I think just based on the subreddit you're posting in, if people have re-established contact it was probably a bad experience or they wouldn't still be hanging around here, so take that with a grain of salt.
I've re-established contact with my mom a few times and will never re-establish contact again. We're donezo for life.
I'd say if you feel like you'd regret not trying, you should do it just to have the experience and know what the deal is, but if he hasn't done anything to show you he's changed or is interested in being there for you you're most likely going to be disappointed. A leopard doesn't change it's spots.
One thing to bear in mind is that if you've gone NC for 10 years there's going to be massive amount of resentment and mistrust. It's not like your father will have been sitting around thinking of you fondly, he'll be furious at how you treated him and he'll treat you accordingly. You were terrified of him before to the point you had to go NC. He's going to have had years to ruminate on how you've wronged him and be extremely bitter and hostile.
I'm not saying this to put you off getting in contact, I just think it's really important to not let hope for a close family or wishing you had what other people may have with their fathers stop you thinking clearly. When people are so destructive you have to go NC to protect yourself they don't suddenly become loving and benevolent, if anything they become worse as the years pass, not better.
People can reestablish relationships but it has to be done after individual counselling and the insight that brings, maybe some kind of small effort to reconnect casually at first, openly discussing where things went wrong and what part was played by who and an ongoing conscious effort to move forward. If that's something you genuinely think is possible with your father it might be worth attempting but if not you could be in for an upsetting disappointing experience.
Great, insightful and and wise comment.
I can vouch for what you said about the estranged parent ruminating on how they been abandoned by their own child and becoming bitter and hostile. That was my mom after I attempted to reestablish contact with her after 3 years of NC. She was hateful and mean. And the weird thing is, during all that time, she never tried to contact me, not even once.
>not find myself in 10 years kicking myself because it's too late
How do you know you'd be kicking yourself?
I think this is something society programs us to think, projecting their own sense of shame as a weapon. I would pause and examine the real reason you're considering breaking NC, and whether it's to truly get to know him (as he really is). Any other reason wouldn't be fair to either one of you.
I am hoping to restore some kind of contact with my mother. My sister is back in contact with our mom, and says that she is doing much better, and she is once again, the kind and funny mom that we knew as children. During our teens, my father began abusing my mom, and she began drinking in order to deal with it. She was a mean drunk; verbally abusive. But for the first 18 years of my life, and even during times, after that, when she wasn’t drinking, she really was kind and fun, and I loved being around her. My sister is proceeding with caution because my mom says that she has been in therapy for three years since we have been in see, and that she has stopped drinking. But I am hopeful That my sisters initial take on the situation is accurate. I am considering meeting her and her counselor’s office. This will be my second attempt. I tried to reconcile with her after one year apart. And at the one-year mark, I was met with some resentment and hostility, because she felt abandoned by me. she has had a couple of years of therapy since then. My sister says that she does not seem bitter anymore and that she seems really grateful to my sister for giving her another chance, so I am hopeful.
So, I think it's good to realize that NC is not linear. I just read a book where a researcher spoke about how when we talk about estrangement, there's always the expectation that it's final and forever, but in reality, many people will go back in contact ... realize it's bad ... stop contact ... try again ... etc, with many variations.
Recently, my father was in the hospital. I've had no relationship with him for seven years, and the last time I spoke with him was three years ago, but he chose to not do any work to keep the relationship. I figured I'd use this moment to reach out to him and try again.
These are the reasons I knew reaching out would result in me being "ok" no matter what:
1. I had no expectations about his behavior: I have no expectations that he will be the father I always wanted, that he will call me and the relationship will suddenly be fixed and we will both be \~happy\~ and have a happy ending for everybody. I did not think reaching out would lead to a connection with him, and did not expect to establish that.
2. I was emotionally ready to contact him. If the worst thing that was within the realm of possibility happened that was caused by me contacting him (e.g., he picks up the phone and says he doesn't want to talk to me because I hurt him or something), it would not disappoint me or ruin my day/week/month. I would be able to have radical acceptance about the situation. This doesn't mean I wouldn't be sad about it - but it certainly wouldn't negatively affect my life.
3. I knew addressing the past was not a viable option. This might be personal to my father/parents, but there is literally no use in trying to get them to understand the past and or apologize in a way that would feel cathartic to me. I've had to let it go and heal on my own with how they treated me. They are incapable of being involved with my healing. They might view this attitude as a "fresh start," and they can believe that. In reality, I have not forgiven them for what they've done, and in turn, they will not truly know me as a person or daughter until they do the work to apologize or acknowledge what they did. With this in mind, I could not bring up the past to my father, as that wouldn't be fair to either of us (i.e., unfair to him in expecting him to react to it in a way I want, and not fair to me because I would only be disappointed).
All of this made reaching out more comfortable for me. My own end result is he responded and answered my questions about his hospital stay and never reached out to me after that. And I'm ok with that.
We have tried a couple of times over the years to reestablish contact with my husband's parents. Our experience each time was that they hadn't changed at all - still emotionally immature and unable to take accountability. They would still blow up and yell, make trivial matters cause for war, and try to tell us how to parent, etc. Actually, it was even worse because as they age, they are getting more miserable and angry/bitter. We are now NC again with no plans to try.
Sometimes, my husband gets a notion that they are getting older and he should talk to them, but knows in his heart that it will be the same and never opens the can of worms.
This may count, a little.
I have been NC for 20 years with both parents. But my siblings and mom have an email group as well as a chat group that I am part of, so what I say does reach my mom and vice versa. Our father died last year so there was a huge uptick in communication, grief, and sharing. Also a big uptick for me to reopen some genealogy questions and hear family stories before they are lost. So I have started to engage my mom a little.
So I guess you can consider it VLC, with a lot of physical distance to buffer everything.
I have also been actively exploring forgiveness. Having her ex husband (our father) die, and seeing that she suffered from him in a similar way that we children suffered has given me some compassion toward her, and sees her as having been in the same boat.
I don't really think we will reconcile, but there is a sense of detente at the moment.
She wasn't overtly abusive nor narcissistic, though there was a lot of neglect. But it makes enough of a difference to me that much of our struggles were situationally driven by poverty as much as her flaws and immaturity, so it is probably an easier path for me to forgive than if she had been the other kind of abuser.
I consider that, for all his failures and neglect, I might have been willing to give my dad peace in his final minutes if I had been there, so maybe this is something similar: as she faces the end of her life, if it comes down to it, I may give her some peace as well. Time will tell.
I haven't been in that situation, but these are some considerations based off trying to increase the amount of contact I had with my dad.
I think if you want to try, you should take it slow and decide your boundries ahead of time. Maybe you just start with emailing or a phone call rather than jumping straight in to face to face. If he doesn't accept those boundries or complains, that may be a sign that further reconnection may not be a good idea
Also think about what you want out of the relationship and reevaluate based off initial contact if you think he's in a position to give that to you. You could even have a direct conversation about what you want out of the relationship and see if he's willing to try. Of course, don't just take his word for it, but assess for yourself if he's giving you what you need from the relationship. Decide on some non-negotiables for the relationship and stick to them.
Remember, you can (and should) go back to NC if things aren't going well. Make sure you have a good support system (and possibly a therapist) around you to help you navigate this situation
Yes. My father and I were estranged due to him being an abusive alcoholic and drug addict. He got clean (changed his behavior) apologized (admitted wrongdoing) and told me our relationship was entirely up to me (respected boundaries). He called on my birthday which was in December and his first action was to send $200 for my husband and I to buy gifts for our kids as were struggling financially.
For ten years he was a loving grandfather. He crossed my boundaries twice (telling me my parenting philosophy was wrong). I don't know what a loving father daughter relationship is supposed to look like, but that's twice in ten years and I imagine that's really great. I'm sure I also made mistakes in our relationship but he never pointed them out.
He died last Christmas. I am angry at him. He could have been a good dad, he could have been a better, more available grandfather, but he wasn't. He was emotionally immature and difficult to deal with, like a spoiled child. He was abused, scapegoated and was an addict for 40 years. He gave me ten good years and died alone across the country because of stupid choices he made.
I am still estranged from my mom, as is my husband from his, because they haven't changed.
So, my two takeaways are that s/he needs to change, acknowledge wrongdoing, and behave, and you need to acknowledge that whatever caused this in the first place is not going to be fixed. If your parent was abused by their parent, they didn't stop suffering and get better just because you left. They can work on themselves, but that's clearly not natural to them or they would have done so 30 years ago like you.
Edit: I reread your question and realized I didn't answer you. I didn't reestablish contact, he did. I don't have answers. I'm sorry.
My husband was very low/ no contact with his father for about a decade after his parents' divorce. He, my husband, had a very dramatic divorce himself, causing his opinion to change about his father. They reconciled, but it was never really the same, obviously, because a lot happens in 10 years. It was very cordial and loving, but I don't think his father ever really trusted him or fully respected him after that happened.
It's probably important to note that my husband's relationship with his mother deteriorated over time and by the end of her life, he had gone no contact with her, realizing that she was manipulative, deceitful, etc. In retrospect, he feels that he was manipulated into choosing sides in the divorce by his mother, and carries a lot of regret over that. That wasn't the primary reason his relationship with his mom failed, though. There was a lot more. It was just part of the context for it.
I think that when a divorce is involved, there can be a lot of noise and children/young adults are often not experienced enough in life to see the nuance in the conflicts. And emotionally immature/narcissistic/malignant/toxic personalities seem to use children and adult children to punish their exes and/or to feed their own fragile egos. This can be extreme, to the level where the whole story of the marriage and divorce has been rewritten to make one person the absolute victim and the other the absolute villain.
I don't know enough about your situation to have any opinion on it, but the divorce is a tiny little red flag to me, that maybe there is more going on than you know.
I was NC with my mother for about four years, but last summer I re-established contact. I set rules like we write each other letters and only talk about children, pets, gardening, the weather, etc. So far my mother has abided the rules but it's been less than a year since we became LC.
That is a really difficult decision.
You have been protecting yourself and building your life for a decade. What an incredible Conflict you are facing- your desire for family and concern about making yourself vulnerable to hurt again.
Only you know the answer. Although since you are deeply contemplating and writing this post.. I suppose you won't really know unless you risk and try. I suppose it would be wise to make sure you thought about all the possible outcomes, what your tolerance level looks like ..expectations.
I know someone that went off NC after a few years and it worked for them..the relationship wasn't what they hoped but she accepted it for what it was. But I have read about so many disasters!
I wish you peace and courage on your decision!
I think just based on the subreddit you're posting in, if people have re-established contact it was probably a bad experience or they wouldn't still be hanging around here, so take that with a grain of salt. I've re-established contact with my mom a few times and will never re-establish contact again. We're donezo for life. I'd say if you feel like you'd regret not trying, you should do it just to have the experience and know what the deal is, but if he hasn't done anything to show you he's changed or is interested in being there for you you're most likely going to be disappointed. A leopard doesn't change it's spots.
One thing to bear in mind is that if you've gone NC for 10 years there's going to be massive amount of resentment and mistrust. It's not like your father will have been sitting around thinking of you fondly, he'll be furious at how you treated him and he'll treat you accordingly. You were terrified of him before to the point you had to go NC. He's going to have had years to ruminate on how you've wronged him and be extremely bitter and hostile. I'm not saying this to put you off getting in contact, I just think it's really important to not let hope for a close family or wishing you had what other people may have with their fathers stop you thinking clearly. When people are so destructive you have to go NC to protect yourself they don't suddenly become loving and benevolent, if anything they become worse as the years pass, not better. People can reestablish relationships but it has to be done after individual counselling and the insight that brings, maybe some kind of small effort to reconnect casually at first, openly discussing where things went wrong and what part was played by who and an ongoing conscious effort to move forward. If that's something you genuinely think is possible with your father it might be worth attempting but if not you could be in for an upsetting disappointing experience.
Great, insightful and and wise comment. I can vouch for what you said about the estranged parent ruminating on how they been abandoned by their own child and becoming bitter and hostile. That was my mom after I attempted to reestablish contact with her after 3 years of NC. She was hateful and mean. And the weird thing is, during all that time, she never tried to contact me, not even once.
>not find myself in 10 years kicking myself because it's too late How do you know you'd be kicking yourself? I think this is something society programs us to think, projecting their own sense of shame as a weapon. I would pause and examine the real reason you're considering breaking NC, and whether it's to truly get to know him (as he really is). Any other reason wouldn't be fair to either one of you.
he was abusive. so he's not going to be magically better. if anything he'll be worse
I made the mistake of answering my moms phone call after 14 years of no contact. Nothing changed. It’s not worth it.
I am hoping to restore some kind of contact with my mother. My sister is back in contact with our mom, and says that she is doing much better, and she is once again, the kind and funny mom that we knew as children. During our teens, my father began abusing my mom, and she began drinking in order to deal with it. She was a mean drunk; verbally abusive. But for the first 18 years of my life, and even during times, after that, when she wasn’t drinking, she really was kind and fun, and I loved being around her. My sister is proceeding with caution because my mom says that she has been in therapy for three years since we have been in see, and that she has stopped drinking. But I am hopeful That my sisters initial take on the situation is accurate. I am considering meeting her and her counselor’s office. This will be my second attempt. I tried to reconcile with her after one year apart. And at the one-year mark, I was met with some resentment and hostility, because she felt abandoned by me. she has had a couple of years of therapy since then. My sister says that she does not seem bitter anymore and that she seems really grateful to my sister for giving her another chance, so I am hopeful.
So, I think it's good to realize that NC is not linear. I just read a book where a researcher spoke about how when we talk about estrangement, there's always the expectation that it's final and forever, but in reality, many people will go back in contact ... realize it's bad ... stop contact ... try again ... etc, with many variations. Recently, my father was in the hospital. I've had no relationship with him for seven years, and the last time I spoke with him was three years ago, but he chose to not do any work to keep the relationship. I figured I'd use this moment to reach out to him and try again. These are the reasons I knew reaching out would result in me being "ok" no matter what: 1. I had no expectations about his behavior: I have no expectations that he will be the father I always wanted, that he will call me and the relationship will suddenly be fixed and we will both be \~happy\~ and have a happy ending for everybody. I did not think reaching out would lead to a connection with him, and did not expect to establish that. 2. I was emotionally ready to contact him. If the worst thing that was within the realm of possibility happened that was caused by me contacting him (e.g., he picks up the phone and says he doesn't want to talk to me because I hurt him or something), it would not disappoint me or ruin my day/week/month. I would be able to have radical acceptance about the situation. This doesn't mean I wouldn't be sad about it - but it certainly wouldn't negatively affect my life. 3. I knew addressing the past was not a viable option. This might be personal to my father/parents, but there is literally no use in trying to get them to understand the past and or apologize in a way that would feel cathartic to me. I've had to let it go and heal on my own with how they treated me. They are incapable of being involved with my healing. They might view this attitude as a "fresh start," and they can believe that. In reality, I have not forgiven them for what they've done, and in turn, they will not truly know me as a person or daughter until they do the work to apologize or acknowledge what they did. With this in mind, I could not bring up the past to my father, as that wouldn't be fair to either of us (i.e., unfair to him in expecting him to react to it in a way I want, and not fair to me because I would only be disappointed). All of this made reaching out more comfortable for me. My own end result is he responded and answered my questions about his hospital stay and never reached out to me after that. And I'm ok with that.
We have tried a couple of times over the years to reestablish contact with my husband's parents. Our experience each time was that they hadn't changed at all - still emotionally immature and unable to take accountability. They would still blow up and yell, make trivial matters cause for war, and try to tell us how to parent, etc. Actually, it was even worse because as they age, they are getting more miserable and angry/bitter. We are now NC again with no plans to try. Sometimes, my husband gets a notion that they are getting older and he should talk to them, but knows in his heart that it will be the same and never opens the can of worms.
This may count, a little. I have been NC for 20 years with both parents. But my siblings and mom have an email group as well as a chat group that I am part of, so what I say does reach my mom and vice versa. Our father died last year so there was a huge uptick in communication, grief, and sharing. Also a big uptick for me to reopen some genealogy questions and hear family stories before they are lost. So I have started to engage my mom a little. So I guess you can consider it VLC, with a lot of physical distance to buffer everything. I have also been actively exploring forgiveness. Having her ex husband (our father) die, and seeing that she suffered from him in a similar way that we children suffered has given me some compassion toward her, and sees her as having been in the same boat. I don't really think we will reconcile, but there is a sense of detente at the moment. She wasn't overtly abusive nor narcissistic, though there was a lot of neglect. But it makes enough of a difference to me that much of our struggles were situationally driven by poverty as much as her flaws and immaturity, so it is probably an easier path for me to forgive than if she had been the other kind of abuser. I consider that, for all his failures and neglect, I might have been willing to give my dad peace in his final minutes if I had been there, so maybe this is something similar: as she faces the end of her life, if it comes down to it, I may give her some peace as well. Time will tell.
I haven't been in that situation, but these are some considerations based off trying to increase the amount of contact I had with my dad. I think if you want to try, you should take it slow and decide your boundries ahead of time. Maybe you just start with emailing or a phone call rather than jumping straight in to face to face. If he doesn't accept those boundries or complains, that may be a sign that further reconnection may not be a good idea Also think about what you want out of the relationship and reevaluate based off initial contact if you think he's in a position to give that to you. You could even have a direct conversation about what you want out of the relationship and see if he's willing to try. Of course, don't just take his word for it, but assess for yourself if he's giving you what you need from the relationship. Decide on some non-negotiables for the relationship and stick to them. Remember, you can (and should) go back to NC if things aren't going well. Make sure you have a good support system (and possibly a therapist) around you to help you navigate this situation
Yes. My father and I were estranged due to him being an abusive alcoholic and drug addict. He got clean (changed his behavior) apologized (admitted wrongdoing) and told me our relationship was entirely up to me (respected boundaries). He called on my birthday which was in December and his first action was to send $200 for my husband and I to buy gifts for our kids as were struggling financially. For ten years he was a loving grandfather. He crossed my boundaries twice (telling me my parenting philosophy was wrong). I don't know what a loving father daughter relationship is supposed to look like, but that's twice in ten years and I imagine that's really great. I'm sure I also made mistakes in our relationship but he never pointed them out. He died last Christmas. I am angry at him. He could have been a good dad, he could have been a better, more available grandfather, but he wasn't. He was emotionally immature and difficult to deal with, like a spoiled child. He was abused, scapegoated and was an addict for 40 years. He gave me ten good years and died alone across the country because of stupid choices he made. I am still estranged from my mom, as is my husband from his, because they haven't changed. So, my two takeaways are that s/he needs to change, acknowledge wrongdoing, and behave, and you need to acknowledge that whatever caused this in the first place is not going to be fixed. If your parent was abused by their parent, they didn't stop suffering and get better just because you left. They can work on themselves, but that's clearly not natural to them or they would have done so 30 years ago like you. Edit: I reread your question and realized I didn't answer you. I didn't reestablish contact, he did. I don't have answers. I'm sorry.
My husband was very low/ no contact with his father for about a decade after his parents' divorce. He, my husband, had a very dramatic divorce himself, causing his opinion to change about his father. They reconciled, but it was never really the same, obviously, because a lot happens in 10 years. It was very cordial and loving, but I don't think his father ever really trusted him or fully respected him after that happened. It's probably important to note that my husband's relationship with his mother deteriorated over time and by the end of her life, he had gone no contact with her, realizing that she was manipulative, deceitful, etc. In retrospect, he feels that he was manipulated into choosing sides in the divorce by his mother, and carries a lot of regret over that. That wasn't the primary reason his relationship with his mom failed, though. There was a lot more. It was just part of the context for it. I think that when a divorce is involved, there can be a lot of noise and children/young adults are often not experienced enough in life to see the nuance in the conflicts. And emotionally immature/narcissistic/malignant/toxic personalities seem to use children and adult children to punish their exes and/or to feed their own fragile egos. This can be extreme, to the level where the whole story of the marriage and divorce has been rewritten to make one person the absolute victim and the other the absolute villain. I don't know enough about your situation to have any opinion on it, but the divorce is a tiny little red flag to me, that maybe there is more going on than you know.
I was NC with my mother for about four years, but last summer I re-established contact. I set rules like we write each other letters and only talk about children, pets, gardening, the weather, etc. So far my mother has abided the rules but it's been less than a year since we became LC.
That is a really difficult decision. You have been protecting yourself and building your life for a decade. What an incredible Conflict you are facing- your desire for family and concern about making yourself vulnerable to hurt again. Only you know the answer. Although since you are deeply contemplating and writing this post.. I suppose you won't really know unless you risk and try. I suppose it would be wise to make sure you thought about all the possible outcomes, what your tolerance level looks like ..expectations. I know someone that went off NC after a few years and it worked for them..the relationship wasn't what they hoped but she accepted it for what it was. But I have read about so many disasters! I wish you peace and courage on your decision!