And in a larger sense, that middle phase is what I’m wondering about here. I get it if the child says, “You clueless dolt! You really don’t understand, or you pretend not to remember, that you beat me bloody with a belt for minor infractions every day of my life? i can show you the scars, here and here and here. I call bullshit. You have the balls to deny it?” and then estranging themselves. I wonder about the ones who just ghost, and the parents are left saying “What did I do?” Those are the people I’ve heard from.
Yeah, this is the way. Both of my parents were beaten from time to time as kids, including to the point of swollen welts and bruising. Not especially frequently and not because my grandparents were particular assholes, so probably nothing like you endured. No, it’s just because they were perceived to have misbehaved and this is what was done back then in the 1950’s-early 1960’s in semi-rural America. Even that was enough for them to have a lot of resentment issues with their parents that lingered, though never to the point of killing the relationships altogether.
They both made sure they were on the same page on corporal punishment before I was born. I reaped the benefit of that thoughtfulness.
When you’ve had a lifetime of their obfuscation, gaslighting, and much, much more. When you’ve had enough, you just know. More words, more contact, it’s pointless, it’s unnecessary.
This is done for me.
I’m moving on.
From this moment they are no longer in my world.
Sometimes denial has nothing to do with it. “I was treated the exact same way and look how well I turned out! In my mind you are not being abused, so I have no reason to change and absolutely nothing to apologize for.”
If you only hear one side of a story, the parent’s, and the parents say they did nothing wrong, then in far too many cases you have actually heard nothing to base a decision on.
My parents were super. I have no complaints, and I was close to both of them until they died.
But you know, if they had beaten me bloody with a belt for minor infractions, there’s absolutely no way I would want to confront them about that. What possible upside would there be for me? I would want to quietly slink away and never see them again.
There’s a pretty strong implication in your thread, repeated here, that you think I (and other people in my kind of situation) I owe the abusive parent some sort of explanation.
I didn’t, and don’t, give a shit about my father’s thoughts or feelings. I owed him, and continue to owe him, absolutely jack.
So he’s confused, or angry, or perplexed, or whatever. Why should I give the tiniest fraction of a fuck?
Don’t forget “trashed their dad and his family at every opportunity, and when the kids got his side of the story, found out she was lying through her teeth the whole time.”
Oh, we knew we were in big trouble when Dad took his belt off, and in REALLY big trouble when he used it to hit the floor. I really think that made a bigger impression on us than if he had actually hit us, which our mother never passed up a chance to do.
This is the kind of conversation that happens in my family:
Mom: I can’t believe you didn’t go to [cousin’s] wedding. [Note: my sister has a chronic illness and was at the time physically incapable of flying halfway across the country.] You never go to family events. I think it’s because you don’t care about family! You never do nice things for your own mother.
Sister: Ugh!! I hate when you say things like this! I’m leaving! stomps off
Mom: What did I do?
Mom, to others (including me!): I don’t understand my daughter. We were just having a nice conversation about her cousin’s wedding and suddenly she stomps off in a huff! She’s so sensitive!
I’m not going to make you all read about my nightmare childhood but my parents and step parents had no fucking business having children. Selfish, mentally abusive and sometimes physically abusive assholes. Two of my step sibs died young as a result of mental issues that were their fault. All of my steps had fucked up other sides too. We are all hurting. I didn’t cut them off but I often fantasize that I did. I would have been well within my rights to do so and they would have claimed to by mystified as to the reason. I didn’t give a shit when Dad died.
They are why I never wanted kids. It would have been way more time with them around and I didn’t want to leave California. That said, I have two nephews and five nieces and without exception they are great people and are thriving.
I haven’t talked to my own mother for 10 years and apparently she has no interest in talking to me either. She was a massive alcoholic for all her life and heavily abusive because of it, and I suspect I was an “accident” and she personally blamed me for ending her partying hard drinking lifestyle. She basically just got up and abandoned the entire family 10 years ago out of nowhere and hasn’t contacted any of her direct children since.
Literally the last conversation I ever had with my mother was us trying to get her help for her alcoholism and her responding “I want to drink until I drown”
I cut off contact with my father about 38 years ago and we never spoke to each other again. I never really gave a reason but the simple version is that we just didn’t like each other. I think he wanted a clone of himself and I was more or less the exact opposite of that. In the 17 years I lived in his house we barely had a conversation with each other. I cut off my mother and sister about 8 years later for similar reasons but also because I arrived at the conclusion that I would be happier to not have contact with them, and to not be reminded of the first 17 years of my life. I’m still happy with those decisions.
I guess this is one answer to my question: you’re so pissed off at your parents that you’d rather they be confused or perplexed or wondering what they did wrong than you would be satisfied by telling them off. That would explain what’s going on with my friends, (nice gentle supportive people who gave their kids everything they could possibly want, as far as I could tell by observing them closely and on a regular basis for years) who offered to pay a shrink or cop or some other authority to monitor a session or two with them and their grown children so the children could vent and so that my friends could understand what’s going in the children’s mind when they say they “feel unsafe” with the parents. This is a form of payback, maybe? “You’re puzzled? Great! I hope you choke on your puzzlement!”
That’s not at all what I said and I do not appreciate my position being reworded and misrepresented.
Sorry. I didn’t mean to misrepresent what you wrote. If you don’t mind, could you clarify the sharp difference between what you wrote and how i paraphrased you? Thanks. And again my apologies.
You keep talking about material goods. And then mention that the kids feel unsafe around their parents.
- i don’t think being showered with material goods is highly correlated with how close children feel to their parents.
- the kids say they feel unsafe. Isn’t that enough of a reason for them to stay away? I avoid people who make me feel unsafe, and i don’t give them a roadmap to me. I just stay away. (And there have been people in my life who made me feel unsafe. I assure you, there’s no fucking way i would have agreed to hang out with them to see a therapist, or anything else.)
I mean, the kids say they feel unsafe. That’s the reason. That sounds like a completely adequate reason and a full explanation. 
In personal experiences, I have found this often to be the cause, or at least a supporting one, of many family estrangements. The spouse slowly but insidiously turns the son/daughter against their family, isolating them, planting seeds of resentment and nurturing them. It is very, very difficult to overcome a controlling and abusive spouse and maintain a healthy relationship with someone in the clutches of that type of domination.
What you listed is a bunch of money:
How much money does love cost? And was there a contract signed in advance–“I’m buying this house, and with it I’m buying your filial love”? Was it notarized?
There’s a pretty big disconnect here. You seem to be looking for an explanation for how the kids are justified in their actions. But they don’t need to be. An adult child does not owe love to their parents, nor do they owe them a continued relationship. If that relationship with their parents makes their lives better, it should continue; but if it makes their lives worse, why on earth should they feel bound to it?
I said it before, but it bears repeating: regard these events like a divorce. How much are going to insert yourself as an arbiter into a marital relationship that ends in divorce? Hopefully not at all. Same thing applies here: all that outsiders need to know is that the relationship wasn’t working for one of the parties and that party decided to end it.
Edit: this is not to say that the adult children are always angels. Sometimes they’re involved in a cult, sometimes they’re suffering from addiction diseases that screw up their ability to maintain relationships, sometimes they have a fucked up romantic relationship that leads to cutting off other ties. There can be a lot of things going on. But that’s true in any situation where a person ends a relationship. Removing the idea of “filial duty” from it will make it much clearer what’s going on, and in most cases, it’s nobody else’s business.
I urge you to read the links I and others have posted. This is exactly what the parents do, and I suspect exactly what your friends who are estranged from their children are doing.
Also, if it’s not one child, but multiple children who say they feel unsafe around their parents, that’s probably due to something the parents did, and not the result of a manipulative spouse. Honestly, if you want to stay friends with these people, you are perhaps better off not knowing why they made multiple children feel unsafe around them.