Estrangement Grief: Anyone else going through this?

My husband died in an accident 2 years ago. My 33 year old son and girlfriend moved back to the area 5 months later. At first it was wonderful but slowly we could no longer communicate or even be together without anger and defensiveness. It WAS horrible. I can honestly say that as dark as my grief had gone losing my beloved husband, this took me lower than i imagined possible. Therapist explained that this is very common due to family "dynamics" once an integral piece of the family is removed. But that didnt make it easier. My daughter, 36 and living 2 hours away, begged him to go to counseling with me but he refused so i spent many a session with my grief therapist talking about my son. It is slowly getting more civil but the bitterness and pain of all the awful things WE said to each other is hard to forget. i am trying to lower my expectations for our relationship and yes, I moved to the town next door so we were not so "entangled". I really feel for you---I can only imagine if it had been my daughter that had died and then how i might feel. May i ask, do you have the support of their father? So often I just wailed to my dead husband because i had no one to help me through it. SO complex and awful. You do your best to get through the grief that brought you there and then THIS on top of it??? I am SO SORRY. Please try to find some counseling and see if he will go too. My therapist helped me to respond vs react to so much of the ugliness that my son and his GF threw at me. Also just having someone non judgemental to listen to my story helped immensely. One note, something my therapist helped me to see and to remember was that raising our son was always difficult--beginning at 13. His older sister was always easy. I guess it just helped having that pointed out somehow.

@jazzme, it sounds like both you and your younger son I hurting. I sending a gentle embrace to hold your hurt, if only for a minute. Was your relationship closer before the tragic loss of your oldest son?

I totally understand. My daughter, 48, blames me for everything. Her father and I divorced when she was in 1st grade. According to her I was never there like before. Yes, I was working a full time job that required overtime at times in the year. It was my fault that her father didn't show up t pick her up for visitation. And on and on. I am terrible because her father would tell her he didn't pick her up because of me....what he left out is that I had to fight with him for child support, medical, etc. She needed orthodontic braces and the court ordered him to pay for them. He wouldn't and didn't leaving bill collectors to come after me. I had to take him to court for that and the Judge said that since I had paid the portion owned IT WAS PAID and he owned me nothing!! I got him to pay for the braces but only after I had my Mother call his sister about what was going on. Then he agreed but only if a certain dentist in his area (55 miles away) did the work. Fortunately my parents were retired and could drive her up there, which he never expected.

The coup foray came when he told her that I supposedly had a lot of money for her college (I did not). He told her that what child support he did pay me was to be put away for her college (???) She took me to court over this. She could prove nothing. There was an account I had that I had put birthday money, gift money etc. in for her over the years and it came to around $2,500. This I transferred to her when she turned 18. That turned out to be a stupid thing for me to do because she claimed she never got it and it was supposed to be a lot more than that.

In flaming her lawsuit against me for $$ she also claimed to be afraid of me. Always insisted that she was afraid to be around me, I had to leave before she would leave the courthouse (dramatics) Claimed I threw her out of house the summer between her junior and senior year at college. That was bunk.

What happened is that I, and my hubby) came home to find her and her boyfriend hunka chunkaing in her bedroom. I told her that I did not approve of that. She told me that she could do what she wanted where she wanted. My response was that as long as she was living with me and I was paying her bills, she couldn't do that. Her response was that she was moving out. Told her she didn't have to move, but no huka chunka-ing in my house....they could get a motel etc. She moved.

To this day we are estranged. I will tell you I was furious and very hurt by what she pulled on me.

Oh, she never contacted me but my parents would try to patch things up. After the hell she put me through and the lies she said I had a very hard time forgiving her to myself.

About 2 years ago I contacted her and got a response saying that I was wrong because, as my daughter, she deserved unconditional love regardless of what she did/does. She than went on to accuse me of things I did to her that NEVER happened. Told me that beause I was so evil she doesn't want her son, age 9, anywhere around me. yadda, yadda, yadda. After 2 years of sending her birthday cards, Christmas cards etc. and never hearing back or only getting very curt, short reponses I have decided THE HELL WITH IT. Life is too short.

One thing I did find out from My Mother before she died is that my daughter discovered that her Father paid for his girlfriend's daughter to go to college and would never help her out. Inspite of this she idolized him.

Estrangement is a profound pain that can not be understood unless you have gone through it personally.
My husband and I have become estranged from our first born, a son who is now 53. He became embittered while in a relationship with an emasculating, domineering, narcissistic woman. Neither of his sisters or we were able to say anything that didn't lead him into an explosive tirade. Unkown to him was her unfaithfulness. She was indeed a very clever actress. They unfortunately married, only to have her demand a divorce less than 9 months later. Our son was devastated, and left totally penniless by her having drained all accounts before making her calculated exit. We were all affected. His sisters and we gave him all our support, both financial and emotional. His father and I paid for the legal fees so he could be fairly represented against her unfounded lies and gaslighting. The trial was horrid, but the judge ruled against her greedy demands. She wanted outrageous alimony, the house and furnishings, jewelry, and more -- such a calculated plan. She got nothing --absolutamente NADA, just the decree that the marriage no longer was legal. We were all relieved but it made her more psychologically unstable, and continued making his life and ours a pure hell. He then met someone who is so into beliefs of conspiracy theories, anti vaccinations, and other factors that affected him intensely, so much so that we just couldn't fathom his total change from the person that we had known. Then we were all separated during the pandemic, making things worse. There's more, but this is all I'm willing to share. Fast forward to today and it's been 5 years since we've had him in family events and holidays. We grieve. We mourn. We miss him painfully so. We find it difficult to accept that he has chosen to no longer be a member of our small but close family unit. I had an emotional and psychological collapse into a chasm of immense depression. Have not yet been able to deal with all the tenacious grips of major depressive disorder. Therapy has helped but only to a minute degree. I still have muscle memories of the last time we hugged, the kisses on my forehead, and his words "I love you, mom". We have had to move on, for the sake of our other two children and their families, and for our marriage of five decades. It's an arduous struggle. Prayer helps, but I still yearn and ache to have our firstborn back in our lives. I never thought that our "golden years" would be spent this way.
A therapeutic avenue for me has been my writing, and I've written essays on this specific journey. As a memoirist, I am capturing in print everything that has transpired. I also attend webinars led by professionals in the field of psychology on the topics related to the twelve letters that comprise the nebulous word "estrangement".
I value having come upon this support group here on Mayo Connect. May those who have connected and shared their pain be able to channel release from it. God bless you all.🙏🏽

I know your pain. My middle son and his wife have decided to not be a part of lives. It initially happened in 2020 when they were living in our house during Covid. All of the sudden they were very upset with us over this and that. When they addressed these issues with us I did not validate their feelings. In the moment I was taken aback and was only one week out of a hysterectomy. So now it has been over 3 years. Not to disregard those who have lost a loved one to death, but I do feel that with this loss of my son I am going through the stages of grief. I have at times had thoughts of suicide which quickly leave but the pain is intense. I am seeing professionals. The rejection from your child….there are no words.

Thank you for sharing. It is so nice to know you aren’t alone.

We are also faced with something similar with our only son. We still see them regularly, but so many topics are off the table that it feels very superficial.
I would say our son and his wife were radicalized by the Internet. They really believe conspiracy theories, and things that seem crazy to us. We worry for our three grandchildren. They are loving parents, but keep the children very isolated from the outside world because they have decided the world is so evil.
I have also been ill with long Covid for two years, and my son doesn’t recognize it as legitimate. I know part of my illness is the destruction of my family.
Like a previous poster, I could NEVER have imagined what has happened to my formerly close, happy family.
I pray for things to change, and for them to come to their senses, but I fear it will never happen.

My husband and I are in our mid 70s and upon the catastrophic buying of our apartment and the building, it sparked a relapse in our older daughter’s clinical depression.She is now estranged and blames us for things that may and definitely did not happen in her younger years due to her dx.I’m willing to share more if there are similar like problems among groups or individuals in this space of many different groups.

I’m sorry and am also estranged from an adult child.

If someone at Mayo Connect is reading these posts - or anyone else - knows how to create a group for estranged parents, please let me know.

Thanks!