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Rise of the family rift
Polly Dunbar looks at the heartbreak and shame behind family feuds
It’s been just over two years since Hannah* stopped speaking to her father. The last time the 40-year-old saw him, on Boxing Day 2017, his wife – Hannah’s stepmother – made a blunt comment about Hannah’s lack of partner as they cleared up after dinner. ‘It was along the lines of it not being surprising that I’m single, because I’m so spoilt and immature,’ she says. ‘I’m used to her insensitivity, but this time she was a few glasses of champagne down and clearly being brutally honest about her view of me.’
When Hannah raised the exchange with her father later, to her dismay he sided with his wife. ‘I was crying, but he dismissed my feelings and said I’d obviously misinterpreted her comments,’ she says. The following day, after a perfunctory goodbye, she drove home, bitterly hurt and angry, and decided to distance herself from both of them. Then, as the weeks turned into months, her resolve hardened. ‘I realised my relationship with them was causing me nothing but stress and pain,’ she says. ‘I haven’t seen or spoken to them since, even though every time I think about it I feel a wrenching sadness.’
Until recently, family rifts like Hannah’s were a taboo, usually only talked about in whispers, being far from the happy relationships perceived as the ‘norm’. But lately, the most famous of all British families, the Royal House of Windsor, have brought the issue out of the shadows. First, the Duchess of Sussex’s very public estrangement from her father was the subject of seemingly endless dissection, as was Prince Harry’s candid admission that he and his brother William were on ‘different paths’. Then came the bombshell of the Sussexes’ decision to step down as senior royals. The Queen’s insistence that the pair remain ‘much loved’ did nothing to stifle reports their exit was prompted by an acrimonious falling-out that left Harry feeling ostracised.
From simmering rivalries to full-blown splits, family rifts can happen to anyone and often have deep roots. Drew Barrymore (now 45) famously legally divorced her mother at 14. ‘It’s no secret that I had to part ways from my mother because we had driven our relationship into the ground,’ Drew recalled in her memoir Wildflower. Jennifer Aniston also had a difficult relationship with her late mother, which intensified after the latter wrote a book about their estrangement. Meanwhile, Anthony Hopkins, 82, has been openly estranged from his actress/composer daughter Abigail, 51, for several decades. He left her mum when Abigail was a toddler and, despite a brief rapprochement in the 1990s, they no longer speak.
Sometimes, however, there is light at the end of the tunnel. Liam and Noel Gallagher reportedly started talking again just last week after 10 years, albeit mainly by text, after their children pushed them to ‘bury the hatchet’. Noel’s daughter Anaïs, 20, and Liam’s children Molly, 21, Lennon, 20, and Gene, 18, pleaded with their fathers to put aside their feuding for the sake of their family.
Away from the public eye, family conflicts are far more common than we might think. Research by Ipsos MORI for the charity Stand Alone suggests that one in five British families – and as many as 12 million individuals – are affected by estrangement. Almost a third of people know someone who is no longer in contact with a family member.
‘Family rifts are very much on the rise,’ confirms psychologist Dr Joshua Coleman, a specialist in estrangement and author of When Parents Hurt. He points to the high divorce rate and growing number of ‘blended’ families as a major cause. With 82 per cent of mothers getting primary custody after divorce, it’s common for fathers in particular to grow distant from their children. One study funded by the Economic and Social Research Council suggested that more than one in five British men who live with second families stop seeing their children from an earlier relationship, with nearly a third saying they do not have a close relationship with them. Another reason is the geographic dispersal of families. ‘We’re also much more polarised now,’ says Dr Coleman. ‘We see those with different values as enemies, which increases the potential for conflict, particularly between different generations, as we’ve seen with issues such as Brexit.’
He believes that the modern prioritisation of individualism lies behind the rise. ‘There has been a gradual shift away from the idea of duty and obedience to institutions such as the church and the family, and towards the individual’s happiness,’ he says. ‘The rise in divorce is one example – you stay married if it makes you happy and if it doesn’t, you leave. With the family, it’s similar. Cutting off your family if they don’t promote your well-being is increasingly seen as courageous.’
Nevertheless, a major conflict among relatives is among the most painful of human experiences. Rachel Davies, a family counsellor at Relate, says the clash between how we all hope our families will look, and the reality, can be devastating. While we’re more willing to cut off family now, the importance society places on the family unit hasn’t changed. ‘We have massive expectations of our family relationships,’ she says. ‘We’re bombarded with images of what the perfect version should be like, which can lead to an awful lot of pressure, and when things go wrong it can be so, so painful. You can’t replace your family in the way you could a friend, there’s so much invested. The emotion involved in a disagreement is often overwhelming, to the point where people can forget the reason they fell out, but not the hurt and anger involved.’
Davies says that, although rifts may be prompted by a single ‘trigger incident’, they can often be fuelled by years of underlying resentment or tension. The most common flashpoints for disputes include times of stress such as money worries and ill health, and moments of transition such as a first baby or an empty nest. Death is another. Alison Regan, a partner at Russell-cooke solicitors, specialises in inheritance disputes, which she says are ‘massively on the rise’, mostly due to the increase in ‘more complicated, blended families’. ‘Sometimes even family relationships that were on an even keel can completely break down after a death,’ she says. ‘Disputes can get very acrimonious and aggressive when someone finds out money has been left to an unexpected source. When they’re grieving, the situation is often very emotionally charged.’
Regan frequently sees people leaving everything to a new spouse and disinheriting their children from a first marriage. One US study, from the University of Wisconsin
Madison, found that after divorce, fathers commonly make their new partner a priority over their relationship with their children.
That was the case for Hannah, whose relationship with her father was difficult from her teenage years, when he divorced her mother and found a new wife. They had two children, leaving Hannah, previously an only child, feeling pushed out of his affections.
‘We were never close after that and I always felt my stepmother and half-siblings were his priority,’ she says. ‘I didn’t like his wife and, as I got older, we clashed more and more. I felt constantly belittled by her long before it came to a head.’ In some ways, Hannah says she feels calmer since deciding not to see them, ‘but I love my siblings and haven’t been able to see them as often, either, which is really sad. I can’t understand why my dad hasn’t tried to apologise or make amends. He’s sent messages inviting me over a couple of times, but that’s all. Some of my friends don’t understand and think I should just make up with them, but I feel too hurt and dismissed to go back to a relationship on their terms.’
The stigma surrounding family rifts often heightens the pain involved, according to Dr Becca Bland, who founded the charity Stand Alone in 2012. Her family estrangement began when she was in her 20s. ‘There’s a sense of shame, of worrying people will judge you for not having the same family relationships as them,’ she says. ‘I felt it was so hard to say I didn’t have a relationship with my parents that I told people, including my then-boyfriend, that they lived in Australia.’
When she wrote about her experience, she was inundated with messages from others in the same position. Stand Alone now offers support meetings and workshops to help those who find themselves affected.
People experiencing serious family rifts often judge themselves, too, worrying that it implies they are unable to make even their most fundamental relationships work. ‘If your family doesn’t live up to the image of perfection, it’s easy to feel you’re failing, which is why these problems are often hidden,’ says Davies. It’s also, she adds, one of the reasons many people continue with family relationships they know are toxic.
Among the relationships most prone to conflict is the notoriously tricky in-law one. As the Duchess of Sussex has discovered, fitting into a new family can be fraught with potential for discord – and parents can find accommodating a new son or daughter-inlaw equally stressful. Maggie*, 62, has experienced this, finding her relationship with her son Tom* deteriorated after his marriage four years ago: ‘I tried hard with Becky*, but I could tell she didn’t like me. Everything I did and said seemed to be wrong. When they got married, she didn’t involve me at all and made me feel I was interfering when I offered to help. They’ve since had a baby and I’ve tried to be involved, but Becky’s mum is there all the time while I feel totally shut out. She clearly doesn’t want me there, and contact has dwindled to the point where I barely see them. What upsets me most is that Tom goes along with whatever Becky wants and doesn’t seem to care about the impact on me. I used to be proud of how close we were and the thought I’ve lost that keeps me awake at night. I feel very depressed about it. I keep making the effort, what else can I do? I can’t bear the idea of not seeing my son and granddaughter.’
Unfortunately, this is a situation Dr Coleman sees regularly. ‘A very high percentage of estrangements happen after an adult child marries,’ he says. ‘It’s common for there to be a clash between the way a family operates and the new person coming into it and often it pushes the adult child away from the family.’
Some rifts happen gradually, when family members drift apart; others are more dramatic. What many have in common is that their origins can be traced back to childhood – particularly those between siblings.
Lucy*, 36, didn’t speak to her brother James* for over a year following a seemingly trivial row. ‘It wasn’t really about the subject of the argument – it was about our relationship,’ she says. ‘Our parents have always treated us differently. I’ve always done well, while he dropped out of university and struggles to hold down a job. They’re always bailing him out financially, including helping him buy a flat, which they never did for me. He takes it all for granted and it infuriates me.’
Eventually the pair reconnected, but Lucy says she can’t help harbouring resentment towards James: ‘I’ve had therapy to try to overcome it, but I’ve begun to accept that we’ll never get on as well as other people seem to with their brothers or sisters, which makes me feel I’m missing out.’
Often, Davies says, sibling conflicts stem from ‘someone else’s baggage. It can be an issue over who is the favourite child and who was never good enough, but that’s actually an issue that belongs to the parents. It can be really useful to realise that.’
More than half of those who contact Stand Alone want to reunite with their family, and the charity offers support with this, as well as for those who wish to remain estranged. Davies believes the key aim is to ‘find peace, whether that’s walking away, finding a middle road of limited contact, or resolving the rift. I’d never put pressure on someone to reconcile, but it can be done. We see it all the time. Even if it’s lasted years, it’s never too late.’
For those who do want to heal a rift, she recommends family counselling. ‘If you find the idea of having a particular conversation with your family too scary, or you’re scared to reach out to them when you haven’t spoken to them for a while, working with someone neutral who can facilitate that conversation can be very beneficial,’ she says.
Dr Coleman has had clients who were estranged for 20 years before reconciling. He believes the most crucial part of the process is finding empathy for the other person. ‘You have to find the kernel of truth in their complaint, take responsibility without being defensive or blaming, and show an openness to repairing the hurt,’ he says. The first step is ‘being open to talking and understanding the other side’s perspective. It can be hard, but never assume the door is closed for ever.’
‘Cutting off your family if they don’t promote your well-being is increasingly seen as brave’