Why did you cancel or go no contact with your parents?

12 comments

1. [deleted]

2. r/raisedbynarcissists would be your best bet for this question.

3. He was flirting with someone else in front of my mum and I, when they were still married. Neighbour also reported seeing her car round our house when my mum was out. He then had the audacity to tell his family the reason my parents got divorced was because my mum was cheating. But he’s now married to that woman he’s flirting with. He was a control freak and I was looking forward to moving out anyway and this gave me a good reason to go NC. I still talk to my mum.

4. Because she abused me

5. Went no contact with my Mum because she died.

6. I haven’t spoken to my dad in a year or so. I told him I was changing my surname to my mum’s maiden name and he stopped calling after that lmao

   It sounds silly, but I just don’t like him very much. My parents are divorced so he and my mum aren’t a package deal, and I realised there was nothing keeping me in contact with him besides a sense of obligation.

7. I don’t like my dad. He’s a bad person. My mother thinks he’s wonderful. There was no way I could cut him off and not her. So I cut off both of them.

   I don’t think it’s obvious to people outside the family why I hate my dad so much. He has quite good self control when he knows there will be consequences for behaving badly. I’m just not convinced he sees other people as people, at all.

   When I was little, like pre school age, he would be furious if I cried because he didn’t like the noise. He never hit me hard enough to do damage, and possibly not even that many times, but the threat was always there. I was terrified of him. Mum left me alone with him for a weekend once and I was sobbing while he was trying to undress me to put me to bed and yelling I hate you, I hate you, because it felt so wrong to have this frightening man take my clothes off, and he got right up in my face and snarled “I hate your guts.” I think he ended up taking me to my grandmother’s house.

   Any time he got angry, mum said it was my fault. I shouldn’t wind him up. Same with my (much older) sister. There was a strong family narrative that she was argumentative and that’s why she and my dad couldn’t get along. I mostly stayed quiet and flew under the radar. I learned to cry silently, and then not to do it at all.

   I didn’t realise there was anything wrong with my family or my dad until years after I left home, from observing other people with their parents and then friends with their own kids once they had them. They had relationships not based on fear.

   I cut my parents off a few years ago. Sometimes I question my decision. My dad doesn’t hit adults. I could have faked liking my parents on occasional visits and eventually inherited half their stuff. I could probably have had some nice times with my mum. But I’d been doing that for years and getting angrier and angrier. It didn’t feel physically safe to bring any of this up with them (the memory of dad trashing my sister’s room when she was about 17 comes up whenever I consider it) so I cut them off. Sent an email saying “I’m happier when not in contact with you and I won’t respond to any more contact attempts” and then stuck to it. Every so often my mother sends me messages trying to guilt trip me into contacting her again. It is obvious she has no idea why I cut her off, or doesn’t want to admit it, and views herself as the victim. Dad has never sent anything other than a reply to my initial email saying “we’ll respect your wishes.”

8. Because my abuser controlled the whole family and made me the family scapegoat. I had aunts block me because of her. My dad chose her.

   So I have been in NC since March 2017. What a breath of fresh air!

9. Dad died decades ago, mother more recently, mother was always abusive.Went no contact after she told me that a boyfriend broke my jaw and it was my fault for being in the way of his fist and annoying him.

10. Because my mother is a materialistic narcissist that puts the accumulation of wealth before caring about me or my brother.

11. They are awful physically abusive people. I’m the oldest of six and I hate myself everyday for leaving my siblings behind. While I basically raised the younger two, they drank away all the money I earned from working 40hr weeks (as well as fucking up my a levels). The thought of reaching out to my siblings both terrifies me and deeply upsets me. The thing is there’s lots of generational trauma in my family. My mum had me at 17, blamed me for ruining her life, and stayed with my cheating dad (who is 13 years older than her). Birthdays and Christmases are the worst. Nothing will repair the damage I caused letting my siblings down. Even the smallest things trigger me. That Cadburys advert with the little girl who went to the corner shop… that would give me panic attacks everytime it appeared on TV.

    Thanks though, I usually do my best to try and shut these feelings out 🙁

12. It’s been five years I haven’t seen or spoken to my dad. Always clashed in the way I was being raised. Still haven’t healed Psychologically to this date