Social Media to Blame for Estrangement?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I think it is due to social media, but not in the way he meant. Before social media, it was super easy to minimize the contact with your parents to maybe a visit every other year and a phone call once every few weeks. If they are local, then a dinner out every couple of months. No need to declare anything for anyone.

Enter social media. If one or both sides tend to post every sneeze, the state of the relationship is now a daily dilemma.

Excellent point. Pre social media you could do a phone call on a regular basis and move away without family needing to see what you were doing constantly.

Now? I'm accused of keeping secrets and hiding things if I don't put my whole life on social media.

My Boomer MIL waged war against my now Ex SIL
on social media - staring with FB comments. Then, SIL blocked MIL across all platforms.
Now totally estranged. Haven’t spoken in years.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Each generation breaks away.

Boomers were raised by a generation of true closet sociopaths. Your sweet grandparents or great grandparents of the silent generation probably beat them with belts, spoons, stuck soap in their mouth and demanded total obedience behind closed doors. Boomers bit back by placing their parents in nursing homes and not looking back. Boomers also took a hands off and stay one rung above complete neglect approach with their kids.

Now boomers are seeking obedience and attention but they have no tools or control to demand it. It’s creating control anxiety. Add in generational behaviors that are foreign to Gen X and millennials like the pout pout and manipulation and you get younger people saying no. If the boomer won’t accept no, then the younger person walks away.

I suspect that GenX , whose big parenting flaw is helicoptering as a reaction to being ignored by their boomer parents, are struggling with the Gen z kids trying to break away. If they don’t back off, their kids will walk away.

The pattern here is that if you keep demanding something from an adult that they don’t want, don’t take no for an answer, and behave with a sense of entitlement then you will wind up estranged. It’s your fault because you left the other no other option.

+1

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I think it is due to social media, but not in the way he meant. Before social media, it was super easy to minimize the contact with your parents to maybe a visit every other year and a phone call once every few weeks. If they are local, then a dinner out every couple of months. No need to declare anything for anyone.

Enter social media. If one or both sides tend to post every sneeze, the state of the relationship is now a daily dilemma.

This is an insightful and nuanced take, PP - thank you. I'm VLC with my parents, who were VLC with their parents (their parents were an ocean away in a time of expensive long distance calls and flights) and I totally agree that the pressure to constantly check in via text/social media makes it much more obvious that VLC is in fact intentional.

[Anonymous]

I actually think a lot of people in the past cut out family, it was easier to do and less visible when it happened. If you moved away you just didn’t visit or write.

It’s just so visible now because people are so obviously connected by internet/phones/sm. I don’t believe there’s actually more happening these days.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Each generation breaks away.

Boomers were raised by a generation of true closet sociopaths. Your sweet grandparents or great grandparents of the silent generation probably beat them with belts, spoons, stuck soap in their mouth and demanded total obedience behind closed doors. Boomers bit back by placing their parents in nursing homes and not looking back. Boomers also took a hands off and stay one rung above complete neglect approach with their kids.

Now boomers are seeking obedience and attention but they have no tools or control to demand it. It’s creating control anxiety. Add in generational behaviors that are foreign to Gen X and millennials like the pout pout and manipulation and you get younger people saying no. If the boomer won’t accept no, then the younger person walks away.

I suspect that GenX , whose big parenting flaw is helicoptering as a reaction to being ignored by their boomer parents, are struggling with the Gen z kids trying to break away. If they don’t back off, their kids will walk away.

The pattern here is that if you keep demanding something from an adult that they don’t want, don’t take no for an answer, and behave with a sense of entitlement then you will wind up estranged. It’s your fault because you left the other no other option.

I’m GenX with Boomer parents and Gen Z kids and this just sums it all up perfectly.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I actually think a lot of people in the past cut out family, it was easier to do and less visible when it happened. If you moved away you just didn’t visit or write.

It’s just so visible now because people are so obviously connected by internet/phones/sm. I don’t believe there’s actually more happening these days.

You forgot that when it happens now, it usually comes with some dramatic pronouncement and some expectation of external validation from strangers for being so cruel and puerile.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:A therapist encouraged me to become estranged from my mom and blame her for all my problems. I recognize her failures and mistakes but also know she tried her best at the hard job of raising three kids in a country far away from her home that she didn’t want to live in.

I have a 23 yo who has been struggling recently with mental health issues. She is seeing a therapist and I predict she will start directing blame at me soon. If that happens I will be devastated but my main concern is her well being and happiness. Hopefully she will come back.

I am 53 with a 22 yo dd with her own mental health problems. I have been dealing with this. She disparages me to anyone who will listen — they tell me some of the wild shit she has said, a lot of it invented. Her 20 you sister, who was raised alongside of her, says she thinks part of her illness is believing these delusions and fantasies.

It’s really very painful. She also doesn’t seem to grasp that when she says these horrible things to others about her parents, it reflects poorly on her. These people know we’re good, if imperfect, parents.

Not sure how it will end. She will be “off the payroll” soon — graduated with no student loan debt courtesy of me. Maybe when the allowance stops, I will be cut off. Who knows.

This may be a beginning of a more severe mental illness was. I know a few people that told some stories in their 20s (usually about how they were slighted by this person and that person) that sounded like they could be true, and were quite believable except a few minor things didn’t check out. It all went downhill later, the stories got progressively more wild, and SSDI followed.

Pp here. I am very much aware and have the $12,000 out of pocket expenses for residential treatment and hospitalization this year to prove it. Thankfully she seems to be stabilized but I am fully aware that could slip at any time. It sucks because we are on edge and if you call her out on anything you realize there’s a risk she will attempt suicide and spiral back into in-patient care.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

I think the cutting off is used to liberally. For abuse, sure, no argument from me, but there is a thread in the Family forum about stopping going to visit grandparents because they are boring.

My mother grates on my nerves. She repeats stories and gets fixated on inconsequential things, but she's in her 80s for goodness sake. I called that woman every day for years when I had babies and small children. She was my lifeline when I needed support, had moved to a new city, and was lonely. If I'm totally honest, talking to her doesn't "bring me joy" at this point, but how horrible would it be of me to stop that effort because I find it tedious because the poor woman is old. Very horrible.

Agree. As a PP noted, GenZ is often self-centered and too focused on their own emotional validation to look at the big picture of familial relations over the grand scheme of life. My elderly mother was incessantly patient with me for many years, was (and is) incredibly loving, but is certainly not perfect. She obviously didn't approve of every adult decision I made, but neither did I expect her to. I love her to death and happily listen to repeated stories because in the overall calculus of life she has been pretty darn good.

I feel like with GenZ if you don't embrace (or monetarily support) every questionable young adult decision, you get labelled controlling or toxic. My current pet peeve is being considered annoying because I refuse to allow pot smoking in our home (I hate the smell). I don't care what they do at school or in their own apartments, but I do expect that my preferences in my home be respected and honestly, I am annoyed at having to repeatedly explain that position.

Have they never heard of edibles? Jesus.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:


Agree. As a PP noted, GenZ is often self-centered and too focused on their own emotional validation to look at the big picture of familial relations over the grand scheme of life. My elderly mother was incessantly patient with me for many years, was (and is) incredibly loving, but is certainly not perfect. She obviously didn't approve of every adult decision I made, but neither did I expect her to. I love her to death and happily listen to repeated stories because in the overall calculus of life she has been pretty darn good.

I feel like with GenZ if you don't embrace (or monetarily support) every questionable young adult decision, you get labelled controlling or toxic. My current pet peeve is being considered annoying because I refuse to allow pot smoking in our home (I hate the smell). I don't care what they do at school or in their own apartments, but I do expect that my preferences in my home be respected and honestly, I am annoyed at having to repeatedly explain that position.


Have they never heard of edibles? Jesus.

LOL. I am the person who posted that and that is EXACTLY what I said to them---"Go eat an edible. Don't stink up my house."

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I think it is due to social media, but not in the way he meant. Before social media, it was super easy to minimize the contact with your parents to maybe a visit every other year and a phone call once every few weeks. If they are local, then a dinner out every couple of months. No need to declare anything for anyone.

Enter social media. If one or both sides tend to post every sneeze, the state of the relationship is now a daily dilemma.

This is an insightful and nuanced take, PP - thank you. I'm VLC with my parents, who were VLC with their parents (their parents were an ocean away in a time of expensive long distance calls and flights) and I totally agree that the pressure to constantly check in via text/social media makes it much more obvious that VLC is in fact intentional.

PP. The more I think of it, the more I realize how social media sows the outrage. Someone above said that it’s OK to cut off your relatives if they are homophobic. I (GenX) honestly have no idea how my grandparents (Greatest Generation) voted or what they thought about gays. There are no gays in my immediate family and the topic never came up during my conversations with my grandparents otherwise.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:The problem is if the therapist doesn't validate the adult child's false reality of the past, they will lose the client.

This is probably important to retain clients.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I actually think a lot of people in the past cut out family, it was easier to do and less visible when it happened. If you moved away you just didn’t visit or write.

It’s just so visible now because people are so obviously connected by internet/phones/sm. I don’t believe there’s actually more happening these days.

You forgot that when it happens now, it usually comes with some dramatic pronouncement and some expectation of external validation from strangers for being so cruel and puerile.

Yeah, sounds like it really came out of left field when your kids cut you off 😂

[Anonymous]

The missing missing reasons for estrangement:

https://www.issendai.com/psychology/estrangement/missing-missing-reasons.html?ref=tbqtalks.com

[Anonymous]

Every single older generation thinks the ones the follow are horrible. This is nothing new. Create the family that you want. Why do older people even WANT a relationship that is purely based on obligation and resentment? I don't! Your kids owe you NOTHING. You chose to have them, it's on YOU to lead the relationship. You can do that with love and acceptance, owning and working on your faults, being open minded and keeping up with the times, respect for your adult child, fitting into their growing lives (building a career, having kids, etc should be their focus now - not on you!). I've never met a person who acts as such be estranged from their kids. It just doesn't happen.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I think it is due to social media, but not in the way he meant. Before social media, it was super easy to minimize the contact with your parents to maybe a visit every other year and a phone call once every few weeks. If they are local, then a dinner out every couple of months. No need to declare anything for anyone.

Enter social media. If one or both sides tend to post every sneeze, the state of the relationship is now a daily dilemma.

This is an insightful and nuanced take, PP - thank you. I'm VLC with my parents, who were VLC with their parents (their parents were an ocean away in a time of expensive long distance calls and flights) and I totally agree that the pressure to constantly check in via text/social media makes it much more obvious that VLC is in fact intentional.

PP. The more I think of it, the more I realize how social media sows the outrage. Someone above said that it’s OK to cut off your relatives if they are homophobic. I (GenX) honestly have no idea how my grandparents (Greatest Generation) voted or what they thought about gays. There are no gays in my immediate family and the topic never came up during my conversations with my grandparents otherwise.

But what if there were? This is one of those things that has made me very protective of my teen DD and very wary of my parents. It’s made me think a lot about unconditional love. My parents love me and my kids, no doubt, but it’s always felt very conditional.