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Son estranged due to controlling spouse
My son & I were always very close. I have two children, he’s the older one. The one that made me a mother & opened up my world to loving unconditionally and so deeply that at times I was completely awe struck. We remained close until he met a particular woman, married her & became completely enmeshed with her family. I’m leaving a lot out here but bottom line, he’s completely controlled by her and her mother. He lives with her parents, it’s very dysfunctional. If you told me this is the person he’d choose, I would have said you’re crazy, it would never happen. It did happen & now they have a daughter, she’s 3.
I am not allowed over their house, my son has cut me out of his life and he’s also estranged from his sister. His life is his wife’s family & he’s turned into a person that gaslight’s, blames my daughter & I for everything under the sun and plays the victim all while jumping through hoops of fire for his wife and her family. I’ve tried ever which way to approach this. I sought therapy for healthy guidance and nothing changes. I miss the person I used to know as my son. Does anyone have any experience/thoughts about how to remain in a healthy frame of mind as I navigate through life without my son or granddaughter (and they just live 10 minutes down the road from me)
Thank you 🙏
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I think you're offering excellent and wise advice! Basically as someone told me yesterday, look at the end goal of your relationships. Do you want essentially to be close or connected to the person? Then keep focused on that! What color hair they have, job they choose, friends they keep, bad habits they have -- Is focusing on any of those going to bring or keep you closer to the person you care about? Is it going to strengthen your relationship? If not, it's probably not that necessary or important.
Ya have to feel it, I guess.
For me, it is a very deep wound that will be with me always. That is not b/c I need to be up in his business all the time.
I’d love to see, w/o butting in, what he’s like as a dad (they alienated me a month after their birth of my 1st grandchild). Laugh with them, do stuff for them.
And then when something like alienation happens you may hear some pretty callous stuff from them; things that can’t be unsaid, and you take inventory of what’s said and you own what is yours. Then you scratch your head and you wonder if you and that child were ever close?! I perceive it one way and he clearly sees it another, and THAT is the knife in MY heart.
Wife and mother have different roles in a man’s life. So why does it have to be number one or two or three? In my view ( learned from my mother) kids should be number one because they need you the most. My mom treated my SIL well. She even told us to take care of her. In her words “she left her country and her family to marry your brother. Be nice to her.” Thirty years later, she becomes our youngest sister. When my mon had a stroke and became bed ridden, she would come to help take care of mom. Life is too short to waste time on ugly stuff.
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