I have been reading around this heart-wrenching subject. Some of the stories - on both sides - are very distressing, yet this seems to be an increasing phenomenon. I would point to several common factors in the cases I'm reading about:
1. The parents have difficulty allowing the children to grow up. Sorry but that's just something that happens & there's no point avoiding it.
2. The relationships that I'm seeing described are usually quite unboundaried, by which I mean the parent will do something that the child finds unacceptable. That is one thing but the parents tend to ignore requests to stop, or attempts to put personal boundaries in place, which leads to...
3. The relationships are usually quite invalidating, which means that the reasonable wishes & views of the child are not respected.
4. This has a tendency to carry on through generations.
I call as my first witness (yes, I know this is a strange phrase to use, but this has a purpose, since the Hound's going somewhere with this) this passage:
'I am pretty much estranged from my whole family, most of the time, for the last 23 years since I stopped drinking. I don't know your situation, mine has to do with I wanted a path of healing and recovery, and not one person in my family wanted the same. I was quite self destructive in my early 20's, until I began recovery/healing, and really, I often wonder if my family of origin would be more comfortable with me if I had continued to self destruct. I have two brothers who died way too young, one at 18 and the other at 42. Just in a nutshell, what I said before...me wanting recovery and I felt that to get that, I had to leave that family, for the most part.' (http://ths.gardenweb.com/forums/load/singles/msg0816055222388.html).
This person was clearly left with no option if she wanted to stay alive.
Again, & this example better illustrates the kind of relationship I'm describing above:
'My mother is just a garden variety control freak, not abusive, but my college roommates, ex-husband, and now SO have all picked up on something "off" about her. As an adult I realized that it's that I always had to be the one to draw the line as a kid, because there was a sense that she wouldn't stop at anything to get her way. (Unfortunately, my ex-husband is similar in his dealings with me.) I can see from others' postings that my mother actually didn't take it very far, but it was a little scary to feel that sense that she might. Her own mother was alcoholic and abusive, and my mother, as the oldest girl, had to raise her younger brothers and sisters, so that situation improved from one generation to the next--my mother drinks but isn't alcoholic, is a control freak and can be mean and use "spankings" or slaps but never got out of control and beat us.' (http://chronicle.com/forums/index.php?topic=38405.60)
I call as my next witness a clinical psychologist in a newspaper article. Unfortunately the article (a capture illustrates this post) is not very clear but I can see how this problem foments in parent/adult child conflict around growing up & the way it persists across generations. I mean, so does alcoholism. Your parents really do fuck you up in all sorts of ways (I'm secure in the knowledge I'll never be a parent myself). The source of that article is: http://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1454&dat=19900317&id=Rr4sAAAAIBAJ&sjid=ARQEAAAAIBAJ&pg=2612,762833. From a Witch point of view, if you have reached a point where your relationship with someone is so destructive that there is no option to get out, then that may be your will. This, of course, is one of those cases where ones Will & decision-making will not be completely without conflicting emotions & ambivalent feelings.
I have one more source to quote on this, it is by an etiquette expert called Mary Jewell (http://www.examiner.com/article/estrangement-from-parents-an-unnatural-relationship). One of the suggestions that comes up on google when you search for adult children estranged from parents is, interestingly 'How do I become estranged from my parents?', & this was right there on the first page. The sources I have referred to above are all ones Ms Jewell uses, in fact her article is my primary source for the difficult things reposted above, but she uses them differently. I always understood etiquette to be about manners, but she is not writing about that, she is writing about morals. An etiquette article on this subject would be about how to behave in this kind of difficult family situation, but she is rather interested in criticising children who make the decision. For a start she describes the relationship as unnatural, which is more the province of theology & philosophy than etiquette. Her theological posture is made clear by her quoting the Bible at the beginning of the article: if this was really an article on etiquette it would not begin by telling people they were breaking one of the Commandments. I also notice that the newspaper she quotes has a heavy Christian slant, & that her other articles on examiner.com assert such things as that parents should be married - in fact I haven't seen one article by her that seems to me to refer to etiquette rather than morals.
And this is where it seems to me she gets very naughty with her sources (since she doesn't seem to know what etiquette is she has presumably not heard of netiquette). I have quoted these sources at length to provide the original context as a foil for direct quotes from Ms Jewell's article to show her use of them. For a start she draws her description of estrangement as 'unnatural' from the article by a psychologist in the newspaper article. I'd have to repeat that the newspaper clearly has a Christian agenda (therefore, I'm thinking, pro-God-created nuclear family), however the article also seems to me to allow much more for the complexities of a situation than Ms Jewell is. It is not going straight to 'you've broken a commandment & chosen an unnatural life'.
Ms Jewell refers to the first quotation I make (with a direct link) like this:
'Reading blogs written by estranged people can be interesting. People work hard to justify their choice of an unnatural relationship, describing beliefs and reasons for which they choose estrangement from their own family.'
Obviously having beliefs & reasons for a choice is wrong. There is also *no* compassion for the obvious difficulty & distress of the person in my first quote. But her use of the second quote is more unfair, taking one phrase *completely* out of context & choosing to ignore the indications of a difficult family life given in a lengthier extract:
'[...] a person just needs to select some dynamite descriptive words, such as 'garden variety control freak' or 'toxic.' to label one or both parents. Next, a person must select 'happy' people with whom to socialize.'
The irony is she has a point, which needless to say she completely (I would hate to imply wilfully) misunderstands: it is totally likely that the pattern of estrangement will continue over generations. She implies in her article that these parents function as bad role models. I think it more likely these parents are so screwed up by their own parents, they cock it up themselves & get estranged. But Ms Jewell wouldn't know that, because she's intent on not listening, criticising people's morals, & painting these already damaged people as somehow bad.
Do I have concrete suggestions? You bet. 1. Parents, listen to your children. Really listen. Show an interest in them. Take time to talk with them.
2. Most important, give credence to what your child says. 'Oh, you exaggerate,' repeated enough, becomes, 'You're a liar'.
3. If your child tells you they don't like something, stop doing it.
As an adult if your relationship with your parents is deteriorating, try to get a disinterested party as an intermediary. Both sides must be prepared to hear some hurtful things. If you try & fail to make it work (on either side), then, the blessing of the witch upon you. We cannot always work relationships the way we want.
I wanted to end this post with a quote on etiquette or manners, but I think it may be wasted on Some People.
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