Estrangement can be difficult for many reasons.
There can be grief, guilt, anger, relief, uncertainty and sadness.
But sometimes there is something else that can be surprisingly difficult to talk about:
What other people think.
You may know why you don’t have a relationship with your parent, adult child or sibling.
You may have spent a long time thinking about it.
You may have tried to make the relationship work.
And yet, telling someone that you’re estranged can still leave you feeling exposed.
Because there is a strong expectation that family relationships are supposed to continue.
Parents and children are supposed to stay close.
Siblings are supposed to remain part of each other’s lives.
And when your relationship doesn’t fit that picture, you may start to wonder whether there is something wrong with you.
Perhaps you’ve heard comments like:
“But they’re your mum.”
“You only get one dad.”
“I’m sure they didn’t mean it.”
“You’ll regret it one day.”
Sometimes people say these things because they don’t know what else to say.
They may believe that family relationships should always be preserved.
They may find estrangement uncomfortable.
Or they may simply have no understanding of what led to your decision.
But hearing these messages can have an effect.
You can begin to feel that your situation needs explaining.
That your decision needs defending.
Or that other people are quietly judging you.
When estrangement becomes something you feel ashamed of
You might avoid telling people that you’re estranged.
You might change the subject when someone asks about your parent.
You might feel uncomfortable when colleagues talk about family gatherings.
You might dread questions around Christmas, birthdays or other occasions when family relationships become more visible.
You may even find yourself comparing your life with other people’s.
“Why can’t my family be like theirs?”
“Why am I the person who doesn’t have a relationship with my parent?”
“What does this say about me?”
That last question can be particularly painful.
Because estrangement can become more than something that has happened in your life.
It can start to feel like something that says something about who you are.
There is a powerful expectation around family
We don’t always talk about it, but there are strong ideas about what family relationships are supposed to look like.
Adult children are expected to stay connected to their parents.
Parents are expected to remain involved in their children’s lives.
Siblings are expected to remain siblings in more than name.
And when those relationships break down, people can sometimes look for a simple explanation.
Perhaps someone is selfish.
Perhaps someone is difficult.
Perhaps someone should apologise.
Perhaps someone needs to forgive.
But real relationships are rarely that simple.
There can be complicated histories, different experiences, things that were never resolved and decisions that made sense to the people making them.
You don’t have to explain yourself
One of the difficult things about shame is that it can make you feel as though you need to prove that your experience is legitimate and there’s nothing wrong with you.
You may find yourself giving people far more information than you really want to.
You may try to convince them that you had good reasons.
You may worry that if they knew the whole story, they wouldn’t understand.
But you are allowed to have private aspects of your life.
You don’t have to disclose painful experiences simply because someone is curious.
And you don’t have to persuade everyone that your decision makes sense.
What if people judge you?
They might.
Some people may never understand your decision.
Some may have strong views about what you should do.
Some may believe that you should reconnect, forgive or try harder.
That can hurt, particularly when the judgement comes from people whose opinions matter to you.
But someone else’s expectations about family don’t necessarily tell you what is right for your life.
Their experience of their own family is not your experience.
Their idea of what a parent-child or sibling relationship should look like doesn’t tell the whole story of yours.
What does the shame mean for you?
It may be worth asking yourself:
Am I ashamed of being estranged, or am I ashamed of what I imagine other people think about me?
Those aren’t necessarily the same thing.
You may still feel sadness about the relationship.
You may wish things had been different.
You may have doubts about some of your own choices.
None of that means you have to accept someone else’s judgement of you.
Your relationship with a parent, child or sibling is one part of your life.
It does not have to become a definition of who you are.
Sometimes moving forward involves making sense not only of the relationship itself, but also of the expectations you’ve absorbed about what family is supposed to look like.
You can care about what other people think without allowing their understanding of your family to define your understanding of yourself.
Hello, I’m Sarah Swain, an accredited therapist and coach working online across London, South East, Kent and the whole of the UK. I’ve worked as a therapist across the NHS, charities and Employee Assistance Programmes for over 15 years. I am trained in integrative therapy, coaching and EMDR and I support adults navigating estrangement.
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