react to him the way you react to us, of course he’s not going to tell you everything: it’s clear, based on how you’ve described it all thus far, that you don’t take his choices or motivations seriously at all. What is there for him to tell you, if you’re just going to, say, liken his motives to believing in aliens from Alpha Centauri? Or compare him to racists and ISIS?
It’s a hypothesis, but I’m also questioning the son’s relationship with the mother. (I’ve asked HP about it, but, predictably, got no answer.)
She appears to, at the very least, tend to overreact. Note how – in HP’s own words – she started crying when the son missed school. And she was reduced to a “broken person” by a screaming phone call (which, as HP says, was just screaming. Nothing concrete).
Most likely, all the players played a role to some degree, and there isn’t come concrete person to take 100% of the blame, but this seems like a level of nuance that HP is unable to grasp, hurting as he is. If he can be prompted to at least take his laser focus off of his son and the woman and consider other possibilities, outside of the binary “innocent/guilty” dynamic he’s insisted upon thus far, then progress can be made.
I think with the mother, we do need to be careful of exaggeration on HP’s part, but that there’s definitely something there to consider. If she really does react with such overt, outward emotion, I can imagine expressing certain things to her would be hard too, and the two of them together? Not particularly conducive to frank, open discussion of issues, I’d say.
HP describes his wife as home alone during the phone call, and by implication vulnerable in a way their son and his friends were supposed to respect. It’s not a normal attitude toward an adult who’s old enough to have a grown son. I suspect they have a “waif and watchdog” arrangement.
It’s almost impossible to tell, given HP’s heavily curated, tightly controlled accounts of what went on. There’s that habitual stripping of context and detail in order to focus on emotion that I’ve seen you write about elsewhere: we know that the emotional reaction happened, but not why, or what triggered it. The emotion alone is supposed to shuffle us toward his intended response.
That’s “missing missing reasons”. HP’s gone as far as to even deny that _anything_ was said during this phone call.
Thinking about this, it almost makes me wonder if this could be the “enabler” component — probably it’s not a thing that one could necessarily make a case to support over other theories, but maybe it’s an interesting framing to view the data with.
Mostly, I think, it seems like the phone call to the mother was the crux of the dispute, and it’s what was said there that fell into the unspeakable void of Lovecraftian shouting into which the missing missing reasons go.
There is a pattern that I’ve seen referred to as “the enabler is worse than the abuser” where in the aftermath of a break the enabler (who was previously perhaps in more of the voice-of-reason peacekeeping role) essentially takes over with escalating and (perhaps unprecedented in the relationship up until that point) overtly aggressive behavior.
That would make the political/social differences more of a secondary dispute and a convenient alternative justification — a thing that also isn’t unknown in the pattern, it seems to me.
It’s really hard to make anything definite out of the thing when the only source gets more untrustworthy the closer one gets to the point, and perhaps the above theory is simply one that would stretch to encompass any indistinct account such as this.
There’s a situation on the forums where the father is clearly disturbed and has spearheaded several years’ worth of intrusions into his son’s life, undeterred by multiple contacts with the police. I thought he was the main abuser… and then his daughter came to the forum and posted links to a forum where his wife was a member. The forum had given her her own thread to reduce the disruption to the rest of the board.
She was floridly disturbed, as narcissistic as they come, and willing to admit to doing things like sending a nude photograph of her husband, her daughter’s father, to her daughter. Her defense was that her daughter was an adult at the time, and besides, she’d been promiscuous in her youth,* so she’d seen plenty of naked men and shouldn’t be shocked by a full-frontal view of her father. Besides, the mother wanted to have an adult conversation with her daughter bout her father’s sexual addiction, like grown women should be able to do.
Yeah.
Years later, the mother is still at it, and has taken to threatening to damage the daughter’s business by distributing photos of a porn actress whom she claims is her daughter. (it’s not.) She already sent the photos to her daughter’s in-laws.
That was my lesson in assuming that if the person before me is obviously dysfunctional, they must be the real problem. The father was–is–thoroughly dysfunctional. But the mother is the lunatic engine powering the family’s collapse.
So it’s possible that HP is the family enforcer, and his wife is the main problem. It’s impossible to tell from his account, though.
* The truth of this claim is somewhat suspect.
So let me get this straight, this “thing” NEVER happens, but in the majority of cases when it does (meaning it does happen) but there is another factor (of which there is not) but for some strange reason you feel the need to add to the narrative for…..
Does it fulfill some need inside of you to make assumptions like that? Does it make you feel good to insinuate someone did something wrong, when they haven’t?
So, your first paragraph is nigh on incomprehensible: would you mind rephrasing with a little more clarity, please?
As to your second, it’s not an assumption if it’s backed by evidence, and in this case, we’ve all observed your ranting, mounting aggression, and mean-spirited rhetorical grandstanding: if you conduct your daily life with the same ill-temper and unwillingness to even consider wrongdoing on your part that you do here- and we have nothing to suggest otherwise other than your own insistence, which doesn’t count for a lot in the fact of everything else- then it’s highly likely that there are unseen portions of your story that, to you (our only source of information on this) somehow don’t count because they don’t fit the narrative that you want to construct.
It’s not that you’re consciously lying, it’s just that you’re so fundamentally incapable of even admitting that there COULD be a problem that of course you’re not going to see it. The metrics you use to assess reality are so skewed in your favor that your personal representation of events can’t help but paint you as the innocent party.
Which you may well be! But this is an unlikely possibility, in my view, given what I know about people who act like you do.
Wow!!! Do you go through life making enormously wrong assumptions about everyone you come in contact with? Assuming I live my life by the way I respond to a bunch of narcissistic people stuck in spoiled adolescence on an Internet blog is a pretty dumb thing to do. One question, do your attempts at browbeating people into admitting wrongdoing when they haven’t usually work?
Theory of mind failure again: your responses to “a bunch of narcissistic people stuck in spoiled adolescence on an Internet blog” are literally the only things we know about you.
I don’t find “entertainment” in sticking my methaphorical schlong in a hornet’s nest. You do, apparently. That’s enough to make some assumptions.
Leaving aside bisky and L’s rather enjoyable skewering, I will suggest that the fact that you see all this as “browbeating,” is somewhat instructive, particularly since my stated goal in this part specifically was merely to induce you to *reconsider* the conclusions you’ve come to regarding your own guilt in this. In fact, the first comment I made on this topic was mostly questions designed to get you thinking about that.
The fact that you can read someone’s entreaty to rethink your position and A: assume that they strictly believe the extreme end of what their questions are suggesting (especially in light of the fact that the comment you’re responding to here even contains acknowledgement that you may still be the innocent party here) and B: that you are being overtly attacked, is fairly telling. For all you rally against “assumptions,” you have a habit of assuming that those speaking to you believe the most extreme, least charitable interpretation of their words, regardless of how much nuance they attempt to inject. You oversimplify grossly.
HP,
The school called you because an adult wanted to get his own place?
So you love your son, but if he dares to live elsewhere as an adult you won’t give him the information he needs to get loans for study. That there is why you ended up estranged from him. You want all or nothing. I have a friend whose parents did the same thing. She still moved out paid her own way through college and her parents are still humiliated that everyone knows they refused to hand over info so she could get loans.
No one has been nasty but you. You are the ones estranged from you son, you are the one following your own advice and failing to reconcile with him so your actions are failing. If you want a reconciliation stop being bullish and following g your own advice and listen to others.
Hurting Parent, I don’t know if you’re still reading, but in case you are:
I think there’s something you might be looking at in a flipped-inside-out way. You’re assuming that because posters are supporting your son’s right to leave, they must not understand the gravity of the situation.
I’m lucky to have a close relationship with my parents – I see them as often as possible, I love them hugely and we’re very involved in each other’s lives. I find it difficult to think of anything happening which would have such an impact on our relationship that I wouldn’t want to see them.
That is what lies behind my belief that for someone to take that step, they must be hurting greatly. I have friends who don’t see their parents and friends who I suspect will in the end stop seeing their parents, and in both groups no decision is taken lightly. I don’t know a single person who has skipped out the door with a lighthearted ‘see you never!’
It’s not that we don’t value the parent-child relationship. It’s that we value it enough that we know what it takes to be broken. Knowing what it takes to be broken, we value and support the rights of those who feel they have to break it.
“It’s not that we don’t value the parent-child relationship. It’s that we value it enough that we know what it takes to be broken. ”
That’s really a perfect way of putting it, thank you. People don’t just up and remove the first and most formative relationship of their lives for no reason or for small reasons, not in the majority of cases, so when it does happen it’s natural to think that there are underlying causes, especially when given the sort of runaround that HP has given us.
The really weird thing is that he wants us to have it both ways: parenting is some profound and amazing bond that his son was totally happy to be a part of and was completely satisfied… but he also estranged for weak reasons, at the lightest of impetus, based on political differences (despite what he just said about being amenable to political debate in his house).
Which is it? Whatever it needs to be in the moment, I guess.
Third option – his son was brainwashed by Team Evil.
Not entirely sure where to put it, but I’ve been pondering the matter of the FAFSA thing. This is a thing that appears in the standard pattern of escalation when an 18-26 year old student enters into substantial conflict with their parents — after the legal control expires, generally financial strings remain; if the financial strings are cut the last move is often to throw a roadblock into their financial aid. Superficially, at least, it has somewhat the appearance of a strategy to use whatever leverage is available.
HP has a bit of a twist on this in that he apparently doesn’t understand the distinction between providing information for the FAFSA and cosigning student loans, and this seems to be a genuine enough belief on his part that he is foregrounding it as an example of his son’s profound irresponsibility. (Although I suppose that has to be considered in light of him not seeming to see a need to consider external reality when addressing others generally.) The thing here though is that even if his son didn’t attempt to tell him what it was for — and we don’t know if he did or didn’t, though it would be a logical thing to mention — that information is not hard to turn up if one cares to exert the slightest effort. And it’s the sort of thing that a parent would need to know anyway if the son were to have done “the right thing” and remained living at home and pursuing the correct major according to the path he was meant to follow.
But HP apparently didn’t look — it seems like he was asked, he hit the ceiling, he came to all manner of definitive conclusions about what this meant that work based on the notion that the request was coming from Team Cartoon Villain Hate (TM), and that’s the end of that topic. In this case, it seems to be more of an emotional truth thing (the bad has done this, and I must therefore oppose it) more so than an actual thought out strategy (I have this string, and I will pull it in order to attempt to produce an effect — but this would require thinking about people and their potential reactions, which is perhaps not so much a thing). I wonder how often that’s the case for people who are playing off this page of the playbook?
So our son can cut the ties between us, and effectively end our relationship, as is his right according to this thread, but I am still bound to parental duties, duties that would involve putting us at risk by handing our information over to complete strangers? Really?
No, you’re not obligated to. However, your son will not get financial aid and that will likely not do anything to help your relationship with him. He will eventually be considered independent — in four years or so — and he can go back to school then or he can put himself into enormous debt now with unsubsidized loans. You probably won’t have any relationship at all at that point, but after all, you have your principles and your priorities to think of. I do question how that is consistent with that parent/child bond you seem to think is so important, but that’s your dissonance to reconcile.
Do you claim him as a dependent on your taxes? If you do, you do have an obligation not to if you will not give him the information he needs, as that is the first step to the process of being considered independent for financial aid purposes.
I believe they call that extortion.
What is extortion? A consequence for being shitty?
Do you claim him as a dependent?
Nope, haven’s since he was 17.
Sir, haven’t you said you were gone? Glad to see you back. Again.
No it’s called consequences. You could provide information that would help your son but you won’t because he won’t hand his life to you. It’s petty and spiteful. Hopefully the memory of your petty triumph will keep you happier in old age than knowing your son.
I believe you have an extremely limited understanding of what you’re discussing, an inability to recognize or rectify your limitations in that area, and a refusal to accept advice on it from us or your son simply because we disagree with you on other things and are thus, within your own black and white worldview, the enemy in every area.
Being wrong about a thing is nothing to be ashamed of. Refusing to even consider correction is.
You’re not bound, either. He’s 18, feel free to live your own life. And let him live his life.
First, you’ve given the impression that he still had contact with you at the time.
Second, if you understood how the FAFSA worked, you may have found a way to provide the information without handing it over to the couple who were sheltering your son.
And yes, in this case the law does bind you and your son together. Proving that he was financially independent of you would have been an involved process that may not have been available to him, given how soon after the move he applied to college. If you’d done research and found a way that satisfied you both, you might have started to heal the rupture, or at least not widened it. As it is, your knee-jerk reaction did nothing for either you or your son–a Pyrrhic victory.
You guys have to get your answers straight. “L” says I’m not bound, and you say I am.
Read the posts again. Issendai is saying you’re legally tied together because he’s assumed not to be financially independent for purposes of financial aid. L was saying you have no legal obligation to hand over the documents. There is no inconsistency here.
Bound by law doesn’t equal bound by parental duty. And why should we “get our answers straight”? Sir, if you think we’re coordinating our answers, you’re paranoid.
The various commenters here are actually different people from one another, just to let you know. Speaking for myself, I’ve read Issendai’s stuff fairly extensively, have commented here before, but otherwise don’t even know Issendai or the other commenters at all. We’re all likely to know slightly different things and have different opinions from each other.
Just because you might classify everyone here as an amorphous mass of vile contradiction doesn’t mean we don’t have independent existences.
I don’t know how American financial aid works, but did you ask anyone at all — financial aid office staff, an accountant, a lawyer, anyone — if turning over this information would actually expose you to the risks you claim it would? Because person after person on this thread is telling you you are factually wrong here, and you just keep repeating the same claims, citing to nothing and no one. Is this just something you believe, and evidence be damned? How is that fundamentally different from believing you’re an alien from outer space?
HP,
Did your son actually give specifics as to why he became estranged?
My above post does sound harsh but it’s not to say I can’t see why you would be worried. Going just by what you have said I would be worried about a minor striking up friendship with two thirty something adults then moving in with them as soon as they came of age. In the uk this would be considered possibly grooming. Now this may or may not be the case. It may be that your son has talked these people into helping him. It could be that his feeling of being controlled made him vulnerable to grooming. I don’t know because I’ve just read you take on it.
But my previous post stands regardless. However, if I were you I’d take a good look at what you want. Do you want to say good riddance, do you want him back, do you want him back but only if he apologises? Do you feel this is about who is right or wrong g? Winning and losing? Taking sides? Him coming to his senses? Him realising he needs you etc?
None of these attitudes will help. Realise that adults, and to an extent everyone, needs to be able to makes choices even the wrong ones and that a parents job is not to act as a harness to stop a child falling but a cushion to catch them when they do fall.
If you want to reconcile with your son, don’t make demands of apologies etc, and don’t bombard him it will push him away.
But I have to say that your posts seem full of anger towards your son about how you feel. He is not a victim of these people, you are seems your belief. He is selfish, cut your throats, cruel etc.. you seem more upset for yourself than worried about him.
“If you love your son why would you want him to be in a relationship that makes him unhappy just because the relationship is with you?”
This should be on a T shirt. Perfect.
One thing I’m interested in here (and I suppose during the “up” end of the flounce cycle I might receive an answer or at least a rant about what a terrible person I am for asking) is: what in the world even is the desired endgame here? I mean, the original point of discussion here was how characterizing continued attempts at contact as stalking was beyond the pale, because those continued attempts were necessary to produce the result of… what now?
My son is terrible. He has betrayed me to go do whatever he wants not caring about how much he hurt me. He has spoken some sort of Lovecraftian language of soul crushing to my wife to the point of rendering her potentially suicidal. My daughter is so angry with him that she does not wish to talk to him, as is right and just. He has slit the throats of myself and my wife (!). He hates. It is so beyond reason that he should be trusted even with financial information that he has a clear reason for needing that even his asking is an obvious outrage.
And the pinnacle of his sins is this: he is not living in my house. Where I, my wife, my daughter, and the aforementioned financial information LIVE.
*RECORD SCRATCH*
Now, maybe the splitting here is such that it’s the Other Woman who is the root of all evil and what the son really wants is to sing the praises of his wonderful father and pursue his major in physics and express his sincerely held social views of whatever-Dad-tells-me-I-think but — didn’t the son maintain contact with Evil Bad once before, even as a minor, while giving the superficial appearance of compliance? What’s to keep him from doing that again, particularly now that as an adult there are fewer legitimate avenues of policing his friendships and contacts? Is the idea to somehow get an adult who apparently has alternative means of support to agree to continual and pervasive surveillance or something? And if so, from his perspective (it is to laugh that I ask this) why would he possibly agree to such a thing?
Is there even a coherent desired outcome here, even if it’s impractical? Or is there nothing here but rage and flailing?
Seconded. Nothing to add, just – this. Well said.
It feels to me as though, very quickly, HP’s focus tends to shift to simply disqualifying those who stray outside of his desired responses, rather than actually portraying his side of events. His son has done something HP disapproves of, and thus he must be made to look bad, so that his choices will seem bad too, thus justifying HP’s responses. We don’t immediately jump to commiserating with him when he tells an anecdote, and so we must be portrayed as vile, inhuman creatures without a shred of empathy for his suffering.
The endgame here has nothing to do with the endgame out in the real world, because they’re two different things. Down here, the goal is to reduce the value of voices that disagree with HP, so that only voices that agree have any form of redeeming qualities at all. Up there, the goal might be to get his son back, but if he’s willing to portray his son this way to exert pressure on him to return, I can’t see that working out so well.
The disconnect comes in because HP has mistakenly tied how good a person is with how closely their behaviors align with HP’s desires: his son is bad *now* because he is acting outside of HP’s intentions, but he’ll be good again once he’s knuckled under. Likewise, we only became disgusting creatures out to blame him for everything once it became clear that we weren’t likely to come around to his way of thinking. Redemption is possible, but it involves doing exactly what the self-appointed arbiter of what is good and human says.
I think the end game is that the Prodigal Son will return to living in the family home, take up physics, renounce the Woman and her website, and resume (or adopt) more conservative political views. And humbly apologize for ever believing that he could leave.
In other words, turn back time.
Don’t know how coherent that is, though.
In other words, become the extension of HP that HP believes him to be.
I also don’t see where the “hurting” part of “Hurting Parent” comes in. HP doesn’t seem very hurt about being separated from his son (that bond being a bond above all other bonds). He just seems very angry. Reconciliation thus does not seem to be an actual goal. Nor does he seem interested in seeing his son succeed despite the situation he believes his son has gotten himself into.
I am willing to consider the possibility that anger masks deep hurt. For some people it can mask it very well.
It likely does. However, his pain does not give him the right to hurt others.
Agreed!
My not-so-inner snark says that there are two ways of reading “hurting”. But more seriously, I think pain is a central feature of the overall estranged-parent pattern and that in this case the anger (and its undirected nature) amounts to more or less putting whatever words can be beat to fit around a fundamental equation something like “this hurt me, therefore rage”.
“This hurt me, therefore rage” is logic of a three-year old. Frustration is a normal initial emotional response to not getting your way, but, y’know – HP, act like an adult.
Making my first comment ever here to applaud how perfectly you nailed it here.
Did anyone else get that HP seems to say he’s on a SWAT team? Anyone else notice he has a short fuse? Anyone else see a problem with this?
…Uh-oh.
I’m primed to notice this because the distinction recently proved very important in my community, but I believe what he said was that he wears 20 pounds of SWAT gear to work. Which conceivably could be a slightly different statement.
Is anyone besides a SWAT member allowed to wear their gear? I’m trying to see how else he could make that statement. Ideas?
Body armor is legal for civilians to own in a lot of states — mine, I think, included. Same with “tactical” type clothing and a lot of the little bits and widgets like flashlights, glass breakers, et cetera that tend to get marketed primarily to law enforcement. Firearms too.
As far as how one could make that claim without being a police officer — security guard who talks big, bounty hunter, maybe something in personal protection… IT guy who carries a backpack to work full of tactical multitools?
(It does seem improbable, but I actually have seen an example of just this very thing quite recently, along the lines of the examples I mention above.)
In this case I don’t see any signs that those options are actually more probable than the other (also, they’re not any less troubling), so I’m mostly being perhaps a little snarky. But… sometimes shades of meaning are a thing?
Ahh, happy memories of the original Mall Ninja thread…
Oh not to worry, my fuse is long, gets tested regularly, and it doesn’t light the wick. Before you even posted that, did you even entertain the idea that maybe it’s just you people that draw it out of people? I’m willing to bet your egos wouldn’t even let let idea in.
“Oh not to worry, my fuse is long, gets tested regularly, and it doesn’t light the wick. Before you even posted that, did you even entertain the idea that maybe it’s just you people that draw it out of people? I’m willing to bet your egos wouldn’t even let let idea in.”
So you are blaming other people for your behavior?
Or you cannot accept that your repugnant behavior might bring it out of people. There’s that ego I was talking about.
And yet your refusal to accept that YOUR behaviour might have something to do with your son’s responses is NOT ego. Got it.
Well, there’s a lot to bring out of you. And it didn’t take much. Is having the worst brought out of you “entertainment?” That’s an odd kink, but hey, won’t judge. Truly, if you’re _that_ pissed off by our lovely beehive, what are you _still_ doing here? Sir.
Consider that, in every single unfavorable interaction that you’ve had here, you are the common denominator. We are all different people, from different places in the world, with different lives, who do not know each other outside of here, mostly. We are diverse, and yet every single one of us comes out of talking to you with a negative opinion of you.
But yeah, it must be us. Obviously. We aren’t negative to each other, only to you, but clearly WE bring it out of other people. Yeah.
I have to ask. Do you feel that your son is abusing you because he’s refusing to have contact with you?
D., he likely does. Why ask – are you playing narcissist excuses bingo?
Sorry, but no.
Sir, if we’re seriously fucked up, vile, disgusting people who draw the worst out of you, what on Earth are you still doing on this site? You’ve announced your departure so many times I’ve frankly lost count.
Entertainment, it’s like observing a bee’s nest.
Oh, don’t worry, the feeling is mutual. I feel kind of guilty, since most clowns are paid, yet here you are for free.
You’ve told us in 50+ messages how you don’t care about our opinion. You don’t look entertained. Here’s a tip – when you say you’re leaving? Keep your word.
The “bee’s nest” is a compliment. Bees are hard-working creatures who protect their own. I prefer “hornet’s nest”. Which you shouldn’t have touched, either.
Ah yes, the ancient and venerable “I’m laughing so hard!” defense. (“I’m not upset. I wish you could see how hard I’m laughing right now. This is fun!”) Traditionally followed by another cycle of rage and devaluation.
So much for tradition.
Oh, that’s so cute, you got me with your little stinger. Good one!!
_Look at me, I’m not affected! I’m not affected so hard!_
Really?
“in what bizarre world do you live in?”
“I’m beginning to realize what the “D” stands for.”
“What the hell is wrong with you people?”
“I seriously think I’m done with this, you people are seriously fucked up, disgusting, vile human beings. I’m done.” – 1!
“Yep that settles it, not another word. Bye Felicia!!!!!” – 2!
“You can really go fuck yourself.”
“Are you serious? You really need to read this again?”
“I had zero plans on returning to this conversation…” – 3!
“I dare you to walk up to a random black person on the street… I really dare you to, just make sure you have a pair of running shoes on.”
“…our son was brainwashed”
“Big conspiracy fan, are you?”
“Do you people have any morals whatsoever?”
“I’m not even sure you can call yourself a human being.”
“I honestly don’t give a shit.”
“So you’ve read nothing.”
“I still just disagree with every vile thing that comes out of your mouth.”
“I’m glad I went back […] Buy Felicia!!!” – 4!
“I truly pity you […] your opinion means absolutely nothing to me […] your ego stroking followers […] I can render all of you irrelevant.”
“Does it fulfill some need inside of you to make assumptions like that? Does it make you feel good to insinuate someone did something wrong, when they haven’t?”
“a bunch of narcissistic people stuck in spoiled adolescence on an Internet blog”
Grand finale: ” As for being nasty, well I’m only nasty to nasty people, and the people on this page…”
“maybe it’s just you people that draw it out of people?”
“your repugnant behavior might bring it out of people”
Ah, classic abuser tactic – blame it on someone else.
Stings, right?
Classic narcissistic behavior, it surely can’t be me, I am above reproach and in no way could someone respond to my words like that. I must be their fault. See, I can do that too.
Were you talking about yourself here?
Sir, as best I can tell each of the commenters here has acknowledged at one point or another that they were unclear, made mistakes, or misquoted you on some way.
How do you square that with narcissism?
But you are the one with a failed relationship with his son, has police called to the house when be tried to leave, as has a wife who when she gets a phone call she describes as berating but consisting of so much screaming she doesn’t know what was actually said to her calls you hysterical to such an extent you feel she may end her life and you are compelled to rush to her side where you find her laying on the floor. And you yourself admit that she was broken by her adult son moving out even though you claim your son had said lots of people move out. Yes he also said he at that time didn’t understand why, but the fact is moving out is not unusual and there is something wrong with a parent who is broken by this.
Yet your the one estranged from his son. I’m not estranged from anyone.
Like I said before your actions s and words have failed to end the estrangement, if anything you have made it worse. If you act and speak to your children as you do to others on here then it’s easy to see why your son left and it’s like!y your daughter will leave to. So if you were clever you would stop and listen.
You are not your!!
As satisfying as it is to feed the troll, he’ll cycle back to useful conversation faster if we don’t reward bad behavior.
(This is a reminder for myself as much as for anyone else.)
His words are useful regardless, but thank you for the reminder.
For 6 years I worked in a program designed to teach offenders about modifying their beliefs and behaviors. It was basically centered around the fact that abusers almost always blame others for their own behavior. To be fair though, I think we all struggle with that…. and who hasn’t said “He / She made me mad!” The “made me” being key. The fact is though, that no matter what another person does to you, your response is entirely your own and you can decide moment by moment how to react. Even walking down the street and having a stranger walk up and slap you, you own your reaction to that and can decide how you will behave in return. Maybe you’ll slap back, maybe you’ll call the police or maybe you’ll decide the person is mentally ill and needs help so you try to befriend them instead.
What EPs just don’t seem to understand is that their children are not responsible for how their parents chose to feel and act. HP being a perfect example.
This though is just one of their “thinking errors” as the behavioral therapy program used to call them.
I also notice he makes a huge mistake. He assumes that if his wife gets so upset she gets hysterical, falls to the floor, dials his number, explains to him her upset in such hysterical tones he fears she might decide to kill herself, and then upon his return is still laying on the floor hysterically that the person who upset her is in the wrong and their words must have been horrendous. The truth is that this is not the reaction of a stable person. So it could be that she had a normal argument and either is mentally incapable of taking any criticism and it truelly did cause her to have a mental breakdown in which case her husband needs to encourage her to seek mental health care. Or she is manulative and one of those people who has to be someone’s victim and if those close to them don’t run to their aid will either rant and rave about how they are not a real man etc or cry and wail about how everyone hates her they are obviously an awful person and should just kill themselves.
I had no plans of saying another word to any of you. You can say whatever you want about me, but now you want to talk about my wife, someone you know nothing about, someone you know nothing about the pain she has suffered, and insinuate she has to be someone’s victim? I explained exactly what happened, and you’re going to say that about my wife? I hope a family member never calls you, hysterical in need of help. Or, you are fucking incapable of empathy, or even entertaining the concept of being a mother, feeling life grow inside of you, loving that life you brought into the world, and then having them do, and say something so horrible to you that it crushes you emotionally? Does that even scratch the surface.
YOU CAN LITERALLY GO FUCK YOURSELF IN THE MOST DEGRADING WAY YOU CAN POSSIBLY THINK OF.
“I had no plans of saying another word to any of you.”
What are we on here, flounce number five?
“I explained exactly what happened, and you’re going to say that about my wife?”
No, you didn’t explain exactly what happened. An account of exactly what happened would have included the content of the conversation that made your wife so upset, something that you’ve not only failed to include, but have asserted that even asking for details like that is indicative of some moral failure on our part. Do not pretend you’ve given even close to a full account of what happened.
“I hope a family member never calls you, hysterical in need of help.”
You know what? I have. And you want to know the difference between you and I, HP? I am actually capable of providing the content of what that call was about. Want to know something else? That call was due to my wife’s triggered PTSD, so we can both acknowledge right now that her hysterical reaction was pronounced and outside the normal range of human reactions.
If I can do all that, why can’t you?
“Or, you are fucking incapable of empathy, or even entertaining the concept of being a mother, feeling life grow inside of you, loving that life you brought into the world, and then having them do, and say something so horrible to you that it crushes you emotionally? ”
Given that you outright refuse to tell us what was said, how on earth are we even supposed to know?
That’s sort of your problem in general, HP. You refuse to give us anywhere near a full account of what happened beyond that information you can tightly control to arrange the picture the way you want it, yet you expect full and complete empathy despite this. You demand agreement, without ever letting us know what you want us to agree to.
And then, when we’re naturally skeptical or curious, you fly off the handle. But it’s not our problem that you’re incapable of taking anything but your desired conclusion without turning into a petulant aggressor.
Feel free to take the flounce, turn it sideways, and stick it straight up your fucking ass. As for being the “petulant aggressor”, even Hannibal Lecter preferred to eat the rude, and this entire thread just goes to prove he was right when he said, “rudeness is epidemic”. Before you go making some sweeping generalization, or assume I would even think of treating everyone in society like this I just want to point out the my ire is target specific for this group of assholes that has zero connection to other human beings, and definitely have never opened themselves to another human being making yourself completely vulnerable. But go ahead keep telling your narcissistic selves how great you are, because now any response I give will nothing more than the vulgar diatribes you hate-filled assholes deserve.
“I didn’t mean to do it but baby you just make me so mad” uh huh.
First, sir, do you know what the word “flounce” means?
Second, have you just compared yourself, and agreed, with a fictional serial killer?
Third, so what was it that your son screamed at your wife?
“Third, so what was it that your son screamed at your wife?”
I have little intention of responding to HP until he begins offering substantive things again (if), but if you somehow find the intestinal fortitude to do so, I encourage you to keep asking this question. It’s an important piece of the puzzle, even if one we’re unlikely to get an answer to, and HP’s strident reticence to even acknowledge we’re still asking about it is… suspicious, to say the least.
Truly, ’tis the most conspicuous missing missing reason.
So, just to be clear, your justification is that we were rude to you- apparently by asking questions and not taking you immediately seriously- so therefore your naked aggression is justified… boiled down, you’re saying that two wrongs make a right. Is that the intellectual level you’re working on, here?
But you’ve made another mistake, too, because now you’ve established that if you feel someone has wronged you, you’re justified in lashing out at them. So when you say that you’re not always like this, that assertion is always going to be tempered by that knowledge: I see you casting yourself as some righteous man, above us plebs, your mighty anger only stirred by our deplorable natures, but your rationales say more than you intend them to, HP. And what they tell us is pretty much what I’ve been saying all along, that you lash out punitively against people you feel have wronged you, and that your feelings, to your mind, are sufficient reason to do so.
You feel hurt, therefore it’s okay for you to try to hurt the person who hurt you. Not a mindset conducive to a truly open, harmonious family, let alone reconciliation with those who choose to leave it.
M has basically said his story cannot be true and that his wife must be a manipulative liar. How do you expect him to respond to that? It’s pretty smug to assume that if you rile someone up and they get angry, while you maintain a detached tone, you’re in the right and you’ve won the argument.
Spoken as someone who blames their frequent, explosive, abusive outbursts on how the other person “riled them up.”
Like attracts to like, as Gustave Flaubert wrote to George Sand.
See, again, you lied.
M did not say that. They said either it’s false and wife is manipulative, OR it’s true, and wife needs psychiatric help.
Because in no context is what HP describing healthy behavior.
If someone says they were shot, either they’re a hypochondriac or need a doctor, but in no case do you just…ignore it.
I don’t need to fuck myself, my husband isn’t impotent.
You are the one who told strangers on the internet that your wife was broken by her adult son moving home, that told us she boasted about her adult son previously saying he didn’t want to leave her when he was an adult, who told strangers that she got a phone call from your son which she cannot recall what was said but the words were so harsh she fell to the floor and stayed there for at least the time it took you to drive home, who managed to call you though and tell you what had happened but made you think she was suicidal. None of these are the normal reactions of a mother who has had a nasty argument with her son. And if you or her think these are normal reactions then it’s no mystery as to why you failed in your relationship with your child.
“Or, you are fucking incapable of empathy, or even entertaining the concept of being a mother, feeling life grow inside of you, loving that life you brought into the world”
Does your wife have any identity or interests other than “parent”? Do you? Because your insistence that no one else can countenance what it’s like to be a parent (including the actual parents posting on this thread, including presumably people who have been pregnant and given birth, which you have not) suggests to me you are far more tightly bound to that identity than is normal.
“say something so horrible to you that it crushes you emotionally? ”
It was so horrible it crushed her emotionally, and yet she also doesn’t remember it or didn’t tell you what it was. I see.
I’m not a parent, but I know I said some pretty awful things to my parents when I was an adolescent. They were hurt and angry. They did not become suicidal. I am not estranged from my parents and never have been.
“YOU CAN LITERALLY GO FUCK YOURSELF IN THE MOST DEGRADING WAY YOU CAN POSSIBLY THINK OF.”
Did you say THAT to your son?
Blah blah blah narcissistism blah blah blah my words are a stone tablet blah blah blah!!!! Do the world a favor, pull your lips over your head & swallow hard.
So, you’re done with even the pretense of mature discussion, then? Could your next flounce out of here actually be a permanent one rather than a lie you tell to make a rhetorical point, in that case?
Alternatively, you could engage with us… but that would mean taking disagreement for what it is, rather than a personal attack profound enough to disqualify us from the human race, wouldn’t it? A level of maturity you, evidently, do not have.
You’ve told him over and again he’s a liar, you’ve come to the automatic conclusion his estrangement from his son is his fault (because on this site it’s always the parent’s fault), you’ve belittled his wife, how do you expect him to react? Why do you assume your tone of smug moderate detachment means you’ve won?
I would expect him to what countless other mature adults would do upon realizing that an Internet Argument(TM) is becoming hurtful or unproductive: LEAVE.
Stop engaging, stop arguing and, for the love of all that is holy, stop tossing out playground insults as if it *doesn’t* justify every misgiving your opponents may have considered possible. The fact that I have to spell this out answers a lot of questions as to your viewpoint, but raises so very many more.
I’m having trouble finding any cases of anyone calling him a liar. Asking him to clarify or prove his claims, sure, but that’s very much the opposite of calling one a liar.
You, however, I have no hesitance in calling a liar, because you’re even making the demonstrably false claim that this site always blames the parent for estrangement
Are you a friend of HP’s, or a similar abusive estranged parent wanting to validate their views by attacking a resource said child may have sent to you?
Now, I’ll go when I’m good and ready. You are right about one thing, you, Issendai, and the rest of your self-aggrandizing miscreants should be disqualified from participating in anything associated with the human race ESPECIALLY PARENTING.
I don’t think you’re going to get much in the way of interaction, now that you’ve devolved into playground taunting, so other than your desperate need to get the last word, I’m not sure what sort of fulfillment you’re going to get out of this, but whatever. It’s not my concern where prideful, negative man-children go to get their kicks.
Not much in the way of interaction, and the last word? You are the dipshits that keep responding. As for maturity, I have no desire to be mature or civil to a bunch of people who should have been swallowed instead of conceived. As for you “M” the important thing is that I, and the people that matter know the truth, so I hope you weren’t expecting too much of a rise out of me for questioning my parenting. Or, then again maybe you were because daddy left you empty, and you were just hoping for daddy’s attention by saying something to get under his skin.
This grows perchance a bit tedious, but there’s still something of a flow of data.
To parse: The rage spiral here has gotten to the point of classifying the “opposition” as recalcitrant teenagers and denigrating them on approximately these grounds. Illustrative perhaps of the treatment of actual teenagers. It’s also a pattern I’ve seen before among people with notable authoritarian streaks — that when they get agitated, they’ll start telling people even who are older than they are that they’ll understand when they grow up. Uh huh right.
But, the parental model is projected back onto the targets — in my rage I see you as a child, therefore you must see me as “daddy”, and since you are getting under my skin (patently ridiculous denial aside) it must be that you are a child trying to irritate “daddy”. The response to which is, well, more rage. One might extrapolate. Again.
The whole “I’m not like this with other people, it’s you who drive me to it” — well, I’ve heard that one a couple times before. It don’t convince. But even if it were true, one would think that a person who had been the model of level-headedness up until this very day, at which point they were reduced to the spewing of vulgarity by people essentially asking pointed questions about the wrong thing — I’d be a bit concerned about that, if I was that person. And actually when I have had nonlinear emotional reactions to things, I do find it to be disconcerting as someone who is actually normally a relatively chill person to be in one specific instance so profoundly not.
So, this might be a moment for reflection. Or it might be another case where I am a perfectly calm person GODSDAMNIT and shut the HELL up if you say I don’t seem so, and I only get mad when you talk back to me and so my behavior here (also my behavior whenever anyone else talks back to me) doesn’t count as far as evaluating the nature of my temper. Which is PERFECTLY FINE, you vile pigs.
“Now, I’ll go when I’m good and ready.”
Is that what you said to your son?
“I have no desire to be mature or civil to a bunch of people who should have been swallowed instead of conceived.”
Is THAT what you said to your son?
Now bisky, you know as well as I do that HP will only allow direct quotations where they cast him in a good light!
Actually, this is a particularly interesting point that I’d like to expand on: has anyone else noticed the highly self serving way HP’s memory operates?
When asked for the content of the phone call between his son and his wife, HP reacts as though we’d be insane to expect him to have any form of quotes from it, or even just a description of what was said. Expecting him to remember that is simply unreasonable.
Yet, when attempting to demonstrate that everything was totally fine with his son before this evil woman entered the picture, and how he’s totally blameless in this, HP is perfectly capable of pulling direct quotes from his son, where they cast HP in a favorable light.
So it’s totally unreasonable to expect him to remember the contents of a conversation apparently so traumatic it rendered one participant in it suicidal, yet he’s apparently able to remember single, innocuous comments from his son that occurred *long before* that phone call that just so happen to aid him in his case that he’s totally blameless.
So, is it just selective memory, or simply dishonest omission?
Also this:
“You are the dipshits that keep responding.”
None of us ever said we were leaving or promised/threatened not to respond to HP. We were doing pretty well dissecting his responses without him, gold mines of dysfunction that they are, But it is still somehow our responsibility to stop HIM from breaking his vow (not ours!) to leave and never come back.
“But it is still somehow our responsibility to stop HIM from breaking his vow (not ours!) to leave and never come back.”
I tried to remind him, but alas.
I think one of the pervasive themes here are the incredibly indistinct boundaries between HP and other people — diffusion of responsibility, the whole “you made me mad so you’re mad not that I’m mad” muddle, et cetera — so that the flouncing was done by HP and doesn’t have any bearing on the participation of other commenters isn’t really a division that exists, ’cause distinct divisions don’t actually exist.
If he’s that way to random folks on the Internet, one can only imagine the hilarity of being his son.
Well, his responces are certainly colored by the pain that he experiences. However. First, as it was said, his pain is no excuse. And second, pain couldn’t have made him – let’s call the assorted tendencies exhibited here “a shitty person” – overnight.
Armchair psychology isn’t big or clever.
Considering you failed massively in parenting your child as either you are correct and he is a nasty selfish person whose mere words are so diabolical they render normal people suicidal or you are wrong and he is a normal person trying to escape controlling, clingy parents.
Either way massive parenting fail. I’m not estranged from my parents or my children.
Hate to be the one to tell you this but it’s not just this blog. I came here after reading the story about your wife laying on the floor on another forum.
Considering you refuse to say what your son said I doubt it’s anything a reasonable person would get suicidal over.
But remember you are estranged from your son not I or other posters. Your words and actions have failed to end the estrangement so a sensible person would have needed advice.
Can you link that story, please? HP’s devolved into insults before I had the chance to learn what his wife was doing on the floor.
Oh, and substitute .com with (dot) com, please, or else the comment is caught in moderation.
I think it was in mumsnet relationship board in a thread entitled this is really chilling. It discusses this blog and someone refers to go being an enabler and his wife laying on the floor as the dominant force in causing problems.sorry can’t link at the moment. Think I might have seen it elsewhere too.
Of course you can’t, that sure the hell wasn’t me, but that goes back to you wastes of DNA, it doesn’t matter that told you it’s not me, you’re just going to say I’m lying. So why don’t ya blow me?
Interesting how the insults have taken a turn, from “you’re not people” to very explicit, degrading sexual language. Do you speak that way around your children?
Well, his son is an adult now, his daughter – no idea. Oh, but of course he doesn’t, it’s just us bringing his repressed desires out.
Honestly, what’s so bad about oral sex? Someone tell me when he gets to BDSM.
I think “fuck yourself in the most degrading way possible” was the BDSM reference. Dying to know where we go from here.
It’s not the mention of sex per se, it’s the highly sexualized insults that I wonder about.
Yeah, I’m a bit disappointed with that one. Where are the specifics? Don’t leave us wondering, really.
As for the sexual fixation of his insults? Freudian. Very Freudian.
Of course we can link. It was linked earlier. Here.
mumsnet (dot) com/Talk/relationships/2635217-This-is-really-chilling-I-think
I don’t care whether you are lying. If you take a look for yourself, this site is discussed over there.
If you’re referring to the comment I think you are, that’s someone else discussing this thread.
What I’d like to see is HP’s own forum posts. Doubtless his wisdom and reasonable nature shine brightly in a more supportive, caring environment.
True, it’s a bit disappointing that it’s not HP. On the other hand – we’ve gone meta!
Well, the point was to prove that this link exists.
Interesting that this — the potential existence of another account of the events involved — is such a thing to get upset over.
Goodness, and one wonders at the failure of your clearly superior skills at conflict resolution. I’m sure the teenager living in your house had no complaints at all.
Yes, please link it, because I can promise you moose-knuckles it’s not our story, and what kind of sick excuse for a human being trolls estranged parents pages? Seriously what is wrong with you?
Er it’s referring to you posting on this site. You talk about the incident here.
Scroll up dipshit, no it’s not.
Okay, so what *did* your son say to your wife?
This isn’t a page for estranged parents. You wrote here in public about your wife reacting to a nasty phone call by laying on the floor making you think she was suicidal. Others have read it and discussed it. What did you expect.
You are the one who saw one person writing about a general problem and took it personally and started bombarding them with crazy emails and comments.
Have you ever had a traumatic experience? Do you remember every jot and tittle of it afterwards? Do you then want to recount every minute and every word of it, even to your spouse, let alone to strangers?
Yes, yes, and yes.
I’ll use an anonymizing name and obscure identifying details, but absolutely, I’ve done all three. As have many posters in this thread, years before you started trolling it.
Again, why did you come here to lie?
Reading estranged parent forums, if one is not a person who is completely sympathetic, makes one a sick excuse for a human being. On the other hand, coming into the comments section of a blog and spewing vituperation at the commenters there is the behavior of a perfectly reasonable and civilized person.
Well yeah, because the comments here are all our fault! Everything is somebody else’s fault!
Sorry, wrong guy.
No problem. So what was it you told to the wrong guy? To go fuck themselves, to blow you, or that they’re a vile being? We’d like to know exactly, god forbid your insults go to waste.
BTW, what did your son scream at your wife?