Dear Bel,
I need help to overcome great pain. I have three adult children, one in Australia, one in New Zealand and one in Great Britain. They just spent a vacation together in Thailand, with my grandchildren and my son’s new partner, whom I haven’t met yet. It felt very cruel to fix it and not include me. It has been my heart’s desire to spend time with all of them.
This year I had a special birthday and I threw a party hoping everyone would come. Unfortunately, the Australian family did not. I tried not to let them see how broken I was.
But now this. I feel quite suicidal, a huge failure.
How do I continue, how can I have any kind of communication with them when I just wanted to hurt them? How bad is it for a mother to say that? I found out right before they left and they tricked me and one of them told me it’s not just about me. How can people move forward and not let the pain eat them up?
I retired a little over a year ago. I try to stay busy. I have good friends, but I can’t tell them because I’m too ashamed that my own children treat me like that. I miss you all very much. But honestly I’m not complaining. I try to be positive and happy when we communicate. But I am always the one who requests contact: they are all very busy. I try to limit it to fortnightly – just ‘Hello, how are you?’
The daughter in Britain has a busy job, two teenagers and a husband who works shifts. She doesn’t have time for me. I stopped trying to see her, but I had hip surgery in May, and although she texts me from time to time, there were no cards, no flowers, no visits.
That’s not how they were raised. It was always about family gatherings and parties. I’ll be honest, I’m lost, I don’t know how to fix it, how to make them see how they’ve hurt me. But the most important thing is how to achieve a better relationship in the future. I’m desperate and getting worse.
freda
Bel Mooney responds: While I feel so sorry for you, I have to start by saying that as a mother and grandmother, I assume that from time to time my feelings will be hurt by the family I love.
“Man gives misery to man,” wrote the poet Philip Larkin in his somber poem about family life (This Be The Verse), so honesty forces me to look back over the years (from my 20s until I was 50) and realizing that there must have been many times when I hurt/disappointed my own parents, may God rest their souls. Yes, I would have used the excuse of being “busy” with a successful career, a family and a happy social life.
What’s more – more true – I wouldn’t have wanted them to go on vacation with us. We wanted to be with peers, not parents.
Does that sound mean? I can’t help it, just as you have been brave enough to make the shocking confession: ‘How can I have any kind of communication with them when I only wanted to hurt them?’ Oh.
He nostalgically remembers happier family times when everyone was together and now misses his adult children who live in Australia and New Zealand. So far… and so hard on you.
With a girl staying in this country, you make it clear that you understand how she spends her time, but I wish she had been more attentive and kind when you were recovering from hip surgery. And so it should have been.
But, as I say, families hurt each other and there is nothing strange about that. So I beg you to forget about ‘how to make them see how much they have hurt me’. Unless you want to make everything worse.
When you celebrated your ‘special birthday’, two of your three adult children came with their families and the New Zealand contingent traveled around the world to be with you. The Australian family couldn’t, probably for very good reasons. So honestly, I think you should be glad for what you had instead of resenting what you didn’t have.
This is the only way forward and answers your sensible question about how to repair relationships in the future. Listen, you have to accept that your adult children have the right to organize whatever vacation they want.
Your “positive and happy” tone is exactly right; Even if you don’t feel it, you shouldn’t add to your own burdens (let alone theirs) by appearing to moan. Many readers will be mad at me for saying this, but I feel like my role in the family is to “suck it up and keep quiet,” because what’s the alternative?
Please focus on enriching your own life without depending on your children to do it for you.
I have been abandoned by my closest friend.
Dear Bel,
I am devastated and confused after the loss of a friendship spanning two decades.
I met my friend when I was 20 years old. She saw me through life’s challenges and I thought of her as a sister. She was married (a wonderful husband and two children) and helped me get through two failed relationships. She was my rock, supporting me as my world fell apart.
After being single for a short time I met a man ten years older than me. We both worked part-time at the same place, where my friend did occasional shifts.
It was a whirlwind romance and we quickly became involved. I was desperate to introduce him to my best friend, but she kept putting things off. I felt like she didn’t like me. He was retired from the army. He had never been married before or had many relationships: he had a traumatic past.
Then there was a problem at work and I had to send an email to clarify something. I can’t reveal much, but my friend basically abandoned me because of this email.
He needed clarification, but she thought he was tricking her by asking her questions. This left me deeply hurt that she could even think such a thing. In fact, I was simply uncovering crucial information, received the clarification and everything was fine, or so I thought.
My friend was still upset because I had asked questions. She never wanted to meet my new friend and I felt like she just didn’t like me.
From that moment on I felt abandoned. I kept messaging but she wasn’t interested and only gave short, curt responses. Soon I received the message. I ended up marrying him last year in a small ceremony.
She wasn’t there when she should have been. I was thinking about her most of the day. I have never gotten over this loss. I remain confused and disappointed. She never explained to me or sat me down to discuss what happened. Should I contact her again?
Kat
Bel Mooney responds: It seems that we have two different issues here that need to be disentangled. I find it difficult to understand why you can claim, with such confidence, that your friend “didn’t like” the man she had never met.
Could it be that he told her all about his “traumatic past” and she became worried that their relationship might be doomed to follow the same path as their previous ones? Or that she knew something about him that you didn’t know, but was reluctant to tell you?
After all, she had a part-time connection with the same workplace, so she might have overheard something. Or maybe a part of her was just jealous that you had embarked on a whirlwind romance, and maybe she was too wrapped up in it to have time for herself. There had to have been a reason.
The work email problem is clearly complicated, as they often are. I understand why he couldn’t give details, so I must remain baffled.
However, it seems clear that your friend felt betrayed by you, and I can only assume that the pain was so deep that she found it difficult to express her feelings.
Perhaps she felt that you were too distracted by your new love to consider the effect of your action on her. What do I know? But there are always reasons for a breakup in human relationships, even if they are not expressed.
To be clear, I believe everything you have written to me, but at the same time
At the same time I suspect it is not the whole story.
So what can you do? You say you messaged him many times, but his responses were “brief” and therefore you “soon got the point.”
But was it too soon? Only you can know, but in my opinion it is
It is definitely worth contacting her again. Can you do it with great warmth, asking for a face-to-face meeting to remember happy moments from the past and try to clarify what went wrong?
That’s how I would say it, thus encouraging her to remember the duration of their precious friendship.
I get the feeling that you still believe that everything that happened was his fault and that you are the wronged party.
But to resolve a dispute with a family member or friend, it is essential to change the mindset from grieving aggrieved feelings to accepting that the fault usually lies with both parties.
Unless you can do that and reveal that vital understanding in the tone you use to make contact again, the situation will remain the same.