Has anyone lost complete contact with a child. My wife has not one, but two friends who each have a son and a daughter and have no idea where the son is. Both sons are probably 30 somethings. In each case, they are in close contact with the daughter. I don’t recall hearing before of anyone in that situation and to have two friends in the same situation strikes me as utterly bizarre.
It is bizarre but I could see it happening to me. I keep in contact with both sons but only one responds. The few times I connect with the other son, he indicates all is well, no grievance with me and since he is doing the same disconnect with all relatives save his wife, I must take him at his word. So if he were to up and move, I don’t know that I or his father or his brother or any of the rest of us would know where he’d moved to.
Bizarre but short of driving 12 hours to where he lives and sitting on him to make him talk more, I can’t do much about it. So I reach out once a month with voice mail and also with email. If/when he’s ready, he’ll reciprocate. Then again he may be like his father who did much the same with his own family.
My Aunt lost contact with her son for many years. He was just a mess…dropped out of high school, dishonorably discharged from the Navy (went AWOL), drugs, alcohol, you name it. Final act was to steal money and jewelry from our grandparents and his mother’s car and disappear. None of us had any contact with him for a long time. One of our cousins died at age 15, and “John” didn’t know because nobody knew where he was to tell him.
He showed up years later, we all tried to make amends (with the exception of one cousin who can’t forgive him for not being there when her twin brother died, can’t say I blame her). He’d been living pretty rough, apparently, homeless at one point living on the streets. After not too long he was back to his old ways, using his mom for money, etc. Contact was dropped again for a few years, but just last month he showed up on Facebook. I accepted his friends request, but we haven’t had any communication besides that. Apparently he’s found religion and had his teeth fixed. For his sake I hope his turnaround is sincere, but it will take more to make me (or any of the family) trust him again.
The whole thing has been very hard on my Aunt. He was her only child, and she’s divorced, so now she’s basically alone except for extended family.
My mom and dad went through this. My oldest brother was estranged from them from many years. I think the only person who had contact with him during those years (and only periodically) was my oldest sister. Many years later, my brother made contact with Mom and Dad and was planning to come home for Thanksgiving, then Dad passed away in October. (This was nearly 20 years ago…which means my brother was about the age then that I am now. :eek:)
For a while, we thought my brother could live with my mom and provide the support she needed, but the issues that caused the initial estrangement were still there. 
I don’t think they ever really reconciled.
I didn’t grow up around my father, but I did run into him a few times a year. I’ve haven’t tried to make contact even though he did want to continue to keep in touch. Anyway, I haven’t seen him since like 2003 or something. I often wonder if he even has any idea that his daughter is on another continent.
… Mom?
(ok, I have a girlfriend but not a wife… otherwise that situation describes me perfectly. I don’t have a serious problem with my family per se but I prefer to keep my distance from them and my dad was the same way with his family)
I have been with my husband for three years now, and I have seen his sister twice, for a total of perhaps an hour. She did not attend the wedding. His brother dislikes their mother and only contacts her on major holidays, but his sister has taken steps to be unfindable. Last we heard, a year ago, she was in a green card marriage, unemployed because of her using, living with friends. She has asked us (ordered us) to NOT try and find her, so we just hope she is well and will eventually find her way to somewhere healthy.
Yeah my version of you is slightly different. When he needs help or emotional support, he calls in a heartbeat. When things are going well, I think for him it’s out of sight, out of mind.
I love him and I will continue to be there if he needs me but I’m not gonna sit around the phone or the laptop wringing my hands 
I am completely estranged from my son by his choice. He will not answer my phone calls nor will he respond to my emails. I don’t care to go into the reasons but the situation makes me very dangerous to myself if I allow myself to dwell on it.
Over the last few years, I’ve gradually pulled away from my family (well, parents and sister – I have not been in contact with extended family for many years). I no longer call my parents to chat, for example, and haven’t visited by my choice in a year and have no immediate plans to visit again.
The situation is very dysfunctional and far too long to go into here but this distance is the healthiest thing for me.
My ex-husband went 7 years without contacting his father and 3 or 4 without talking to his mother, by his choice (parents were split up). As far as I know, they made no attempt to find him during that time period. Rather predictably, he dropped back into their lives when it was advantegeous for him to do so.
My brother was off the radar for two years with no word. I finally got a snootful and called his employer, in tears, begging for information on his well-being. My husband has only met him twice in 20+ years; once just prior to my mom’s death and then 8 months later to bury her ashes. He’s fine. He loves us. I think there may be some mental illness issues that crop up from time to time, but we’ve gotten used to it. It is what it is.
This thread is quite pertinent for me as I think I’ve turned into one of those children as far as my father is concerned. It’s become apparent now after long periods of no contact (his choice, not mine) that he doesn’t inhabit the same world as the rest of us, and whatever I do will be the wrong thing in his eyes. My mother and I agreed yesterday that it’s probably best for me to pretend that he doesn’t exist and simply stop making any effort to be in contact with him, which ultimately means we’ll never speak again as he won’t make the effort himself. When it comes time for me to move house/change phone number I won’t be telling him, and I probably won’t even know when he dies.
One of my cousins graduated and signed up for the military maybe 40 years ago. He’s barely been heard from since - only rumours and a few christmas cards and a couple of phone calls to his mother. His father died around 15 years ago but he never even attended his funeral.
He’s in his early 60s now, and his mother is in her 90s but she’ll probably never see her son again.
Nobody really knows why (that I’m aware of, anyway).
My older daughter has decided to remove herself from my life, with no explanation, for the last few years. This was upsetting to me, still is painful to dwell on, in that I don’t understand what changed her from a happy 15-year-old to an angry and resentful 15-year-old overnight. We had no argument, no issues that I knew of, really nothing at all in comparison witih some of the teenage vs. parent conflicts I’ve seen in my friends’ families (and in her friends’ families)–I just got a note on my kitchen table one day and she’s been out of my life every since. My attempts to arrange to speak, or to go to family counseling (where I promised to listen and not speak unless requested) have been firmly rebuffed.
The weird part is she lives in my apartment building with her maternal grandmother, so I actually see her pretty often–she just does not acknowledge me, other than to grunt, make some slit-eyed eye contact, and jet.
My “brother” is like this. First off, he’s really just an old, old family friend that my family has unofficially adopted, so much so that he calls my parents “Mom” and “Dad,” we all refer to each other as siblings, been to each other’s weddings, and so on. He had a troubled childhood and a rough time of things growing up, and after he fell in with my brother (they were best friends in jr. high and high school), he came to view my parents as more of his family than his own.
He’s basically cut off all contact with his biological family, and none of them know where he is. His dad has contacted my mom in the years past to inquire about how he’s doing, so at least his dad knows how to get in contact with him should he need or want to, but I don’t think any other family member would know that much.
It’s pretty much entirely by my brother’s choice, too - he just has no desire to ever be in contact with his biological family again. But he does keep track of us, and vice versa.
I’m pretty sure my father has no idea as to the whereabouts of my sister and I. The last time I had contact with him was my freshman year in college – 8 years ago.
Since we both moved 3000 miles away from where we grew up, it would be pretty hard for him to track us down, even if he wanted to.
I think I’m one of these children ^^’ I’m very much an ‘out of sight, out of mind’ person, and generally don’t go too far out of my way to keep in touch with people, family OR friends. And now that I live in another country…well, you can guess. So I don’t talk to my parents much unless something is going on. It’s not that I don’t like them or anything, they’re great people, I’m just not the kind of person who wants or needs to know every little thing that’s going on in other peoples’ lives.
I make sure to call my parents for birthdays, holidays, etc. so we keep up. I just tend to keep to myself a lot (Hell, my husband complains about it, and with him I try not to).
Another one of the prodigal children checking in. Well, only half-prodigal - haven’t had any contact with my father (outside of my grandmother’s funeral in '99) for over 20 years. Neither has my sister. Lot of reasons for that which don’t need to be gone into, but just wanted to say that it’s not really as bizarre as the OP thinks - people don’t get along (or don’t want to) and it happens.
I think we all understand that, it’s the idea of someone disappearing off the map completely for reasons that aren’t apparent. If people have a huge falling out or are in fact not people who are compatible with each other (and this overrides the fact that they are parent and child) then that’s understandable to most of us, even if it might seem a little drastic. But for someone to just suddenly fall into a black hole for no discernible reason, despite the family trying to maintain contact and having not done anything wrong - that really defies understanding (again, for most of us).
To reiterate my own story, I’m now in this position because I’ve reached the conclusion that my father is possibly mildly mentally unbalanced. I can’t have a relationship with him that doesn’t involve me walking a very long distance uphill and basically agreeing with anything and everything he says, no matter how out there it is. I think that my decision not to have anything more to do with him is rational and understandable by most people, even if it’s slightly unpalatable. If I’d suddenly decided one day that I wasn’t going to speak to him ever again for no reason, that’s a little less so.
I pretty much have one point of contact for a family-emergency basis and that would be my brother.
I “disappeared” from my father’s life a few years ago. It was a drastic measure but one that needed to be taken nonetheless. In the event of his death, his sister/niece/nephew can contact my brother and/or mom and get the word to me.