Breaking up with a family member: ‘I never saw my mother after that day’

There is something in every family. The slightly too snippy mother-in-law. The brother-in-law who leaves every party with a piece in his collar. Jealousy between sisters and parents with entrenched thought patterns. Yet the disturbed relationship with her mother was Ilona (38) a little too much, and she broke off contact five years ago.

cold woman

“My mother was always a cold woman, but I didn’t know any better. She rejected me and hurt me on purpose, and in response I craved her love even more as a child.” When Ilona’s mother became dependent eighteen years ago, Ilona was there for her day and night. “To settle her taxes. to go to the doctor. Take her for an afternoon to a terrace or for an errand. I saw it as my duty; my father left us when i was one. We never saw him again.”

Maybe there’s a lot of unprocessed anger there, Ilona thinks now. “Time and again I got kicked when I left again. No matter how pleasant our contact had been, it always ended with a bad remark. ‘It’s a good thing you don’t have a good job; I would never ask your sister for this – she has far too important things to do.’ Or: ‘Don’t order wine, you’re already so big.’ A recurring hit: ‘Yes, your sister also had a new bag, it was really beautiful. But of course you can’t afford that.’

Punching ball

I don’t know if that was really aimed at me or if I was just the punching bag. She couldn’t help it, I’m sure. I think she had a chilly childhood herself. She never spoke of it and my grandparents died before I was born. I once asked if she wanted to talk about it. Whether her lack of warmth was actually a matter of inability. Or anger at the fact that she was left alone for years to take care of two small children. That she just never learned what love was. She then declared me to be a hysterical looking for nails at low tide. I have suggested couples therapy. Family constellations. But she didn’t want that. She had no contact with her four sisters; maybe that told me enough. They are not open to contact with me, by the way.”

The border

Ilona continued to take the scratches on her soul. Until she got pregnant five years ago. “I was delirious with happiness; it hadn’t been that easy. After four miscarriages, I was thirteen weeks pregnant with my husband Remco at her doorstep. ‘You? Mother?’ she exclaimed. ‘Of course it will be a drama.’ My first reaction was a physical one. Nausea, a rock in my stomach and a skyrocketing heart rate. She had reached my limit. I answered with icy calm, “If I set good examples from now on, not.” I never saw her again after that.

According to my sister – who doesn’t have a warm relationship with our mother herself, but goes out for coffee once a month – she tells the outside world that the breakup is because of me. That I don’t want to see her anymore and that I’ve always been ‘a bit screwed up’. While in my youth nothing ever played; I was an exemplary student and not a rebellious teenager. I’m still on the defensive. My son Timo is now four and I almost choke him with my love. Something I should probably pay extra attention to, because that’s not good either, and just a counter-reaction to my own childhood.”

According to Ilona, ​​Timo does not seem to realize that Timo has never seen his grandmother. “He has a sweet grandfather and grandmother on Remco’s side, with whom we celebrate all the holidays. Something my sister sometimes finds difficult, because at Christmas she has the loyalty conflict. That is the consequence that I accept; breaking up with a family member can never happen without damage to others. The nagging feeling in the background that will probably never go away is smaller than the pain my mother caused when she played an active role in my life – though I try to forgive her.”

Breaking up with a family member

There are hardly any figures about how many people break up with a family member. According to a survey by the Network Notaries in 2014, 38 percent of the Dutch would no longer have contact with one or more family members. 67 percent of those cases involved siblings.

Lima (36) is one of those people. Not she, but her adopted brother Tim broke off contact eight years ago. “As children we were Jut and Jul. ‘Sjors and Sjimmie’ they called us in the village – that was still possible then. He tinged with jet black, shiny hair, I red with freckles. It was us against the rest of the world. Even during our college days. We were less than a year apart – I think that helped. We had a nice, warm childhood. Tim sometimes demanded a little extra attention. He had tantrums and was hard to touch. Something that came from his adoption, we thought. He never directed his behavior at me, so I could live with it.”

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Deserted

When Lima became pregnant with eldest daughter Sterre nine years ago, something changed between them. “Ah,” he said. “So the time has come: you are going to continue the bloodline.” For the first time I got a glimpse of the pain he had been hiding all his life; that blood tie was not there for him. And no matter how much my parents always treated us equally, apparently that felt like a difference to him.”

She blames herself for never noticing. “But I don’t think he was aware of it himself. My pregnancy from Sterre triggered something that no one knew existed.” Tim became more and more isolated. He declined calls, showed no interest in outside help. Lima: “That put a stain on my pregnancy. Besides my friend Ron, there was only one person with whom I wanted to experience this period intensely. Moreover: Tim would become an uncle. Kind of like a second father, as far as I’m concerned. But instead he behaved as if I had abandoned him.”

Silence

There are probably plenty of psychological studies that say something about this, Lima thinks, but contact requires two people. “No matter what I tried, he didn’t want to hear from me anymore. I asked him about ultrasounds or baby shopping; something I always thought we would do together. I tried not to talk about the baby at all, suggested doing things that really belonged to us. Going to a concert or surfing; which goes surprisingly well with a modest belly. There was silence on his part.”

Perhaps Sterre’s birth would change everything, Lima still hoped. “But he never came for a maternity visit. He also kept out of contact with my parents. I tried a few more times to get closer, but he just doesn’t respond. My parents see him once or twice a year, but can’t figure out where exactly his pain is. His decision is echoed throughout the family. Birthdays, Christmas, weddings and cremations; when I am there, he is not there.”

A Surinamese saying goes: ‘siblings are the marrow of your bone’. They are inside you forever, whether you like it or not. “That gives me hope that things will work out one day,” Lima says. “My door is always open.”

Sham

Sometimes the relationship with a family member just seems impossible. Because your father may be your father forever and your daughter your daughter forever, but when parents disinherit a child it goes a long way. “For them then”, says Anneliese (40). “Because my parents cannot make me unborn, even if they deny my existence.”

Annelies grew up in a sham, she says herself. “I was always different from other girls. I got along better with the boys, jumping over ditches in shorts, and hating girls in pink dresses. My parents found that difficult; after two brothers, a daughter was a dream come true.”

Homosexuality was not accepted in their home, so when Annelies was very fond of a girlfriend at the age of nine, her father made it clear in no uncertain terms that that was not the intention. “We didn’t do dirty pots in this house,” he said. I had better put that unhealthy hobby, as he called it, out of my mind, otherwise the door would be broken. I was nine. Didn’t even know what sex was or infatuation was. My mother stood by and looked at it, two paces behind her husband.”

Hole in the door

Although her father’s reaction initially only evoked fear in Annelies, he was right: at the age of twelve she was sure that she was a lesbian. “That started the loneliest time of my life. In high school I was an outcast and experimenting with crushes the way my peers or my brothers did was not for me. In my room, I was engulfed in the music of lesbian pop stars, while publicly conforming to my parents’ will. That hole in the door was too dangerous for me; where on earth was I supposed to go?”

Only during her student days did Annelies openly admit her sexuality. “A world opened up for me. Suddenly there were people who embraced me as I was. And: I fell in love with a classmate.” They managed to keep the relationship a secret for two years, until the story reached her parents. “Seeing my father was standing in the kitchen of the family home when I came to visit at the weekend.

Was this really true? I was 23 and suddenly I saw the situation from a distance. This sham had to stop now: I was fine the way I was. ‘Yes,’ I said, ‘and I love her, so it’s a choice or a split.’ Then my father never wanted to see me again. My mother was silent again in all keys.

Disconnected

After a month of radio silence, much of which I spent in a mixture of panic and anger, I called my mother, in tears. This couldn’t be what they wanted, could it? “I stand behind your father, child,” she said. And she disconnected. Six months later, I received a handwritten letter from my parents, telling me that I could no longer claim their inheritance and asking me to please stop contacting them. I kept to that even when our daughter Magali was born three years ago, with the help of a donor.

The rejection of my parents leaves a hole in my heart that cannot be closed. But I am very happy with my family and have a large group of friends. In addition, the contact with my brothers is fine. They don’t approve of my parents’ behavior and my parents, in turn, find it hard to bear that they do accept me. But it doesn’t get in the way of the other family ties; I’m just erased. If my parents ever open the door, I don’t know yet if I will use it. You can glue a break, but the tear will always remain visible. I am grateful to them for one thing: thanks to my parents I know what not to do with upbringing.”

This article was previously published in Kek Mama.

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