agonyaunt | (no subject)

(no subject)

Dear Prudence,

I raised “Anne” from the time she was 3 until she was 16. Her mother couldn’t be bothered to do more than call on her birthday until she found God (or more accurately when she got back in the graces of her rich parents). I was mom until Anne was around 13 when she started pulling away from her father and me. We couldn’t compete with the barrage of expensive gifts and permissive parenting that her mom gave her. Anne went to live with her mother despite my husband and me beggaring ourselves with lawyer and therapy fees.

Around this time, I got pregnant and my husband lost his job. We were barely holding on—then I lost the baby. It was devastating. I fell into a deep depression where I couldn’t even get out of bed. During that time, Anne openly mocked me and made fun of my pain. My husband’s only response was to tell me that Anne was just a teenager and didn’t really mean it. I asked for a divorce.

It has been 10 years. I am in a much better place and don’t try to dwell on the past. My ex died two years ago. I sent a card and flowers but didn’t attend the funeral. I never thought I’d hear from or see Anne again. Then I got a letter in the mail. Anne wants to “try again.” Her paternal grandmother isn’t in good health and her other grandparents have died. Her mother blew through the estate and left nothing for Anne. They aren’t on speaking terms anymore. Nowhere in the letter was there actually anything resembling an apology, just more excuses about Anne being a troubled kid.

My partner thinks we should just throw away the letter and go on with our lives. Part of me feels guilty because Anne was the closest thing I had to a daughter for a time, but in the end, she wasn’t my daughter at all. I never had children of my own and I have made peace with that. I don’t want to open a door to more pain. But sending back a note saying I wish you well but please don’t contact me again seems crueler then not responding at all. What should I do?

—Letter Unsent

Dear Letter Unsent,

It sounds like your marriage to Anne’s father was a particularly painful time for you, especially nearing the end, and I am so sorry for your losses. What you’ve made of your life in the aftermath sounds peaceful and loving, and while the same may not be true for Anne, it’s not your responsibility to heal or fix that for her.

You say you don’t want to open the door to more pain, and while sending a letter asking her not to contact you again may sound cruel, I think it’s actually the opposite. It’s a kindness to let someone know that you wish them well, and to ask them for the space you need. But it IS opening a door. It could be that Anne has experienced some fundamental shift once becoming an adult that has made her a safer person to engage with than she was as a teenager, but is that a chance you want to take? That’s up to you to decide.

Link

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Ten years probably doesn't mean exactly ten years, it means somewhere in the vicinity of a decade, and I'm also not sure if the clock starts when Anne is 13 or 16. So her age now could be anywhere from ~21 to ~28. My opinion on her current letter varies a lot depending on which end of the scale she's on!

But whether or not I'm sympathetic with present-day Anne, I'm a bit more sympathetic to adolescent Anne than I think LW is. I understand why LW lacks sympathy for her, of course! But what I'm reading here is that Anne's mother never cared that much about her, did care about her inheritance, and only showered her with all those gifts etc. because her daughter's presence was an implicit condition on reconciling with her parents. And if Anne has any brains at all she has got to know or at least suspect that this is the case.

I also wonder if perhaps Anne's parents and stepmother made her feel like she had to choose, that she couldn't have both parents in her life. And if they made her feel that way, sooner or later she was going to act on those feelings and make a choice.

Which doesn't excuse her bad behavior after this miscarriage, nor her lack of apology in this letter today.

So what would I do? Well, I'd reply back and lay it all out, something like this:

Dear Anne,

Thank you for your letter. I don't know if you remember, but you were pretty cruel to me after my miscarriage and during my depressive episode. You made it clear at the time that you wanted nothing to do with me, and I have tried to respect your wishes. I know you were young and going through a lot, so I have forgiven you*, but I'm sure you'll understand when I say I don't really want to stay in touch. I'm sorry things are rough with your mom right now, and I wish you all the best for the future. I'll contact you if I ever change my mind.

Just pop that in the mail and toss out any future missives. Done and done.

* If LW can't honestly say this and doesn't want to lie then she can say "I wish I could forgive you" or even just leave it out.

Edited 2024-10-08 20:32 (UTC)

I like your response. I think it covers the essentials, and honesty is best in this case. LW should state her position clearly, and move on without Anne in her life

Yeah, I also have more sympathy for adolescent Anne than Prudence does. I feel like there are a couple of important features here:

1) Stepparents need to always, always, always remember that they are not replacing the kid's parent in the kid's life/heart even if they are performing all the kid's parent's functions. What you're hoping for is that you will both be in there. Teenagers are not always clear about communicating who they love; asking them to ONLY love one of you is not fair. (And the framing here of "I was her mom and her birth mom couldn't be bothered" really makes me think that that's how LW sees it...which might be fair in practical terms? but parenting is not fair. It's literally not.)

2) You are the parent, they are the kid. It's not an even relationship. Reacting to a teenager with "you reject me? FINE, I reject you back!" is false equivalency. Even for people in their twenties, you are not having a relationship of equals, you are the parent. "I tried to separate from my parents" is developmentally normal behavior. "You're separating from me? I'll never speak to you again," is not. "In the end she wasn't my daughter at all": why, because your daughter would not behave badly? because I have news.

3) It's entirely likely that Anne does not remember what she did and did not apologize for. Yes, it was extremely shitty to mock LW at her lowest, but the person who is seriously at fault here is LW's ex, whose job it was to convey that LW was going through something devastating and deserved love and concern (which, depending on the maturity level of the teenager, Anne might not have fully processed), but also to model that behavior for Anne. Clearly he didn't. So I think your inclusion of "I don't know if you remember" was absolutely spot-on.

I don't know how much to believe LW that there was nothing resembling an apology. Maybe there wasn't. I have seen situations, though, where people were really hurt and angry and not ready to hear the apologies that were actually offered. It's also not clear to me whether Anne has learned how to apologize or whether she feels like self-excoriation is the same thing. "More excuses about being a troubled kid" sounds to me pretty likely to be Anne acknowledging that she was difficult to deal with rather than saying "you owe me." "I want to try again, I was a troubled kid and I regret that" is something LW can choose not to do, but...if she really was one of this young person's parents or alloparents for 13 years, it's pretty harsh.

So much agreement with all of this.

Yeah.

The thing is, if LW is being unreasonably harsh on this young woman then... well, probably it's for the best they stay out of touch, this time for Anne's sake.

Yeah, if Anne saying she'd like to try again doesn't make the LW say, you know what, yeah...

Then you know what, no.

"More excuses about being a troubled kid" sounds to me pretty likely to be Anne acknowledging that she was difficult to deal with rather than saying "you owe me."

Ahhhh that hadn't occurred to me but that makes so much sense.

Yeah.

The bit about "Anne went to live with her mother despite my husband and me beggaring ourselves with lawyer and therapy fees," makes me wonder just how coercive and rancorous Anne's original attempt to get back in touch with her mother was, too. It's one thing to not want your kid to end up living with a parent who might be abusive; it's something else to burn all your savings trying to make sure she can't ever leave or force her to come back once she has.

Anne's grandparents are dead (or soon-to-be), her father is dead, and she's cut off from her biological mother. She's trying to reach out to the only "family" member she has left? Maybe it's from a place of remorse, reflection, and desire to do better; maybe it's from loneliness; maybe she needs something. There's no clear reason given. To me that's a red flag.

Troubled kid or no, Anne's mockery of, and cruelty towards, LW's loss was terrible and uncalled for; 16 was old enough to understand that and not do it. There can't be any real attempt to "try again" without Anne sincerely apologizing for that incident, which imho has to be part of the first contact letter. That lack of apology strikes me as a second flag. Stating she did those things because she was a troubled kid might indicate regret, but it is not an apology.

This sounds harsh, but LW is in no way obligated to let Anne back into her life, even if she receives an abject apology, even though LW co-parented Anne for several years; her parental obligation to Anne ended with the divorce. Without knowing Anne's real reason for reaching out without an apology, imho LW is running a real risk of getting hurt again. There's also no guarantee that Anne will heed any request from LW for no further contact. I think I'm on Team Silence for this one.

Edited (added some words) 2024-10-09 16:09 (UTC)

I don't understand why "I want to try again [to have a relationship with you]" strikes you as not a sufficient reason to contact someone and, in absence of sufficient reason, a red flag.

Edited 2024-10-09 20:37 (UTC)

Repeating this sentence from my 2nd paragraph:

There can't be any real attempt to "try again" without Anne sincerely apologizing for that incident, which imho has to be part of the first contact letter.

Yeah, on consideration I agree with you here. The axe forgets but the tree remembers, so why should the tree trust the axe unless it shows explicitly that it will not chop again? To stop torturing the metaphor -- while adolescents are famously self centered and sometimes cruel, I think there are levels of cruelty even adolescents should know are unacceptable, and that certainly an adult should be able to look back upon and realize were wrong.

Edited 2024-10-11 12:23 (UTC)

I agree that it might be wrong to blame Anne so harshly for how she behaved as a teen. Teenagers without good role models do not necessarily understand how cruel they are being. Young adults who didn’t have good role models growing up do not necessarily learn how to apologize. A lot of people believe that excuses and “can we try again?” count as an apology.

All that said, it seems like LW has her mind made up, and the only question she has is whether she should reply to the letter or not. I suspect Anne wants some kind of financial assistance, regardless of how sincere she is about wanting to renew a relationship for other reasons. It would be a kindness to reply so she knows sooner rather than later not to expect that. But I also think silence is a reasonable response.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only