Lost track of children

In My Humble Opinion
21

I’m relieved to see I’m not the only one who is like this. I rarely feel a need to keep in touch with people. It used to hurt my mother terribly that I didn’t stay in constant contact like her friends’ daughters did. I LOVED my mother but I did not feel the need to call her every day or even every week.

As a mother, I DO understand how she felt, though. MY children are like this as well and if I feel the need to call them, I do but I let them dictate the length of the call. I’m never surprised if they don’t answer an email. I do this myself.

Unfortunately, I lost a friend this past year over what she sees as my neglect. I suppose it is but that’s just how I am.

22

I wonder if you kids who cut yourselves off are fully aware of the pain some of your parents are probably feeling. When I was a teenager, both of my parents died, probably at the peak of my rebellious “I’m a grownup now, I-need-nobody” phase, so I do understand a little bit of my older daughter’s declaration of independence, and I’m a stubborn cuss, so I understand a lot about digging your heels into justifying a stupid decision you made long ago, but I know my girl to be a deeply compassionate person, too, which makes more puzzling her refusal to have even the barest relationship with me. I’m sure some of you have your own good, sound reasons for withdrawing from your parents’ lives (as I felt I did when I was a teenager) but have any of you just cut ties without a word of explanation and refused to make contact when your parent has asked to understand what your resentments are about? If you’ve tried discussing your issues for years at end, and felt you can’t get through, then giving up might be the wisest choice but have any of you just given up without trying very hard to make yourselves clear? I could live through this more easily if I understood my daughter’s complaint, whatever it is, than to wonder for years on end what she was so unhappy about. It would even be a comfort to me, in a strange way, if her complaint was something that I disagreed strongly with, and felt I couldn’t do anything about. “(All my dad likes to do is talk about old movies,” okay, I can see that; “My dad overcooks my steak,” okay, sometimes I did that; “My dad got a divorce from my sweet old mom,” yup, I sure did, etc.)

23

I wonder this too.

My older son doesn’t seem to lack compassion, and I am aware he does this to all relatives, including his father who lives in the same city he does. His father is far more willing to lay guilt trips on him to maintain contain, but I am very uncomfortable with that as a basis for a relationship.

It’s very hurtful and baffling that he can reach out to me if he needs emotional support or if (as was the case this summer) there are material gains for him (my husband and I gave away most of our furniture prior to moving to Boston, and included him and his wife on the offer). So he knows how to reach out but almost never does it.

This morning, my younger son–who is visiting his dad’s family–sent me a video of the older son getting his first gift from his wife. It’s a funny video and while I was glad to see it, I also cried. I miss my son and would love to have some contact on a regular basis–not asking for hour-long phone calls or anything like that. I’d be thrilled to get a short call once a month that said nothing more than he is alive and doing well, or an equally brief email saying the same thing.

I can almost guarantee you I will get a phone call from the younger son today, but will not hear from the older one. I will call him, and it will roll to voice mail and he will not return the call. Nor will he send even the most rudimentary acknowledgment of the gifts we sent to him. This guess is based on the last 18 months’ experience.

And to Pseudo’s point, I could take hearing that I completely failed him as a mother better than this weird limbo, because at least then I would (hopefully) have a chance to make amends. This situation is a lot harder to bear. This next year, I will do some withdrawing in the sense that I just cannot continue to put myself out there for continuous rejection. I’m there for him, but he will need to reach out.

24

I wonder if this country (the USA) has rather more people like this elsewhere, due to its unique role in world history as a target of global immigration?

Suppose this is a character trait that is at least partially genetically based, a disposition towards “drifting off” from one’s family background, a willingness to just up and leave familiar areas and people and head off to set up on one’s own with no regrets.

A whole lot of them would have ended up in USA in the 19th and 20th Centuries, eh, before the era of easy air travel and global instant communication?

25

I perhaps didn’t explain that these two sons have disappeared. When the father of one of them died, the family had no way to contact him. He has just disappeared without a trace. And similarly with the other; if one of the parents died, there would be no way to contact him either. This seems a little different from most of the stories posted here.

26

Actually, I’m pretty sure he doesn’t.

The last time I spoke to my father, it was because I was in the state where he lived, visiting another relative at the time.

I hadn’t seen him face to face in a few years, but had had intermittent conversations with him over the phone and sent Christmas/birthday cards back and forth a few times. I thought it would be nice to see him.

Somehow, this phone call turned into me pouring my heart out to him, telling him how hard it was living without him in my life and telling him the reasons I kept myself estranged from him. I told him some things had to change, but I wanted to try to make things better between us. When I was finished, there was a long pause. I thought our phone call had been cut off. Finally, I asked “What do you think of all that?”

Another long pause. And then: “I can’t listen to you when you’re yelling at me.”

That was it for me. I may somehow be misinterpreting that statement, even after all this time, but I don’t think so. To me, it meant: “I don’t want to make the effort with you.”

I wish my dad was a drunk or an abuser or a derelict of any kind… then I could have an actual reason for cutting off all contact with him. It’s hard to come to terms with the fact that some men simply weren’t cut out to be fathers. It’s not his fault, really. How do you know, before you even have kids, if you’re fit for the job?

But it’s not my fault either. I never did drugs or shoplifted or got pregnant in my teens or got into trouble. I wasn’t even particularly rebellious.

We just don’t fit into each others lives. So it’s better this way.

Luckily, I was surrounded by good men who were willing to be paternal figures to me. Many weren’t even related to me by blood. Comparing their kindness, love, and generosity to the complete disinterest I experienced from my “real” father has made me appreciate them all the more.

27

I guess you’ve tried as hard and as sincerely as you could have, and only then given up. I wish my daughter had put in one-tenth the effort in the past few years that you put into that phone conversation. It’s gotten to the point where being yelled at, even if that really was what she’d be doing, would feel better than being shut out. Sorry for your troubles.

It’s funny how this works both ways, too, with the “father figure” image you use: when I’m tempted to display my impatience with my students, who are roughly the same age as my daughter, I find extra patience by asking myself how I would treat my daughter if she’d deign to talk to me, and I sometimes find a whole lot of extra energy when I’d thought all of mine had been exhausted. So she’s doing some good, if only for my students whom she’s never met.

28

And in the interest of fairness – my older son called me of his own volition yesterday. We had a very pleasant conversation and then his wife asked to speak to me as well. That was a nice and unexpected surprise, I will say.