The Detachment Wall: How to Let Go of Your Adult Children
Some of us moms have a problem with our attachment to our children, to the point where the bond can become unhealthy.
Can we love our children but not let their choices or behavior make us crazy? Is some detachment actually a good idea?
Is Detachment a Wall?
The idea of detaching from a person can seem terrifying. But is there a way to practice healthy detachment?
Another way of thinking about it is this – when we live detached, we are not placing a wall between us and others. Instead, we are examining our own expectations and dependencies.
With those in perspective, we are freer to love another person because the focus is shifted to them and is not solely on us.
With our adult children, though we love them unconditionally, we try to satisfy unmet needs in us:
- Our need to be needed.
- Our desire to nurture someone.
- Our desire to see that our work and love produces an effect – a child who loves us back.
What we often do is keep a picture in our minds of our child and how they will fulfill these needs and desires for us. What happens when that child rejects us? In my case, and for many other moms, we completely freak out!
What Went Wrong
When we are ‘good mothers,’ we begin to define ourselves by our mothering. While this can be positive and can encourage us to fulfill our role responsibly, by totally adopting that definition we can forget all the other aspects of ‘me.’
When we are our role, when that role is challenging, or when that role is over, what is left of ‘us’?
In dealing with estranged children, we still tend to look within ourselves. We ask ourselves what we did wrong. We obsess over every interaction and question whether we could have responded differently.
Read HOW TO DIVORCE YOUR ADULT CHILDREN AND RESTORE YOUR SANITY.
Also read HOW TO DEAL WITH HAVING AN ESTRANGED ADULT CHILD.
This Monday-morning quarterbacking neglects some basic facts about humans:
You Can’t Control Other People
We surely have influence over our children, but we do not mold them like clay. When they don’t turn out the way we planned, we neglect this fundamental truth.
The Power of Letting Go: How to drop everything that’s holding you back on Amazon
You Can’t Rely on Your Children for Your Happiness
We may have looked ahead to our golden years and seen ourselves surrounded by loving grandchildren. This neglects another fundamental truth: People change. If we rely on other people for our happiness, we may be disappointed.
My source of joy and happiness is an inside job, not dependent on the actions of others.
Find Your Joy: A Powerful Self-Care Journal to Help You Thrive on Amazon
Your Emptiness Is Yours to Fill Up
Your adult children don’t exist solely to fill the void of your unmet needs. Do you need the love and admiration of children and grandchildren to be happy? Perhaps meeting your own needs by loving yourself sufficiently will bring more peace and satisfaction.
Complete People Can Love Completely
I remember well the first time my young daughter gushed about a new boyfriend, saying, “He completes me!” We had many long talks deep into the night discussing how love can be real and true only when two people who are complete within themselves come together.
True love rejects the notion that the other exists solely to please you. True love is therefore not threatened when the other displeases you, because the love is not dependent on the other fulfilling your needs.
Having the other person conform to our desires so we will love them is manipulation, not love. Focusing on “what’s in it for me” is a death knell for true love.
Yet, as mothers, we sometimes forget that in our relating to our adult children. When we can view them with some detachment, when our reactions to them are no longer based on expectations or being dependent on them, we are then able to love them fully and freely.
Do not look at your adult child as completing you, giving you a fulfilled life, or meeting your needs. When you set those aside, you begin to understand love.
What to Do Now?
If you are a hurting mama, laid low in the dust by the estrangement of an adult child, what should you do now?
- Examine your feelings and thoughts. What does it feel like when attachment hurts? What thoughts are you thinking at the time? Can you begin to think differently?
- Be with others and love them, but don’t look to them as your source of happiness.
- Learn to be alone, not lonely. Loving ourselves enough that we can be our best companions is healthy.
- Quit blaming yourself for the state of the relationship. You didn’t and couldn’t control the outcome. Why beat yourself up?
Read WHEN PEOPLE ASK ABOUT MY ESTRANGED CHILDREN… WHAT CAN I SAY?
Here are a few more ideas to help you heal and let go.
- Journal – Writing or sketching your feelings and thoughts puts you in the moment and helps to get you out of your thoughts. Buy yourself a pretty journal and write in it whenever you feel overwhelmed, sad, or lonely.
- Find other mothers in the same boat – Join Facebook groups and share your stories with other women who are going through the same thing. Lift each other up and remember not to fall into the trap of wallowing and continuous negativity.
- Seek counseling or therapy – Look into talk therapy or cognitive behavioral therapy. Online websites like Better Help and Talk Space offer versatile and affordable access to therapists and counselors.
- Read empowering books such as:
Self-Love Workbook for Women: Release Self-Doubt, Build Self-Compassion, and Embrace Who You Are by Megan Logan on Amazon.
When Things Fall Apart: Heart Advice for Difficult Times by Pema Chödron on Amazon
Keep Moving by Maggie Smith on Amazon
The Four Agreements by Don Miguel Ruiz on Amazon
Mind Over Mood by Dennis Greenberger and Christine A. Padesky on Amazon.
When we are not attached to any outcome in our relationships, then we can be free and happy. When the state of our internal life is more important than our external circumstances – there lies peace.
Read PARENTING ADULT CHILDREN CAN BE AGONY.
Also, MY ADULT CHILDREN CUT ME OUT OF THEIR LIFE.
Let’s Have a Conversation:
Do you still find it hard to let go of your adult children? Or, do you still worry about them and take care of them more than you think you should? Please join the conversation below.
Im I’m pain after my three adult kids have moved away- and I struggle with finding purpose in life
Hello everyone,
If you’re someone as lonely as me, just e-mail me .
Thank you :(
I am so grateful to have found this site. I felt so alone dealing with detachment. I’ve always been very close to my kids. I feel that being a Mom is the best job in the world. When I became an empty nester, I really, really struggled with it. I knew nothing about “ME”. I didn’t know how to grocery shop for just me. I didn’t know what to do in life. My kids and grandchildren are my life. My kids always tell me that I need to live my life. I don’t know how. I find myself calling them all the time. Way more than they call me. They tell me all the time that I’m a great Mom. I appreciate that. My grandchildren use to spend a lot of time with me. Now that they have reached the double digits in age and have friends and other interest, they don’t call or come over like they used to. My kids are very loving to me and very independent. I am having a hard time letting go. They have told respectively that I am too involved and that sometimes I cross boundaries. I don’t know what to do day to day. I’m retired. I have no interest in doing anything unless it’s with them. I feel like I’m not living, just existing. Is there anyone else that has gone through this? Please give me some suggestions on what to do.
I am not sure if this is allowed . Maybe there could be a way to get small groups together , within the same geographical region , almost like Meetup, so that we all could actually see each other . Perhaps we would feel less lonely ? We all have the same issues, therefore hiding in shame or sadness , would not be there. Thoughts?
my eldest son is leaving with his wife and young family my granddaughter aged 7 and grandson aged 2, they are relocating to another country, actually where I am originally from, which I left over 50 years ago, I am so happy for them yet so sad as I won’t have the opportunity to see them grow in their everyday life. I can’t help feeling anxious about the future without them in, life can be so damn cruel as i love my children with all my heart, yet they need to live their lives, which so do i , but i had so many dreams of them in it, yet here i am so sad that i wont. it give me pains in my stomach, how do i deal with this
I am reading similar things but not exactly the same situation. My only daughter is now 31. Before she left home (18) we were thick as thieves, just as much here doing as mine. She became depressed in college, decided I had done everything wrong, and it was touch adn go for awhile, including her marrying a man completely wrong for her (he went throughs spells of wanting to kill himself, wouldn’t hold a job, etc, whereas she is a real go getter), and the more miserable she was, the more horrible and angry she was to me. Needed me during that break up and divorce and then met a wonderful man, and as she was happy, was no longer having a spiteful attitude toward me. Our relationship became more what I would have imagined it would be when she became an adult. Spending an appropriate amount of time together for only being an hour and 15 minutes apart, sharing more important details of her life with me, actually listenening to things about my life and not just having one sided conversations, etc. Then she and her boyfriend were in a terrible motorcycle accident and basically my and my husband’s (her stepfather) lives stopped for a couple of month’s while we did everything we could to take care of them. She seemed really appreciative and although times were stressful we had some good times. Now she is having problems with her mate again as he has not recovered as quickly and does not seem to be making as much effort to. Again she has reverted to being disrepectful at times, accusing me of saying or doing things that not only didn’t happen but are out of character for me. I know she will get over it but why does it put me on pins and needles like I am afraid of not knowing what will say that will make her mad? I do have the reference that my cousing cut my aunt off for 6 years over nothing (or an offense not grand enough for the result) and wouldn’t let her see her grandchildren either. ???? How do I just step back and say, “eh, she will get over it, come to her senses again, or she won’t?” I don’t have alot of close friends, and I do consider my husband and my child to be my best friends. It is hard not to as my daughter is alot like me in sense of humor, likes and dislikes, intelligence, etc. Advice?