How to Divorce Your Adult Children and Restore Your Sanity
I am known for exposing the “elephant in the living room.” Those things everybody knows but nobody is talking about. Not every mother-daughter relationship reads like a Hallmark card, and our culture makes that a shameful secret to bear.
Dr. Christiane Northrup suggested that the bonding hormones that flood a mother’s blood stream at childbirth stay with women for about 28 years.
It is no accident, then, that the first round of truly adult separation (not teenage rebellion) begins to rear its head somewhere around 30 for women and the menopause years for their mothers. For the first time, the veil begins to lift and we see each other for the women we have become.
When It Comes to Your Adult Children, What is Normal?
Some estimate that 96% of American Families are dysfunctional in some way – making it the norm. But “normal” is not necessarily healthy, and it certainly falls short of the abundant life we’ve been promised.
Women are held responsible for the relational health of the world – at work, at home, family health and wellbeing, the sexuality, the promiscuity, the cause, the cure and the results. When a true perpetrator arises in a family, the mother protects ala Mama Bear. If she doesn’t die trying, she can later become a target.
Mom is apparently the one who knew (or should have known) what was happening at every moment of every day to their children – physically, emotionally, mentally and spiritually. After all, moms have eyes in the backs of their heads and are equipped with the unusual ability to read minds, right?
See also: Letting Go And The Art Of Parenting Adult Children
What Is Healthy When It Comes to Adult Children?
M. Scott Peck wrote, “Mental health is an ongoing process of dedication to reality at all costs.” The pinch point for grandmothers is that any loss of relationship with our adult children means strained relations – if not severed ties – with the grandchildren who now light up our lives.
I am a mother of three and grandmother to 11. I stayed with their father for more than 20 years believing that somehow I could make him feel loved enough to change.
Over time, each of my children has drawn close to me for healing, and pulled away for the same reason. I am, after all, the one they hold responsible for the shifting emotional sand in their psyche.
Ten years ago, I remarried a man whose children were also grown. We imagined that would alleviate the adjustments of step-families. In some ways, not having children in the home made it easier to forge our identity as a married couple.
Although we shared values, we didn’t share history with each others’ children. We each brought our traditions and expectations to bear. When I recently chose to divorce this man who had played “grandpa” to my children’s children, old wounds surfaced.
Had I known that to leave him meant I would lose my only local family, I probably would have stayed for the sake of the grandchildren. It’s that old programming baby boomer women still struggle with.
If something isn’t working, you try harder. Marital problems? Pray more, love more, give more, be patient, and wait it out. Suck it up, stuff it down, be quiet and don’t make waves.
What Is Real?
I have identified four distinct stages in the journey to wholeness.
Desperate
Our lives become (or continue to be) a carefully constructed illusion based on how it looks, what people will think, and what we imagine will get us the love and security we so desperately crave.
This is why grandmothers continue to “make peace at all costs” rather than saying what they see, need and want. Some have called it the disease to please.
Distant
Pretending that everything is okay when in our hearts we know that is not true can only go so far. We go along to get along. We smile in public and cry in private. We live a lie, and it eats at our souls every day.
Women think if we ignore it, maybe it will go away or time will heal all wounds. The thing is, time doesn’t heal buried pain. It has to be unearthed and acknowledged before it will pass away. Pain that gets buried alive poisons the rest of our lives.
Divorce
Divorce is a harsh word when applied to our mother-child relationships, isn’t it? But it happens whether we acknowledge it or not. Divorce occurs when all communication has broken down and attempts at reconciliation fail.
It is the most painful dark night of the soul. With divorce comes all the drama of severed relationships, he-said she-said finger pointing, and drama triangles where people talk about each other, but never directly to one another so healing could occur. We might as well lawyer up and some do. It’s called Grandparent Rights.
See also: The Detachment Wall: How To Let Go Of Your Adult Children
Done
Last is the place of acceptance. There is no anger, no angst, no more bargaining. It is where we accept what life is handing out right now and the fighting is done.
You have decided what you do and do not want, what you will and will not stand for, and are making decisions to move forward with or without the resolution you may have hoped for. You are free to stay or go because you have become dedicated to reality at all costs.
Read HOW TO DEAL WITH HAVING AN ESTRANGED ADULT CHILD.
What’s Next for You and Your Adult Children?
Do I wish I had capacity back then to do some things differently? Definitely. Do I regret what I allowed my children to endure because of the choices I made? Mm-hmm.
Is there anything I can do now to go back and change it? Not a damn thing. Does it serve anyone for me to live in remorse and regret? Nope. Not now, not ever. Never.
Nobody had a perfect childhood – at least nobody in my generational gene pool. We all did the best we could with what we had to work with at the time. That is as true today as it was generations ago.
The biggest healer for women in daughter divorces is to break the shame by breaking the silence. Let’s talk about what’s real and how to help live dreams without drama in our later years.
Read WHEN PEOPLE ASK ABOUT MY ESTRANGED CHILDREN… WHAT CAN I SAY?
Also read 60 AND ESTRANGED FROM AN ADULT CHILD? HOW NOT TO DEAL WITH IT.
This article has generated several important conversations. Many mothers/grandmothers are going through similar realities each with their unique set of situations. Talking and being vulnerable with one another is part of the healing process – as we can tell by reading your chats. Knowing that you are not alone helps in accepting the outcome of your distanced relationship with your adult children.
Many have mentioned that therapy has helped them through this difficult time in their lives. Online therapy sessions are now readily available and affordable. Websites like Better Help, Talk Space, and Online Therapy have therapists and mental health professionals available to listen and guide you.
Let’s Have a Conversation:
Where do you find yourself in the process of letting your adult children go? Where are you on the journey to finding yourself in your sixties? Please share your thoughts below!
Tags Adult Children
How do you mentally disconnect from an ungrateful daughter, an only child, who has continued to disrespect me her entire life, and cause struggles that I think about every day? How can I have a relationship with my grandchildren if I can’t even bring myself to dial my daughter’s phone number because hearing her voice disgusts me to a level that’s just not welcoming? How easy is elimination, really? How do I stop thinking about what could have been but is not?
When you do everything you can to help, make life easy, show you care for nothing in the end, how does it end?
I came across this site tonight and found this discussion very helpful. Honestly, I am crushed and tired of dealing with my son’s drama all of the time. He doesn’t treat me bad, just expects me to give him money every time he has a sob story and those stories come at least once a week. He makes a lot of bad choices, and then pulls me in to fix them because he can’t do it on his own. I have been through hell with him and every girlfriend he chooses and each new one is worse than the last. I found out he has been lying to me to get money out of me. I am now in crisis mode all of the time waiting for the next phone call from him, or worse yet, I wake up to a gazillion text messages from him that are always about him feeling sorry for himself and life is so tough and he hates himself. He dumps every single problem on me, collects money from me and then moves on. My bank account and my mental health are depleted. My mind says if I don’t help, he will be homeless or go hungry, and then I feel guilty because I make a decent salary and I grew up poor and not having a lot of food or a decent place to live.
Boundaries are a necessary survival skill we didn’t learn until we had to. Sounds like it might be time. I’m happy to help if you’d like to PM me.
—Kim
Ugh why is it so hard for today’s 30+ year old children to launch???
My worst fear has come true. I lost my 18 year old son to parental alienation in the divorce 12 years ago. From then I did everything humanly possible to insure I wouldn’t lose my daughters. One of them was distant but civil so I wondered what lies my ex had told her. I made a lot of excuses through the years for her distance and made sure I never crossed her or inconvenienced her etc. But then I’m into a 2 year journey of wellness on every level (emotionally, physically, spiritually etc.) and I realize that her coldness and ingratitude are so uncomfortable for me that I need to address it. I ask her if we could have a conversation about family dynamics since the divorce because we have never talked about it. She gets defensive, says that I’m unstable and I can no longer watch my granddaughter. I was stable enough to help care for her for 5 years but suddenly I’m not because I want to talk? This was eleven days ago. I haven’t heard a word. My last email to her said that if she was going to bring a child into our adult issue there would be no dialogue. The most appalling thing to me is that she would do this to a child who has no ability to understand why her close bubby has disappeared. I am grieving the loss of these 2 relationships but I will not respond to a person who can be cruel to a child. To me this is a tactic and a quality in a person that I’m not able to work with. I have done all the backbends I can do in 12 years. I came to a point where I no longer wanted to be around anyone who really doesn’t love me and enjoy me. I hope someone can understand more quickly than I did that no relationship should cost you your well being, dignity, self respect and peace of mind, even those that originated in your womb.
For your sake I will make this short, so much will be left out. When I lost my eldest, a son over a decade ago, to parental alienation by a narcissistic spouse during a divorce it derailed my life. At the time my son was 18 and I asked him to live with his dad because they spent all their time together and my son treated me with disrespect which I didn’t want my girls to witness anymore. I never doubted that this was the right decision. But when he cut me off immediately I spent the ensuing years ruminating over what I did wrong in raising him. I devoted my mothering years to my kids and he required the most from me. All I ever wanted to be was a mother and I couldn’t understand this hateful reaction from a boy who had been loved and cared for every day of his life. How could he ally with a man who did not participate in the care and nurturing of his kids? I wasted all those post divorce years on this mystery. Eventually through therapy and reading I learned about their narcissistic alliance and that nothing I could have done would have changed the outcome.
I was so traumatized by this and so afraid of it happening to my two daughters that I overlooked and put up with anything that happened with them. I poured into their lives financially, emotionally and anything else I had. I failed to notice that with my middle child the relationship was strictly her taking from me, we weren’t getting closer, there was no depth to the relationship. I found so many excuses for this because I couldn’t lose another child. 2 years ago I began a wellness journey that eventually led me to see what was really happening with my middle daughter. I asked to open a dialogue about our relationship because it wasn’t working for me and I didn’t understand what was going on. This happened a week ago. She erupted and turned this request into a storm. In typical narcissistic fashion she turned the tables on me and accused me of being unstable. She pulled my granddaughter from me though I had taken care of her for 5 years and developed a strong relationship with her. I thought my daughter was a good mother but when she did this to a child I saw the light. She really was cold hearted wrapped up in a pretty, successful package. I told her there would be no dialogue unless she took my granddaughter out of our adult issues. I haven’t heard from her. My point? I’ve lost my daughter and granddaughter because I wanted to talk and improve our relationship. I am grieving my granddaughter and what she has to go through but this will not derail my life. This time I have a solid, healthy life I’ve built and if anyone tries to drag me into their pathology they are out. I’m 61, I don’t have any time to take on another person’s baggage when I’ve worked tirelessly at getting rid of my own. It is a loss, and I acknowledge that, but the focus of my life will not be on that. I will continue to pour myself into the life affirming, healthy people that I now know. Toxicity in any form does not align with my values and I won’t tolerate it, even if it originated in my womb. I hope this helps someone to invest in their health and not take the responsibility for someone else’s egregious behavior. No guilt, no shame.