Why is my son shutting me out of his life?
DEAR BEL
I MET my first husband at school and we married when I was 18 and he was 19. We had two boys, three years apart, and I was a full-time mum, so my husband could concentrate on his career.
When the boys were teenagers my in-laws (whom I loved dearly) died within ten months of each other. I had to arrange both funerals as my husband couldn’t spare the time — but then he decided he needed bereavement counselling, even though he always moaned about them when alive.
His counsellor told him he needed to be more selfish. So he decided that for the previous ten years he hadn’t loved me, but was just going through the motions. At the time we’d been together for 32 years and married for nearly 28 years. I was devastated and he expressed surprise at my reaction. He investigated rental flats but when he saw how much it would cost he changed his mind. I begged him to go for marriage counselling but he refused.
At this same time my first boyfriend started working for the company I worked for. He started pursuing me — which I mentioned to my husband. He said he couldn’t believe anyone would find me attractive, so the guy must be deranged.
I’m ashamed to say I succumbed and we slept together just once. My husband found some incriminating texts, I confessed, and he left the next day saying he wanted to live by himself. I told him he could have six months to decide whether he wanted me or not. After six months he said I was trying to make him come back by force, so I instigated divorce proceedings. My boys were both upset, although the younger said he wasn’t surprised.
To cut a long story short, four years after our divorce, I got married to a wonderful man. I am so lucky to have found him. My ex is still on his own but we get on fine. Six months ago we moved north to my husband’s home town where we can have a good quality of life.
My problem is my eldest son blames me for the divorce. I have never spent Christmas with him in the past ten years as he says he feels sorry for his dad on his own. Both the boys love my new husband. My eldest got married this year but wouldn’t invite either myself or my husband to the stag and hen. He said my husband wasn’t family even though we’ve now been married for six years. He also excluded us from a meal he arranged for his younger brother’s 30th.
He won’t come and visit me as he really disapproves of my move north. I make sure I travel south every six weeks or so, but he won’t put himself out to make himself available despite giving him loads of notice. I want to just walk away as I can’t bear the constant rejection. How much does a mother have to take before saying enough is enough? Please tell me how to get my son to accept my life and stop punishing me!
ROSEMARY
Your first marriage ended a long time ago and to apportion guilt is fruitless. Yet you do still feel guilty, don’t you? This seems to me to be at the root of your fretting about your son.
It should go without saying (to anybody who reads this page regularly) that I feel real sympathy for the pain behind your letter.
Nevertheless I’ll start by playing Devil’s advocate. For one thing, I have never known parents being included in stag and hen nights. No doubt they can be, yet surely such evenings of riotous fun are usually for the young friends of the bride and groom?
If you assure yourself calmly that there was no reason for you and your husband to be included, you will be dealing with one of the thorns in your flesh.
Suppose, too, that the 30th birthday dinner was for young people and not oldies? We parents can’t go to every event. I wouldn’t take it amiss to know that my son or daughter had a gathering of f riends and didn’t invite my second husband and me. So pause to reflect that the situation
may not be quite as bad as you think. It’s pretty bad, but not that bad. Take a deep breath, re-write the scenario, and pluck out this other thorn.
You see, I believe we all have a choice ho w we respond to something. How easy it is to take offence, to see a slight every time we turn our heads!
In reality, people are careless and thoughtless and get things wrong and act hurtfully — but if we can learn to shrug these realities off our backs, like ducks in a shower, how much less stressful life can be.
The great poet T.S. Eliot was right when he wrote: ‘Teach us to care and not to care . . .’ Care about the big things but l et the smaller matters go.
You maintain that your sons ‘love’ your second husband, but that seems a protest-wish too far. I’m sure they like him a lot and are probably glad you have f ound happiness, but . . . love?
Don’t expect too much from the adult children of divorce. It’s often hard f or them to l et go of the l onging for the family they once knew. That’s the way it is. Nothing can be done.
Except conversation. I hope you talk to your younger son regularly, even though you have moved north, and that you can confide in him concerning his older brother’s seeming annoyance with you. But if I were you I wouldn’t make too much of it. Nor would I continue to be as overtly needy as you are, because if you just pull back one step you will save yourself from having to have to ‘take’ anything else. I’m not talking about cutting off ties in anger and hurt, just relaxing a bit.
By continually putting yourself i n the way of rejection there is a spin-off you won’t have thought of — which i s that you can allow yourself to go on feeling hurt and misunderstood.
But if you chill out and shrug — since young men in their 30s have their own lives to lead and don’t actually need to see their mothers every six weeks — then you will save yourself pain. I once didn’t see my beloved son (then about your sons’ age) for six months, and we were only 100 miles apart. He was going through a problematic stage in his life and didn’t need me.
Though worried and sad I didn’t fuss, knowing it would all be fine in the end. Which it is. So please hang in there with the love, but not with the expectations. Enjoy this chance of happiness you have with your husband and let your sons know you’ll always be there.